American films
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In response to fierce accusations of racism in his film The Birth of a Nation (1915), director D.W. Griffith was inspired to make this epic morality work which argued that intolerance was a tragically fundamental part of the human condition. It is significant that the film was made during the First World War (just prior to America’s involvement)...
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In one of his most ambitious and greatest films, D.W. Griffith skilfully combines melodrama and historical political intrigue to create one of the most spectacular and poignant of films of the silent era of American cinema. Real-life sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish play the two orphans of the title, bringing pathos and a sense of realism to a moving (albeit far-fetched) story of two innocents...
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A curiosity from the silent era of film, Salome feels more like a bizarre Art Nouveau-inspired erotic dream than a piece of cinema. The extravagant costumes, striking minimalist set design and highly stylised acting suggest narcotic-induced fantasy, not realism. Whilst the film’s effete artificiality and sluggish pace are somewhat off-putting...
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Lost for nearly eight decades, this silent masterpiece made a surprising return in 2007 thanks to the efforts of dedicated film restorer Serge Bromberg and his company Lobster Films. When significant "lost" films are bought back from the dead, there is sometimes a feeling of disappointment when we finally get to see them...
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Sunrise, F.W. Murnau’s timeless classic of corruption, redemption and true love, is widely regarded as one of the most exquisitely realised of all silent films, and arguably one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century. Murnau brings his experience as one of Germany’s leading directors of the 1920s to slick Hollywood production methods...
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Buster Keaton, possibly the funniest man in history, was at the height of his powers as both a comedian and a director when he made The General , his greatest film, and arguably one of the best war films of the silent era. With some of the most spectacular visual gags ever recorded on film, it’s an icon of American cinema which continues to delight film enthusiasts of all generations...
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The best of the eight collaborations of director Tod Browning and legendary star of the silent era Lon Chaney, The Unknown is also Browning’s darkest and most disturbing film, several orders of magnitude more chilling than his subsequent horror classic Dracula (1931). What makes this macabre tale of unrequited love, self-mutilation and grisly revenge so potent is the unbeatable combination...
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Buster Keaton ended his association with United Artists by co-directing and starring in this feature-length comedy in which his flair for understated pathos and death-defying sight gags is once again put to good use. This was the penultimate film over which Keaton would have directorial input; in his subsequent films for MGM he would have diminishing artistic control and would rarely achieve...
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The last but one of the ten collaborations of director Tod Browning and actor Lon Chaney is one of their best and, whilst not strictly a horror film, it is the film in which Chaney gives arguably his most chilling performance. The film was adapted from the successful stage play Kongo, which was performed on Broadway in 1926...
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When Erich Maria Remarque’s novel Im Westen nichts Neues was published in 1929 it became an immediate international best seller. With its horrifically detailed description of life and death on the battlefields of World War I, the novel obliterates the notion that war is a glorious thing and stands as the greatest anti-war statement in literature...
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"Garbo speaks" is how MGM promoted this insipid adaptation of the famous (and vastly overrated) stageplay by Eugene O'Neill. The Swedish sphinx Greta Garbo appears in her first talking role, having made a substantial name for herself in silent films for a decade. And what a voice – hoarse, gutsy and heavily accented...
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City Girl is the third of four films that the legendary German-born filmmaker Friedrich Murnau made in Hollywood before his tragic death in a car accident 1931. It has many striking similarities with his earlier film Sunrise (1927), which is considered to be Murnau's masterpiece. Both films make wry contrasts between urban and rural life (at a time when the former was rapidly superseding...
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The film that launched one of Hollywood’s biggest band wagons and has the distinction of being one of the best known films ever made is one that continues to divide critical opinion. Universal’s 1931 production of Dracula is the seminal monster movie, one of the most influential films of all time, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would describe it as a masterpiece...
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It was the enormous success of Tod Browning’s Dracula in 1931 which prompted Universal Pictures to make a second film in the fantasy/horror genre, and that film, Frankenstein, was to become the most influential film of its kind in the history of cinema. With its distinctive expressionist design and compelling narrative...
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Whilst it may not have been the first gangster film that was made in Hollywood, Little Caesar is certainly one of the most influential. Its success resulted in a spate of similar films – beginning with William A. Wellman’s Public Enemy (1931) and Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932) – which made...
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The third and most memorable screen portrayals of the life and death of Mata Hari is the one that contributed most to the myth of the infamous dancer-turned-spy. It also added to the mystique of the actress who played her, Greta Garbo, who by this stage in her career was the most famous actress in the world. The Swedish Sphinx is a perfect casting choice for the part of the alluring temptress...
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The Miracle Woman is the film where Frank Capra, with around twenty films already under belt, found his voice and is the first of his noteworthy morality films. This was his second collaboration with Barbara Stanwyck, an actress who quickly rose to fame under Capra’s tutelage, whilst providing the director with the perfect muse for his early 1930s films...
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The Public Enemy was Warner Brothers’ initial follow-up to Little Caesar (1930), the first sound gangster film which turned the virtually unknown actor Edward G. Robinson into a star. Along with Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932), these two films would establish the gangster movie as a major genre in Hollywood of the 1930s...
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The only reason for watching this soppy, overrated and hopelessly dated melodrama is to see Katharine Hepburn make her much-vaunted film début (and even that is not as great as some people claim it is). The second of three screen adaptations of a mediocre play by Clemence Dane, A Bill of Divorcement is painful to watch on account of its excruciating theatricality and dated attitudes...
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Frank Borzage’s masterful adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 semi-autobiographical novel may at times appear uneven and slightly dated, but it is still a film with great visual impact and harrowing emotional intensity. The film, a tragic love story set against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest conflicts in history...
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