Categories
Review

Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton’s legacy in cinema history is not just one of the two greatest and most beloved silent era comedians (along with Charlie Chaplin), but one of the medium’s great directors, period.

Categories
Review

Foolish Wives (1922)

Erich von Stroheim is a complex and compromised figure from early cinema history.

Categories
Review

Häxan (1922)

Documentaries did not properly exist in 1922 as a cinematic form.

Categories
Review

Nosferatu (1922)

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is among the earliest horror films to be universally canonized, and it’s not hard to see why

Categories
Review

Nanook of the North (1922)

Nanook of the North is often hailed as the first documentary — though both the “first” and “documentary” parts of that are up for debate.

Categories
Review

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

Film serials peaked in the mid-to-late-1910s, but their epic-yet-episodic storytelling mode didn’t completely vanish.

Categories
Review

The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923)

Many of the very early films — like 1925 and before — that have endured in the canon are epics.

Categories
Review

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

I was recently watching some YouTube videos on Crash Course about film history with my three year old daughter.

Categories
Review

Orphans of the Storm (1921)

The French Revolution turns out to be a very good match for DW Griffith.

Categories
Review

Way Down East (1920)

This is the fourth DW Griffith film I’ve watched in my tour through film history, and the fourth starring Lillian Gish.