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A series of 19 musical and comedy “vaudeville” sketches presented in the form of a live broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley (as himself). There are two “running gags” which connect the sketches. In one, an actor wants to perform Shakespeare, but he is continually denied air-time. The other gag has an inventor trying to view the broadcast on television. Four of the sketches are in color (in shades of yellow and brown only).Read More »
1921-1930
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Adrian Brunel, Alfred Hitchcock – Elstree Calling (1930)
Comedy1921-1930Adrian BrunelAlfred HitchcockMusicalUnited Kingdom -
Bertolt Brecht & Erich Engel – Mysterien eines Frisiersalons AKA Mysteries of a Barbershop (1923)
1921-1930Bertolt BrechtComedyErich EngelGermanySilentWeimar Republic cinemaKarl Valentin plays a journeyman in a barber shop who prefers to stay in bed than to take care of his (already heavily bearded) customers. When he’s at work, he removes boils with hammer, chisel and pincers, turns long-haired men into skin-heads and chops off people’s heads.Read More »
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Rasmus Breistein – Brudeferden i Hardanger AKA Bridal Procession In Hardanger (1926)
1921-1930NorwayRasmus BreisteinRomanceScandinavian Silent CinemaSilentThis is the 25FPS version with modern orchestral score.
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A true classic of Norwegian cinema, Rasmus Breistein’s Bridal Procession in Hardanger (1926) is not only a high point of the nation’s body of silent film, but also stands as a vital piece in their visual and cultural history. Stunningly shot on location on the fjords of western Norway, the film recreates a rural idyll of 19th century Scandinavian life to tell a compelling melodrama of young love, marriage, class division, and the lure of emigration to brighter lands of new promise.Read More » -
Ewald André Dupont – Piccadilly [+ Extras] (1929)
1921-1930DramaEwald André DupontSilentUnited KingdomThe star attraction of the Piccadilly Club is the dancing team of Mabel and Vic. Victor is infatuated with Mabel, but she rejects his advances, since she is in love with Valentine Wilmot, the club’s owner. One night, as Mabel and Vic perform their act, there is a disruption caused by a customer who is unhappy about a dirty plate. When Wilmot goes back to the kitchen to investigate, he finds several employees in the scullery watching Shosho, one of the dishwashers, dancing on a table. That night, Wilmot fires both Shosho and Victor. But the club’s sagging fortunes soon lead him to re-evaluate Shosho’s talent.Read More »
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Kenji Mizoguchi – Tojin Okichi aka Mistress of a Foreigner (1930)
1921-1930JapanKenji MizoguchiShort FilmSilentthis is a fragment of the original 115 minute film.Read More »
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Kenji Mizoguchi & Seiichi Ina – Asahi wa kagayaku AKA The Rising Sun is Shining [Reedited version] (1929)
1921-1930DocumentaryJapanKenji MizoguchiSeiichi InaSilentPartially lost film. Exactly it is said only 1/4 are extant.
Original story is like the following (translated from the accompanying booklet):
After finishing university, Hayafusa (Eiji Nakano) and Kusaka (Hiroyoshi Murata) enter Osaka Asahi Shimbun Co. Akizuki (Heitarô Hirai), the president of some company, who is from the same province with them, does not pleased of their entrance because he dislikes newspaper, however, his daughter Asako (Ranko Sawa) prays their future successes. At the office of Shinzaki (Shin Minobe), that are located at the same building with Akizuki, dubious foreigners have frequented, Hayafusa and Kusaka can obtain Shinzaki’s encrypted telegram with the help of elevator operator Kurie (Takako Irie). When Aurora, steamship round the world meets with a disaster off the coast of Sumoto, they goes there as reporters.Read More »
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Kenji Mizoguchi – Furusato no uta aka The Song of Home (1925)
1921-1930DramaJapanKenji MizoguchiSilentFrom David Williams entry on Mizoguchi in World Film Directors:
The first of his pictures still extant, Furusato no uta (The Song of Home), is a studio assignment remote from Mizoguchi’s personal concerns, lauding traditional rural values over those of the wicked city, although it contains some montage experiments in the manner of Minoru Murata. The script by Ryunosuke Shimizu won a Ministry of Education award.Read More » -
Man Ray – Le retour à la raison AKA Return to Reason (1923)
1921-1930ArthouseExperimentalFranceMan RayMore a work in experimental Dadaism than a film, «Le Retour à la raison» was the first film to be made by the celebrated surrealist artist, Man Ray. The American-born artist made the film soon after he moved to Paris in the early 1920s to found the Dada movement.
The film is very short (three minutes in length) but includes some astonishing and evocative images. The early segments of the film iillustrates a technique which Man Ray pioneered in static photography, the rayograph (or photogramme). Here, an object is placed between a light source and photo-sensitive film, in contrast to traditional photography where photographic film captures light reflected off an object. Read More » -
Man Ray – L’étoile de Mer AKA The Starfish (1928)
1921-1930ArthouseExperimentalFranceMan RayIn the modernist high tide of l920s experimental filmmaking, L’ETOILE DE MER is a perverse moment of grace, a demonstration that the cinema went farther in its great silent decade than most filmmakers today could ever imagine. Surrealist photographer Man Ray’s film collides words with images (the intertitles are from an otherwise lost work by poet Robert Desnos’) to make us psychological witnesses, voyeurs of a kind, to a sexual encounter. A character picks up a woman who is selling newspapers. She undresses for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less interested in her than in the weight she uses to keep her newspapers from blowing away, the man lovingly explores the perceptions generated by her paperweight, a starfish in a glass tube.Read More »