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418,783 | 1,609,079 | 148,547 | 8 | Rossini meets Rasinski . | There seems to be a tradition in American animated cartoons , shared by nearly all the major animation studios : whenever cartoon characters decide to guy an opera , it's almost invariably ' The Barber of Seville ' . Even more specifically , it's got to be the barber's aria ' Largo al Factotum ' : the song in which he ... |
419,509 | 1,609,079 | 22,915 | 8 | Stymie stymies the Unholy Four . | I'm not a major fan of Hal Roach's " Our Gang " comedies - - the so-called Little Rascals - - and I usually avoid the Rascals in any movie that shows them eating . I have no desire to watch their table manners , and most of the " gags " are very predictable : close-up of white kid with dark food smeared on his face , f... |
418,388 | 1,609,079 | 234,114 | 8 | Speed it up ! | Here's an interesting American ' trick ' film which is much cruder than the trick films which Melies was doing in France at this time . Yet in some ways - - due to its fast action and use of exteriors - - this movie is more interesting than a typical Melies offering . I wonder if the makers of ' Liquid Electricity ' ha... |
418,791 | 1,609,079 | 18,652 | 8 | The Felix and the Carpet | ' Arabiantics ' is one of the better Felix cartoons from the Otto Messmer era . ( I had the painful pleasure of meeting Messmer shortly before he died : painful , because - - long after his ill-paid career was over - - he was totally skint and dependent on charity whip-rounds from New York City's Collective for Living ... |
418,990 | 1,609,079 | 263,371 | 8 | Excellent live-action thriller | Several film critics ( notably Leslie Halliwell and William K Everson ) have made detailed comparisons between the 1940 ' Gaslight ' ( made in Britain ) and its better-known 1944 Hollywood remake . The general consensus is that the British version is better . Still , Ingrid Bergman is very beautiful and compelling in t... |
418,924 | 1,609,079 | 366,287 | 8 | That 1940s bomber crew are back . . . | I saw ' Caterina va in Città ' in Sydney , where the audience had mixed reactions to the schoolboy who speaks Italian with what's apparently meant to be a Sydneysider accent . In general , I was impressed by the ensemble acting , but I felt that the best performance was given by Margherita Buy as the heroine's mother A... |
418,816 | 1,609,079 | 329,437 | 8 | He's got the horn . . . | This is a low-budget Danish television production of Eugène Ionesco's surrealist play ' Rhinoceros ' . I speak very little Danish , and I'm eager to improve my understanding of the language . When a chance to screen this kinescope came my way , I eagerly accepted . I'm very familiar with Ionesco's play in English trans... |
418,306 | 1,609,079 | 22,999 | 8 | She fingers his plumb bob . | ' Heritage of the Desert ' is an excellent western that will appeal to viewers who don't normally like westerns . Made early in the career of the underrated director Henry Hathaway , this is a splendid example of his skills . Veteran character actor J Farrell MacDonald gives one of his best performances here as Naab ( ... |
419,707 | 1,609,079 | 483,279 | 8 | She's from France , she can dance . . . but more prettily in Italy . | This movie takes place in Italy but the scenery looks as if it was filmed in France . The heroine is identified ( in the intertitles ) as French , but there's no particular reason for her to be French apart from the fact that the actress who plays her is French . In a sound film , this sort of backstory is necessary to... |
419,488 | 1,609,079 | 13,834 | 8 | A " lost " film , you say ? | This silent version of Eugene O'Neill's drama ' Anna Christie ' , starring Blanche Sweet , is an excellent film in its own right , very faithful to the source material . It also proves a point I've often made about so-called ' lost ' films : namely , that a diligent and intelligent search for a specific film can often ... |
419,549 | 1,609,079 | 150,887 | 8 | Ruling the roost in a coop d'etat | I'm a fan of Arnold Stang , but I dislike the Uncle Herman cartoons for which he provided the main character's voice . All the cartoons putting Uncle Herman at odds with Katnip the Cat have exactly the same boring plot . ' The Henpecked Rooster ' , at least , is a Herman cartoon which places the character in a differen... |
419,426 | 1,609,079 | 222,651 | 8 | Too good to be fiction ! | I saw ' The White Rabbit ' when it was originally televised on the Beeb , and would happily watch it again if it were given a repeat transmission . However , considering Auntie Beeb's penchant for taping over her original recordings , I doubt that ' The White Rabbit ' still exists . Here's hoping . The IMDb credits cor... |
419,140 | 1,609,079 | 215,038 | 8 | Walk through this with me | Marcel Aymé ( pronounced ' Ah-may ' ) was France's equivalent to Thorne Smith . Aymé wrote fantasy stories which , like Smith's , tended to feature unobtrusive men whose lives are irrevocably changed by an unexpected encounter with the supernatural , not always ending happily but usually with a bit of sex along the way... |
419,235 | 1,609,079 | 22,639 | 8 | Barrymore steals the picture | Believe it or not , the Mona Lisa actually got stolen once , and was missing for nearly two years . In 1911 , Leonardo da Vinci's ' La Gioconda ' ( better known as the Mona Lisa ) was taken from the Louvre by a petty thief ( and former Louvre employee ) who allegedly sought to return the world's most famous piece of ar... |
419,605 | 1,609,079 | 12,284 | 8 | Seven faces of Chic Sale | I viewed the UCLA print of this film , an acetate dupe which was struck from a nitrate release print that had seriously deteriorated . Charles ' Chic ' Sale was a vaudeville monologist who did rural material about hicks and hillbillies . More importantly , Sale was also the author of a book called ' The Specialist ' , ... |
418,566 | 1,609,079 | 247,485 | 8 | Comedy of social classes ; funnier than I expected . | I saw ' Lumpen und Seide ' in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy . Although this silent film is German , and the festival screened a print from a German collection ( the Bundesarchiv in Berlin ) , this print was from the film's release in Holland , so it had Dutch intertitles . . . and the... |
419,087 | 1,609,079 | 22,612 | 8 | Solid programmer , minor flaws . | ' Afraid to Talk ' is one of those efficient low-budget Hollywood features that deserve to be better known . This drama of corrupt politicos is very much of the 1930s . I don't mean to say that modern politicians are less corrupt than their 1930s counterparts , but the corruption in this film is heavy with the milieu o... |
418,691 | 1,609,079 | 187,702 | 8 | Not a lucky dip . | I saw this short film at the Cinema Muto film festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 . The directors of that excellent annual festival placed a great deal of emphasis on this particular film as one of the prestige attractions of the 2006 festival . In fact , the significance of ' Arrest of a Pickpocket ' is almos... |
418,422 | 1,609,079 | 10,061 | 8 | See me , hear me , touch me | There is a damaged and incomplete print of this film in the Library of Congress ; some effort is underway to make it available on video . It's a shame that the 1919 film ' Deliverance ' has the same title as a much better-known film about hillbilly sodomites . ' Deliverance ' ( this one ) is a clumsily-made film , poor... |
419,412 | 1,609,079 | 1,500 | 8 | Slam-bang action but no credibility . | ' Bedraget i døden ' would translate as the very intriguing ' Deceived in Death ' . I saw this film in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy ; they screened a Danish Film Institute archive print made in 1957 . The film's director is Eduard Schnedler-Sørensen . The credited scenarist is Ludwig Landm... |
418,502 | 1,609,079 | 69,483 | 8 | Brilliant enactment of Thurber's ' Last Flower ' | ' The War Between Men and Women ' was originally a suite of drawings by cartoonist / author James Thurber , depicting quite literally an all-out war between the two sexes . Thurber was an embittered misogynist ( as well as a philanderer ) , so it's no surprise that he ended his " War " with the women offering unconditi... |
418,472 | 1,609,079 | 426,227 | 8 | Climbing the walls | In the very early days of film-making , when film distributors typically disrespected film producers ' copyrights ( especially those of foreign production companies ) , it often happened that one movie company would produce an unauthorised remake of another company's profitable film : they would copy the set , story , ... |
418,840 | 1,609,079 | 15,935 | 8 | a Chile reception | I saw ' Hussar of the Dead ' at the 2006 Cinema Muto silent-film festival in Sacile , Italy , where it was definitely one of the high points of the excellent festival . This Chilean silent movie was at least the third film version ( and the second by actor-director-author Pedro Sienna ) depicting the life of Chilean he... |
418,888 | 1,609,079 | 3,424 | 8 | Very impressive editing | I viewed a print of ' Suspense ' in the National Film Archives , in London . Phillips Smalley is credited as director , but the film was probably co-directed by Lois Weber . Women film directors have always been a rarity , although Alice Guy Blache was also directing films in early silent days . Lois Weber's career is ... |
418,751 | 1,609,079 | 22,768 | 8 | Spring-time for Roscoe | Close Relations is one of the six short comedies which comprise Roscoe Arbuckle's entire talking-film career . He's ably assisted in this film by Shemp Howard , the once and future Stooge , riding on a pogo stick . The plot involves a rivalry between two branches of Arbuckle's family . Arbuckle's clan are named the W... |
419,552 | 1,609,079 | 125,067 | 8 | A tantalising glimpse of what might have been . | I saw a beautiful print of ' A Dream or Two Ago ' at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 ; the print was restored in Holland in 2004 , with Dutch intertitles . As is often the case in foreign prints of silent films , several of the characters were renamed : the lead role ' Millicent Hawthorne '... |
419,612 | 1,609,079 | 27,557 | 8 | Magyar self at home | ' Danube Rendezvous ' is froth , notably only because it offers some interesting views of Budapest circa 1936 , and because it shows that Hungarians were able to indulge in such frivolity at a time when events in Germany and Austria were getting very serious indeed . SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . Zita Perczel ( an attractive b... |
419,657 | 1,609,079 | 395,571 | 8 | A brief history of Hawking | ' Hawking ' , which I saw recently on BBC2 , is a fictionalised telefilm biography of physicist Stephen Hawking . . . known to Homer Simpson as ' that wheelchair guy ' . ( Hawking is also the only person ever to make a guest appearance as himself in an episode of ' Star Trek : The Next Generation ' . ) Some modern-day ... |
418,528 | 1,609,079 | 53,607 | 8 | Should have shown more grass , less glass . | I was never an admirer of the poetry of John Betjeman , although I agree with his famous observation about parents . To a large extent , Betjeman defined a certain aspect of England ( and Englishness ) that was already fading away during his lifetime . The BBC documentary ' Architecture of Entertainment ' gives Betjema... |
418,811 | 1,609,079 | 10,221 | 8 | Uncle Fester's father and some perforated cheese . | ' The Hayseed ' is one of Roscoe Arbuckle's comedy shorts , with strong emphasis on slapstick and ' impossible ' gags . As usual at this point in his career , he's ably abetted by the great Buster Keaton . Also on hand is John Coogan , father ( and manager ) of future silent-film star Jackie Coogan . The elder Coogan m... |
418,700 | 1,609,079 | 149,212 | 8 | At least they're not bald eagles . | For some reason , this cartoon's title is singular when it ought to be plural : Heckle and Jeckle are both salesmen here , or at least pitchmen . They show up in a municipal park , set up a keester , and start trying to sell hair tonic to the locals , who are a bunch of cute li'l animals . Why any woodland creatures wo... |
418,242 | 1,609,079 | 480,669 | 8 | He's beside himself | This very clever time-paradox film is the first movie I've ever seen which contains a flashback shot that's also a flash-forward . If you find that confusing , then this movie's not for you . On the other hand , if you enjoy having your brain stretched by temporal causality paradox and Schrodinger's quantum superpositi... |
418,295 | 1,609,079 | 288,822 | 8 | Informative and fun documentary . | ' It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World ' is one of my all-time favourite comedies , one of the very few movies I've watched repeatedly . ( One reason I've managed to see so many movies is because I very seldom allocate the time to watch any movie I've already seen . " Mad World ' is one of the few exceptions that I'll watch ov... |
418,383 | 1,609,079 | 34,631 | 8 | Excellent voice work by Bletcher and Blanc . | Daffy's Southern Exposure is one of the funnier Daffy Duck toons from his black and white period . There are two errors in the IMDb description of this cartoon : the animal who tries to cook and eat Daffy here is a wolf , not a fox . . . and the voice of the wolf is supplied not by Mel Blanc but by ( uncredited ) Bil... |
418,235 | 1,609,079 | 945,314 | 8 | Reminds me of Ingmar Bergman . | ' Amelia and Michael ' is a short film that gets in , tells its story with a punch , then gets out again with minimal frippery . The opening shot is a tight close-up of Amelia's eye as she applies her mascara ; actress Natasha Powell apparently did this while looking directly into the camera , without the aid of a mirr... |
418,671 | 1,609,079 | 92,687 | 8 | Be a crook and meet hot chicks ( and bad Czechs ) | I screened the Czech movie ' Bony a Klid ' specifically because I wanted to develop some familiarity with the Czech language , but this turns out to be an enjoyable film in its own right , with several action sequences that don't rely on dialogue . The title ' Bony a Klid ' is an intentional pun on ' Bonnie and Clyde '... |
418,704 | 1,609,079 | 6,101 | 8 | In this silent movie , it's moot if he's mute . | I saw this remarkable melodrama in October 2007 at the Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone , Italy ; they screened a print restored by Eastman House with the assistance of the Library of Congress . The 35mm print ( struck from a 28mm diacetate ) replicated the original Desmet colour tinting . Character actor Robert Warwi... |
418,362 | 1,609,079 | 285,633 | 8 | Neat little tale with a punch . | I saw ' The Jest ' at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . This short film is a neat shaggy-dog tale : dramatic , with a shock ending that might arguably serve as a ' joke ' punchline . It's a shame that none of this movie's actors are credited ; they all give excellent performances . The opening scene is ... |
419,020 | 1,609,079 | 11,301 | 8 | Crude but funny . | In 1907 , the San Francisco Chronicle's cartoonist Bud Fisher began a comic strip called " Mr A . Mutt " , depicting the adventures of Augustus Mutt , a hapless punter and railbird . The tall lanky Mutt soon found visual contrast in Jeffries , a runty little wiseguy named for a recent heavyweight boxing champ . Soon re... |
419,156 | 1,609,079 | 19,198 | 8 | Shattering supernatural allegory | ' Der Geheimnisvolle Spiegel ' would translate as ' The Mysterious Mirror ' . This is an eerie and moody supernatural fable that deserves to be better known , although the storyline is more episodic than it ought to be . SPOILERS COMING . An old castle in Bavaria contains a magical mirror . Whoever looks into it by the... |
419,068 | 1,609,079 | 3,643 | 8 | This is the Poe-est movie . . . | ' The Avenging Conscience ' isn't the weirdest movie on DW Griffith's CV , but it's well up there . This is a drama of modern 1914 , but it's firmly influenced by several stories of Edgar Allan Poe , who is referenced ( by name and daguerreotype image ) in the film . Henry Walthall plays a young man whose mother died g... |
418,724 | 1,609,079 | 462,477 | 9 | Learning the ropes ; or , Good to the last drop . | Albert Pierrepoint was the most prolific hangman in British history , executing German war criminals at Bergen-Belsen as well as hundreds of convicted prisoners in England . He was NOT the last hangman to carry out an execution in Britain , but he was the last to hold the official title of Chief Hangman . I attended a ... |
418,527 | 1,609,079 | 416,049 | 9 | Eerie , moody . . . but confusing . | I'm fairly fluent in German , and yet I had trouble following the dialogue and action in this low-budget German-language teleplay . ( Admittedly , the sound recording is poor and the plot of this story is intentionally disorienting . ) I wouldn't have been able to understand it at all , if not for the fact that I had p... |
418,715 | 1,609,079 | 4,537 | 9 | Creaking relic still fascinates . | The actor Thomas Jefferson ( presumably named for the U . S . President , who was allegedly this actor's ancestor ) was a son of Joseph Jefferson the Third , an extremely popular 19th-century American stage actor whose lifespan just barely overlapped with the earliest days of movies . Consequently , Joseph Jefferson's ... |
419,573 | 1,609,079 | 6,402 | 9 | Follow that bathtub ! | ' Bath Tub Perils ' is hilarious , and I recommend it to any students of silent-film comedy as a good example of a ' generic ' Keystone . The star of the film is Fred Mace , whom modern audiences are unlikely to recognise ( he died young ) , and all the lesser actors are obscure . . . so we're able to perceive this sho... |
419,254 | 1,609,079 | 26,121 | 9 | Paul Muni tour de force | In ' Black Fury ' , Paul Muni gives one of his best performances , and also appears onscreen in one of his more plausible make-ups . This time he plays a Slavic immigrant , uneducated but keenly intelligent , working in an American coal mine . Muni's hair is dyed blond , yet looks realistic , and his own Eastern Europe... |
419,496 | 1,609,079 | 35,105 | 9 | Roz is riotously funny | ' My Sister Eileen ' is based on true incidents . Ruth and Eileen McKenney were sisters from a small town in Ohio who came to New York City : Ruth intending to become an author , Eileen hoping to be an actress . Although Ruth McKenney sold a few magazine pieces , her most successful work was her series of fictionalised... |
418,842 | 1,609,079 | 8,918 | 9 | She flips for him . . . pancakes , I mean . | I saw this film at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . The very popular William S . Hart was something of an anomaly among silent-film stars . Whereas most male silent stars tended to play either exclusively good guys or exclusively baddies , Hart usually played characters who started out bad but were ref... |
419,273 | 1,609,079 | 321,330 | 9 | After you , Alphonse . . . | Marcel Aymé ( pronounced ' Ah-may ' ) was France's equivalent to Thorne Smith . Aymé wrote fantasy stories which , like Smith's , tended to feature unobtrusive men whose lives are irrevocably changed by an unexpected encounter with the supernatural , not always ending happily but usually with a bit of sex along the way... |
418,204 | 1,609,079 | 21,797 | 9 | Ethel Merman meets Doctor Caligari . | My thanks to Nick Markovich and the Yip Harburg Foundation for enabling me to view a print of this rare film . ' The Devil Sea ' is an above-average example of the thousands of short films from the early talkie era which made a trip to the movies similar to a trip to the vaudeville house . These movies , often featurin... |
418,354 | 1,609,079 | 200,648 | 9 | The Hunchback's Revenge ! | This early film version of the Gabriele D'Annunzio drama is amazing ; it features some deeply impressive sets and costumes , as well as elaborate title cards , and dramatic acting that's more subtle than usual for its period . I regret that the print which I viewed did not have a cast list or other credits . The story ... |
419,094 | 1,609,079 | 359,434 | 9 | Would somebody review a movie without seeing it ? | At the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy ( in October 2006 ) I saw a movie which purports to be ' How the Professor Fooled the Burglars ' . The film screened at the Sacile festival was a print on loan from the University of South Carolina . Here we have a movie - - although we don't know for certain WHICH movie - ... |
418,744 | 1,609,079 | 167,050 | 9 | Hilariously relevant to our own times . | ' Billy and the Big Stick ' is a comedy dealing with the expansionist policies of the United States in the years leading up to the First World War . As I watched this film , nearly a century after it was made , I was amazed at how extremely relevant this movie is to current United States policy and international relati... |
418,799 | 1,609,079 | 357 | 9 | Has her lower half got a sister ? | I viewed the British Film Institute print of this early ' trick ' film . This brief and enjoyable comedy is purely a vehicle for some conjuring tricks , all of which are achieved in the camera rather than through stagecraft . The tricks are well done , with the jump cuts and other fakery being rather more difficult to ... |
419,713 | 1,609,079 | 130,371 | 9 | Thrilling and authentic | Of all the safari films made by Martin Johnson and his wife Osa , ' Congorilla ' was the most popular and most successful financially . I enjoyed ' Congorilla ' but I regretted that film's patronising attitude towards African natives , as well as a couple of wildlife sequences that appear to have been faked . ' Wonders... |
418,779 | 1,609,079 | 351,917 | 9 | Kiwi fiction , much more effective as a documentary . | I saw this movie in October 1998 at the Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the New Zealand Film Archive with the original intertitles . Although this is a fiction film , it has more impact as a documentary . Part of this is for a bad reason - - there's really not much narrative in the story ... |
418,795 | 1,609,079 | 420 | 9 | Lewis Carroll would have loved this ! | Cecil Hepworth is a vitally important figure in Britain's early cinema , but his achievements were compromised by the fact that he was a poor businessman and poor planner . Prints of his most popular films - - such as " Comin ' Thro the Rye " and " The Joke that Failed " - - were sold outright to exhibitors , causing H... |
419,070 | 1,609,079 | 177,163 | 9 | Will this review get me in Dutch ? | ' Das Recht auf Dasein ' ( ' The Reality of Existence ' ) is a German film , but the print I viewed ( at a Manhattan screening , from the archives of the Nederlands Fillmmuseum , Amsterdam ) had been edited for release in the Netherlands , so all the original German intertitles - - as well as several shots of handwritt... |
418,688 | 1,609,079 | 583 | 9 | 12-minute ' Camille ' . | I saw this fascinating drama in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . ' Kameliadamen ' translates as ' Camellia Lady ' : this is the same story which would later become Garbo's classic ' Camille ' , and which also became the opera ' La Traviata ' . ' Kameliadamen ' is quite faithful to its well-k... |
418,458 | 1,609,079 | 8,243 | 9 | Whose little girl are you ? | The print of this film which I viewed had credits and intertitles printed on different film stock from the actors ' footage . . . and the title footage is older . This may explain why the title ' Madcap Madge ' doesn't match the film proper , in which the main character's name is Betty . In silent films , it was a fair... |
418,687 | 1,609,079 | 602 | 9 | Impressive fake wildlife film . | I saw this impressive early silent film in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . Those who are unfamiliar with Scandinavian languages may find the title ' Løvejagten ' confusing . ' Løve ' has nothing to do with ' love ' : it's the Danish word for ' lion ' . The film's title translates as ' Lion ... |
418,667 | 1,609,079 | 157,938 | 9 | Beneath those bangs , her secret hangs . . . | ' Louise Brooks : Looking for Lulu ' is one instalment in an ongoing series of documentaries by Hugh Munro Neely , each spotlighting an actress of the early film era . ( Full disclosure : I've had some professional dealings with Hugh Neely , and I consider him a friend , but I hope that this hasn't coloured my percepti... |
419,189 | 1,609,079 | 33,667 | 9 | Splendid low-budget delight | ' Go West , Young Lady ' is a surprisingly delightful little film that easily straddles at least three different genres : it's a comedy western with a couple of full-fledged musical numbers , but which never quite becomes a full-scale musical . This film features the only good comedy performance I've ever seen by Glenn... |
418,601 | 1,609,079 | 332,253 | 9 | A stagedoor Johnny becomes a chorus girl . | This short film was restored by the Library of Congress from a paper print . Apparently the ' Mr Jack ' in this film is inspired by the character of the same name in Jimmy Swinnerton's newspaper comic feature . But Swinnerton's Mr Jack was a cloyingly cute humanised animal , whereas the ' Mr Jack ' seen here is an all-... |
418,389 | 1,609,079 | 24,562 | 9 | A little girl with a big voice . | ' Sing , Babies , Sing ' is one of a series of shorts produced by the Fleischer studio which followed an interesting format : some typical Fleischer black-and-white animation ( cartoon gags with a musical soundtrack ) would book-end a live-action musical performance by some popular vaudeville act of the time . Generall... |
418,657 | 1,609,079 | 152,332 | 9 | Jimmy Durante meets George Bernard Shaw . | Columbia Studios ' low-budget Scrappy cartoons ( starring a blond boy of that name ) are mostly quite bad . Featuring poor animation and unattractive visuals , the Scrappies had a tendency to repeat every sight gag - filling up screen time by recycling the animation cels - and the sight gags were usually not funny in t... |
419,335 | 1,609,079 | 420,069 | 9 | The looking-glass war | I saw this very amusing film in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone ; the annual festival has made a welcome return to that town after eight years in nearby Sacile . . . a town no less beautiful , but in Sacile the festival's programme was split between two smaller cinemas at opposite ends of the t... |
419,222 | 1,609,079 | 17,947 | 9 | The tiptoeing gorilla is hilarious | Ralph Spence wrote his play ' The Gorilla ' in the mid-1920s , when Broadway audiences had already seen several dead-earnest thriller plays about spooky old houses full of trapdoors and masked villains . The posters for the 1925 Broadway production of ' The Gorilla ' acknowledged its predecessors , by ballyhooing : ' O... |
418,423 | 1,609,079 | 37,661 | 9 | Jessica Rabbit meets Virgil Partch | Virgil Partch , who signed his name ' ViP ' , was a magazine and newspaper cartoonist noted for his clean uncluttered linework and weirdly surrealistic humour . Although ViP was definitely an original , his subject matter is similar to that of Gahan Wilson , Arnold Roth and the great Basil Wolverton . The very first is... |
419,415 | 1,609,079 | 893,596 | 9 | Eerie supernatural masterpiece . | I saw ' En Kunstners gennembrud ' in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . The festival screened a beautifully tinted acetate print , struck in 2001 from an original nitrate release print in Filmarchiv Austria , with German title card and intertitles replacing the Danish originals . The film's ti... |
418,523 | 1,609,079 | 97,839 | 9 | No , really . . . I was pushing that sheep through the fence ! | THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SEXUAL CONTENT WHICH MAY BE DISTRESSING TO SOME READERS . ' Marquis ' is the only film I've ever seen by the oddly-named Henri Xhonneux , but it's so imaginative and entertaining that I'm eager to see more of his work . ' Marquis ' alleges to be based on incidents in the life and novels of the Marq... |
418,681 | 1,609,079 | 864 | 9 | Much better than I'd expected . | I saw this short drama at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the Library of Congress with the original intertitles missing . IMDb's synopsis of ' The Fascinating Mrs Francis ' is accurate but leaves out some useful details . SPOILERS AHEAD . After the youth becomes infatuated with t... |
418,522 | 1,609,079 | 76,706 | 9 | Knife-edge prison drama | The Puerto Rican playwright Miguel Pinero ( no relation to the English playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero ) was originally a career criminal who turned his life around while serving an armed-robbery sentence in Sing Sing . In an inmates ' playwriting workshop , Pinero wrote the brilliant drama " Short Eyes " which deser... |
419,015 | 1,609,079 | 29,744 | 9 | Demarest funny , Winchell phony | Walter Winchell started in vaudeville as a performer in Gus Edwards's ' School Days ' act . ( A fictionalised version of this remarkable troupe became Bing Crosby's movie ' The Star Maker ' . ) Between engagements , Winchell wrote and published a vaudeville newsletter , filled with showbiz gossip . He eventually became... |
419,551 | 1,609,079 | 128,813 | 9 | Comet allez-vous ? Armageddon out of here ! | I saw the Danish Film Institute's digitally-restored print of this film when it was screened at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 . In 1910 , the entire planet Earth went through the tail of Halley's comet . The only physical effect was that nights were brighter than usual that year ( nowaday... |
418,486 | 1,609,079 | 35,441 | 9 | A star at age 13 ! | There are some remarkable similarities between Sally Ann Howes and Julie Andrews . Both began their careers as singing ingenues in the same era . Julie's stepfather Ted Andrews was a radio entertainer ; Sally Ann's father Bobby Howes starred in West End musicals , playing a character similar to Eddie Cantor's but less ... |
418,221 | 1,609,079 | 276,585 | 9 | That's not how we re-Hearst it . | ' Captured on Film : The True Story of Marion Davies ' is one of several documentaries directed by Hugh Munro Neely and produced by Hugh Hefner , each one spotlighting a legendary actress of silent films . Full disclosure : I've had some minor interaction with Mr Neely and I consider him a friend , so I may be slightly... |
419,720 | 1,609,079 | 31,944 | 9 | Betty Boop gives a lube job . | I'm not a fan of Betty Boop , but ' So Does an Automobile ' is one of her more enjoyable cartoons . It features Betty in a storyline that doesn't require us to accept her as beautiful or voluptuous . ( Honestly : if you saw a real woman who looked and sounded like Betty Boop - - that gigantic head , that tiny mouth , t... |
419,424 | 1,609,079 | 44,974 | 9 | Erotic , exotic , powerful . . . but not spooky ! | It's intriguing that so many diverse cultures have independently developed legends of the witch : a supernatural female , frequently erotic , with powers usually devoted to evil . Most peasant cultures are nominally ruled by men , but the two great mysteries of life - - birth and death - - are controlled by women . A w... |
419,635 | 1,609,079 | 20,918 | 9 | Banjo Eyes gets pulled over . | ' Getting a Ticket ' , a comedy short starring Eddie Cantor , is much funnier than the peculiar and protracted tailor-shop skit which Cantor had performed a few months earlier in the feature film ' Glorifying the American Girl ' . There are some crudities here : at one point , there's a cut to another camera set-up jus... |
418,641 | 1,609,079 | 203,681 | 9 | Long before Zapruder . . . | William McKinley was an extremely popular President . ( The man who assassinated him was a crackpot nihilist , who shot McKinley merely because he was the President . . . not for any motive relevant to McKinley's policies . ) Among McKinley's other achievements was his very dignified method of campaigning . McKinley re... |
418,920 | 1,609,079 | 22,815 | 9 | George Rosener as Milton Parsons . | SPOILERS AHEAD . I must disagree with my IMDb colleague Bob Lipton , who says that Dickie Moore gets his legs chopped off in this movie . There's a very convincing special-effects sequence in which little Dickie's go-cart gets run over by a stolen car , and there's some dialogue in hospital about Dickie being crippled ... |
418,360 | 1,609,079 | 109,985 | 9 | Trouble at t'mill , squire . | I have mixed feelings about screen adaptations of classic novels and plays . On the one hand , they serve as a ' crib sheet ' for students ( and George Costanza types ) who are too lazy to read the original books . Also , they cheat viewers out of the experience of the prose by the original author , in this case Dicken... |
419,091 | 1,609,079 | 174,990 | 9 | 78 ( Russian ) revolutions per minute | The Russian comedy film ' New Moscow ' is barely known even in Russia ; apparently it incurred the wrath of the commissars during its original screening in 1938 , and was suppressed afterward . I'm amazed that it survived at all . Alyosha ( played by Daniil Sagal , uncle of Peg Bundy ! ) is a Siberian farmboy who looks... |
418,291 | 1,609,079 | 16,359 | 9 | Stan , Stan , the funniest man ( and woman ) | ' The Sleuth ' , directed by my friend the late Joe Rock , is a starring vehicle for Stan Laurel pre-Hardy . Laurel is excellent here , playing a character quite different from his later ' Stanley ' dimwit . He's Webster Dingle , a private detective . Alberta Vaughn walks into his office ; her husband ( Glen Cavender ,... |
418,431 | 1,609,079 | 383,694 | 9 | If this movie was accurate , I wouldn't be alive . | Mike Leigh is a brilliant filmmaker , whose films feature impeccable production design . Reportedly , Leigh never writes a script : he preps his actors in their characterisations , and then all dialogue is improvised on the set ! I found only one production flaw in ' Vera Drake ' : Susan , the upper-class young Londone... |
418,985 | 1,609,079 | 20,768 | 9 | Very nearly as good as ' Sunrise ' | ' City Girl ' is a tantalising glimpse of what sort of Hollywood career F . W . Murnau might have had , if not for his untimely death . In some ways , this film resembles Murnau's masterpiece ' Sunrise ' told in reverse : here , a young couple fall in love in the city ( Chicago ) , then travel to the countryside ( Minn... |
419,363 | 1,609,079 | 287,248 | 9 | Just what the doctor ordered | ' Maybury ' is a splendid example of the sort of television drama that British production companies do so very well , and which American production companies always do badly . The setting for this series is the psychiatric unit of Maybury General Hospital , and accordingly the central theme is the treatment of mental i... |
419,463 | 1,609,079 | 34,199 | 9 | You won't sleep through this movie ! | ' Sleepers West ' has a complicated pedigree . In the early ' 30s , pulp-magazine novelist Frederick Nebel wrote a detective story called ' Sleepers EAST ' . The Fox studio bought the rights and filmed this in 1934 , but the film ' Sleepers East ' is spoilt by some boring romantic elements that dilute the mystery plot ... |
418,968 | 1,609,079 | 381,456 | 9 | a Pock o ' Lips now . | WARNING : This review contains frank language which may offend some people . Billie Whitelaw is an extremely talented actress who is also astonishingly good-looking and sexy ; sometimes her physical beauty actually distracts from the role she is playing . Although Whitelaw could easily get steady employment in conventi... |
418,736 | 1,609,079 | 430,254 | 9 | Sisterhood forever . | I found this documentary absolutely fascinating . Its title ' Joined for Life ' inevitably reminds me of ' Chained for Life ' , the notorious road-house film starring conjoined sisters ( so-called ' siamese ' twins ) Daisy and Violet Hilton . But the Hilton sisters were two complete twins who shared no major organs ; m... |
418,823 | 1,609,079 | 228,415 | 9 | Legendary Lola-Lola . | I got within twenty feet of Marlene Dietrich while ' I Wish You Love ' was in rehearsal ; her concert was produced by Bentwood Television , the U . S . production company of Alexander Cohen , in whose London office I was then employed . ( Five years earlier , Cohen had staged Dietrich's concert performance as one of hi... |
418,428 | 1,609,079 | 5,204 | 9 | ' plane nonsense | The output of Mack Sennett's Keystone studio has been unfairly stereotyped as mindless slapstick : a steady diet of custard pies and pratfalls , climaxing in a chase . Although many Keystones did conform to that formula , many others did not . Some notable exceptions were the rural comedies starring Ora Carew and Josep... |
418,655 | 1,609,079 | 18,771 | 9 | Poodles Hanneford is brilliant | Franke Darro came from a circus background ( his parents were aerialists ) , and he just occasionally had a chance to show off his circus skills in his film roles . . . such as in ' Wild Boys of the Road ' , when he gives a dazzling display of acrobatics in the last scene of the movie . Darro's short stature enabled hi... |
419,553 | 1,609,079 | 131,434 | 9 | Danish blue cheese . | I viewed an acetate print of ' Den Hvide Slavehandels Sidste Offer ' ( " The White-Slave Trade's Final Victim " ) at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 . This film is yet another early 20th-century movie exploiting a theme that was hugely popular at the time , namely ' white slavery ' : white ... |
418,868 | 1,609,079 | 12,248 | 9 | Impressive drama deals bravely with unpopular subject matter . | I'm impressed that ' Hail the Woman ' was made at all ; released just one year after American women got the vote , this turgid drama makes an earnest plea against the sexual double standard which judges women's sexual behaviour more harshly than men's . SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD . A prologue , set in the Plymouth colony in... |
418,412 | 1,609,079 | 231,967 | 9 | Focus on his feet ! | Let's Scuffle is a short subject - - a single song-and-dance number - - that appears to have been cut from a feature-length movie : to be precise , a ' race film ' . ( This was the term used by American cinema exhibitors in the 1940s and earlier for any movie with an all-black cast , intended primarily for distributi... |
419,300 | 1,609,079 | 15,931 | 9 | The first Walter Mitty . | ' How Baxter Butted In ' is a delightful comedy , featuring a daydreaming hero astonishingly similar to James Thurber's immortal creation Walter Mitty . Both men are overworked nobodies in their workaday lives , yet both are many-sided heroes in their fantasy worlds . The similarity between Walter Mitty and this film's... |
418,277 | 1,609,079 | 18,881 | 9 | Eggs and hamming it up | Hal Roach made several interesting attempts to create female comedy teams , most notably his pairings of Thelma Todd with ZaSu Pitts and with Patsy Kelly . Nearly as interesting is the brief teaming of Anita Garvin and Marion Byron . In " Feed ' em and Weep " , it's unfortunate that their characters are so clearly a fe... |
418,770 | 1,609,079 | 25,388 | 9 | What a great railway engine ! | ' Love and the First Railway ' is what this movie's title would mean in English . This is one of those films that depicts fictional characters participating in an historic incident . The actual first railway was built in England , of course . But according to this movie , the first railway ( in Germany , at least ) was... |
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