1921-1930

  • Marcel L’Herbier – Le diable au coeur AKA The Devil in the Heart AKA Little Devil May Care (1927)

    Marcel L'Herbier1921-1930DramaFranceRomance
    Le diable au coeur (1927)
    Le diable au coeur (1927)

    PLOT: Ludivine, a lttle tomboy, takes on the too polite Delphin. Being caught, and punished, she wants him and his father to be dead. When the latter dies, she feels guilty and takes Delphin under her wing.Read More »

  • Vladimir Erofeev – Pamir, krisha mira AKA Roof of the world (1928)

    1921-1930DocumentarySilentSoviet silent cinemaUSSRVladimir Erofeev
    Pamir, krisha mira (1928)
    Pamir, krisha mira (1928)

    Film-maker Vladimir Yerofeyev (1898-1940) was a pioneer of expedition cinema in the Soviet Union, advocating for increased attention and investment in edifying non-fiction films made to win the interest of broad audiences. Pamir. Roof of the World, 1927, is his second feature film, and the first resulting from an expedition (his debut that same year, Za poliarnym krugom [Beyond the Arctic Circle] was a co-edited compilation film). In summer 1927, a trek to the mountainous Pamir region, known as the “Roof of the World”, in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was organized by the Sovkino studio in co-operation with the Geological Committee. Yerofeyev worked with prominent geologist Dmitrii Nalivkin and ethnographer Mikhail Andreyev; both scholars had extensively researched the area and contributed to the planning for the crew’s journey.Read More »

  • Karl Grune – Waterloo (1929)

    Karl Grune1921-1930ClassicsGermanySilentWeimar Republic cinema
    Waterloo (1929)
    Waterloo (1929)

    Waterloo is a German made movie that depicts the soldiers of Belgium + The Netherlands; Brunswick; England, Ireland, Scotland + Wales; Hanover; Nassau; and Prussia’s victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.Read More »

  • André Sauvage – Études sur Paris (1928)

    1921-1930André SauvageDocumentaryFranceSilent
    Études sur Paris (1928)
    Études sur Paris (1928)

    Quote:
    This visually magnificent and poetic city symphony of Paris in the late 1920s earned Sauvage the admiration of Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Sauvage maps the metropolis through its street life, monuments, ports, and automobile traffic.Read More »

  • Victor A. Turin – Turksib (1929)

    Victor A. Turin1921-1930DocumentaryUSSR
    Turksib (1929)
    Turksib (1929)

    SYNOPSIS
    Turksib itself, a silent film presented here with a newly commissioned score by Guy Bartell focuses on the problems faced by regional farmers in Turkestan and the creation of the Turkestan-Siberian railway. It is filled with impressionistic images of the land and its people juxtaposed with the inevitable juggernaut of Soviet industrial expansion. I’m not so certain that the new score is always in harmony, no pun intended, with the subject matter here. The electronic instrumentation and trance music seems rather anachronistic and jarring, really a bit out of place, if I may be redundant.Read More »

  • Charles Chaplin – The Circus (1928)

    1921-1930Charles ChaplinComedyDramaUSA
    The Circus (1928)
    The Circus (1928)

    Quote:
    The ringmaster of an impoverished circus hires Chaplin’s Little Tramp as a clown, when he discovers that he can only be funny unintentionally, not on purpose.Read More »

  • Lajos Lázár & Paul Sugar – Rabmadár aka Prisoner Number Seven (1929)

    Lajos Lázár1921-1930DramaHungaryPaul SugarSilent
    Rabmadár (1929)
    Rabmadár (1929)

    Synopsis: This crime story centres around Anna, the prisoner, who was drawn into stealing by her lover and that’s what got her in prison. The girl would like to meet Jenő, her sweetheart again. She begs the prison physician until she lets her out for one night. She visits the man, but the womaniser hotel waiter has long forgotten her. He has already coaxed the naive do-all girl, Birdie, courted the chambermaid, and is now planning to rob the cash-register with his new lover, an acrobat. The acrobat falls on the run with an elevator out of order and dies. Anna forgives the disloyal Jenőnek, whom she still loves, but when she learns of Birdie expecting a child from him, she convinces Jenő to marry the girl and then returns to the prison.Read More »

  • René Clair – Paris qui dort AKA The Crazy Ray (1924)

    1921-1930FranceRené ClairSci-FiSilent
    Paris qui dort (1924)
    Paris qui dort (1924)

    A young man, the night watchman on the iconic Eiffel Tower, wakes to find he is alone in the world. Descending from his iron eyrie, all is eerily frozen, apart from a few souls who have escaped a mad scientist’s immobilising ray. The streets of Paris briefly become a Garden of Eden to play in, as the friends indulge in their new-found liberty. Like Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale, this is a film to be carried in the heart.Read More »

  • Richard Eichberg – Großstadtschmetterling AKA City Butterfly (1929)

    Richard Eichberg1921-1930DramaGermanySilent
    Großstadtschmetterling (1929)
    Großstadtschmetterling (1929)

    Quote:
    Made at the height of Anna May Wong’s fame in Europe, Pavement Butterfly was a coproduction between Germany and Britain and filmed on location in Nice, France. In this silent film, Wong plays a dancer in the French Riviera who, after her act takes a deadly turn, finds refuge in the arms of a young painter.Read More »

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