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Maciste all'inferno [Maciste in Hell] (Guido Brignone, 1925)
Oct
17
sinners
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Медвежья свадьба [Medvezhya svadba / The Bear's Wedding] (Konstantin Eggert + Vladimir Gardin, 1925)
Sep
28
In preparation of the bear's wedding, a cook – wearing not much more than an apron and a toque blanche – stirs a huge kettle over a roaring fire. DPs: Eduard Tisse & Pyotr Yermolov.
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Orlacs Hände [Die unheimlichen Hände des Doktor Orlac / The Hands of Orlac] (Robert Wiene, 1924)
Sep
25
Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) stretched out on a wooden bench in a tavern. A strange man sits on a second bench on the other side of the table. DPs: Hans Androschin & Günther Krampf.
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狂つた一頁 [Kurutta ippēji / A Page of Madness] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
Sep
12
The servant's wife (Yoshie Nakagawa) eating. She looks up at someone offscreen, and smiles. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.
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Moonland (William A. O'Connor, 1926)
Aug
15
Chant At The Moon Day
Mickey (Mickey McBan) and his dog looking up to the crescent moon from a perfectly round window with beaded curtains made of stars. Spot the Milky Way! DP: Edward Gheller.
A little boy and his dog are invited over by the Man in the Moon himself. The trip to the Moon is a big adventure for the drowsy duo and they meet peculiar flora, fauna and men along the way, lifted straight from the Great Moon Hoax.
“You and I may dream of gold or grocery bills — but when a child slaps Morpheus on the back and says 'Hello, old man' — well it's a different story.”
– opening title card
Post-McCay's serial Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905) and pre-Fleming & Cukor's The Wizard of Oz (1939), William A. O'Connor is heavily indebted to both. Which doesn't make his short Art Deco-styled science fiction fantasy any less magical.
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Michael [Mikaël / Chained: The Story of the Third Sex / Heart's Desire] (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1924)
Aug
3
National Michael Day
Art critic Switt (Robert Garrison) with muse Michael (Walter Slezak). DPs: Karl Freund & Rudolph Maté.
Considered one of the earliest positive cinematic depictions of (male) homosexuality, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael tells the story of lonely artist Zoret (director Benjamin Christensen), his bright young muse and model Michael (Walter Slezak), and the more mature art critic Switt (Robert Garrison). Though it's mostly suggested – there's a female temptress (Nora Gregor) assuming a heterosexual perspective – its motif of the spoken and unspoken relationship between the men is definitely one of love, much in the same way Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946) is.
“Now I may die content, for I have seen great love.”
– opening title card
Michael is the second book adaption of Herman Bang's Mikaël (1902) after Vingarne [The Wings] (Mauritz Stiller, 1916).
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盘丝洞 [Pan si dong / The Cave of the Silken Web] (Dan Duyu, 1927)
Jul
14
Pandemonium Day
“Today is our Queen's wedding day, let us drink it up!”
Note that some of the reels are still missing, and the English translation I found is subjective at best, so have a translation app at the ready. Nevertheless, take a moment to dim the lights, and accompany Tang Sanzang, the Monkey King, and Pigsy on their pilgrimage. Even if only for a little while.
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Körkarlen [The Phantom Carriage] (Victor Sjöström, 1921)
Jun
13
International Axe Throwing Day
David Holm (Victor Sjöström) attempts to break through a wooden door with the butt of an axe. This scene was the inspiration for the infamous door scene in Kubrick's The Shining (1980). DP: Julius Jaenzon.
“I want to be good, but no one believes me. Is it any wonder I cry?”
– David Holm
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Броненосец Потёмкин [Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin] (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
Jun
8
Bounty Day
A closeup of a sailor. DPs: Eduard Tisse & Vladimir Popov.
“Shoulder to shoulder. The land is ours. Tomorrow is ours.”
– sailor
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West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning, 1928)
May
14
Spinalcord Injury Awareness Day
Lon Chaney as the tormented Phroso dragging himself along the ground. DP: Percy Hilburn.
A brawl over a woman. That's what breaks The Great Phroso. After recovery, a year later, he finds himself a #paraplegic and his stolen wife dead in a church with an infant next to her. To Africa he takes the child – it's the other man's, the ivory trader's – and carefully, vengefully raises her.
“How did God ever put a thing like you on this earth?”
– Maizie
Phroso, now known as Dead-Legs and White Voodoo to the tribe he resides over, uses his magician's skills to rule over his own little jungle empire. We see the gestation of Kurtz, oddly too an ivory trader in that other White Hell, Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899).
Despite attempts to tone it down on request of censors, West of Zanzibar is one of Tod Browning's meanest. Lon Chaney is fantastic, of course. His Phroso, torn by love and #revenge, one of the early and rare depictions of male frailty in western cinema.