INTERNATIONAL SILENT CLASSICS (A-H)
THE ANCIENT LAW (DAS ALTES GESETZ)
E.A. Dupont (Germany)
THE ANCIENT LAW is an important piece of German-Jewish cinematic history, contrasting the closed world of an Eastern European shtetl with the liberal mores of 1860s Vienna. With its authentic set design and ensemble of prominent actors - all captured magnificently by cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl - THE ANCIENT LAW is an outstanding example of the creativity of Jewish filmmakers in 1920s Germany.
Marcel L’Herbier (France)
L’ARGENT is L’Herbier’s silent-era swan song. Known for his ability to translate artistic and innovative sensibilities into commercial fare, L’Herbier designed the film to compete with the super-productions coming out of France, United States, and Germany at the time. It is thus bursting with state-of-the-art techniques, a big-name international cast, 1500 extras, and was shot by France’s highest paid cameraman at the time, Jules Krüger.
BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT & MONTE CRISTO: tHE LOST FILMS OF JOHN GILBERT
King Vidor & Emmet J. Flynn (US)
Today, more than 80% of silent cinema is considered lost forever. Some films were claimed by the flammable and unstable film stock of the day. Others were, once upon a time, thought to be worth less than the cost of keeping them. Yet, miraculously, unique copies of celebrated films previously thought lost are occasionally found and restored to...
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (PANZERKREUZER POTEMKIN) / OCTOBER (OKTJABR')
Sergej Eisenstein & Grigori Aleksandrov (USSR)
This deluxe 2-disc DVD set presents Sergej Eisenstein's immortal screen classics BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and OCTOBER in previously unreleased and painstakingly restored versions featuring the original accompanying scores by Austrian-born composer Edmund Meisel. The ROM section includes a wide range of rare documents…
2018 - BEST SINGLE RELEASE
BEHIND THE DOOR
Irvin V. Willat (US)
Legendary producer Thomas H. Ince and director Irvin V. Willat made this —“the most outspoken of all the vengeance films” according to film historian Kevin Brownlow —during the period of World War I-inspired American patriotism. Hobart Bosworth stars as Oscar Krug, a working-class American, who is persecuted for his German ancestry after war…
2009 - BEST SPECIAL FEATURES ON DVD (BONUS)
BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (BERLIN, DIE SINFONIE DER GROßSTADT) & MELODY OF THE WORLD (MELODIE DER WELT)
Walther Ruttmann (Germany)
Walther Ruttmann is a pioneer of modern multimedia art. His first short films are unique experiments with forms, colors, and rhythm, his innovative commercials connected abstract animation art with concrete messages. The symphonic documentary BERLIN, DIE SINFONIE DER GROßSTADT is one of the most famous silent classics, the travelogue MELODIE DER WELT became the first German sound feature film.
BLIND HUSBANDS (DIE RACHE DER BERGE)
Erich von Stroheim (US)
Erich von Stroheim's 1919 directorial debut BLIND HUSBANDS is considered a masterpiece of American silent cinema. Set in the alpine scenery of South Tyrol this film still fascinates audiences through its precise visual language and its moral ambiguity. This Edition Filmmuseum presents the film in its gorgeous tinted Austrian release version, DIE RACHE DER...
THE BOLSHEVIK TRILOGY - THREE FILMS BY VSEVOLOD PUDOVKIN
Vsevolod Pudovkin (USSR)
Pudovkin embarked on his narrative feature debut in 1926 with MOTHER, regarded by many as a masterpiece of the Russian silent era, and a showcase for Pudovkin’s emotive approach to editing. Pudovkin followed MOTHER’s tale of proletariat uprising with the Bolshevik-themed THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG and the Mongolia-set STORM OVER ASIA in 1927 and 1928 respectively, dazzling the world with a trio of masterful films centered around this tumultuous and revolutionary period in Russian history.
BY THE LAW (PO ZAKONU)
Lev Kulešov (USSR)
BY THE LAW (PO ZAKONU), Lev Kuleshov's legendary “constructivist western”, was one of the most popular films of its time and is now considered a masterpiece of Soviet Cinema. Adapted in 1926 from the Jack London story, “The Unexpected”, BY THE LAW tells the story of a group of prospectors in the Yukon who, after a gold strike and two murders, find...
2011 - BEST BOX SET
Various Directors (US)
Charles Chaplin came to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios late in 1913 as a little-known British vaudevillian, and after a year, had not only established his Tramp character, learned to write and direct his own films, and also achieved public recognition as a star comedian. Although Keystone did not publicize its performers by name, standees of...
CHAPLIN'S ESSANAY COMEDIES
Charles Chaplin, Gilbert M. Anderson (US)
In late 1914, Charlie Chaplin was paid the then-unprecedented salary of $1,250 per week (with a bonus of $10,000) in exchange for signing a one-year contract with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company. The resulting 14 films he created for Essanay find Chaplin further experimenting with new cinematic techniques…
CHAPLIN'S MUTUAL COMEDIES
Charles Chaplin (US)
"When Charles Chaplin signed a record-setting contract with the Mutual Film Corporation in February 1916, it was the culmination of events that changed the motion picture business. Mutual's founders redefined how films were bought, sold and distributed. Chaplin redefined screen comedy with a character that leapt into the hearts of moviegoers around the world…
CHICAGO
Frank Urson &
(uncredited) Cecil B. DeMille (US)
Sexy, jazz-loving and dressed to kill, Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver) has a doting, handsome husband in Victor Varconi not to mention a gold-digging affair on the side with Eugene Pallette, who pays and pays, eventually with his life. Put on trial for murder, Roxie secures lawyer Billy Flynn (Robert Edeson), equal part mob “mouthpiece” and publicity agent.
CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
Frank Lloyd & Josef von Sternberg [uncredited] (US)
The film begins in an American "divorce colony" in Paris after the First World War, where parents would leave their children for months at a time. Jean, Kitty, and Ted meet there as children and become fast friends. Years later, in America, when wealthy Ted (Gary Cooper) reconnects with Jean (Esther Ralston), the two fall deeply in love, vowing to fulfill a childhood promise…
THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS (DIE STADT OHNE JUDEN)
H.K. Breslauer (Austria)
Based on the controversial and best-selling novel by Hugo Bettauer, H.K. Breslauer’s 1924 film adaptation of THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS (DIE STADT OHNE JUDEN) was produced two years after the publication of the book, only a decade before events depicted in the fictional story became an all-too-horrific reality. The film was produced in the context of the mass migration of Eastern European Jews during and after the First World War, primarily to Vienna and Berlin.
2009 - BEST BOX SET
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS: A MODERN MUSKETEER
Various Directors (US)
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS: A MODERN MUSKETEER is a five-disc DVD collection that includes eleven of the delightful modern-dress comedies, westerns, satires, dream-fantasies and romances which made Douglas Fairbanks a popular hero, before he launched into the costume spectacles for which he is best remembered today.
DZIGA VERTOV: THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA AND OTHER NEWLY-RESTORED WORKS
Dziga Vertov (USSR)
"I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only the machine can see it. I am now free of human immobility. I am in perpetual motion. I approach things, I move away from them. I slip under them, into them. I move toward the muzzle of a race horse. I move quickly through crowds, I advance ahead of the soldiers in an…
Various Directors
More women worked in film during its first two decades than any time since. Unfortunately, many early women filmmakers have been largely written out of film history, their contributions undervalued. This necessary and timely collection highlights the work of 14 of early cinema's most innovative and influential women directors, rewriting and celebrating their rightful place in film history.
THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD OF CHARLEY BOWERS
Charles Bowers (France)
Beginning as an animator in 1915, Bowers soon turned to mixing live-action with puppet animation, producing a score of mini-masterpieces, often featuring himself (billed in France as Bricolo). Forgotten for decades, a few of these films were miraculously rediscovered in the late 1960s by archivist Raymond Borde of the Toulouse Cinémathèque in France.
James Kirkwood (US)
FANCHON THE CRICKET based on an “adult fairy tale” by George Sand, stars Mary Pickford as the title character, a strong-willed waif ostracized by “acceptable society” until she shows them the power of love and understanding. A natural, sensual and uninhibited Pickford breaks through today’s stereotype of her as “the girl with the curls.” It is also the only surviving film in which both Jack and Lottie Pickford appear with their sister.
FOUR FILMS WITH ASTA NIELSEN
Various Directors (Germany)
In DIE SUFFRAGETTE (THE SUFFRAGETTE), Asta Nielsen plays the Englishwoman Nelly Panburne. Through her mother, Nelly comes to know the suffragette movement and joins it. In the course of the film Nelly must undergo a crucial test in the conflict between her political convictions and her love for Lord Ascue, the bitter opponent of the…
2020 - THE PETER VON BAGH AWARD
Fridrikh Ermler (USSR)
“If influence is the criterion for determining the significance of a film director,” writes Russian film scholar Denise J. Youngblood, “then Fridrikh Ermler is perhaps the most important director in Soviet film history.” Why he does not join the ranks of Eisenstein, Kuleshov, and Vertov as one of the great masters of Soviet filmmaking is unknown. Yet his legacy as an intricate craftsman of deceptively simple stories layered with psychological depth and technical proficiency lives on in his work.
2013 - BEST SILENT COLLECTION
FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS IN PARIS (1923-1929)
Ivan Mosjoukine, Alexandre Volkoff, Marcel L’Herbier, Jacques Feyder(France)
The collection of Russian filmmakers who made up the core of what came to be known as Films Albatros arrived from Moscow after the October 1917 revolution by way of Yalta, Constantinople and Marseilles, establishing their base of operations in an old Pathé greenhouse-style studio in the Paris suburb of Montreuil. From it flowed some of the finest...
FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (VON MORGENS BIS MITTERNACHTS)
Karlheinz Martin (Germany)
Georg Kaiser describes in his Expressionist theater play, FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (VON MORGENS BIS MITTERNACHTS), the attempt of a bank cashier to escape his middle class daily life. Director Karlheinz Martin's film adaptation transfers Kaiser's play into an Expressionist work of radical stylization. The German film industry was so irritated by the resulting film, that it…
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Lewis Milestone (US)
This thoroughly entertaining romantic comedy from 1928 was an important film for both its beguiling star, Corinne Griffith, an Academy Award™ Best Actress nominee (The Divine Lady–1929), and talented director Lewis Milestone, a two-time Academy Award™ Best Director winner. The film was scripted by Hanns Kräley, a scenarist of four 1920s...
2008 - BEST BOX SET (GEORGE MÉLIÈS: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA)
GEORGE MÉLIÈS: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA & ENCORE
George Méliès (France)
Georges Méliès built the world's first movie studio in 1896 near Paris; from it cascaded fantastic magic films, dream films, historical reconstructions, imaginary journeys, melodramas, slapstick comedies—even erotic films. Examples of all are here, with many still retaining power to astonish and charm. This monumental thirteen hour collection on five DVDs…
GEORGES MÉLIÈS: A TRIP TO THE MOON & THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE
George Méliès (France)
No original hand-colored copies of Georges Méliès A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), had been known to survive until one was miraculously found in Spain in the mid-1990s, but in a fragmentary condition thought too fragile to handle for either viewing or restoration. In 2010, three experts in worldwide film restoration - Lobster Films, and two non-profit...
HITCHCOCK: BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PICTURES COLLECTION
Alfred Hitchcock (U.K.)
Before he became known as the Master of Suspense in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock had already established himself as a precociously talented filmmaker in England. HITCHCOCK: BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PICTURES COLLECTION brings together five features he directed for the production company. Four of them are visually dynamic silent films: the atmospheric boxing drama THE RING (1927), sprightly comedies THE FARMER'S WIFE and CHAMPAGNE (both from 1928), and a love triangle set on the Isle of Man, THE MANXMAN (1929). These lesser-known Hitchcock films were made by the director between the success of THE LODGER (1927), a murder mystery centering around a serial killer, and BLACKMAIL (1929), which was released in both silent and sound versions. Also included in this set is the 1931 sound feature THE SKIN GAME, a melodrama about feuding families.
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE)
Richard Oswald (Germany)
Long considered lost, DER HUND VON BASKERVILLE (1929), was the last silent Sherlock Holmes film ever made, produced when German studios were the envy of the world. Seen here in two versions, one with English titles and one entirely in German with titles based on the original German censor records, Hund lives again accompanied by a new ensemble score from the incomparable Guenter Buchwald.
2015 - BEST DVD (THE PETER VON BAGH AWARD)
THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY (LA MAISON DU MYSTÈRE)
Alexandre Volkoff (France)
Serial films, or ciné romans were well-established in France before World War I, where they are most closely identified with writer-director Louis Feuillade. These melodramas for adult audiences were unlike American serials that were targeted primarily at youngsters. At Albatros, Russian émigré producer Joseph…
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Wallace Worsley (US)
Hunchback is a huge production: the sets depicting 15th-century Paris covered nineteen acres of Universal Pictures’ back lot and included the façade of Notre Dame Cathedral. Filming took six months and the climactic sequence employed two thousand extras, but it’s Lon Chaney’s performance that makes the character unforgettable. THE HUNCHBACK OF...