Flicker Alley (Firm)
1) The Italian
Description
It is the story of Beppo, a gondolier who comes to America and settles in lower Manhattan, where he operates a shoeshine business and eventually saves enough money to import his fiancee. Crime and poverty soon impact their lives – and there is no artificial, happy ending. Conflated from three sources, this tinted edition is mostly copied from an original nitrate print, and has an optional scene-specific audio essay by Prof. Giorgio Bertellini. A...
Description
Bardelys the Magnificent is based upon the novel by Rafael Sabatini. In France "in an age of light loves and lively scandals,"the Marquis de Bardelys, casual womanizer and accomplished swashbuckler, is entranced by Roxalanne de Lavedan; and against a background of knavery and intrigue, he sets out to woo and win her. Lavishly mounted and superbly directed with spectacular action scenes, Bardelys is a hugely entertaining action romance given an A-plus...
Description
This groundbreaking collection features eight seminal films from the Soviet silent era. Sergei M. Eisenstein's last silent and seldom seen Old and New (1929); Dziga Vertov's Stride, Soviet (1926); Victor Turin's Turksib (1930); Esther Shub's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927); Boris Barnet's The House on Trubnaya (1928); Lev Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) and By the Law (1926); and Mikhail...
4) The Fireman
Description
In Chaplin’s second effort for Mutual, he portrays an inept firefighter at Fire Station 23. Charlie, still asleep, mistakes a drill bell for a fire alarm and single-handedly drives out the horse-drawn fire engine. When he discovers his error, he simply backs up the engine into the fire station, with horses galloping backward (an early instance of camera tricks—cameramen Foster and Totheroh skillfully cranked the cameras in reverse and Chaplin...
Description
GEORGES MeLIeS built the world's first movie studio in 1896 near Paris; from it cascaded fantastic magic films, dream films, historical reconstructions, imaginary journeys, melodramas, slapstick comedies -- even erotic films. A genuine virtuoso, Melies produced and directed his films while also devising the narratives; designing the sets, costumes and props; and frequently performing the leading parts. Arranged in chronological order, this comprehensive...
6) The Cure
Description
The Cure, the tenth film in the series, is perhaps the funniest of the Mutuals. It was partly inspired in its setting by the Fred Karno sketch, The Hydro, which was set in a hydrotherapy clinic.
7) Easy Street
Description
Easy Street, his ninth film for Mutual and the most famous of the twelve, Chaplin ordered the first of the T-shaped street sets to be built that he would consistently utilize to provide a perfect backdrop to his comedy. The look and feel of Easy Street evoke the South London of his childhood (the name "Easy Street"suggests "East Street,"the street of Chaplin’s birthplace).
Description
The Floorwalker, Chaplin’s first film under his landmark contract with Lone Star-Mutual, has embezzlement as its subject. Chaplin’s inspiration for the film came while he and his brother Sydney were in New York City negotiating his contract with Mutual. While walking up Sixth Avenue at Thirty-third Street, Chaplin saw a man fall down an escalator serving the adjacent elevated train station and at once realized the comic possibilities of a moving...
Description
Saved From The Flames is a unique and wonderful collection of 54 rare and restored short films from the inflammable years of cinema. Movies were once made on nitrate film stock, which has a chemical composition similar to gunpowder and is highly vulnerable to fire and decay. This remarkable seven-hour anthology, organized in eight thematic groups presents amazing treasures from the vaults of Lobster Films in Paris and from the Blackhawk Films Collection,...
11) The Adventurer
Description
The most popular of the Mutuals, The Adventurer begins and ends with a chase. It is the fastest-paced film of the series, and although it has more slapstick than Easy Street and The Immigrant, it is redeemed by its construction, characterization, and Chaplin’s balletic grace.
12) Timothy's Quest
Description
A charming pastoral about two unwanted children finding acceptance and love, Timothy’s Quest (1922) is a rare, cinematic gem based on a novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm), who was then known as “America’s best loved author of stories about children.”*. The only production of the Dirigo Film Company, established in order to make films in the state of Maine adapted from works by Maine authors, Wiggin loaned her own home...
Description
Hunchback is a huge production: the sets depicting 15th-century Paris covered nineteen acres of Universal Pictures’ back lot and included the faade of Notre Dame Cathedral. Filming took six months and the climactic sequence employed two thousand extras, but it’s Lon Chaney’s performance that makes the character unforgettable. The Hunchback of Notre Dame premiered at New York’s Astor Theatre on September 2, 1923. The success of the film was...
Description
Esfir Shub culls her landmark documentary from pre-Soviet Russian newsreels gathered from Europe and America. In May 1913 the Romanov Dynasty celebrates its 300th anniversary at the Russian throne. The last emperor in the long line is czar Nicholas II. He rules over a country with huge social and economic differences. Russia is for the most part still an agrarian society, but capitalism and its industries are growing. In 1914 Russia gets involved...
Description
Discovering Cinema is a 2 part collection comprised of Learning to Talk and Movies Dream in Color. Film historians Eric Lange and Serge Bromberg compiled materials from their own Lobster Films collection and material from archives throughout Europe and the USA to create these two historic documentaries illustrating the birth of sound and color cinema, perhaps the greatest cultural achievement of the twentieth century...Told from a European perspective,...
16) Traffic In Souls
Description
According to legend,Traffic in Soulswas produced surreptitiously at Universal Pictures Corp. with the producer (Jack Cohn) and director (George Loane Tucker) prepared to buy the picture in case the company wouldn’t release it. Exploiting a recent expose of prostitution rings, this "white slavery"story proved a huge financial success.Traffic In Soulsis a very accomplished work for its time, and makes excellent use of its New York City locations.
17) The Immigrant
Description
The Immigrant, which contains elements of satire, irony, and romance as well as cinematic poetry, endures in the twenty-first century as a comic masterpiece. The film, Chaplin’s eleventh in the Mutual series, is the best-constructed of his two-reelers and was Chaplin’s favorite among all his two-reel comedies
18) Stride, Soviet!
Description
STRIDE, SOVIET! is a film intended to publicize, in the run-up to local elections, the work and accomplishments of the Moscow municipal council or "soviet." Dziga Vertov attempts a different kind of lecture film, one that disposes of staid commentary in favor of sharp visual conflicts that mimic the impact of a fiery orator. Developing the plan in 1925, Vertov envisioned the film proceeding as a montage of contrasts. For him, advertisement was best...
19) Sherlock Holmes
Description
The film faithfully retains the play’s famous set pieces—Holmes’s encounter with Professor Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and the tour-de-force deductions. It also illustrates how Gillette, who wrote the adaptation himself, wove bits from Conan Doyle’s stories ranging from “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “The Final Problem,” into an original, innovative mystery play.. Film restorer Robert Byrne says, “It’s...