Greta Garbo Magazine Cover

Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Last Performance (Paul Frejos, 1929)

The stockmarket had apparently already crashed by the time "The Last Performance", starring Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin, was screened first run at the Park Theatre in Boston. Universal Weekly, primarily an advertising journal, after having remarked the film was "conspicuous for its camera effects and discriminating direction" tied in the New England premiere to its reception by excerpting three "leading newspapers", The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald and the Daily Record. The Daily Record mentioned the film as having been one of the two "first rate pictures" then on the marquee of the Park Theatre, the other also produced by Universal. It may be important to the history of film appreciation that the paper had written, "The Philbin-Veidt is part talkie. But in some cases, the less talk, the better the picture. This is one of those cases, for Veidt is a high rating character actor and needs no dialogue to score his points."
An earlier issue of Universal Weekly, while noting that Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin had previously costarred together in the film "The Man Who Laughs", showed the trick photography in the film "The Last Performance" by providing a still from the film where the magician Veidt is holding Philbin in his hand. The Universal Weekly, owned by Universal Pictures Corporation, clarified itself with its captioned subtitle, "A Magazine for Motion Picture Exhibitors" and listed its editor as Paul Gulick. Letters to the editor to be published were addressed to Carl Laemmle, President. Interestingly, Author Anthony Slide gives an account of Mary Philbin having declined interviews after retirement, "Thanks to her reclusivity, she became a minor Garbo in the eyes of fans of silent film."
Silent Film Lon Chaney Bela Lugosi

Scott Lord SIlent Film: Wax Works (Paul Leni, 1924)

Paul Leni directed the expressionistic film "Wax Works" before coming to America to direct the films "The Cat and the Canary" and "The Last Warning". Leni had worked as an art director with director Leopold Jessner on the film "Backstairs" (Hintertroppe, 1921), an "intimate drama" (Eisner) that moved "at a very slow, heavy pace" (Eisner). Silent Film

The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters; Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino Silent Film

Lost Films, Found Magazines: The Lobby Cards of Lost SIlent Films

Words and images that tell us what the film was about. Lost Films and Found Magazines

The article on Dartmouth professor Mark Williams was relevant, pertinent and succinct enought to require giving the name of the reporter, Kathy McCormack rather than just mentioning the Associated Press. Not being involved in film preservation itself but devoted to he study of the Photoplay, I have for years been gleaning through extratextural discourse, that which is not part of the codex of the film, to find what might have been contained in film that, for whatever reason, are now lost. When the article on lobby cards went to print, I had already had a blog entry with reproductions of lobby cards belonging to films mostly that were not lost, and being in public domain, were available through copies on my webpages, each copy of an existing film having an appended encouragement for the reader/viewer to become a film detective and find material concerning lost films-Lost Films, Found Magazines. In regard to the movie theater having similar exingencies as a museum, the lobby cards were displayed on easels and meant to be viewed by standing directly in front of them at a short distance, there being an audience reception to extratextural discourse, just as there is a "viewing" of paintings that has been changing during this century. A librarian paraphrsed by McCormack has posted that the purpose of the lobby cards were publicity and exploitation, the theater owner being an "exhibitor", but that, being aimed at the spectator, they disclosed the movie's plot, the technology soon improving to where the mood and atmosphere of the film could be surmised from the photographic images. The librarian quoted by McCormack claims that in additon to data regarding the film-and titles were often changed during production to differ from an earlier advertised title- lobby cards could often include a line of dialouge, if only one precious line of dialouge that would be a key to an entire lost film- lobby cards that were not "title cards" have been referred as "scene cards", Dartmouth College in fact had a collection of television commercials it had lent the Moving Image Rearch Center while McCormack was writing her article. The Moving Image Research Center houses material on Lois Weber and Alice-Guy Blanche. Mark Williams is presently part of he Media Ecology Project at Dartmouth College, which is digitalizing thousands of lobby cards to assist Film Preservation. Keep in mind that there have been a small number of rediscovered films, once presumed to be lost, one example being my writing on the John Barrymore version of Sherlock Holmes, which needed to be updated after the film had been found.

Rudolph Valentino Silent Film Lobby Cards

Mary Pickford Silent Film Lobby Cards

Douglas Fairbanks Silent Film Lobby Cards

D.W. Griffith Silent Film Lobby Cards

Lon Chaney Silent Film Lobby Cards

Benjamin Christensen and Danish Silent Film

The Photoplay: Silent Film Lobby Cards

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino Silent Film Rudolph Valentino

Scott Lord Silent Film: Le Voyage sur Jupiter (Segundo de Chomn, 1909)

Silent Film Silent Film

Swedish Silent Film Stars on the Theater Stage

Actress Harriet Bosse was married to both playwright August Strindberg and Swedish film director and actor Edvin Adolphson (Long ago, I found a copy of her correspondence to Strindberg at UniLu, Harvard University while I was talking to Bishop Stendhal about his almost having married Ingmar Bergman's sister). Harriet Bosse appeared in the film "Sons of Ingmar" directed by Victor Sjostrom. Victor Sjostrom not incidentally, had returned to the stage in 1914 and 1915 under the direction of Gustaf Collijn for August Strindberg's play "To Damascus".

Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: A Narrow Escape (Pathe, 1908)

"A Narrow Escape" is evidently the only film in which both the doubling narrative, or bifidation narrative, used in crosscutting and the last minute rescue were present before their use in the films of D.W. Griffith. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier has noted that crosscutting had been present in the film "The One Hundred to One Shot" made by Vitagraph in 1906. D. W. Griffith used crosscutting frequently to depict the last minute rescue frequently during the beginning of 1909, particulalrly in the film "The Lonely Villa". The director at Biograph had been Wallace McCutcheon (Personal,1904) and it is him to whom, rightly or not, crosscutting has been attributed (Her First Adventure,1906;The Elopement,1907); on occaision directors were beginning to hint at cutting on action by 1907 and were also beginning to link scenes together, as when the same character appears in two scenes that are adjacent.

If within a cinema of attractions narrative exposition had previously used a discontinuous style, one of filming a single action within what was then an autonomous shot, it would acquire as form a continuous style; where there were to be juxtapositions within narrative from shot to shot, there would be decisions of editing used for the advancement of plot. Technique would become the ordering of images within an arrangement of shots that would bring seperate compositions into a relation with narrative-the film technique that would be later described by Christian Metz as consisting of syntagmatic categories, technique that would avail questioning whether a segment would be autonomous, chrological, linear, narrative or descriptive, chronological, linear, narrative or descriptive, continuous or whether it would be organized, was beginning to be decided. Metz in fact had viewed the narrative function in cinema as being what had brought about its development, it being more possible that the techniques developed by Ince and Griffith. Narrative would no longer need to be only liner in regard to its structure and the syntax of the film could include transitions between scenes: technique, in part could become the attraction. In fact, Roger Manvell quotes an author who credits Griffith with developing the "cinematic or conjunctive" method of narrative, where the tempo of "continuity movement" was accelerated.

During 1908, The Pathe studio, Societe Pathe Freres, founded by Charles Pathe in 1896, performed a magic trick exactly opposite of the break from non-narrative by the cinema of attractions and the temporalities being adapted by narrative form; while George Melies continued toward his 1912 Conquest of the Pole", Pathe invented the newsreel that was to be shown with cartoons and short subjects. Newsreels went to London during 1910 under the name Pathe's Animated Gazette. The temporality created by Segundo de Chemon in the Pathe film "The House of Ghosts" would become friendly competition for the immediacy of royal coronations being filmed as they happened, a diegesis of reality. Screen time transpired just outside the theater, based on an event, if not reverting to an earlier form of attraction. Perhaps at the core of the cinema of attractions are the actuality films of American Mutoscope and Biograph, despite Edison's choosing subjects which could be filmed theatrically indoors, including his film of Annie Oakley shooting. Crosscutting and D.W. Griffith Silent Film

Swedish Silent Film Stars on the Theater Stage

Maurtiz Stiller

During 1911, Mauritz Stiller acted on stage at the Lilla Teaten.

Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Swedish Silent Film Stars

The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters

Silent Film

Edison Film Company

Edison Film Company

Villiage Blacksmith

W.S. Hart

The Covered Wagon

Madge Bellamy

Madge Bellamy Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: (Hårda viljor (Brunius, 1923)

Directed by John Brunius in 1923 with a screenplay coscripted Sam Ask, "Harda Viljor" starred actresses Lilla Bye and Linnea Hillberg. The film was photographed by Hugo Edlund. Silent Film Silent Film

Scott Lord Swedish Silent Film: Åh, i morron kväll (John Brunius, 1919)

Directed in 1919 by John W. Brunius with a screenplay cowritten by Brunius and Sam Ask "Ah, i morron kvall" featured actresses Mary Graber, Jean Grafstrom and Gucken Cederborg.
John Bruinis

Scandinavian Silent Film

Silent Film

Scott Lord Scandinavian Silent Film :Dodsspring til het fra circuskuplen...

The film "The Death Jump/Fatal Decision" was directed in 1912 by Eduard Schnedler-Sorensen and starred actress Jenny Roelsgaard. The photoplay was scripted by Alfred Kjerulf. Jenny Roelsgaard had starred in the 1910 film "The Face Thief" (Gunnar Helsengren,1910) for the Fotorama studiowith actresses Martha Helsengren and Marie Niedermann. Eduard Schnedler-Sorensen during 1912 also directed the film "Ablaze at Sea" (Et drama pa Havet) in which Valdemar Psilander starredwith Ellen Ageeholm and Otto Langoni. Sorensen also that year directed a comedy, "The Bewitched Rubber Shoes" (De Forhexede Galoscher), starring Maja Bjerre-Lind. Silent Film Silent Film Silent Circus Movie Danish Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Return of Draw Egan (William S. Hart, 1916)

In his volume The Western, From Silents to Cinerama, the author George N. Fenin highlights the theme of "the reformed outlaw" in the film "The Return of Draw Egan". The reformation is brought about not by remorse from a former lifestyle or the need for virtue, but rather from the love of a virtuous woman. "Hart had no qualms about making himself a completely ruthless, although never despicable, outlaw." The author intertwines this theme with that of "The Hero versus the Badman" in early configurations of the Western genre and the development of its protagonist. The periodical Motion Picture World, having just emerged from the theater during 1916, anticipated the writing of George N. Fenin, it having explained, "The outlaw's sense of duty is not established by the responsibilities of his new position in life, but through the sentimental side of his character. He falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor." Actresses Louise Glaum and Margery Wilson star in the five reel film. C. Gardner Sullivan had adapted his own screen story for the photoplay of the film. Photoplay Magazine provided a shortstory novelization of the film on its first run, evidently on penned by C. Garnder Sullivan, Photoplay having used its own writers to adapt other scripts written by Sullivan. Although Photoplay was one of the first film tabloids in the United States that ran reviews of currently shown movies, before the end of the first world war was still a magazine of fiction, adapting the onscreen literature of movies into magazine articles for the reader of the short story.

Silent Film Silent Film

The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters

Silent Film

Von Stroheim

The Photoplay: Silent Film Movie Posters

Silent Film

John Barrymore

John Barrymore

John Barrymore Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford as Pollyanna (Powell, 1920)

In addition to one of the most beautiful films made by Mary Pickford, “Pollyanna” (Paul Powell, six reels), during 1920 Pickford also made the film “Suds” (five reels) under the direction of Francis Dillon. The former also stars William Courtleigh, the latter William Austin

Silent Film Mary Pickford Mary Pickford