Scott Lord Silent Film: The Woman In the Suitcase (Fred Niblo, 1920)

Fred Niblo directed the six reel film "The Woman in the Suitcase" during 1920 for Thomas H. Ince Productions. The photoplay was written by C. Gardner Sullivan. Actress Enid Bennett stars in the film.

The periodical Wid's Daily reviewed the film with, "Old time situation lacks conviction and seldom reaches the entertainment point. Story has been done hundreds of times and isn't different enough to get by on that score." The magazine exhorted, "There is no great reason why you shouldn't play 'The Woman in the Suitcase" and get away with it."

That year Fred Niblo also directed Enid Bennett in the film "Silk Hosiery" (six reels), costarring actress Joan Standing and in the film "Her Husband's Friend"(five reels) co-starring Mae Busch.

Fred Niblo had begun directing during 1918 with the films "The Marriage Ring" (five reels), a lost silent film starring actress Enid Bennett, "Fuss and Feathers" (five reels) a silent film considered to be lost starring Enid Bennett, "When Do We Eat" starring Enid Bennett, "Happy Though Married", and "Partners Three", starring Enid Bennett. Director Fred Niblo and actress Enid Bennett were married in 1918. Picture Play Magazine announced the wedding in their Screen Gossip section.

Silent Film Fred Niblo

Scott Lord Silent Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes Baffled (Marvin, 1900)

Author Ron Haydock, in his volume Deerstalker: Holmes and Watson on screen, is succinct in describing the first appearance of Arthur Conon Doyle's Sherlock Holmes on screen, "Directed by Arthur Marvin, Edison's Sherlock Holmes film was shot with only one set, and one strait-on full shot camera angle and can be viewed time and again without boredom. It's fast, entertaining and over before you would like it to be."

Author David Stuart Davies, in his volume Holmes of the Movies, The Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes, acknowledges as part of the consensus, and there seems to be no reference to the author Emil Gaboriau who wrote in 1868 in the films of Georges Melies, that an unknown actor in the 1903 film "Sherlock Holmes Baffled" from the American Mutoscope and Bioscope was the first on screen appearance of Sherlock Holmes and first adaptation of the cannon written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In regard to how early, Stuart Davies points out that it was filmed the same yeart that "The Empty House" was published in the Strand Magazine and I in fact would mention that in a discussion of The Cinema of Attractions/The Cinema of Narrative Integration that it was released the same year as "The Great Train Robbery" from the competing Edison Manufacturing Company. "The audience at seeing the film may also have been baffled, for the film has no recognizable plot and seems to be little more than a series of tableaux of a melodramatic nature without any real continuity."

The cinema of George Melies has been likened to a cinema of attractions in its repetitive use of suprise and sudden appearance, the temporality of attractions are of appearance-non-appearance rather than development. On viiewing the single-shot film as it ushered in a new century with the first appearance on film of the consulting detective, the audience was a baffled as Sherlock Holmes by the abrupt vanishings of a burgler throughout the room through the use of stop-motion trick photography.

Sherlock Holmes in Elsinore, Mystery in Danish Silent Film

Silent Film Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangelor

Scott Lord Danish Silent Film: The Golden Clown (Kloven, A.W. Sandberg 1...

A. W. Sandberg had cowritten his first filming of "The Clown", which had starred actor Valdimar Psilander, in 1917 with Laurids Skards. "The Golden Clown", cowritten by A.W. Sandberg with Poal Knudsen, starring Gosta Eckman and Karina Bell, was one of two remakes of films that had been originally shot in 1917 that Sandberg had filmed that year, his having also during 1926 having directed Gunnar Tolnaes and Karina Bell in the film "Oriental Love/The Favorite Wife of the Maharadjah" (Maharajahens Yndlingshustru). The Danish Film Museum viewed both films as "tame" in years that brought "decline" for A.W. Sanberg and "catastrophe" for Nordisk, causing the company to liquidate during 1928-1929. Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film chronicles that after the war, the Danish film industry, by then principally Nordisk Film, had greatly lost popularity through competetion with the better equipped United States and Sweden, which may have been a factor in the decision to refilm earlier successes.

During 1925, A.W. Sandberg had directed the historical drama "Mists of the Past" (Fra Piazza del Popolo) written by Sam Ask and Poul Knudsen, based on novel by Vilhelm Bergsoe, an admirable choice considering the place Denmark held inthe international film market compared to the United States and considering the historical dramas that had built the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film were quickly headed for desuetude. Thw film starred actor Olaf Fonse.

During 1924, Anders W. Sandberg had showcased both Karina Bell and Karen Sandberg Casoerson in the 1924 film "House of Shadows" (Moranen).

Danish Silent Film