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438,812 | 1,617,546 | 21,659 | 6 | Still In The Silent Era | William Boyd is willing to kill himself for enough insurance money to pay off his debts , but crime boss Warner Oland raises the stakes : a year and a day , and the money will nominally be paid to wife-for-hire Dorothy Sebastian . But a lot can happen in a year . . . Shot beautifully by under-rated DP Hal Mohr , this m... |
438,656 | 1,617,546 | 151,574 | 6 | Follow the Bouncing Ball | The screen song has a long history . Take a look at photos of the earliest purpose-built movie theaters and you see that they are advertising sing-alongs inside . The earliest regular series of talkie cartoons were the Fleischer follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-alongs from 1926 - - two years before Disney supposedly inven... |
438,679 | 1,617,546 | 223,725 | 6 | The End of the Act | At the moment just the last ten seconds of this Melies magic act survive : it looks like he produces some cards , makes them grow and sets the enlarged but still small court cards dancing . A lovely little act and typical for Melies in this period in between the big story films like Gulliver and VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE , h... |
438,810 | 1,617,546 | 212,015 | 6 | Have to Watch My Language | Ralph Bakshi , watch out ! Almost half a century before FRITZ THE CAT , there was a flourishing pornographic movies industry - - Johann Schwartzer in Austria was producing the equivalent of dirty French postcards in Austria , suitable for smokers . This is a pornographic cartoon , with sexual members that detach themse... |
439,306 | 1,617,546 | 476,013 | 6 | Good Script but . . . | A very good script and a briskly maintained pace of direction struggle with some handsome but unfortunately one-note performances . While I do not expect Sammi Hanratty in the role of the seven-year-old Celia to show the range and subtlety of of Shirley McLaine , Lacey Chabert as her older sister seems to spend most of... |
438,653 | 1,617,546 | 28,574 | 6 | Comedy-Drama | This comedy-drama from the mind of Sam Katzman - - besides producing this quickie , he also directed - - is a fairly amusing story about how starving artist Bruce Bennett ( still credited as Herman Brix ) helps ditzy Joan Barclay whose father has pawned a fabulous diamond - - well , it's too long to explain here and fo... |
438,346 | 1,617,546 | 37,360 | 6 | Boyd Gets to Do Some Acting in Another Good Hopalong Cassidy | A gang of outlaws are burning out ranchers and then their front man is buying out the settlers at bargain prices . But when a pal of Hopalong's is killed , Cassidy goes to investigate , disguising himself as foppish , milk-drinking Bostonian to do so . in an amusing comic turn . Boyd , a capable but bland actor was mad... |
438,927 | 1,617,546 | 9,144 | 6 | Hard-Knocks slapstick but . . . . | At first this appears to be no more than another bone-grinding slapstick of the era . Harold plays a beauty parlor worker who wishes to slap Snub , kick his boss , beat up on Bud Jamison , and to flirt with every pretty girl , particularly incompetent manicurist Bebe : just another knockabout slapstick in which the ' j... |
438,748 | 1,617,546 | 1,032,855 | 6 | The business of French Postcards | Johann Schwarzer had been making dirty motion pictures for a couple of years when he turned out this rather amusing one , a full reel in length , about the travails of a photographer who specializes in feelthy pictures . We see the photographer posing his model in various states of undress and a mild payoff as a woman ... |
438,621 | 1,617,546 | 28,651 | 6 | Crashing Taxis | This fast-paced Fox programmer - - originally issued at 78 minutes , although the version I saw was cut to just under an hour - - looks a lot like its Warner Brothers counterparts , programmers modeled on Jimmy Cagney vehicles . Brian Donleavy does a good job in the lead role , playing the cocky , brash young hot shot ... |
438,989 | 1,617,546 | 32,511 | 6 | The Crazy Gang | This wartime farce concerns the Crazy Gang - - you may think of them as a precursor of the ' Carry On ' series , if you like - - who get involved in World War Two , which for them means running a fish and chips shop off a barrage balloon , floating accidentally into Germany , being interned in a concentration camp , ac... |
438,567 | 1,617,546 | 1,032,882 | 6 | Clowning Around | Poodles Hannaford came from a family that spent centuries as acrobats in the circus . He developed series of tricks that would have seemed to make him a natural for the screen , but his variety of clowning was often so bizarre that it never seemed to work . In this , his simplest film appearance , he is at his best : h... |
439,468 | 1,617,546 | 373,277 | 6 | Hiding in Plain Sight | The cops are trying to chase down Eddie Boland and , after a series of amusing gags evading them , he pretends to be a short order cook in a diner where pretty Ethel Broadhurst is waitress and the level of gags becomes more mixed . As Harold Lloyd moved into three reelers and features , Hal Roach needed someone to repl... |
438,816 | 1,617,546 | 351,542 | 6 | Okay | Well executed but unexceptional one-reeler about a couple of incompetent paperhangers . James Parrott , brother of Charley Chase , was an equally skilled man behind the camera , later writing and directing some of Roach's best two-reelers , before he died too young , but while the gags here are well done , he never rea... |
438,560 | 1,617,546 | 373,260 | 6 | How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm ? | I first must note special interest : I do not like ' comedies ' in which animals are mistreated for the audience's amusement : Jules White & Zion Meyers ' DOGVILLE series for MGM fills me with horror . But chimpanzees are human enough and social enough that using them as performers does not disturb me and I have some f... |
438,792 | 1,617,546 | 2,726 | 6 | The Story Not The Thought | This is a typical-looking Biograph social piece , on the lines of D . W . Griffith's A CORNER IN WHEAT and ONE IS BUSINESS THE OTHER CRIME . But while Griffith made his pieces in this vein morally ambiguous , preferring to raise questions without coming up with answers in which he himself had little faith , Christy Cab... |
439,494 | 1,617,546 | 37,393 | 6 | One-Shot | George Gordon is a potentially interesting cartoon director who seems to have never created a really great cartoon . The second person hired by Fred Quimby for his cartoon unit at MGM - - Quimby was hated by all his directors because he left them alone except when it came time to grab the best cartoon statuette at the ... |
438,526 | 1,617,546 | 212,884 | 6 | Editing | It is a little difficult to comment usefully about the editing of Edison films of this era . Recent work has indicated that Porter's landmark LIFE OF AN American FIREMAN was originally edited in a style consonant with magic lantern shows , but later re-edited to agree with now-standard practices : linear time , albeit ... |
439,439 | 1,617,546 | 12,631 | 6 | No Context for Review | Let us imagine you are someone from Japan who enjoys a lot of different films . You like American films , and have seen several hundred of them , mostly westerns , but only about twenty made before 1945 . You've seen almost all the pictures that Frank Capra directed from 1928 on , one non-Capra drama from 1926 - - let ... |
438,397 | 1,617,546 | 10,490 | 6 | 99 . 47 % Pure Soap | The second screen version of this durable weeper . Although it lacks the charming goofiness of the 1934 version - - provided by W . C . Fields and Zasu Pitts - - it tells the story with enough flourishes to keep you wondering how everyone is going to get out alive and in some semblance of happiness . Watch for a very y... |
438,642 | 1,617,546 | 256,884 | 6 | Exotic Locales | Sparing no expense , surrounded by hostile natives in their colorful clothing - - sorry , but this is black and white - - across stormy seas , braving the local perils of English cooking , Lumiere has ventured into darkest London to show you . . . . a lion . |
439,459 | 1,617,546 | 248,066 | 6 | Not doing Chaplin | A fair little comedy with some nice gags and funny title cards . Billy is not doing his Chaplin imitation , but walks around in white pants and a straw boater . He's a lot less obnoxious in his mannerisms . There's a plot , too . Good heavens ! The man had some talents of his own ! |
439,348 | 1,617,546 | 14,767 | 6 | Changing Clothes | All of the major players in this movie have been much better served . Zasu Pitts has a throwaway role , Victor Varconi - - - well , I must admit I can't think of anything else I might have seen Mr . Varconi in , but his role as husband is the sort that Tommy Meighan made a career playing , and he has almost no presence... |
439,154 | 1,617,546 | 160,150 | 6 | Attack of the Killer Pumpkins | Early slapstick short from Louis Feuillade involving runaways , except that , instead of it being a runaway horse ( see Griffith ; s THE CURTAIN POLE for an example ) , it is a cartful of what appear to be hundred-pound pumpkins that get away , rushing hither and yon , down sewers , up chimneys , pursued by the drayer ... |
439,021 | 1,617,546 | 313,330 | 6 | Gags A-Plenty | Snub Pollard is quite good in this gag-filled comedy as a hapless bum who has gotten himself attached - - quite literally - - to a ball and chain and a grateful escaped convict . Although not particularly sophisticated - - as you would expect from a Weiss Brother release - - there are lots of gags and pratfalls skillfu... |
438,960 | 1,617,546 | 56,859 | 6 | Adventure Flick | Decent although unremarkable adventure flick as Keenan Wynn - - who looks dashing and satanic in a beard - - and a crew composed of other Royal Navy Reservists - - go searching for stolen Nazi gold . The opening sequence in which the team is assembled and instructed via ape recording looks like it was lifted for " Miss... |
438,633 | 1,617,546 | 43,418 | 6 | Puzzle Mystery | This is a tightly-constructed mystery of the pre-Black Mask style , in which the solving of the crime - - here a potential serial killer - - must be tracked down , and the only clear clue is a bit of paper at the scene of the crime with a cypher code . The movie tries to add psychological drama by turning it from a " W... |
439,066 | 1,617,546 | 1,146,439 | 6 | Yup | A classic western plot - - a bad guy wants to grab off a small landowner's land and only a laconic wanderer can save the pretty ranch owner - - having killed her man by accident - - runs along in its well-greased way . Luke Perry is fine as the scruffy , squinty , hoarse hero . Jaclyn DeSantis is good as the woman he t... |
439,138 | 1,617,546 | 447,134 | 6 | Fireboats - - rather pretty | If you've never seen one of New York's fireboats in action , you've missed a movable fountain . It sucks the water out of the river and sprays it over whatever its powerful pumps can reach - - just the thing for a fire at a dock or dockside warehouse . Although I am not fond of the short Edison actualities - - and by 1... |
439,217 | 1,617,546 | 270,474 | 6 | Country & Western Music | One of the numerous musical short subjects that the movie studios churned out , this one purports to offer you a sampling of Western songs from the old west and modern musical westerns : " Home on the Range " , " Oh , Susannah " , " My Little Buckaroo " and " Deep in the Heart of Texas " are offered for your enjoyment ... |
439,355 | 1,617,546 | 54,860 | 6 | Wanna Buy a Duck ? | I turned on this comedy , not expecting much . It looked like the sort of meaningless unfunny ' family ' comedies that Disney specialized in during the late 1960s . But the sure comic timing of Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett won me over immediately : and the absurdity of the situation - - two sailors on a submarine in... |
438,516 | 1,617,546 | 30,007 | 6 | Oh Suffering Kay ! | Another Kay Francis super-weeper . Here , through no fault of her own - - or indeed , anyone - - she loses her husband , her daughter and her home and must get it all back by going on stage , starting in burlesque , until her triumphant Broadway premiere enables her to get her husband out of prison . She doesn't love h... |
439,101 | 1,617,546 | 449,252 | 6 | Remaking the Classics | Pathe and Gaumont were the big players in motion pictures by this point and this remake of Melies ' classic VOYAGE A LA LUNE is an attempt to put the stake through his heart - - his productions were on the decline by the next year and would cease within another five years . So , in looking at this movie , we can compar... |
438,493 | 1,617,546 | 33,696 | 6 | Powered by Gleason | This , the third in the series of Roach ' streamliners ' - - short comedy features about 50 minutes in length - - about Sgt . Doubleday , the instant non-com with the photographic memory is , like the others , an unremarkable comedy , some good bits placed in a script that often seems to start and stop , but it does ha... |
438,824 | 1,617,546 | 20,180 | 6 | Signs of Life | At present only about two reels of this late-silent Universal comedy survive , enough to give you an idea of the plot - - Kathryn Crawford , a dress designer , is married to Charley Chase , which must be kept secret for some reason , and Parisian couturier Jean Hersholt wants to take her to Paris to study under him - -... |
439,139 | 1,617,546 | 45,253 | 6 | RKO B Westerns | Tim Holt and Richard Martin starred in a long series of RKO B westerns from the early 1940s through the mid 1950s . Production values were good , stories generally were fine , but the directors were people like Lesley Selander , director of this effort , who knew how to shoot the scenes very well but wasn't much on dir... |
439,163 | 1,617,546 | 12,755 | 6 | Comedy Bits | Mary Pickford and her director , Alfred Green - - her brother Jack is also credited as co-director , but it's hard to say how involved he actually was - - did this movie as a comedy with a few serious bits . Miss Pickford is charming in the early scenes in Belgium , in which she gets a particularly stubborn mule to go ... |
439,093 | 1,617,546 | 20,175 | 6 | Go And Darken My Doorstep No More | This is a fairly good early talkie , thanks to a good original story by Booth Tarkington and an amusing performance by Leo Carillo who , in this phase of his career , always wound up playing Italians . Here he seems to be channeling Chico Marx and he comes to the rescue of orphan Virginia Valli , who has been tossed ou... |
438,355 | 1,617,546 | 27,862 | 6 | Light Touch Saves Yet Another Noble Harding Picture | Really , how much of these noble suffering roles could Ann Harding take without puking ? It isn't simply a matter of typecasting ; often typecasting , particularly for stars in the studio period was simply a matter of finding a good compromise between their talents and the sort of vehicle the public would accept . And ... |
438,781 | 1,617,546 | 248,308 | 6 | Producing Plenty of Pleasing Pratfalls | An early and amusing Semon from the days before his budgets and ego ballooned out of control . He is the utterly inept janitor in an office building , where an inventor is busy cutting a deal for a new sort of - - well , it looks like it might be a racing car , but it might be a zeppelin . But when Larry is not wieldin... |
438,529 | 1,617,546 | 360,877 | 6 | Not long enough to be annoying | One of the problems with the disappearance of the short subject is that everything has to be a feature - - even if it doesn't warrant it . Fortunately , some people still make short films , even if they are usually student works , and occasionally one shows up that is worthwhile . This one , based on a short story , is... |
438,512 | 1,617,546 | 27,900 | 6 | Wee Sybil Jason | Released the same year as John Ford's WEE WILLIE WINKIE , in which Shirley Temple saves the British Raj , this Vitaphone short starring Sybil Jason is played much more for comedy , with a musical interlude or two . Miss Jason is rather stagy in her line readings and seems far more forcedly cute than Miss Temple's ebull... |
439,170 | 1,617,546 | 212,822 | 6 | Composition | Jack Frawley , Lubin's cameraman for his remake of GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY is the writer and director of this movie , and he does a couple of interesting things in framing techniques in order to change the composition of the picture , using arches , trees and roads . He clearly understood the technique more clearly than mo... |
438,485 | 1,617,546 | 32,207 | 6 | The Producers | This Warner Brothers movie uses its juvenile B leads from BROTHER RAT in another version of George Kaufman's BUTTER AND EGG MAN . The dialogue is sharp and brittle , but only Ronald Reagan as a fast-talking , down-at-the-heels Broadway producer and Jane Wyman are spot on . Wayne Morris is miscast as Reagan's partner an... |
439,053 | 1,617,546 | 14,608 | 6 | While Squirrel Hunting In New Jersey We Were Attacked by a Pantomime Rhinoceros | That's the story Stan tells the court when he is a witness in a divorce proceedings . Then he is given a truth serum pill and we get another story entirely . . . . Stan was still working his young-man-in-a-boater bit when he made this short subject for Hal Roach , but it was probably the last time he did so , before he... |
438,429 | 1,617,546 | 12,682 | 6 | A Selected Short | When we think of short subjects in the studio days of movie-making , we think of comedy shorts , and other specialties : newsreels , educational shorts , sing-alongs and , of course , cartoons . But westerns were one of the first genres to emerge , starting with Broncho Billy Anderson in the first decade of the twentie... |
439,040 | 1,617,546 | 43,319 | 6 | Bob Cummings , Comedian | This is a pleasant enough comedy set in turn-of-the-century Miami as Bob Cummings plays a swindler who's been swindled : he's been given a deed to a large plot of mangrove swamp in the out-of-the-way community . So he decides to con the locals , some of whom are not as honest as he . . . . There are a few good points t... |
438,650 | 1,617,546 | 152,233 | 6 | Sandy in the Dessert | Dalton " Sandy ' Sandifer's first writing credit has Woody's vacation in the dessert interrupted by a German-accented scientist who thinks he has landed on Mars and wants to take Woody back as a specimen . The script is certainly livelier than many Woody Woodpecker scripts of the era as Woody takes an active hand in to... |
439,333 | 1,617,546 | 27,909 | 6 | Hugh Herbert as W . C . Fields | Warner Brothers provides us with another one-hour B picture , with almost exactly the same plot as W . C . Field's THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE . Hugh Herbert is quite enjoyable in the lead , but I enjoy Hugh Herbert and his pixilated little men ; his drunk scene with Hobart Cavanaugh is excellent . Dorothy Vaughn is ... |
439,127 | 1,617,546 | 22,219 | 6 | Sound ! | Antediluvian soundie cannot do justice to the enormous talent of Washington . Although the picture is sharp and the composition is excellent , Washngton's voice is washed out as he sings the title song while lounging against a tree and his ' mammy ' berates him into getting a job moving empty crates in Harlem . |
438,444 | 1,617,546 | 423,936 | 6 | Crazy Like a Fox | This Christie Comedy shares a lot of plot points and gags with Charley Chase's CRAZY LIKE A FOX : Neal Burns wants to get out of being engaged to Lila Leslie , so he decides to act insane . Unlike Chase's comedy , however , we lack sympathy for Burns . He has not been asked to marry the unseen daughter of an old friend... |
438,873 | 1,617,546 | 208,771 | 6 | As the Title | Louis Feuillade was Gaumont's lead director for a decade or two from about 1907 and he directed many of his pieces with a casual haste that resulted in some fascinating cinematic moments : pulling an exact duplicate of the woman you've just kidnapped out of a trunk , or going to your lawyer by balloon may be offered to... |
439,478 | 1,617,546 | 18,394 | 6 | Or Should They Run ? | Mabel Normand's next to last movie stars Mabel and Creighton Hale as a couple of dim-witted thieves , outwitting the even more dim-witted Eugene Palette and terrorizing Oliver Hardy in a very good cameo appearance - - it's wonderful to watch Mr . Hardy's beautifully timed comic reaction and lets you know that he was a ... |
439,188 | 1,617,546 | 336,656 | 6 | A Forgotten Debut | British Pathe decided to get into the cartoon business with this , the first of a series about a small dog - - ' tyke ' is Yorkshire slang for a dog - - who does nominally funny things . The drawings are good , the animation is all right for the era , and the dog walks around on his hind legs , talks and laughs at his ... |
439,136 | 1,617,546 | 8,550 | 6 | Spy Stuff | This is a static but watchable story of beautiful German spy Florence Vidor , caught between clueless Jack Holt and wily Sessue Hayakawa . The men are trying to protect information about a convoy in the Pacific where a new German submarine force is rampaging - - remember , this is World War One , and the Japanese were ... |
438,892 | 1,617,546 | 770 | 6 | Performances | This is an early Griffith effort - - when you're turning out eighty or ninety movies a year , you look everywhere for a story . A full reel , this was an immense production in Griffith's schedule and it shows . Although it is shot in simple long takes and the crowd scenes are staged well but not as amazingly so as late... |
438,611 | 1,617,546 | 187,153 | 6 | Sing It Again ! | Weird little short - - a couple of minutes in length - - showing a series of clips from films done by Wharton , including Pearl White in THE PERILS OF PAULINE and Irene Castle waving a large American flag . The sound track consists of a song recounting the stars with the chorus repeated several times : " It Was Hollywo... |
439,436 | 1,617,546 | 20,305 | 6 | Strong Silent Types in Talkies | Well mounted , interesting story about suave racketeer Armstrong falling for impoverished deb Lombard , hampered a bit by the declamatory style of speaking any speech longer than three words and apparent immobility of microphones . |
439,124 | 1,617,546 | 29,921 | 6 | Not Quite a Dog | Ace the Wonder Dog , RKO's answer to Rin Tin Tin - - not that anyone had asked the question - - is introduced in this Richard Dix programmer . Dix was a leading star at RKO from 1929 through 1940 , but for RKO this meant handsomely mounted B movies that his loyal fans would go to see , and which could be used to introd... |
439,064 | 1,617,546 | 20,258 | 6 | The Young Son and Heir | Dated , stagey and suffering from a static camera , this early Philip Barry play still manages to pack a wallop due to Barry's wonderful dialogue and the strengths of the leads , Frederick March and Ann Harding , right at the beginning of their careers , but possessed of a naturalness that carries this movie along . Th... |
438,916 | 1,617,546 | 33,382 | 6 | Nodding Off In A Moving Vehicle | Some wonderful actors are a lot of fun in a curiously unengaging screwball comedy . The cast is a great one : Fredric March and Loretta Young in the leads , with Robert Benchley , Eve Arden , the unfortunately forgotten Allyn Joslyn and Helen Westley as a blonde bimbo . It has some wonderful comedic moments - - the one... |
438,629 | 1,617,546 | 29,941 | 6 | Social Drama | Monogram tries its hand at producing a social drama on the order of DEAD END or ONE-THIRD OF A NATION with Jackie Cooper giving a high-energy performance as a leader of a street gang , but the entire production slides over into standard melodrama . Neither does the cheap production value help - - even though it might s... |
438,639 | 1,617,546 | 217,294 | 6 | Fireman , save my child ! | An exciting early clip of a fire department in action , with horse = drawn fire cars flying down the street towards the conflagration . Although the overcranking results in slightly slowed motion , the straining of the horses makes this a classic and model clip of how to shoot a scene like this |
439,290 | 1,617,546 | 37,736 | 6 | Typical RKO musical | This typical mid-40s RKO musical is enlivened a bit by Joan Davis ' goofy mugging . The plot , of course , only serves to gives people time to take a break between the comedy bits and the musical numbers . We also have a view of Roach silent comedy star , Glen Tryon as George White . The musical numbers are pretty good... |
438,955 | 1,617,546 | 197,917 | 6 | Valentino on the Rise | This was Valentino's last film before he appeared in Rex Ingram's THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE , the film that made him a star - - so great a star that the original six reels of this movie were cut down to three and edited to make his role more important . It's a fairly old-fashioned movie for 1920 : a still cam... |
438,632 | 1,617,546 | 1,227,777 | 6 | Retreat to Cable TV | This Hallmark Channel TV movie has a decent script , about a New York teenager who is sent to stay with his grandfather to straighten out and does so . Nowadays the movie theaters are full of big spectacles which seem to be all about production values and little about people or story , so efforts like this are welcome ... |
438,718 | 1,617,546 | 250,118 | 6 | ' French ' Does Not Mean Classy | An illiterate man with some sense of intestinal urgency needs to find the right door at a railroad station . He chooses . . . . the wrong door . Zecca was Pathe's leading director at this point and was always willing to experiment in an effort to find a new way of telling a story cinematically . This split reel subject... |
438,886 | 1,617,546 | 33,452 | 6 | The Other Black Bird | Fast-paced mystery programmer that times in at exactly one hour , this one doesn't give you any time to grow bored , as a piece of forged Chinese furniture turns out to be real . Eddie Foy Jr . is great as the fast-talking sidekick and the plot veers in unexpected direction . William Lundigan is earnest and stiff as al... |
439,232 | 1,617,546 | 8,652 | 6 | It Wasn't The Best of Films . It Wasn't the Worst of Films | This well-mounted and visually interesting silent version of the Dickens novel is a good effort , but , of course , it pales before the 1935 version starring Ronald Colman . As a silent film it suffers from too many title cards - - an artifact , no doubt , of the fondness for the book . One searches for nice things to ... |
438,813 | 1,617,546 | 1,338,590 | 6 | Miracles Are All Around Us | A couple , on the verge of ending their marriage because they cannot have children , find themselves stranded in a village in Mexico where they come to know some of the locals - - and each other - - as they prepare for their festival . This comedy-drama is handled in a very quiet manner and the focus seems to be more o... |
438,770 | 1,617,546 | 35,362 | 6 | Roy Rogers Rides Again | Plenty of amusement in this Roy Rogers movie as the folks borrow the plot of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN . Roy's father and grandfather were both old-fashioned , famous western sheriffs . Gabby Hayes fetches him out to deal with cattle rustlers . . . . but the FGI after his name is not the Federal Gureau of Investigation , but ... |
439,475 | 1,617,546 | 150,441 | 6 | Half A Good Start | Little Lulu was a series of one-panel , wordless cartoons produced by ' Marge ' for many years starring Lulu as a mischievous , imaginative child . This , the first of the cartoon series produced by Famous Studios , the Fleischer successor , gets off to a great start with a fine series song and some good sight gags , b... |
438,478 | 1,617,546 | 33,414 | 6 | Some Laughs Remain | This frantic Warner ' B ' comedy about how millionaire Jeffrey Lynne copes with being invisible succeeds , in large part , because of the great , great comedy chops of Everett Horton , who takes over the movie as the mad scientist who turns him invisible . Well , he's not mad , actually . He is , in fact , quite amiabl... |
438,446 | 1,617,546 | 330,107 | 6 | Kids Type the Darnedest Things | Louis Feuillade was Gaumont's director of whatever they needed directing for a couple of decades from about 1907 : classic serials such as JUDEX and LES VAMPIRES , melodramas of all lengths , slapstick comedies and kiddie comedies , particularly those of the Bout Le Zan series . In this one , Bebe is a child actor in a... |
438,487 | 1,617,546 | 28,081 | 6 | Closing Down the Shorts Department | Roach's ' Girl Friends ' series winds down in the last year of Roach's short subjects production with no Zasu Pitts and with Thelma Todd dead - - Patsy Kelly and Pert Kelton get roped into selling aluminum pots and pans door to door . Unhappily there is very little chemistry between these two comediennes as Miss Kelly ... |
439,208 | 1,617,546 | 37,802 | 6 | Benny B Team | This is a very pleasant little B movie from Columbia . The plot is that Phil Harris is a house painter in partnership in with Eddie ' Rochester ' Anderson , comes down with amnesia and becomes a band leader , getting wealth and the girl in the process . In this they are ably abetted by old hand Del Lord in the director... |
438,373 | 1,617,546 | 33,505 | 6 | Superior Grist | Bright little Saturday afternoon oater , one of several dozens starring Tim Holt for RKO in the 1940s . If the script is , in the main , average , there are several surprising turns in the plot and occasional flashes of wit ; the photography is excellent , and the cast is uniformly excellent , with the sole exception o... |
438,620 | 1,617,546 | 33,508 | 6 | Counterpunching | This rarely-seen cartoon from Rudolph Ising shows that he was still watching what the competition was doing and trying to equal or better it - - Fantasia had come out the year before and this looks like his reply to it . But to my taste it doesn't work , marred by the excessive sentimentality and " it's for the kiddies... |
438,419 | 1,617,546 | 29,796 | 6 | Long Ago and Far Away | This is one of the earliest full color cartoons turned out by the Termite Terrace crew and I wouldn't expect you to be interested unless you are fairly familiar with popular culture seventy years ago and able to figure out , for example , that Lilly Swans is supposed to be Lily Pons - - there were three or four that es... |
439,369 | 1,617,546 | 128,853 | 6 | Cheap and easy | Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have great screen chemistry . All of their movies show it . And for the first three quarters of this film , they light up the screen . This is the third time this movie has been made . The first time , it was Ernst Lubitsch ' THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and a delight . The second time , it was IN ... |
438,974 | 1,617,546 | 234,897 | 6 | Well-trained tools | A charming little trick-photography piece in which a poor , exhausted tailor , ordered at gunpoint to make a suit in a hurry , falls asleep on the job and dreams of how his tools and goods , brownie-like , make the suit . This picture somehow seems to be more than a series of camera tricks , but more a matter of longin... |
439,364 | 1,617,546 | 12,468 | 6 | A Work in Progress | The work meant here is the work of restoring this movie , since it did not exist in any sort of coherent form for many decades - - until the folks at UCLA got their hands on a version that the Soviet film archives , Gosfilmfond had held for many years , intended as a feature on how the upper classes in America mistreat... |
438,615 | 1,617,546 | 146,559 | 6 | Not Bad | A surprisingly strong series of gags and a familiar story manage to enliven this early Van Beuren - - which animator Frank Tashlin called ' Van Boring ' - - sound production , to the point where it is worth watching . Van Beuren Studios was one of the major cartoon studios from the mid-twenties until it lost its contra... |
439,049 | 1,617,546 | 971 | 6 | Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense | This is , in its surviving form , a split-reel melodrama by Alfred Machin , whose best-remembered work is the anti-war drama , MAUDIT SOIT LA GUERRE made just before World War One broke out . Although the acting in this one is fairly primitive , and the miller's character is indicated that , despite being fairly well-t... |
438,369 | 1,617,546 | 24,228 | 6 | Silent movie comedian | A very pleasant short for Harry Langdon fans . The entire 20 minutes go by without more than twenty words being uttered , nor do they need to be . Langdon has a couple of nice , typical bits in the movie , playing with a water hose and hiding out with wax dummies . If you're not familiar with Langdon , this short is a ... |
438,859 | 1,617,546 | 772,185 | 6 | Predictable But Sweet | This is a highly predictable movie , but exceedingly sweet , as Jenny McCarthy , a demographics-driven marketing expert goes back to take over the family business - - the Santa Claus operations for daddy and , of course - - and discovers the true meaning of Christmas . The jokes are a little weak as elves stop work eve... |
439,387 | 1,617,546 | 1,329,492 | 6 | Stuck On You | A cute little scene , directed by the first film director , Alice Guy : a woman's maid is helping her at the post office by licking stamps , and a passing rake decides to steal a kiss with some unexpected results and a good payoff gag . Although things were beginning to move in terms of film direction by 1906 , Miss Gu... |
438,437 | 1,617,546 | 481,189 | 6 | Knockabout Farce - - then knock him down and step on him | Paul Bertho stars in this pretty funny knockabout force from 1911 , It's a real knockabout slapstick piece and one of the most violent I have ever seen , as people attempt to cushion their falls by landing on other comedians . The second half does some nice camera trickery as Bertho seems to hide in a large satchel , w... |
438,722 | 1,617,546 | 29,657 | 6 | Quick Fun | An amusing runaway - heiress - and - newspaperman comedy ( think IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT without Capra , Riskin , great actors or Harry Cohn ) , this second feature times in at pretty close to an hour and seems to be all right . Perpetual lunk Gordon Jones is fine as the eccentric newspaper photographer , but Betty Furne... |
439,503 | 1,617,546 | 383,567 | 6 | Wedding Speeches | A Jewish couple has just gotten married and people give speeches at the wedding supper . The morning after , however , it is time to get along with the business of living . . . . . When I tell Jewish jokes , I use my grandfather's voice . Younger people tell me I shouldn't make fun of people , that no one speaks that w... |
438,725 | 1,617,546 | 51,461 | 6 | The Formal Drama | In its time the American B western was possessed of a form as rigid as any dramatic form in existence . There would be half a dozen plots that could be used for a western and the story was usually told in a conservative fashion , using techniques that ran back to when William S . Hart , popularizer of the Good Bad Man ... |
439,347 | 1,617,546 | 37,992 | 6 | Going Out Swinging | This is the infamous short which is supposed to have killed Langdon : he had a cerebral hemorrhage and died soon after it was finished . Since it was 1 : a Columbia short and 2 : costarred El Brendel . who reasonably held the record of World's Worst Comic Actor between Al Joy - - who , by the way , turned out shorts th... |
439,144 | 1,617,546 | 36,317 | 6 | Their Best Comedy - - Don't Cry If You Miss It | Carney and Brown were two minor supporting comedians whom RKO teamed , hoping for the same chemistry - - and profits ! - - that Universal was getting out of Abbott and Costello . But whereas A & C were two guys who had spent twelve years honing their act and timing , this pair had to move on their acting ability , whic... |
439,474 | 1,617,546 | 34,124 | 6 | How Did I Get In This Handbasket and Where Are We Going ? | Cisco and Pancho ( played by the always amusing Cesar Romero and Chris-Pin Martin ) , wander into the third movie version of a pretty good novel set among aristocratic Mexicans . Charles G . Clarke's camera work is sharp and beautiful , but while the movie is always interesting , the various elements don't gel together... |
439,068 | 1,617,546 | 311,754 | 6 | Earning Some Cabbage | At this stage in their careers , Lloyd Hamilton and Bud Duncan were a comedy team for Kalem , Ham and Bud . Playing two vicious tramps , they wandered into depressing situations , created some chaos and left . This was supposed to be funny . Usually it wasn't . According to stories , the two men hated each other and th... |
438,575 | 1,617,546 | 300,055 | 6 | From Circus To Circus | Another of Snub Pollard's gag-filled one-reelers from Roach . Pollard , once he split off from Harold Lloyd had a busy career in Roach shorts for a few years , and his gag construction was impeccable . However , his character never seemed to make much sense and by the end of the decade he was working comedy support in ... |
439,402 | 1,617,546 | 16,564 | 6 | et la metteur en scene | What can we say usefully about the works of Germaine Dulac ? This little-remembered member of the French avant-garde in the ' Teens and Twenties has had her work recently revived . A series of movies by her were shown in 2003 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York . Each movie was preceded by an earnest lecture to the... |
439,022 | 1,617,546 | 5,443 | 6 | Keystone Programmer | If you've seen one , you've seen them all - - but if you've seen Chaplin or Arbuckle's versions of the slovenly restaurant , you've seen it done much better , of course . This one depends on the Keystone staples : mugging , fraud and physical violence which of , course , have their own charms . And one cannot deny that... |
439,003 | 1,617,546 | 226,746 | 6 | I'm Henry the Eighth I Am | This short subject about a couple of the wives of Henry the Eighth of England is pretty much of a burlesque skit and Bert Lahr as Henry mugs it up endlessly . Although a marvelous presence , he was made for the stage , with his rubber face and loud noises , so apart from his turn as the Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF O... |
439,422 | 1,617,546 | 18,516 | 6 | Directed by William Wyler | Decent entry in the late silent series of Mountie shorts starring Cobb , this has a little more actual acting than most entries in this series - - when they ran thin on inspiration in these shorts , they simply had the actors move slower , but not in this entry . If , like me , you're an admirer of William Wyler , you'... |
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