Scott Lord on the Silent Film of Greta Garbo, Mauritz Stiller, Victor Sjostrom as Victor Seastrom, John Brunius, Gustaf Molander - the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film........Lost Films in Found Magazines, among them Victor Seastrom directing John Gilbert and Lon Chaney, the printed word offering clues to deteriorated celluloid, extratextual discourse illustrating how novels were adapted to the screen; the photoplay as a literature;how it was reviewed, audience reception perhaps actor to actor.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Scott Lord Silent Film: Shadows (Forman, 1922)
Robert Sherwood, editor of the volume The Best Moving Pictures of 1922-23, wrote, "In the direction of 'Shadows' by Tom Forman, and in the acting by Lon Chaney, Harrison Ford, Marguerite de La Motte, and John Sainpolis, there was a fine sincerity. They all seemed to realize they were working on a picture that was destined to be a part from the regular run of machine made products." The periodical Exhibitors Trade Review during 1922 entitled their rebiew of the film "Chaney a Master of Characterization". It read, "Most stars stand for a definite type of pwrformance, while Chaney is never the same except perhaps in the degree of sincerity and finish that he gives to the characetrizations he undertakes." To add authenticity, authority and credibitlity, Exhibitors Trade Review quoted snippets from the periodicals Motion Picture News, The Film Daily, and Motion Picture World, apparently unperturbed by the competition.
Lon Chaney
Lon Chaney Lon Chaney
Scott Lord Silent Film. The False Faces (Thomas Ince, 1919)
The Paramount Artcraft publicity releases for 1918 divided their review into three columns, one announcing a "Startling Theory Suggested", another announcing a "Brilliant Leading Lady for Henry B. Walthall" and another announcing "Exciting Incidents Pictured in Production". (The starling theory was of a German UBoat submarine base off of Martha's Vineyard and as the present author was born and raised on Cape Ann, now and long since living on the Charles River, it remains entirely a matter of imaginative speculation.)
The script to "The False Faces" was adapted from a then current serial story printed in The Saturday Evening Post. "Irvin Willat directed the picture with unusual skill." The periodical Wid's Daily during 1919 wrote, "Adaptation of popular serial...offers plot of many complications suitable to screen presentation." Its direction was "responsible for numerous thrills in registering full force of dramatic climaxes."
Lon Chaney as well as having starred in the seven reel silent film “The False Faces”, during 1919 starred under the direction of Tod Browning in the seven reel film “Wicked Darling”.
Silent Film
Lon Chaney
.Lon Chaney Lon Chaney