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Recent Posts
- The fallibility of film history: Valeria Creti unmasked as Filibus
- Il cinema ritrovato 2018 in review
- Bologna-bound: Il cinema ritrovato 2018
- Buster on the big screen: a visit to the delightful Time Cinema
- The perilous camera-eye: El sexto sentido | The Sixth Sense (ES 1929)
- Coda to Valentine’s Day: silent film postcards
- Power couples of Italian silent film
- Pride and passion: Pina Menichelli in Il padrone delle ferriere (1919)
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Tag Archives: cinema of France
Il cinema ritrovato 2018 in review
Six weeks after the fact, you say? From the Department of Better Late than Never comes my recap of Il cinema ritrovato 2018: a wonderful festival of archival film of all eras and countries. Spoiler alert: I had a blast!
A rainbow of silent film
Regular readers will have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around Silents, Please! for the last year or so. Partly, this was because I channelled a lot of energy into researching, writing and drawing my Feminist Media Histories article: a very … Continue reading
Image, light, sound – magic: Reporting back on Il Cinema Ritrovato 2016
There was a time when cinema came out from behind trees, burst forth from the sea; a time where the man with the movie camera arrived in town squares, entered cafés, and turned screens to windows into infinity. In this … Continue reading
Stacia Napierkowska on film
As dancer Marfa Koutiloff in Les Vampires (FR 1915-16), Stacia Napierkowska gave the silent cinema one of its most iconic images: a woman in a black bodystocking and great black bat wings, stretching and swirling as if to take flight. Later, she … Continue reading
Mistinguett on film: three shorts
Mistinguett must be considered one of France’s great entertainers. Born Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois in 1875, in the early twentieth century she was a huge star of the French music hall, lighting up the stage of such legendary venues as the Moulin … Continue reading
To the stars and beyond: movies dream of outer space, 1898-1910
It was the end of the nineteenth century, a tumultuous time in Western society. Amidst the ongoing innovations in manufacturing and agriculture, there were new inventions such as the telegraph, the automobile, and lightbulbs; new forms of invisible energy such … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged blogathon, cinema of 1910, cinema of England, cinema of France, cinema of Italy, cinema of New Zealand, cinema of the 1890s, cinema of the 1900s, Ferdinand Zecca, frères Lumière, Gaston Velle, George Méliès, original research, R. W. Paul, science fiction, Segundo de Chomón, space is the place, Walter R. Booth
23 Comments
Mosjoukine! … Le Brasier Ardent | The Burning Crucible (FR 1923)
Before Morrissey, before Morris Day … there was another: the original Moz. And that Moz is Ivan Mosjoukine, né Мозжухин (Mozzhukhin) … Vanya to his friends. He has been seen before on this blog, but only briefly and not in … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged Albatros, émigré cinema, cinema of 1923, cinema of France, Ivan Mosjoukine, Natalie Lissenko, Nicolas Koline
16 Comments
Suffragettes on film: Emmeline Pankhurst, Les Femmes Députées (FR 1912), The Pickpocket (US 1913)
On this day in 1893, the women of New Zealand voted in a general election for the first time. New Zealand was the first self-governing nation in the world to grant universal suffrage, following the tireless campaigning of activists such as … Continue reading
100 years ago: Figures de Cire | The Man with Wax Faces (FR 1913)
An early work by renowned director Maurice Tourneur, Figures de Cire is a horror film that presages German Expressionism in its use of light and shadow. It’s a prototypical haunted-house film: out carousing with his friends, Pierre boasts that he is totally without fear (“la peur … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged cinema of 1913, cinema of France, Grand Guignol, Henri Gouget, Maurice Tourneur, menacing shadows, nitrate damage
4 Comments
La Dame Masquée | The Masked Lady (FR 1924)
Incredible visual design is the most salient aspect of La Dame Masquée. The film was produced by the legendary Albatros studio at Montreuil, made up largely of Russian émigrés who fled their country in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution and … Continue reading
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