Scott Lord on Silent Film Hollywood, Lost Silent Film, Swedish Silent Film, Danish Silent Film: May 2024

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Harold Lloyd in Haunted Spooks (Hal Roach, 1920)

Friday, May 17, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Knight of the Trail (Ince, 1915)

Frank Borzage stars with director William S. Hart and actress Leona Hutten, in the two reeler "Knight of Trail". Borzage shortly thereafter went on to direct silent film for The Triangle Film Corporation and although copies of the 1918 film "The Gun Woman" still exist, the remaining seven films directed by Borazge during 1918, "Innocents Pogress", "The Shoes That Danced", "Society For Sale", "An Honest Man", "Who Is To Blame", "The Ghost Flower" and "The Atom" (five reels) are presumed to be lost films, with no surviving copies existing, as are the remaining two silent films Frank Borzage directed for the Triangle Film Corporation during 1919, "Tonton the Apache" and "Prudence on Broadway" (five reels). Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Pride of Palomar (Frank Borzage, 1922)

Directed during 1922 by Frank Borzage, "The Pride of Palomar" (eight reels) features actress Marjorie Draw with Warner Oland in the supporting cast. Silent Film Silent Film Silent Film

Saturday, May 11, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Politician's Love Story (D.W. Griffith, 1909)

The Politicians Love Story is a brialliant, early example of reverse screen direction, using diagnol framing to depict perspective.

Linda Arvidson, wife of director D.W. Griffith chronicled having known Mack Sennett in her autobiography "When Movies Were Young", " 'The Curtain Pole' and 'The Politicians Love Story' started the grumbling young Mack Sennett on the road to fame and fortune. Like the grouchy poker player who kicks himself into financial recuperation,Mack Sennett grouched himself into success."
Silent Film D.W. GriffithD Biograph Film Company

Saturday, May 4, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film: Sage Brush Tom (Tom Mix, 1915)

Tom Mix was credited as having written, directed and starred onscreen in the 1915 film "Sage Brush Tom", produced by Selig Polyscope. Apearing in the one reel film were actresses Goldie Colwell and Victoria Forde. Silent Westerns

Silent Film Revision page- please disregard and navigate onward

Not only were silent films remade in Hollywood, Anna Christie, Anna Karenina and Camille all films that had originally been silent before having been remade with Greta Garbo, but the "grammar of film" or syntax of film technique, how scenes are constructed through shot structure evolved, or was perhaps developed from earlier silent film.

Vitagraph during 1919 had advertised its onscreen images as being "As brimful of Appeal, of Allurement, of Unexpectedness, of Radiance and Feminine Witchery as- Girls Themselves" as it brought actress Corinne Griffith to the screen in The Girl Problem, under the direction of Kenneth Webb.

It has been suggested that characters were to become unique to each studio, an early for. Of branding, in that way the star system having precedence to genre, which would be established gradually. At a time when the screen was readying its sales for a post-war audience, director Sidney Franklin, sometimes credited as Sidney A. Franklin, was showcasing Norma Talmadge in morality scripts, or marital melodramas, typical of the period, although during 1919 he would waver on genre formula and try for star power, directing Talmadge in the the six reel adventure "Heart of Wetona". The Norma Talmadge Film Corporation had in fact begun during 1917 with the five reel film "The Panthea" directed by Alan Dwan and featuring Eric Von Strohiem as an actor starring with Talmadge.
-------- 1919 was a year readying for a new decade with D.W. Griffith at Artcraft directing The Girl Who Stayed Home, (six reels) photographed by Bitzer and starring Robert Harron, Carol Dempster, Richard Barthelmess and Calir Seymore and it was a year with Thomas Ince heading the production of Dorothy Dalton in Extravagence. . D.W. Griffith appears to have sought the combination of moralizing and character interest again by unspooling, unraveling the 1919 drama "Scarlet Days" starring both Carol Dempster and Clarine Seymore while perhaps targeting audience reception and identification by also directing Lillian Gish in the film "True Heart Susie" (six reels) with Robert Harron and Kate Bruce. And yet Paramount was advetising Elsie Ferguson in Counterfeit and Ethel Clayton in More Deadly Than the Male.
D.W. Griffith during 1920 cast Lillian Gish in "The Greatest Question" (six reels), photographed by G.W. Bitzer, as well as "The Idol Dancer" (six reels) with Clarine Seymore and Kate Bruce and "The Love Flower" (seven reels), starring Carol Dempster. During 1921, Carol Dempster again starred under the direction of D.W. Griffith in the silent film "Dream Street".
------------- During 1921actress Alice Lake, with the film Uncharted Seas (Wesley Ruggles) knudged in between the battle for covergirl transpiring between Viola Dana and May Allison, both for Metro Pictures Corporation. Priscilla Dean stayed on the periphery of the dogfight with her film Reputation for Universal Jewel Deluxe.

Cecil B. DeMille during 1921 expanded the genre of romantic melodrama directing Conrad Nagel with Dorothy Dalton and Mildred Harris in the film "Fool's Paradise". DeMille during 1921 directed Agnes Ayers and Kathleen Williams in "Forbidden Fruit", adapted from a story written by Jeanie Macphearson, the story a remake of an earlier film, "The Golden Chance", DeMille had directed in 1915 with actress Cleo Ridgely. Motion Pocture News during 1922 wrote,"Cecil B. DeMille's name immediately conjures up a very definite and distinguished type of screen entertainment: lavish, intimate, satiric, daring, broad in scope and fine in detail, artistic in execution yet with strong box office appeal and exploitation angles...The name of DeMille soon becomes identified rather closely with society drama, but in "Forbidden Fruit" he showed that his genius was by no means confined to one strata of society."

First National in 1923 published its Great Selection First National First Season brochure of the films it had released during 1922 with a preface explaining that with the aesthetic value of its film was the box office value and it supported the practicality of the exhibitor entering into membership while the studio in fact owned the theater. in their Franchise Plan. "Every First National Picture will have a cast of famous actors. Keep your eyes open and let your patrons know they are with you. It will mean an added box-office attraction." One of the "biggest box-office certainties of the year" was Madge Bellamy in Lorna Doone. It also showcased Norma Talmadge in The Eternal Flame and Costance Talmadge in East is West, it also including Katherine MacDonald in Three Class Productions, Heroes and Husbands, The Woman Conquers and White Shoulders. Hope Hampton was featured in The Light in the Dark. First National annouced, "Louis B. Mayer out to put John Stahl productions on top." Among these were The Dangerous Age, One Clear Call, The Woman He Married and Rose o the Sea (Fred Niblo). "First National Franchise holders can look foward to a series of superb attractions from the studios of Louis B. Mayer, one of the Circuit's earliest producers. J.G. Hawks, "former editor and supervisor of production for Goldwyn" was assigned to Mayer, as was actress Anita Stewart.

----------------"The Beautiful and the Damned", adapted from the novel written by Scott Fitzgerald by screenwriter Olga Pritzlau, it having been only one of her numerous screen credits beginning from 1914. The film starred Charles Burton with actresses Marie Prevost and Louise Fazorda.

From the advertising of 1927 for the film White Gold, actress Jetta Goudal seemed a sensation. The direction of William K Howard was reviewed as "distinctive". The Film Daily wrote, "His method of creating atmosphere appropriate to the action, while not relatively new, is most effective. The monotonous creaking of a rocker, the dreary routine of the sickening desert heat, all these and more,creating detail, makes his efforts outstanding." The photoplay was scripted by Garret Fort with scenario writer Marion Orth.
Photographer Oliver Marsh during 1927 would be behind the camera lens to film Norma Talmadge in "The Dove" (nine reels), director Roland West adapting the play written by Willard Mack for the screen. That year Norma Talmadge left her autograph, and footprint, in cement in front of the pagoda of Graumann's Chinese Theater, in Los Angelas, along with those who would include her sister Constance, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and Norma Shearer.

Greta Garbo

Silent Film

Victor Sjostrom Greta Garbo

Silent Film<

Remade by Greta Garbo

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Scott Lord Silent Film:The Vicar of Wakefield (Ernest C. Warde, 1917)

The sixth silent film ersion of "The Vicar of Wakefield" (eight reeks) in about that many years was filmed by Ernest C. Warde for the Tanhouser Film Corporation. That year Warde had also filmed an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins novel "A Woman in White" starring Florence LaBadie.

THe periodical Motion Picture News when reviewing the film adaptation was laudatory of the novel by Oliver Goldsmith, claiming that it was widely read and accoladed by the authors Irving, Scott and Goethe. "So the picture 'Vicar of Wakefield' is stripped of its fine English and narrowed down to bare plot....His plot, if it may be called such, is grossly episodic and wanders," The magazine then appraised the film as a costume drama, Ernst Warde in the production of "The Vicat of Wakefield" has achieved a wonderful atmosphere, realistic to the period, the mid-eighteenth century."

Silent Film Silent Film