“What a thing is patriotism! We go for years not knowing we have it. Suddenly...it becomes life’s greatest emotion.” The words ring as true today as when they did when they were written, over 90 years ago. Assigned to a title card, the sentiment opens King Vidor’s 1925 epic silent. …
The Little Fellow treks to Alaska, freezes, starves, consumes a boiled shoe sole, falls in love, choreographs a dance of dinner rolls, strikes it rich. Chaplin's fabled humanism does not inhibit him from apportioning all the heart, the humor, and the sympathy to his own character.
Eisenstein's most frequently shown and most perfectly shaped movie, a rallying commemoration of the 1905 uprising, the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin, and the massacre on the Odessa Steps. Since the audience's sympathies are ushered immediately into place with no qualifications (the ship's doctor, squinting at an infested side of …
Keaton must take a bride forthwith to inherit a fortune, and in the tables-turned finale, a great scene, he finds himself pursued by legions of womankind and the aroused elements of nature -- an angry mob of boulders. Directed by Keaton.
Larry Semon's silent slapstick take on L. Frank Baum's venerable childhood classic. Having tried with no success to get through it on at least two occasions, one can only hope it plays better with an audience.