Scott Lord Silent Film: Tale of Two Cities (Frank Lloyd, 1917)

Already a remake of a 1911 Tale of Two Cities directed by Charles Kent, the seven reel 1917 film adaptation directed by Frank Lloyd for the Fox Film Corporation starred William Farnum in a dual role. Photoplay Magazine jubilantly claimed that the the "Won't You Hold My Hand" scene had made Florence Vidor famous as an overnight sensation. "Miss Vidor is a splendid example of the writer's theories on the chances of breaking into pictures." In the film there is a cut-in insert shot of the two joining hands.

During 1917 Frank Lloyd again directed William Farnum and Florence Vidor in the five reel lost silent film "American Methods". The following year Frank Lloyd directed William Farnum in the World War I drama "For Freedom". Made for the Fox Film Corporation the film too is a lost silent film, of which no copies exist. It is uncertain whether there exists a copy of the 1918 silent film "Riders of Of the Purple Sage", in which Frank Lloyd again directed William Farnum, although lobby cards and magazine articles can be found.

silent film

Silent Film

Scott Lord Shakespeare in Silent Film:King Lear (Ernest Warde, 1916)

Author Robert Hamilton Ball explains that due to the world being at war, there were no film adaptations of the plays of Shakespeare filmed during 1915 and that those filmed during 1916 were stricly American. This may or may not be a matter of course, but there having had been being no film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays during 1918 as well, Ball sees The Great War as having inhibited them. Actor Frederick B. Warde had previously starred in the film " "Richard III" (Keane, five reels) during 1913. Actress Lorraine Huling starred with him as Cordelia in the film "King Lear" (five reels).

Silent Film director Ernest C. Warde during 1917 directed an adaptation of Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. The Taming of the Shrew Silent Film

The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni, 1927)

Perhaps overshadowed by the double exposures of the opening shot, the film begins with a subjective point of view of a ghost, dollying in to show the apparition had been wandering the earth for two decades.

The eight reel silent film was photographed for Universal Pictures by cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton.
Paul Leni, like F.W. Murnau, Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, was among several directors from Europe who emigrated to Hollywood toward the end of the silent film era, it often being that film critics regonize European silent film as a sinking ship of which Hollywood had pulled ahead before the technologicaal innovation of sound film, a historiography that would recognize transnational cinemas.

Silent Film

silent film