Silent Film: Lost Film, Found Magazines Greta Garbo had been slated to film "The Ordeal" with Lon Chaney as his co-star under the direction of Marcel de Sarno; it is not a lost film of which there are no surviving copies, it was left unmade and is an unrealized film script, an abandoned photoplay.Lon Chaney is quoted as having said, "I told Garbo that mystery served me well and it would do as much for her." The advertisements published in advance by M.G.M during 1926 announced the film as an adaptation of a novel by Dale Collons, Motion Picture News having described the upcoming film as a "sea story" and having announced that Ray Doyld, formerly a newspaper reporter, was preparing the scenario. "Garbo in Support of Lon Chaney in 'The Ordeal' announced Greta Garbo as the "featured feminine player opposite Chaney. A similar report appeared in Moving Picture World that year. Film Daily during 1927 reported that John Griffith Wray had been signed to direct Lon Chaney in "The Ordeal", it neglecting to mention entirely Chaney having been previously signed to the film or Marcel deal Sarno having been dismissed as its director.
"Tower of Lies" in which Lon Chaney starred under the direction of Victor Sjostrom is in fact a lost film; there are no surviving copies of the film and the best way to find the content of the film is to search through magazine articles printed during it first run for reviews and synopses. The publicity department of M.G.M often, if not incessantly, centered its magazine advertisements around the attraction of the studios "stars", that is to say it claimed to have the greatest number of the most popular screen actors, the particular film a then afterthought- in The Film Daily during 1926 it directly addressed exhibitors, "Then take 'The Tower of Lies', Victor Sjostrom, director; Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer stars. It's an angle when exhibitors advertise this thrilling attraction as a 'successor to "He Who Gets Slapped" with the same director and stars.'."
During 1925, Lon Chaney, in an article entitled My Own Story and published by Movie Magazine, while pointing to the themes of "self-sacrifice and renunciation" in his films wrote, "The picture I have just completed, Tower of Lies, is the story of a father's enduring love and sacrificep, even to death, for his wayward daughter. I do not know that it is my favorite of all roles that I have portrayed, but certainly it is one of them and I consider Victor Seastrom, who directed it, the greatest director in the motion picture profession." Also in 1925, The Reel Journal, a sister publication to the magazine New England Film News, reviewed the films of Lon Chaney with the article "Lon Chaney Turns to Less Grotesque Roles". The article initially began by noting that, in regard to depiction of thematic character, "Lon Chaney, who has attracted stardom by playing roles of a weird and grotesque character, is turning to portrayals depending on more deeply human qualities for their interest.", the professionalism as a make-up artist on the part of Lon Chaney is not without having been noticed, "In his first Metro-Goldwyn Mayer picture, Victor Seastrom's production of Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped...Chaney donned two make-ups, one as a European scientist, and the other as a clown. It was said by critics of the latter that this portrayal was the first circus clown interpretation to express the humanity which lies behind the painted mask of a mountebank...In The Tower of Lies, his make-up demonstrates a transition from middle age to old age." Both films The Tower of Lies and The Unholy Three were unreleased at the time of the review.
Although there accounts of Lon Chaney only having taken a small role in the film, "The Next Corner", directed by Sam Wood in 1924 is a lost film. The film, made by Paramount, stars Dorothy Mackaill and its length is seven reels.
It is not entirely suprising that Lon Chaney was cast with John Gilbert in their respective dramatic roles. John Gilbert would later star as a magician in a 1931 adaptation of a story written by Gaston Leroux for the film "The Phantom of Paris", which was apparently slated for Lon Chaney before his death. There are no existing copies of the film "While Paris Sleeps" in which Lon Chaney and John Gilbert appeared on the screen together under the direction of Maurice Tourneur during 1923.
There are no existing copies of the film "A Blind Bargain" starring Lon Chaney, directed by Wallace Worsley during 1922. It is an adaptation of the novel Octave of Claudius, written by Barry Bain. Appearing in the film with Chaney is actress Jaqueline Logan. Exhibitor's Herlad remarked upon Chaney's performance in the film, "This tragic story by Barry Bain has a wealth of good acting by Lon Chaney in a dual role. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine any other actor...who could handle these two contrasting characterizations with one half the dramatic finesse that is Chaney's." Whereas both Tod Browning and Lon Chaney had previously centered on the morality of the crime drama to arrive at plot lines, they would soon begin to establish the genre of the silent horror film and its commodification- Motion Picture News Booking Guide introduced the Lon Chaney film "The Blind Bargain" as Mystery Melodrama. It added, "Star plays Dual role...A struggling author agree to allow doctor to experiment on him in return for financial and medical aid for his mother, who is dying...the author escapes the fate of other victims chained in the doctor's private dungeon when one of those men breaks the bars engaging him and crushes the doctor to death. Romance between author and publisher's daughter."
"Voices of The City", or "The Night Rose", starring Lon Chaney under the direction of Wallace Worsley, six reels released toward the end of 1921, is also a lost film of which there are no existing copies. The film, a heavily censored crime drama that was recut before its release, also starred actress Leatrice Joy. That year Chaney had also appeared in the six reel film "For Those We Love", a romantic melodrama directed by Arthur Rossen and starring Betty Compson. The actress had co-produced the film with Goldwyn Studios. The library of Congress has no listings of archived holdings of the film, it presumed to be lost and there being no surviving copies.
Director George Loane Tucker was responsible for the scenario of the eight reel film "The Miracle Man", of which only a three minute fragment now remains. Released in 1919, the film starred Lon Chaney with Betty Compson and Elinor Fair. Silent film proponent, author, perhaps icon, Anthony Slide, has casually mentioned that it was not untill the film "Miracle Man" that character actor Lon Chaney gained recognition as a film artist and the film may have catapulted him toward stardom- it may also be taken for granted that the majority of the earlier film made by Chaney before "The Miracle Man", not to mention several made after, are lost in their entirety, including numerous short films made between 1914-1915 and possibly a dozen feature films in which Chaney appeared between 1916-1917. The Man of a Thousand Faces before becoming a celebrity is now invisible on the screen as an aspiring star, the celluloid having been destroyed.
Although one of Chaney's best films, Laugh, Clown Laugh, directed by Herbert Brenon during 1928, is often screened to modern audiences, the Library of Congress lists the film as surviving only as incomplete and missing an entire reel. There exists no copy of the fourth reel of the film. Of the film, Photoplay expressed the emotion that "it is the greatest relief to have him minus his usual sinister make up...Loretta Young, as Simonetta, reveals an unexpected display of dramatic ability."
Among the films to which there are no holdings listed by the library of Congress are two six reel films directed by Tod Browning during 1919, both starring Mary McClaren, both presumed to be lost and their present survival unknown, "Petal on the Current", based on a story by Fanny Hurst and "The Unpainted Woman", adapted from the work of Sinclair Lewis.
It's has been estimated that less than 10% of the earl films of Lon Chaney made for Universal still exist. Chaney had filmed with Universal Bison, Universal Nestor and Universal Rex during the second decade of the twentieth century. Of the lost films that Lon Chaney made during 1916, 1917 and 1918 for Universal Blue Bird and Universal Red Feather, several were made with the actress Dorothy Phillips or actress Louise Lovely and were directed by either Joseph de Grasse or Ida May Park. The films were a running length of five reels.
Lon Chaney was given the supporting role of Nils Krogstad was a screen adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll House" (1917) in which Joseph de Grasse directed actress Dorothy Phillips.
In regard to Lost Fim, Found Magazines, the idea that there is no existent copy of the film, but history can be studied by looking at the neglected magazine articles of one hundred years ago, some of the most beautiful magazine art of the Tweties belonged to the regular output of Bluebird Photoplays, a subsidiary of Universal Manufacturing Company- most of the films of Bluebird Photoplays made between 1916-1919 are unknown to survive. Although not strictly mystery or horror films, it being too early in the history of Universal Film to belong to a developed horror adventure genre, they include the work of three notable directors: Rupert Julian, Rex Ingram and Tod Browning. Also directing for Bluebird was Robert Z. Leonard, who married actress Mae Murray after directing her in "Princess Virtue" (1917)
Rupert Julian not only directed his own films, but like Victor Sjostrom in Sweden, often appeared in front of the camera. One such film was "The Mysterious Mr. Tiller" in which the director starred with Ruth Clifford during 1917- the film is thought to be lost. Motion Picture Weekly reported that in the film Julian directed himself in a dual role, "He changes before the eye of the camera from a debonair gentleman of the world, in conventional evening dress, to a desperate, sinister criminal, one with distorted features and threatening leer in his eyes." The magazine saw the transformation as clever and the film as a mystery, mysteries then growing in popularity- the film was a "corker". It is unknown whether the 1916 five reel film "The Evil Women Do" in which the director starred with Elsie Jane Wislon and Francella Billington is presently lost. The Photoplay was based on a novel by Emile Gaboriau. Bluebird Photoplays also produced Rupert Julian's adaption of Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Naked Hearts" from 1916, in which the directed and starred with Francellia Billington. It is also unknown if there are still surviving copies of the film. Two five reel films in which actress Ruth Clifford was directed on screen by Rupert Julian for Bluebird Photoplays, the 1917 film "The Door Between" and the 1918 film "Hands Down (The Highest Card)" are both in fact presumed to be lost films.
 Included among the myriad of films that cannot be viewed by modern audiences are The The Chinese Parrot (1927, seven reels), adapted for the screen from the pen of Earl Der Biggers by Paul Leni and starring Marian Nixon and Florence Turner and Four Devils, filmed in the United States by F. W Murnau in 1928 and starring Janet Gaynor. Photoplay, while providing a still from the film, saw The Four Devils as the "long awaited successor" to Murnau's Sunrise and as a source of a plot summary to the film, it alludes to the film's tone, "the final shot implies a happy ending. The film will probably be cut to eliminate the over drawn scenes before it is released." Paul Rotha in The Film till now, a survey of the cinema opined, "Murnau's second picture for Fox was Four Devils, a story of the circus ring, which (save for some moving camera work) an uninteresting film." Laurence Reid of Motion Picture Classic magazine, The Celluloid Critic, reviewed the film in an article that read, "There are some highly graphic scenes- the outstanding being the expansive one of the trapeze act with the spectators seated Pin rows after the manner of the Roman Coliseum. there are suggestions of 'Variety' in this incident pertaining to the acrobatic work, though Murnau has used initiative in developing the story in his own dramatic way. So I highly recommend 'Four Devils', which is colorful, appealing and moving."
Silent film journals have noted that no matter how star struck audiences may have been, John Barrymore's film When a Man Loves was eclipsed and while thought to be a lost film, it was not screened between 1927 to 2000, but add to this that the film The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921), in which he appeared with Colleen Moore and Anna Q. Nilsson, was also during that entire time taken to be a lost film; one source listed as many as thirteen films in which John Barrymore starred that are believed to be missing. The five reel film "The Test of Honor", in which John Barrymore starred during 1919, is a lost film of which there are no surviving copies. It is a film adaptation of the novel The Malefactor, written by the prolific mystery-romance writer E. Philips Oppenheim. The present author having spent a summer having read twelve novels written by E. Phillips Oppenheim while collecting first editions at a used bookstore in Boston, my hardcover copy of The novel The Malefactor Was printed in 1907 by Collier.
If all that exists of The Chinese Parrot is a still photograph, the caption from Photoplay Magazine, cautioned that, alhtough mysteries were not meant to be divulged, the adaption had not kept faithful to the Earl Der Biggers plotline. In addition to "The Mountain Eagle", an early silent starring actress Nita Naldi directed by Alfred Hitchcock during 1926 being listed as lost with no surviving prints, there were several films which Hitchcock, before having become director, wrote the intertitles for as an apprentice in the screenplay department of Famous Players-Lasky British made between 1920-1922. All the films for the studio on which Hitchcock worked appear to now be non-existant.
Picture Play magazine, in two full pages using six still photographs toward the end of 1927, introduced the new Lon Chaney film, title The Hypnotist. the director and author was Tod Browning, with Chaney as "a Scotland Yard detective with a mystery to solve by means of mesmerism and a terrifying disguise. "the bat girl, played by Edna Techener, is an eerie creature." For silent film detectives piecing things together, when Ruth Waterbury interviewed Lon Chaney for Photoplay, she reported the film having been completed in its entirety that morning under the title The Hypnotist, a week ahead of schedule, " 'Tonight, I start out for the high Sierras,' Lon crowed. 'No shaving, no make up, no interviews, for four long lazy weeks.' " Chaney had planned to embark directly on a fishing trip with his wife. in the article The Life Story of Lon Chaney, Waterbury describes the actor filming," Earlier that day I had sat on The Hypnotist set watching Lon enact a monster creeping through a fearful room. Then he had worn a black frock coat and a high black hat. he had a wig matted grey ly about his shoulders and from his slobbering mouth, pointed teeth gleamed and tears of agony flowed from his awful distended eyes." The True Life Story of Lon Chaney would become ancedote rather than reporting for Waterbury of Photoplay, "He loathes people on the set. Yet he saw to it that I always had a comfortable place on 'The Hypnotist' set so that I might witness how easily he worked and with what economy of guesture. Arriving one day at the studio I was told he was in his dressing room. I did not find him there. On the company stage, I observed Tod Browning, his director, and the Kleigs were blazing. Suddenly I heard a voice calling me. Up against the roof of the stage, some thirty feet high, was a monster bat, waving its hand at me. Of course it was Lon. He had been rigged up there for hours. At that distance the camera couldn't catch his face and any other man would have used a double. Lon thought the bat business important to his characterization, so he did it." In two of its numerous, weekly Studio briefs, Motion Picture News Magazine during September of 1927 announced that during the week, Henry B. Wathall, Claude King, and Andy McClelland had each individually been added to the cast of "The Hypnotist", a "new Metro Godlwyn Mayer vehicle for Lon Chaney."
At first glance, it would seem that the studio itself gave Lon Chaney the name of "the man of a thousand faces" the phrase having appeared in one of its magazine advertisements for the film "The Hypnotist". The advertisement read, "Chaney, the man of a thousand faces and a thousand arts, once again will delight audiences with a role that has within its range all the curious and the novel, the fiendish ness and the sacrificial redemption that has gone with his greatest efforts. M.G.M. Is banking heavily on the power in The Hypnotist. Just in all Chaney stories the Suprise elements make the plot, and it is divi cult to divulge them in a cold brief paragraph."
In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines, Photoplay reviewed the film London After Midnight, "Lon Chaney has a stellar role in this mystery drama and the disguise he uses while ferretting out the murderer is as gruesome aPs any has ever worn...Chaney plays a dual role." The Motion Picture News Booking Guide of 1929 provided a brief synopsis of London After Midnight, directed by Tod Browning, "Theme: An uncanny mysterious drama laid in a haunted manor house in England. Lon Chaney in the role of a Scotland Yard detective invades the precincts of ghosts and apparitions and utilizes hypnotism in a scientific manner." Carl Sandberg reviewed the film in 1928, "No wonder Inspector Burke is played by Lon Chaney with little or no make up. The world had forgotten what Lon Chaney's real face looks like and when he lets his own countenance shine forth he is disguised most of all...The story of how Inspector Burke solves the mystery is one of the most diverting and suspenseful in all the long associations of Chaney, the actor, and Tod Browning, the director. Conrad Nagel, Marceline day and H. B. Walthall have parts, but do not have them seriously enough to interfere with Mr. Chaney and his performance." National Board of Review magazine wrote, "An interesting mystery story. The story is tense and the acting excellant...The effect rendered by the use of vampires is eerI'm ie and the whole story is of an unusual nature." The Film Spectator during 1928 provided an eye witness account of London after Midnight, "For once, Tod Browning gets too deep for my poor understanding. I do not know if I was expected to take it seriously as a treatise on the application of hypnotism to crime detection or whether I was to regard it as a fanciful joke...This is about one reel of story embellished by six reels of utter rot. if the Scotland Yard man wants to hypnotize Conrad Nagel and Henry B. Eat hall surely he could have managed it without dragging in a vampire for which is no authority other than Slavic folklore, an old man with starling teeth and a woman who looks like a bit of animated death."
With "London After Midnight", the seven reel silent film The Big City, directed by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney is also lost. Only the trailer, of which there are existing fragments, can be seen today.. Browning co wrote the scenario with Waldemar Young in 1928 and starring in the film Chaney are Betty Compson, Virginia Pearson and Madeline Day. From stills and reviewers, the film is principally Chaney without make-up. Picture Play Magazine used two full pages to carry six stills from the film The Big City that begin to provide clues as to the tone, atmosphere and dramatic content of the film, despite the director's film technique and editing being difficult to surmise from only stills. The photo captions allude to its plot and character motivations for plot by announcing a love interest between Betty Compson and Lon Chaney. "As the heroine of a crook picture should be." The title to the two page layout was "A Stir in the Underworld".
An earlier film directed by Tod Browning, A Dangerous Flirt (1924), starring Evelyn Brent, is also included among the lost films of Silent Hollywood. A review of the lost film can be found in the magazine Photoplay. "an intriguing little drama spiced with the risqué. Threatened with a scandal because she has been out all night with a youth whose car broke down our heroine agrees to marry the hero. She loves him, but is afraid of love. Not understanding, he leaves for South America. She follows."
Of Silent film director Tod Browning, Iris Barry wrote, "Browning has a peculiar gift for managing dramatic suspense, only rivaled by some of the Germans, though achieved by methods less dramatic than theirs." That Devil Bateese (William Wobert, 1918) in which Lon Chaney starred with Ada Gleason, is a lost silent film.
Lon Chaney would return to the screen in 1926 in the films The Blackbird (Tod Browning, seven reels), The Road to Mandalay (Tod Browning, seven reels) and Tell It To the Marines (George Hill, ten reels).
The Motion Picture News Booking Guide provided a brief synopsis of the film Road to Mandalay, directed by Tod Browning, "Melodrama of a degenerate parent who gets a streak of redemption when he would save his daughter from evil partner. She has no knowledge of her father's identity."
Picture Play Magazine looked at the director's technique while providing a brief synopsis to the film "Blackbrid", directed by Tod Browning. " 'The Blackbird' is a perfectly fine melodrama of London's Limehouse district, that convenient locale where we can always find crooks of the better sort...When Lon Chaney takes to play a double role- He is in this a tough, tough, thug known as The Black Bird, and he lives with his brother, a holy man, known as The Bishop of Limehouse. The Blackbrird makes trouble and the Bishop tries to undo it...However, not to deceive you too long, Lon Chaney plays both parts...Tod Browning has a remarkable sense of melodrama. He photographs bits of action and fleeting glimpses of faces, making in a few seconds a point that many directors could make in several reels of action."
In 1927, Lon Chaney starred in front of the camera of silent film director William Nigh to portray Mr. Wu (eight reels), the film co-starring Renee Adoree and Gertrude Olmstead. It was reviewed in Photoplay as a "gory story and one that is not likely to equal most of Chaney's films in popularity." The Motion Picture News Booking Guide provided a brief synopsis of the film "Mr. Wu", "Theme: Adapted from the stage play. Melodrama of Chinese vengeance when mandarin's daughter prefers American's love in preference to a Chinese marriage. "
1927 was a year in which Rupert Julian, director of Phantom of the Opera was collaborating with screenwriter Garret Fort on the film Yankee Clipper to showcase actress Elinor Fair. Tod Browning that year would be filming "The Show", starring John Gilbert, Renee Adoree, Gertrude Short and Lionel Barrymore. Motion Picture Magazine published a photograph of Browning on the set filming a topshot from a platform or what looks like the roof of a three wall set. Still referring to the film as "The Day of Souls", the photcation read, "Now in order to be a good cameraman you have to be able to swing from chandeliers and do any other feat which will result in action being photographed in an unusual way. This scene...is to be photographed with the camera shooting down upon it." Motion Picture News during 1927 reported the change in title in its Studio Briefs section, "Formerlly known as 'The Day of Souls', John Gilbert's starring vehicle for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, will henceforth be known as 'The Show'. Tod Browning directed this Photoplay of show life in Budapest and in it Renee Adoree plays opposite Gilbert for the first time since 'The Big Parade'."
While one of the ten films then being produced by M.G.M, also among them being "Masks of the Devil", directed by Victor Seastrom, and "The Mysterious Lady", directed by Fred Niblo, it was reported by Exhibitor's Daily Review that the film "West of Zanzibar", starring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning, would be made with sound effects. The photographer to the film would be Percy Hilburn. A photo caption in Exhibitor's Herald and Moving Picture World was directed toward moving going audiences, " Grim visages from Lon Chaney's latest 'West of Zanzibar', which is as distinguished for unusual characterizations as Chaney pictures usually are." The Film Daily su headed its review of "West of Zanzibar" with the description, "Swell Layout of Creeps, Thrills, Terrors, Morbidness and All-Round Devilishness." It reviewed the film by placing beneath,"This is from an original story and was written only with Chaney in view. It is admirably adapted to his yen for the bizarre in characterization...many of the scenes are positively gruesome." That week, The Film Daily also reviewed Conrad Veidt in "Lucretia Borgia", directed by Richard Oswald.
Photoplay Magazine reviewed the film "Where is East is East", directed by Tod Browning in 1929 and starring Lon Chaney with Lupe Valez and Estelle Taylor. "Gather round folks for another Chaney bedtime story- A very bad woman, wife of an animal trapper, deserts her husband only to return later to steal the affections of the boy who lives her own daughter. Not nice at all, this woman, but Estelle Taylor plays her to perfection." The film being the last on which Chaney had starred under the direction of Browning, it would mark the tenth film on which the two had collaborated.
While looking for films that might have played on the same marquee as double features, on early horror film from 1926 include "Midnight Faces" (1926) in which Francis X. Bushman and Kathryn McQuire appeared under the direction of Bennet Cohen.
Based on the novel by Somerset Maugham, "The Magician", directed for M.G.M by Rex Ingram, brought more horror and suspense to the movie theaters of 1926. Alice Terry and Gladys Hamer star in the film. Motion Picture News magazine reviewed the film with "Fantastic Picture by Ingram aha it's Moments"- "It is weird, fantastic, adequately suspension and shivery-and no matter how it is accepted, no one is going to dismiss it as something that doesn't belong...Here in the new opus, the symbol of the title role is a coiling cobra. The magician...is determined a la Svengali, to get a beautiful girl in his clutches in order to solve his problem of human life. if he can squeeze her heart's blood into his formula he will solve his age old riddle."
Interestingly, the first film directed by Rex Ingram was "Black Orchids", the script cowritten by Ingram and the leading lady of the film, Cleo Madison. Filmed for Universal during 1917, a lack of support for the film required Ingram to remake it five years later for Metro with Barabara La Marr under the title "Trifling Women". Motion Picture Magazine describes Cleo Madison as the "French Vampire" placing more on her being seductuctress than supernatural while starring in "the main incidents of a drama which deals almost exclusively with open defiance of all moral law but which nevertheless holds the spectator's unidivided attention to the end of the last reel." Bluebird Photoplays, a division of Universal, subtitled the film, The Love Affairs of A Heartless Woman, "the film a five reel romance bearing the Bluebird Seal", which is indicative of the sensationalism of the second decade of the century centering upon an immorality of sexuality, whereas during the third decade of the century it would embrace the macabre more often in the thrill seeking of the Photoplay and photo dramatist. Although a Bluebird Photoplay, purportedly, a print of the five reel film "The Chalice of Sorrow", in which Rex Ingram directed actress Cleo Madison, does presently exist in Los Angelos it fortunately not being one of the several Universal-Bluebird films in need of restoration or preservation. It is unknown whether the five reel Bluebird Photoplay "The Reward of the Faithless" directed by Rex Ingram during 1917 still exists and it is unknown whether the five reel film "Pulse of Life (Humanity)" directed by Ingram in 1917, starring Molly Malone and Gypsy Harte, still exists.
Professor Ib Bondebjorg, University of Cophenhagen, has recently published a paper on the study of Genre, in which he writes, "The study of film genres is therefore placed in a triangular structure relating to the institutional, social and cultural context of films; to the aesthetic, formal, thematic and stylistic dimensions; and to audiences and reception understood both in an empirical social and psychological sense." This would imply that as self-contained, although self-perpetuating, that genres are mercurial, that is to say they may become dated in their specificity, but it also would account for the advent of the silent horror film alongside the mystery-detective film and the Universal Horror film that subsumed the genre with the advent of sound. Bondebjerg mentions the feminist Williams as grouping the horror genre among genres that are "more action-orientated and excessive body genres", which seems to imply corporeality as being thematic when contrasted with immateriality, the invisible observer bringing light to appearance and non-appearance. Aside from auteur theory which Professor Bondebjerg teaches in class and online, where genre study and feminist theory might be pertinent to his writings is his study of a modern transnational cinema and the emergence of Nordic Noir, and yet there are those who would include The Phantom Carriage, directed by Victor Sjostrom as being both a Scandinavian film and a horror film, it's use of the elements of landscape, atmosphere and mood and its narrative technique being seen as heightening the Gothic as a specter becomes an agent of death.
It could be purported that while the silent film was well suited as a visual art form for the horror film, that one reason for the genre taking so long to be established was not only was it a genre that was being imported for Europe-it being easily seen that "The Cabinet of Caligari" (1920) and "The Golem" (1920) were soon followed by "The Hands of Orlac" (1922) and "Waxworks" (1924); one volume, The New Spirit of Cinema, published in 1930, having alleged just that, that Expressionism itself was exploitation, with the paragraph, "The circumstances that linked the commercial and aesthetic tendencies together are not difficult to trace." - but that the popular form of melodrama untill 1920 was the serial, or cliffhanger, and that adventure films were sold in installments as narratives, which would account for Universals first Chaney films, Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame being literary adaptations that almost collide with the costume drama, as with Fairbanks and the Three Musketeers. If mystery suspense films are presently lost and are without surviving copies, one primary reason to look for is if they were made as serials and released in shorter multi-reel form. It need only casually noted that to return to film appreciation, despite the clifferhanger being escapist, it avoiding the themes that leave us with a spiritual experience of having looked at the dramas within the world, the pull they have that brings costumers into the theater is part of fantasy having been taken up by art, irregardless of how they sit next to films like "The Joyless Street", "The Scarlet Letter" or "The Gold Rush". Propheticly, the magazine Exceptional Photoplays during 1922 reviewed the film "A Blind Bargain", "Whatever the case was Mr. Chaney has succeeded in lending the true horror note and placing his picture in that limited category which is headed by the John Barrymore screen version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde."
Scholar Casper Tybjerg has written that the Expressionist films of the mid-twenties were "precursor" films of the genre of horror films, possibly not yet "full-fledged" horror films, and yet it is difficult to exclude "Nosferatu" from the genre if only to begin with the film "The Man Who Laughs". Tybjerg looks for similarities in the films where they can be considered "Fantastic Films" and he in fact includes a Danish serial starring Olof Fonns, Homunculus (1916) of which only a fragment exists and no full copy of the work survives- there are less than two of is six parts that can be screened at present. Despite the effect of The Great War on the European film industry, Casper Tybjerg includes the influence of the film "Der Student Von Prag" (1913) as well as the next entry directed by Stellan Rye, the 1914 film "The Eyes of Ole Brandis" (Die Augen de Ole Brandis), which is a lost film. It is hopefully history itself that Professor Tybjerg confidently provided a plot summary of a film which we longer have a copy of adding his his efforts in film preservation and that in light of that I can employ the subtitle "Lost Film, Found Magazines" to my own internet writing more often. Author Leonaordo Quanesimo views the Homunculus character as inevitably derived from the Gothic Novel. Quanesimo writes, "The Frankenstein creature in this sense is the ancestor and begetter of this character. The Nosferatu of Galean/Murnau is its direct successor. This last link seems very transparent. Homunculus' features in numerous and obvious ways are already those of the vampire from 1921." There are authors that mention the film "Night of Horror" (Nachte eas Grauens), released in Germany the same year "Homunculus" was released in Denmark, 1916, as being a story with vampires, if not the first vampire film as it preceded "Nosferatu" and may have had little connection with expressionism. The film was directed by Richard Oswald and Arthur Robinson and starred actress Ossi Oswalda.
One of the seemingly most important films related to the development of the genre, "Life Without a Soul"(Joseph Smiley, 1915) is a lost film. It stars actress Lucy Cotton in a tale in which a scientist falls asleep literally while reading Mary Shelley's "Frankenstien", the plot then anticipating the storyline of The Bride of Frankenstein. Motion Picture World reviewed the film during 1915, "The author of 'Life Without Soul' has been guided by but one purpose- to build a Photoplay which appeals to the emotions rather than to the intellect and is at all times good entertainment by its directness and cohesion of plot and attractiveness of its theme." Motion Picture re-reviewed, "A new color scheme is also carried out I the toning and tinting of the picture. The colors are applied so as to accentuate the idea carried in the action and also to add to the atmosphere so as to convey the impression desired." In an earlier article printed toward the end of 1915, Motion Picture World have looked at the making of the film. "Four hundred and sixty three scenes are incorporated in the script, and the scenic beauty is enhanced and supported by a story unusual in its intensity dealing with the artificial creation of a being that acts as the nemesis of its creator.....Hazard exploits were engaged in, one of which called for the blowing up of a mountain in order to cause a landslIde, the huge boulders blocking up a cave in which the Creation has already taken refuge."
Vitagraph produced the film "Mortmain" (Theodore Marston, 1915), a weird tale of a scientist performing transplants and the ensuing romantic complications. It's director, Theodore Marston, who had previously directed short versions of Jane Eyre and Lorna Doone, went on to direct Suprises from an Empty Hotel in 1916. As the genre developed, among the film's that followed include "The Brand of Satan" (George Archainbaud, 1917) starring Montagu Love, Gerda Holmes and Evelyn Greeley, where a medical student retains his evil side.
"And when the rain comes down and the lightning flashes and the weird happenings of the night are visualized, you will forget that you are in a theater looking at a picture. You will be with the characters of the story and going through their experiences." In the full page review of "The Haunted Bedroom" (Fred Niblo, 1919) Motion Picture News not only dismissed the film from being a comedy, but bestowed its accolade on the film's director by dismissing it's being far-fetched or impossible, it having a tight atmosphere and controlled mood as the magazine explained the title and the room from which "the strange sounds emanated" and revealed that Enid Bennet was a girl reporter posing as a maid while investigating a ghost during a modern era in which there were those who sincerely believed in seances. The original Photoplay was contributed by the prolific screenwriter C. Gardner Sullivan.
Again, to the contrary, without a vague sentiment of a well laid out genre, the program reader to the six reel film "The Phantom Honeymoon", written and directed by J. Searle Dawley during 1919 read, "If you don't believe in ghosts please come to this theater next week and see 'The Phantom Honeymoon'. Should it happen that you do believe in ghosts will you kindly attend the showing of 'The Phantom Honeymoon' next week. Whether you do or don't, be sure and attend this theater next week and you may change your present opinion about some ghosts. We cannot go any further." Motion PIcture News gave the advice to exhibitor's that presaged the new genre, that, "title and theme is the thing to excite their curiously and these are what should be displayed in every possible place." This was to be despite the notoriety of the film's star, Marguerite Marsh. The plot line entails a "ghost romance" involving a groom who loses a duel on his wedding night, having exposed his arm to a deadly snake, and the bride who implores to die with him, a double exposure showing the couple traveling around the world during the afterlife. During the same week, Motion PIcture News reviewed the film 'A Scream in the Night', starring Ruth Budd, and it noted to its movie going readers that, "No part of either the theme or action suggests the title." the magazine, as early film criticism, implying that not only were films a sellable product, but were works of art being advertised for their "pull", their box-office draw.
Untill they are found and or restored, the films made in the United States continue to lurk within the shadows of the silver screen theaters, and although many of the theaters, with all their granduer that introduced the films are also gone, particularly in Boston where as historic districts theater districts have shifted while being rebuilt, the detectives of film can find them in the world of Lost Film, Found Magazines with each newly discovered poster, still or full page advertisement.
Photoplay magazine in 1927 reviewed a unique foreign film, "A story of the City of the future, I'm weirdly imagined, technically gorgeous, but almost ruined by terrible acting and awful subtitles. The settings are unbelievably beautiful; the mugging of the players unbelievably bad." In the United States, a newer version of the Silent Film Metropolis is currently being presented by Kino International. Karl Freund was the film's cameraman. Apparently, possibly as a lietmotif or metaphor for cranking up the kem and its dusty archive of sprockets and outdated take up reels once a tradition at Harvard, the University overlooked the dilapitated condition of the Fogg Art Musuem and screened actress-machine Brigitte Helm in the Silent Film at its Film Archive during September along with the film Sunrise (Murnau). |
