1921-1930

  • Kenji Mizoguchi – Tokyo koshin-kyoku AKA Tokyo March [Japanese print] (1929)

    1921-1930AsianJapanKenji MizoguchiSilent

    IMDB:
    A classic melodramatic love tragedy addressing social inequality in feudal Japan, depicted in Kenji Mizoguchi’s typical style. The nostalgic scenes of 1920s Tokyo provides a valuable visual experience set against the background of the title song, “Tokyo March.”Read More »

  • Lionel Barrymore – Madame X (1929)

    1921-1930ClassicsDramaLionel BarrymoreUSA

    Plot: Young Raymond Floriot, following in his father Louis Floriot’s professional footsteps, he now France’s attorney general, has just passed the bar exam. Raymond’s first case, appointed to him by the courts, is a murder case. His pitiful and poor Jane Doe client, who refers to herself only as Madame X, admits to killing the scoundrel of a man named Laroque, but won’t disclose why or in turn defend herself in court. Raymond knows nothing of her past, which includes once being a woman of class, married to man of prestige. But that marriage ended because he treated her without love, which resulted in her leaving him for another man, who in turn passed away shortly thereafter. Read More »

  • Aleksandr Dovzhenko – The Cultural Heritage [Disc 1] (1926 – 1928)

    1921-1930Aleksandr DovzhenkoArthouseSilentUSSR

    Love’s Berries 1926
    The mistress of hairdresser Jean Kovbasyuk throws a baby up to him. Jean decides in any method to be delivered from a “natural” child…Getting a call to the judicial investigator, Kovbasyuk is given up to search a child. A mistress labours for in the court of people’s “justice”. However much it turns out after registration of marriage, that Jean and in actual fact was not the father of child. But lately…Read More »

  • Aleksandr Dovzhenko – Arsenal (The Cultural Heritage) [Disc 2] (1928)

    Drama1921-1930Aleksandr DovzhenkoArthouseUSSR

    In Arsenal, Alexander Dovzhenko, perhaps the most radical of the Soviet directors of the silent period, altered the already extended conventions of cinematic structure to a degree greater than had even the innovative Sergei Eisenstein in his bold October. The effect of this tinkering with the more or less accepted proprieties of motion picture construction produced a work that is actually less a film than it is a highly symbolic visual poem. For example, in a more linearly structured piece like October, the metaphors, allusions, and analogies that arise through the construction of the various montages replace rather than comment on essential actions within the film. In Arsenal, however, the symbolism is so purposely esoteric, with seemingly deliberate barriers established to block the viewer’s perception, that the relationship of individual symbols or sequences to the various actions of the film is not immediately clear.Read More »

  • Aleksandr Dovzhenko – Zemlya – versions of 1930 & 1971 (The Cultural Heritage [Disc 3]) (1930)

    1921-1930Aleksandr DovzhenkoArthouseDramaUSSR

    Earh (1930) 59 min.
    Poetic cinema story about events related to collectivization in Ukraine at the end of 20th years of the last century, about creation of the first of a collective farm communes, about class enmity on a village.
    The best film Dovzhenko and one of the best films in history world to the cinema.
    A film “Earth” on the World exhibition in Brussels of 1958 was adopted among the twelve best films of all times and people as a result of questioning, conducted Belgian cinematic among 117 film critics andconnoisseurs of the films from 26 countries of the world. During many subsequent years “Earth” was multiple included in the various lists of the best films of the world of XX century.Read More »

  • Alfred Hitchcock – Champagne (1928)

    1921-1930Alfred HitchcockComedySilentUSA

    plot summary:
    A spoilt rich girl leads a life of luxury on the profits from her father’s champagne business. To bring her back down to earth he tells her that all the money has been lost so she goes to seek her fortune.Read More »

  • Michael Curtiz – Fiaker Nr. 13 aka Cab Nr.13 (1926)

    1921-1930GermanyMichael CurtizSilentWeimar Republic cinema

    IMDB User Reviews
    20 April 2004 | by bullybyte (United Kingdom)

    *** This review may contain spoilers ***

    SPOILERS!! The film starts with a woman on the run from her millionaire husband giving birth to a daughter in the home of a washerwoman. The woman dies in childbirth, but the baby survives. The washerwoman leaves the baby in a horsedrawn Parisian taxicab (No. 13). The paperwork of the birth is lost in a huge tome. Sixteen years pass. The tome is bought by a poor student. One day his bookshelf collapses, and the tome opens at the page where the paperwork has been hidden. The student realises that the paperwork relates to a millionaire who has spent the last sixteen years looking for his pregnant wife.Read More »

  • Yevgeni Chervyakov – Moy syn (1928)

    1921-1930DramaSilentUSSRYevgeni Chervyakov

    Synopsis: A woman announces her husband that her newborn baby isn’t his. What follows is a simple and powerful sequence of close-ups of a man caught in his mixed emotions and a woman obsessed with the child’s well-being.Read More »

  • Yasujirô Ozu – Rakudai wa shitakeredo aka I flunked but… (1930)

    1921-1930ComedyJapanYasujiro Ozu

    Yasujirô Ozu wrote:
    One could say this is the flip side of I Graduated, But… The student-protagonist scribbles his crib notes on his shirt sleeve, but the day of his graduation exam, the girl at his boarding house unwittingly takes the shirt to the launderette So naturally, he flunks. However, those who pass and graduate in high spirits cannot land any job, while the ones who flunked can continue to bum around living off their parent’s money. It’s a vignette. Although Ryu Chishu has appeared in my previous films, it was the first time I let him have a go at a more significant role.Read More »

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