Lillian Gish

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Henri Langlois, the legendary cofounder of the Cinémathèque Française, changed the course of cinema history with his passionate advocacy for film culture, helping incubate the artistic explosion of the French New Wave. When the French government attempted to close down the Cinémathèque in 1968, Langlois’s movie mecca became a rallying point for the student protest movement that would soon bring France to the brink of revolution—and shut down that year’s Cannes Film Festival. Made two years later, this documentary portrait follows Langlois around the streets of Paris and features interviews with Lilian Gish, Simone Signoret, Catherine Deneuve, Kenneth Anger, Viva, and more.Read More »

The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith also co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It was released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission.
The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War and Reconstruction-era America: the pro-Union northern Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy Southern Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized.Read More »

Director Anthony Asquith’s 1958 British psychological thriller Orders to Kill is an extremely powerful and persuasive wartime moral dilemma film. Paul Massie stars as Gene Summers, a French-speaking American agent parachuted into France in World War Two with orders to kill a supposed double agent, French lawyer Lafitte (Leslie French), a meek sort of family person, whom he soon comes to think may be innocent of suspected treachery as a Nazi sympathiser, leading to an agonising moral dilemma.Read More »

Letty moves to West Texas from the East and it seems that the wind always blows and the sand gets everywhere. While living with relatives, she finds that she is not welcomed by the wife. With no where to go, she marries a man who disgusts her. Her new home is a small shack with the wind and the sand constant companions. When it is necessary for most of the men to go out into the sand storm, one stays back to have his way with Letty and that costs both of them.Read More »

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.Read More »

Just prior to the French Revolution, Henriette takes step-sister Louise to Paris in hopes of curing her blindness. Lustful aristocrat de Praille has virginal Henriette abducted and brought to his estate, leaving Louise helpless in the big city. An honorable aristocrat (Schildkraut) helps Henriette escape from de Praille. Scoundrel Mother Frochard forces Louise to beg in the streets. Unable to find Louise, Henriette gives shelter to admirable politician Danton after he’s attacked, and she also runs afoul of radical revolutionary Robespierre.Read More »

A tender young woman and her husband (a musician) attempt to eke out a living in the slums of New York City, but find themselves caught in the crossfires of gang violence.Read More »

The physician’s death orphans his two adolescent daughters. Their older brother is able to convert some of the doctor’s small estate to cash. But it is late in the day, and with the banks closed he stores the money in his father’s household safe. The slatternly housekeeper, aware of the money, enlists a criminal acquaintance to crack the safe. She attempts to get into the adjacent room where the sisters tremble in fear, but finds that the door is locked. The drunken housekeeper menaces them by brandishing a gun through a hole in the wall. But the resourceful girls use the telephone to call their brother who has returned to town. He gets the message and organizes a rescue party.Read More »

A young couple struggle to get ahead, the wife always assuaging the troubles of her melancholy husband. As he climbs the ladder of success, he abandons the homely values and takes up with another woman. His wife leaves him, returning to her mother’s home where she bears a child. When the husband is abandoned by his concubine, remorse drives him to find his wife…Read More »