1
Louis Lumiére (1864 - 1948)
The two flowing rivers of the birth of film are considered to be Thomas Edison and Louis
and Auguste Lumiére. Edison was the Grand Showman, recording music hall turns inside
his barnlike studio with a monstrous, cumbersome camera. The Lumiéres were Grand
Documentarians, taking to the Parisian streets with their cinématographe and photographing
everyday occurences, displaying a joy in movement and commonplace realities, celebrating
the mundane as a lifeforce.
From the first, the Lumiéres were technicians. Their father, Antoine, was a well-known
portrait painter who gave up paint for financial rewards in the business of photographic
supplies. Antoine sent his sons to technical school, but because of recurring headaches, Louis
left the school early and began experimenting with his father's photographic apparatus. In the
process, he discovered a new process for the preparation of photographic plates and a factory
was built to manufacture them. By 1895, the Lumiére factory was the leading European
manufacturer of photographic products, employing over 300 workers. Like Edison, the
Lumiéres had become successful inventor-businessmen.
An invitational demonstration of the Edison Kinetoscope, a parlor peephole machine, in Paris
in 1894, sparked the Lumiéres' interest in motion pictures and the brothers set out to devise a
machine that would combine motion picture movement with front projection. In 1895, Louis
came up with such a device, and the cinématographe was patented in his name.
With the cinématographe, the emphasis of the nascent motion picture form was dramatically
changed. Edison's bulky, stationary camera forced its subjects to display themselves in front
of the camera as objects of a performance. The cinématographe, on the other hand, was not
bulky but lightweight (about five kilograms), hand-cranked and not bound to a studio. The
Lumičre camera reduced the frames-per-second (f.p.s.) speed from Edison's 48 to 16, using
less film and reducing the clatter and grinding of the Edison camera. The cinématographe was
also unique in that the same housing functioned as a camera, projector and printer.
And, perhaps most importantly of all, the Lumiére’s applied the principle of intermittent
movement to film projection, allowing smooth-running projection through the film gate—an
idea Edison had rejected as he struggled to perfect projection using continuous movement past
the film gate. The Lumiéres' technical innovations allowed the motion pictures to venture into
the world outside of a studio, permitting any object in reality to become a subject of interest
for the camera.
From their first film, WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÉRE FACTORY (1895)/LA
SORTIE DES USINES, the Lumiéres made everyday processes their subjects. In 1895, they
recorded over 20 subjects, including L'ARRIVÉE D'UN TRAIN EN GARE/ARRIVAL
OF A TRAIN, LE REPAS DE BÉBÉ/FEEDING THE BABY, L'ARROSEUR ARROSÉE/
WATERING THE GARDENER, DEMOLITION D'UN MUR/THE + FALLING WALL and
COURSE EN SACS/THE SACK RACE.
At first, the Lumiéres kept their invention a secret, only demonstrating the cinématographe at
private screenings, first at a March 22, 1895, industrial meeting in Paris and later at a June 10
meeting of photographers at Lyon. These private exhibitions were met with great enthusiasm,
and, on December 28, 1895, the Lumiéres held their first public screening at the Grand Café
on the Boulevard des Capucines. The reaction was sensational and before long there were 20
showings a day to meet the tremendous public demand. The success spurred the Lumiéres to
debut the cinématographe in England, Belgium, Holland, and Germany.
By 1897, the Lumiéres were a global success, training hundreds of operators and expanding
their film catalog to over 750 titles. But after the Paris Exposition of 1900, during which they
projected a film on a mammoth 99 x 79-foot screen, the brothers decided to curtail their film
exhibitions and devote themselves to the manufacture and sale of their inventions.
As inventors and businessmen, the Lumiéres were perhaps uneasy shooting film subjects in
an area that had begun to attract burgeoning film artists. While Edison stubbornly struggled
to hold back the clock, forming a trust to quash up-and-coming filmmakers, the Lumiéres'
withdrawal from the vanguard of filmmaking opened the door for others to advance the
aesthetic side of film.
Nevertheless, during their brief careers in production, the Lumiéres brought filmmaking
to five continents, demonstrated the beauty of movement in the mundane, and forever
enshrined "cinema" as the art form of the 20th century.
Georges Méliès (1861 - 1938)
One of the visionary pioneers of the cinema, Georges Méliès was born to a boot manufacturer
and passed through adolescence exhibiting two talents: for drawing and for making cardboard
Punch & Judy shows. During his military service he was stationed near the home of Robert
Houdin, the magician whose optical illusions had captivated Méliès as a child, and whose
theater he would eventually buy after he escaped from his family job as overseer of factory
machinery.
When the Lumiere brothers (Louis and Auguste) unveiled their Cinématographe in public on
December 28, 1895, Méliès was not only present, but clearly the most affected member of the
audience. Frustrated when the Lumieres would not sell him the machine, he sought out R.W.
Paul and his Animatographe in London. Méliès then built his own camera-projector and was
able to present his first film screening on April 4, 1896.
Méliès began by screening the films of others, mainly those made on the Edison Kinetoscope,
but within months he was showing his own works; these were apparently one-reel views,
usually consisting of one shot lasting sixty seconds. Although Méliès is often credited with
inventing the narrative film by relating stories as opposed to simply depicting landscapes or
single events, this is not strictly true; many of the Lumiere brothers' films were also much
more than simple, static views. Méliès's signal contribution to the cinema was to combine
his experience as a magician and theater owner with the new invention of motion pictures in
order to present spectacles of a kind not possible in the live theater.
Within nine months, Méliès had increased the length of the filmed entertainment (his last
film of 1896 consisted of three, three-minute reels) and was making regular use of previously
unimaginable special effects, such as making performers disappear by stopping his camera
in mid-shot. As the year ended he was also completing a glass-walled studio where he could
make films without fear of the elements.
From 1897 to 1904 Méliès made hundreds of films, the great majority now lost. The scores
of prints which survive show why his contemporaries were both initially impressed, and
ultimately bored. Méliès regarded the story in his films to be a mere "thread intended to link
the 'effects' … I was appealing to the spectator's eyes alone." Failing to develop any consistent
ideas, his entertainments consisted only of a succession of magical tableaux peopled by
Méliès (who often dressed as the conjurer or the devil) and young women recruited from the
theaters of Paris, performing against flat, painted backdrops.
Méliès's own resources and interest in these films apparently began to dwindle after 1905,
partly due to competition from other filmmakers and rising costs, partly because of the
growing industrialization of the French film industry, and partly due to his wish to continue
presenting live programs at the Théâtre Robert Houdin. By 1911 he had ceased independent
distribution; by the time France entered WWI in 1914 his career as a producer-director
had ended. His best-known surviving works are A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), THE
MELOMANIAC (1903), AN IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (1904) and THE CONQUEST OF
THE POLE, (1912, his last year of production).
Léon Gaumont (1864 - 1946)
A merchant of photographic equipment, in 1895 he established the Gaumont company and in
the following year began manufacturing motion picture apparatus. The commercial success
of his chronotographe, a camera-projector developed by Georges Demeny, encouraged him
to expand his activity into the production of films. The regular director of his films through
1907 was Alice Guy. Later directors included Louis Feuillade, Jacques Feyder, and Marcel
L'Herbier. At the same time, Gaumont began experimenting with various film devices. One
of his early inventions, in 1902, was the Chronophone, a sound system synchronizing motion
pictures with a record player. His company expanded rapidly and soon comprised studios,
labs, and a growing chain of movie theaters in Paris and other cities. After 1907 it extended
its business activities into England, Germany, Russia, and even the United States. Gaumont
continued with his technical research throughout the company's expansion.
In 1912 he introduced a program of "talking movies" into one of his Paris theaters, using an
improved version of his Chronophone. In the same year he patented a three-color additive
process, the Chronochrome, and in 1918 produced a short color film with that system. In
1928 he developed a sound system, which was used in the production of the first French
talkie, EAU DE NIL. However, the system was imperfect and was soon dropped. Gaumont's
retirement from the business in 1929 ended an era marked by the complete dominance of the
French film industry by two pioneer giants—Léon Gaumont and Charles Pathé.
Charles Pathé (1863 - 1957)
He was the son of a pork butcher and a cook and joined the labor force at age 12. After five
years of military service, he went to Argentina hoping to make a fortune but returned to
France empty-handed in 1891. He tried several occupations without success and then, in
1894, he finally hit the jackpot when he bought an Edison phonograph and began exhibiting
it at fairs all over France. Business was good and within several months he was an established
importer and merchant of phonographs. By 1896 he had extended his business interests to
include the sale of motion picture projectors and even directed a number of simple films
in imitation of Lumiére. The same year, he founded with his brothers Émile, Jacques, and
Théophile, the Pathé Fréres company.
The sale of phonographs constituted the major source of Pathé Fréres' profits until 1901.
In that year Charles left the phonograph end of the business in Émile's charge (Jacques and
Théophile had by then left the company) and began devoting his energies to film production,
with the aid of director-producer Ferdinand Zecca. In 1902, Pathé built a studio in Vincennes
and began turning out short films assembly-line style, at the rate of one or two a day. The
following year he began forming foreign branches, at first in London, then in Moscow
and New York. Before long Pathé branches were popping up in such other faraway places
as Kiev, Budapest, Calcutta, and Singapore. By 1908, the Pathé Fréres company was an
international empire, selling twice as many films in the United States as all American
companies combined. It was by far the world's largest movie producer. Expanding rapidly,
Pathé went into the manufacturing of raw film and motion picture equipment and virtually
monopolized the business by building studios, laboratories, and motion picture theaters.
The company developed a color process, Pathé-Color, and launched the world's first weekly
newsreel, "Pathé-Journal," made in France as well as in other countries, including the US.
With WWI shutting down some of his operations in France and causing chaotic conditions
in others, Pathé came to the US at the end of 1914 and centered his efforts on solidifying the
position of his American branch, the Pathé Exchange. When Pathé returned home in 1917,
he found conditions profoundly changed. Production costs had soared and the local market
was saturated with foreign films, mostly American. Foreign markets, on the other hand,
especially the American market, were turning French exports down. In desperation he ordered
his filmmakers to produce films geared specifically to the American taste, but he could not
stop the trend. In 1918 he began the long and agonizing process of divesting his empire of its
various branches and affiliates. In 1929 he sold his last interest in the business and retired to
the Riviera.
Film d'Art
French production company founded in 1908 to bring films of artistic merit to an elite,
educated audience. The company's output, beginning with THE ASSASSINATION OF THE
DUC DE GUISE (1908), featured renowned players from the Comédie Française under the
direction of leading contemporary figures such as Abel Gance. Mostly static recordings of the
established theatrical repertoire, these features did little to advance filmic art but nevertheless
earned a new prestige for the medium.
The first Film d'Art production to reach the U.S. was QUEEN ELIZABETH (1912), starring
Sarah Bernhardt. Distributed by Adolph Zukor, the film was a huge success, influencing
Zukor to form his Famous Players in Famous Plays Company (which later evolved into
Paramount) and proving that feature-length films could be commercially profitable.
Louis Feuillade (1873 - 1925)
Prolific director of over 700 films, most of them short or medium-length. Feuillade began
his career with Gaumont where, as well as directing his own features, he was appointed
artistic director in charge of production in 1907. Feuillade's work was largely comprised
of film series; his first series, begun in 1910 and numbering 15 episodes, was LE FILM
ESTHÉTIQUE, a financially unsuccessful attempt at "high-brow" cinema. More popular was
LIFE AS IT IS (1911-13), which moved from the costume pageantry of his earlier work to
a more realistic, if somewhat melodramatic, depiction of contemporary life. Feuillade also
directed scores of short films featuring the characters Bébé and Bout-de-zan.
Feuillade's most successful feature-length serials were FANTÔMAS (1913), which chronicled
the diabolical exploits of the "emperor of crime," and LES VAMPIRES (1915), which
trailed a criminal gang led by Irma Vep (Musidora) and was noted for its imaginative use of
locations and lyrical, almost surreal style.
1913
FANTÔMAS director, screenwriter
1913
JUVE CONTRE FANTÔMAS
director, screenwriter
1913
LE MORT QUI TUE director, screenwriter
1914
FANTÔMAS CONTRE FANTÔMAS
director, screenwriter
1914
LE FAUX MAGISTRAT
director, screenwriter
1915
LES VAMPIRES
director, screenwriter
1916
JUDEX
director, screenwriter
1916
L'AVENTURE DES MILLIONS
director, screenwriter
1916
NOTRE PAUVRE COEUR director, screenwriter
1916
UN MARIAGE DE RAISONdirector, screenwriter
1917
LA DESERTEUSE
director, screenwriter
1917
LA NOUVELLE MISSION DE JUDEX
director, screenwriter
1917
LE PASSE DE MONIQUE
director, screenwriter
1918
LES PETITES MARIONNETTES
director, screenwriter
1918
TIH MINH
director, screenwriter
1918
VENDEMIAIRE
director, screenwriter
1919
BARRABAS director, screenwriter
1919
L'ENGRENAGE
director, screenwriter
1919
L'HOMME SANS VISAGE director, screenwriter
1920
LES DEUX GAMINES
director, screenwriter
1921
L'ORPHELINE
director, screenwriter
1921
PARISETTE director, screenwriter
1922
LE FILS DU FILIBUSTIER director, screenwriter
1923
L'ORPHELIN DE PARIS
director, screenwriter
1923
LA GOSSELINE
director, screenwriter
1923
LE GAMIN DE PARIS
director, screenwriter
1923
VINDICTA
director, screenwriter
1924
LA FILLE BIEN GARDÉE director, screenwriter
1924
LE STIGMATE
director, screenwriter
1924
LUCETTE
director, screenwriter
1924
PIERROT, PIERRETTE
director, screenwriter
Max Linder (1883 - 1925)
At 17 he left high school to study drama and soon after began an acting career on the
Bordeaux stage. He moved to Paris in 1904 and started playing supporting parts in
melodramas. In 1905 he embarked upon a parallel career in Pathé films. For three years he
spent his days in the film studios and his evenings on the stage, using his real name in the
theater and the pseudonym Max Linder on the screen. By 1908 he had given up the stage to
concentrate on his increasingly successful screen career. By 1910 he was an internationally
popular comedian, possibly the best-known screen comic on either side of the Atlantic in the
years before WWI. Typically playing a dapper dandy of the idle class, he developed a style of
slapstick silent screen comedy that anticipated Mack Sennett and Chaplin and set the premises
of the genre for years to come. Ferdinand Zecca, Louis Gasnier, and Alberto Capelani were
among the directors of his earliest films.
By 1910, Linder was writing and supervising, and from 1911 also directing, all his own films.
His popularity was at its peak in 1914, when he was called to arms. Early in the war he was
a victim of gas poisoning and suffered a serious breakdown. The injury was to have a lasting
effect on his physical and mental well-being. He returned briefly to French films, but finding
his popularity vanishing, he accepted a bid from Essanay and left for the US late in 1916.
Continuous ill health hampered the American phase of Linder's career from the start. In mid-
1917, after only three films, he was felled by double pneumonia and spent nearly a year
recovering in a Swiss sanitarium. When he returned to the US in 1921, he formed his own
production unit, releasing through United Artists. But after making only three more American
films, including the celebrated parody (of Fairbanks's THE THREE MUSKETEERS) THE
THREE MUST-GET-THERES (1922), he returned to Europe, where he married the daughter
of a Paris restaurateur in 1923. Linder made two more film appearances, one in France, the
other in Austria, but realized his career was finished. In 1925 he entered a suicide pact with
his wife. Their bodies were discovered side by side in a Paris hotel. He remained forgotten for
years, until the 60s, when many of his old films began turning up, affording film historians an
opportunity to evaluate his career and his contributions to the evolution of screen comedy.
1905
LA PREMIČRE SORTIE D'UN COLLEGIEN
performer
1906
LE POISON
performer
1908
UNE CONQUĘETE performer
1909
LE PETIT JEUNE HOMME performer
1909
UN MARIAGE Ŕ L'AMÉRICAIN
performer
1910
MAX AERONAUTE performer
1910
MAX CHAMPION DE BOXE
performer
1910
MAX SE MARIE
performer
1911
MAX DANS SA FAMILLE director, performer
1912
LE MAL DE MER
director, performer
1912
MAX ET LES FEMMES
director, performer
1913
MAX ASTHMATIQUE
director, performer
1913
MAX VIRTUOSE
director, performer
1914
MAX DANS LES AIRES
director, performer
1915
MAX ET L'ESPION director, performer
1917
MAX COMES ACROSS
director, performer
1917
MAX IN A TAXI
director, performer
1917
MAX WANTS A DIVORCE director, performer
1919
LE PETIT CAFÉ
director, performer
1920
LE FEU SACRÉ
performer
1921
BE MY WIFE director, performer
1921
SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK
director, performer
1922
THE THREE MUST-GET-THERES director, performer
1923
AU SECOURS!
performer
1924
LE ROI DU CIRQUE/DER ZIRKUSKÖNIG/KING OF THE CIRCUS
co-
director— with E. E. Violet, performer
Cecil Hepworth (1874 - 1953)
Pioneering British filmmaker who patented several inventions and published one of the first
books on film, Animated Photography, or the ABC of the Cinematograph (1897). Hepworth
set up a studio and laboratory and made several documentaries as well as the remarkably
advanced narrative short, RESCUED BY ROVER (1905). He was a major figure in British
cinema until the end of WWI, primarily as a producer.
The postwar slump that disabled the entire British film industry forced Hepworth out of
business in the early 1920s. He later lectured on the history of cinema and made trailers and
advertising shorts.
1899
EXPRESS TRAIN IN A RAILWAY CUTTING
producer, director, photography
1900
THE ECCENTRIC DANCER
producer, director, photography
1900
THE EXPLOSION OF A MOTOR CAR
producer, director, photography
1900
HOW IT FEELS TO BE RUN OVER
producer, director, photography
1900
THE KISS
producer, director, photography
1901
CORONATION OF KING EDWARD VII producer, director, photography
1901
FUNERAL OF QUEEN VICTORIA producer, director, photography
1901
THE GLUTTON'S NIGHTMARE
producer, director, photography
1901
HOW THE BURGLAR TRICKED THE BOBBY
producer, director, photography
1902
THE CALL TO ARMS
producer, director, photography
1902
HOW TO STOP A MOTOR CAR
producer, director, photography
1903
ALICE IN WONDERLAND producer, director, photography
1903
FIREMEN TO THE RESCUE
producer, director, photography
1904
THE JONAH MAN
producer, director, photography
1905
THE ALIEN'S INVASION
producer, director, photography
1905
A DEN OF THIEVESproducer, director, photography
1905
FALSELY ACCUSED
producer, director, photography
1905
RESCUED BY ROVER
producer, director, performer
1907
A SEASIDE GIRL
producer, director, photography
1908
JOHN GILPIN'S RIDE
producer, director, photography
1909
TILLY THE TOMBOY
producer, director, photography
1911
RACHEL'S SIN
producer, director, photography
1915
THE BASILISK
producer, director
1915
THE BATTLE
producer, director
1915
THE CANKER OF JEALOUSY
producer, director
1915
IRIS
producer, director
1915
THE MAN WHO STAYED AT HOME
producer, director
1915
THE OUTRAGE
producer, director
1915
SWEET LAVENDERproducer, director
1915
TIME THE GREAT HEALER
producer, director
1916
ANNIE LAURIE
producer, director
1916
THE COBWEB
producer, director
1916
COMIN' THRO' THE RYE producer, director
1916
SOWING THE WIND
producer, director
1917
THE AMERICAN HEIRESS producer, director
1917
NEARER MY GOD TO THEE
producer, director
1918
THE BLINDNESS OF FORTUNE
producer, director
1918
BOUNDARY HOUSE
producer, director
1919
THE FOREST ON THE HILL
producer, director
1919
THE NATURE OF THE BEAST
producer, director
1919
SHEBA
producer, director
1920
ALF'S BUTTON
producer, director
1920
ANNA THE ADVENTURESS
producer, director
1920
HELEN OF FOUR GATES producer, director
1921
NARROW VALLEY producer, director
1921
TINTED VENUS
producer, director
1921
WILD HEATHER
producer, director
1922
COMIN' THRO' THE RYE producer, director
1922
MIST IN THE VALLEY
producer, director
1922
PIPES OF PAN
producer, director
1927
THE HOUSE OF MARNEY producer, director
George Albert Smith (1864 - 1959)
An established portrait photographer, he built his own movie camera in 1896 and began
making films the following year. A prodigious innovator, he rivaled France's Méliès in
devising special effects for his trick films. As early as 1897 he patented double exposure as a
filmic device and in 1900 pioneered in the use of the close-up as an intercut. In 1900, forming
a partnership with Charles Urban, he built one of the world's first motion picture studios, in
Brighton. Almost from the beginning of his involvement with film, he sought to develop a
satisfactory color technique. In 1906 he patented Kinemacolor and in 1908 he formed with
Urban the Natural Color Kinematograph Company for the commercial exploitation of the
two-color process.
1897
THE CORSICAN BROTHERS
director
1897
THE HAUNTED CASTLE
director
1898
CINDERELLA
director
1898
FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES director
1898
THE MILLER AND THE SWEEP
director
1898
WAVES AND SPRAY
director
1899
ALADDIN AND THE WONDERFUL LAMP
director
1899
THE LEGACY
director
1900
GRANDMA'S READING GLASS
director
1900
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT director
1902
MOTHER GOOSE NURSERY RHYMES director
1903
DOROTHY'S DREAM
director
1909
KINEMACOLOR PUZZLE director
Giovanni Pastrone (1883 - 1959)
A leading figure in the formative years of Italian cinema, he began in 1905 as an administrator
and technical pioneer, then (1908) began producing and directing. His monumental CABIRIA
(1914) is a landmark in the history of films. He often used the pseudonym Piero Fosco.
1908
GIORDANO BRUNO
director
1909
LA MASCHERA DI FERROdirector
1910
AGNESE VISCONTI director
1910
THE FALL OF TROY/LA CADUTA DI TROIA
director
1910
LUCIA DE LAMMERMOOR
director
1910
MANON LESCAUT director
1912
PADRE
director
1914
CABIRIA
director
1915
IL FUOCO
director
1915
MASCISTE
director
1916
TIGRE REALE
director
1919
HEDDA GABLER
director
1923
POVERE BIMBE
director
Mauritz Stiller (1883 - 1928)
One of the two dominant figures of theGolden Age of Swedish silent cinema (the other being
Victor Sjöström), whose reputation as a director has been somewhat overshadowed by his
fame as mentor and "discoverer" of Greta Garbo.
Of Russian-Jewish parentage, Stiller moved from Finland to Sweden at the age of 20 (fleeing
service in the Russian Army) and with little acting talent and good looks became a leading
stage actor and later director. Charles Magnusson hired both Stiller and Sjöström in 1912 to
work at Svensk Biograf (later Svensk Filmindustri) and together they produced some of the
most exquisite and sophisticated works of the silent era, propelling the Swedish cinema into
the European vanguard.
Stiller possessed an exquisite visual sensibility, combining naturalism and lyricism to great
effect. Though a versatile talent, he is best known for his astute social comedies, from LOVE
AND JOURNALISM (1916) to the internationally successful EROTIKON (1920), both
starring Karin Molander. Stiller also made a number of fine literary adaptations, including
three from the novels of Selma Lagerlöf: SIR ARNE'S TREASURE (1919), GUNNAR
HEDE'S SAGA (1922) and THE ATONEMENT OF GOSTA BERLING (1924). The latter
film introduced the world to Garbo and earned Stiller an invitation to Hollywood from Louis
B. Mayer—which the director accepted on the condition that his protégée accompany him.
Garbo was immediately groomed for stardom while Stiller experienced constant conflicts
with the constraints of the American studio system. The first Garbo vehicle he directed,
THE TEMPTRESS (1926), was taken out of his hands, and despite the relative success of
HOTEL IMPERIAL (1927) and THE WOMAN ON TRIAL (1927), two films starring Pola
Negri, his Hollywood sojourn was an overall disappointment. He was credited as director for
THE STREET OF SIN (1928), but the film was actually completed by scenarist Josef von
Sternberg. Suffering from acute rheumatism, Stiller returned to Sweden, where he died at age
45.
1912
THE BLACK MASKS/DE SVARTA MASKERNA
director, screenwriter
1912
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
director, screenwriter, performer
1912
THE TYRANNICAL FIANCÉE
director, screenwriter, performer
1913
THE CHILD/BARNET
director
1913
THE MODERN SUFFRAGETTE
director, screenwriter
1913
ON THE FATEFUL ROADS OF LIFE
director, screenwriter
1913
THE UNKNOWN WOMAN director, screenwriter
1913
THE VAMPIRE/VAMPYREN
director, screenwriter
1913
WHEN LOVE KILLS/NAR KARLEKEN DODAR director, screenwriter— from
story
1913
WHEN THE ALARM BELL RINGS
director
1914
BECAUSE OF HER LOVE director, screenwriter
1914
BROTHERS director— from story, screenwriter
1914
THE CHAMBERLAIN
director, screenwriter
1914
PEOPLE OF THE BORDER director
1914
THE RED TOWER
director, screenwriter
1914
THE SHOT
director
1914
STORMY PETREL
director
1914
WHEN THE MOTHER-IN-LAW REIGNS director, screenwriter, performer
1915
ACE OF THIEVES
director
1915
THE DAGGER
director
1915
HIS WIFE'S PAST
director
1915
MADAME DE THEBES
director
1915
PLAYMATES
director, screenwriter
1915
WHEN ARTISTS LOVE
director
1916
THE AVENGER
director
1916
THE BALLET PRIMADONNA
director
1916
THE FIGHT FOR HIS HEART
director, screenwriter
1916
LOVE AND JOURNALISM director
1916
THE LUCKY BROOCH
director
1916
THE MINE PILOT
director
1916
THE WINGS director, screenwriter
1917
ALEXANDER THE GREAT director, screenwriter
1917
HIS WEDDING NIGHT
director
1917
THOMAS GRAAL'S BEST FILM/THOMAS GRAALS BASTA FILM
director
1918
THOMAS GRAAL'S FIRST CHILD/THOMAS GRAALS BASTA BARN
director, screenwriter
1919
SIR ARNE'S TREASURE/HERR ARNES PENGAR/THE THREE WHO WERE
DOOMED
director, screenwriter
1919
SONG OF THE SCARLET FLOWER
director
1920
EROTIKON director, screenwriter
1920
THE FISHING VILLAGE
director
1921
THE EXILES director, screenwriter
1921
JOHAN
director, screenwriter
1922
GUNNAR HEDE'S SAGA
director, screenwriter
1924
THE ATONEMENT OF GOSTA BERLING/GÖSTA BERLINGS SAGA/THE
LEGEND OF GOSTA BERLING
director
1926
THE TEMPTRESS
director
1927
HOTEL IMPERIAL director
1927
THE WOMAN ON TRIAL
director
1928
THE STREET OF SIN
director
Victor Sjöström (1879 - 1960)
One of the most influential forces in the development of the Swedish cinema, Sjöström began
his career as a professional actor in 1896, as a member of Ernst Ahlbom's traveling theater
company. He worked as both an actor and director for a number of Swedish companies during
the next 16 years. In 1911 he formed his own company along with Einar Froberg, and, in
1913, was offered a film contract by Svenksa Bio.
Throughout his career, reviewers of Sjöström's performances seldom failed to mention
his "distinctive, monumental face, as rich and alive as any landscape." Likewise, Sjöström's
films as a director, which he often wrote and starred in, gained their greatest acclaim for
his expressive use of landscape and "natural scenery." Sjöström's first great success came
during the years 1917-1921, which saw his four film adaptations of novels by Swedish Nobel
laureate Selma Lagerlof (three of which he also starred in), and the film that many consider
his directorial masterpiece, THY SOUL SHALL BEAR WITNESS (1920).
Although Sjöström's Swedish films were generally considered too downbeat for American
audiences (a trade magazine warned theater owners that they would have a better time
attending their own funerals than a screening of THY SOUL SHALL BEAR WITNESS),
the enthusiastic reviews they received for "artistic excellence" and "sheer pictorial power"
made Sjöström, along with the likes of Ernst Lubitsch, Erich von Stroheim, and Sjöström's
colleague Mauritz Stiller, a prime candidate for American import.
In 1923, Svensk Filmindustri sent Sjöström on a "study trip to America," retaining the
Scandinavian distribution rights to the films he would direct for Samuel Goldwyn. During
his seven-year residence in Hollywood (1923-1930), "Seastrom," as he was billed in the US,
directed top stars of the day such as Lillian Gish (THE SCARLET LETTER, 1926, THE
WIND, 1928), Greta Garbo (THE DIVINE WOMAN, 1927), Lon Chaney and Edward G.
Robinson. In a 1924 interview, Charlie Chaplin called him "the greatest director in the world."
Sjöström made his reputation as a master of silent films by virtue of his expressive imagery
and minimal use of titles. With the advent of talkies, however, his style of filmmaking
was quickly outdated. He returned to Sweden in 1930 and resumed his career on the stage,
although he continued to appear frequently in the films of other directors, concluding with his
most memorable role, at the age of 78, as Professor Isak Berg in Ingmar Bergman's WILD
STRAWBERRIES (1957)
1912
THE BLACK MASKS/DE SVARTA MASKERNA
performer
1912
THE GARDENER/TRADGARDSMASTAREN
performer
1912
I LIVETS VAR
performer
1912
LADY MARION'S SUMMER FLIRTATION/LADY MARIONS SOMMARFLIRT
director
1912
LAUGHTER AND TEARS/LOJEN OCH TARAR director
1912
MARRAIGE BUREAU/AKTENSKAPSBYRAN
director, screenwriter
1912
A SECRET MARRIAGE/ETT HEMLIGT GIFTERMAL
director
1913
THE CHILD/BARNET
performer
1913
THE CONFLICTS OF LIFE/LIVETS KONFLIKTER
director, performer
1913
FOR SIN KARLEKS SKULL
performer
1913
HALF BREED/HALVBLOD director
1913
MARGARET DAY/INGEBORG HOLM
director, screenwriter
1913
THE MIRACLE/MIRAKLET
director
1913
THE PARSON/PRASTEN
director
1913
THE POACHER/KARLEK STARKARE AN HAT director
1913
THE STRIKE/STREJKEN
director, screenwriter, performer
1913
THE VAMPIRE/VAMPYREN
performer
1913
THE VOICE OF PASSION/BLODETS ROST
director, performer
1913
WHEN LOVE KILLS/NAR KARLEKEN DODAR performer
1914
CHILDREN OF THE STREETS/GATANS BARN director
1914
DAUGHTER OF THE PEAKS/HOGFJALLETS DOTTERdirector, screenwriter,
performer
1914
DET VAR I MAJ
director, screenwriter
1914
A GOOD GIRL KEEPS HERSELF IN ORDER/BRA FLICKA REDER SIG SJALV
director, screenwriter
1914
GUILT REDEEMED/SONAD SKULD
director, screenwriter
1914
HEARTS THAT MEET/HJARTAN SOM MOTAS director
1914
JUDGE NOT/DOMEN ICKEdirector
1914
ONE OF THE MANY/EN AV DE MANGAdirector, screenwriter
1915
IN THE HOUR OF TRIAL/I PROVNINGENS STUND
director, performer
1915
LANDSHOVDINGENS DOTTRAR director, screenwriter
1915
PREDATORS OF THE SEA/HAVSGAMAR
director
1915
THE PRICE OF BETRAYAL/JUDASPENGAR
director
1915
SHE TRIUMPHS/HON SEGRADE director, screenwriter, performer
1915
THE SHIPS THAT MEET/SKEPP SOM MOTAS director
1915
STICK TO YOUR LAST, SHOEMAKER/SKOMAKARE BLIV VID DIN LAST
director, screenwriter
1916
KISS OF DEATH/DODSKYSSEN director, screenwriter, performer
1916
A MAN THERE WAS/TERJE VIGEN
director, performer
1916
THERESE
director, screenwriter
1917
THE GIRL FROM THE MARSH CROFT/TOSEN FRAN STORMYRTORPET
director, screenwriter
1917
THE OUTLAW AND HIS WIFE/BERG-EJVIND OCH HANS HUSTRU director,
screenwriter, performer
1917
THOMAS GRAAL'S BEST FILM/THOMAS GRAALS BASTA FILM
performer
1918
SONS OF INGMAR/INGMARSSONERNA I & II director, screenwriter, performer
1918
THOMAS GRAAL'S FIRST CHILD/THOMAS GRAALS BASTA BARN
performer
1919
HIS GRACE'S WILL/HANS NADS TESTAMENTE
director, screenwriter
1919
KARIN DAUGHTER OF INGMAR/KARIN INGMARSDOTTER
director,
screenwriter, performer
1919
THE MONASTERY OF SENDOMIR/KLOSTRET I SENDOMIR director,
screenwriter
1920
MASTERMAN
director, performer
1920
THY SOUL SHALL BEAR WITNESS/KORKARLEN
director, screenwriter,
performer
1921
MORTAL CLAY/VEM DOMER
director
1922
FIRE ON BOARD/ELD OMBORD director, screenwriter, performer
1922
THE SURROUNDED HOUSE/DET OMRINGADE HUSET
director,
screenwriter— with Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius, performer
1923
NAME THE MAN
director
1924
HE WHO GETS SLAPPED director, screenwriter
1925
CONFESSIONS OF A QUEEN
director
1925
THE TOWER OF LIES
director
1926
THE SCARLET LETTER
director
1928
THE DIVINE WOMAN
director
1928
THE MASKS OF THE DEVIL
director
1928
THE WIND
director
1930
A LADY TO LOVE director
1930
THE MARKURELLS OF WADKOPING/MARKURELLS I WADKOPING
director, performer
1934
SYNNOVE SOLBAKKEN
performer
1935
WALPURGIS NIGHT/VALBORGSMASSOAFTON
performer
1937
JOHN ERICSON—THE VICTOR OF HAMPTON ROADS/JOHN ERICSSON—
SEGRAREN VID HAMPTON ROADS
performer
1937
UNDER THE RED ROBE
director
1939
THE OLD MAN'S COMING/GUBBEN KOMMER
performer
1939
TOWARDS NEW TIMES/MOT NYA TIDER
performer
1941
STRIDEN GAR VIDARE
performer
1943
DET BRINNER EN ELD
performer
1943
THE WORD/ORDET performer
1944
KEJSAREN AV PORTUGALLIEN performer
1947
RALLARE
performer
1948
JAG AR MED EDER…
performer
1949
FARLIG VARperformer
1949
TO JOY/TILL GLÄDJE
performer
1950
KVARTETTEN SOM SPRANGDES
performer
1952
HARD KLANG
performer
1952
KARLEK
performer
1955
MANNEN I MORKER
performer
1956
FLYKTINGARNA/LES EVADES
performer
1957
WILD STRAWBERRIES/SMULTRONSTALLET performer
Nordisk
A Danish production company established in 1906 which, prior to WWI, dominated the world
market with its immense output of unpretentious, often sensational, entertainment films.
Known in America as the Great Northern film Company, Nordisk boasted such internationally
popular stars as Asta Nielsen, Valdemar Psilander, and Olaf Fonss. Among its world-famous
directors were Viggo Larsen, August Blom, Urban Gad, Holger Madsen, Robert Dinesen,
and Benjamin Christensen. The company's Copenhagen studio was among the best-equipped
in the world during the early days of cinema. Nordisk is still in business, the oldest film
production company in the world in continuous existence. See also Denmark.
2
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931)
Dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park" during his own lifetime, and considered by some
the "ancestral deity" of General Electric, Edison was a major contributor to the age of
electronics. Renowned for his work on the incandescent light bulb and phonograph, his
ingenuity also touched devices such as the stock ticker, mimeograph machine and telephone
transmitter. Edison's New Jersey labs in Newark, Menlo Park and West Orange were think
tanks extraordinaire, where creative minds worked together on key developments in early
motion picture technology.
Edison had already made a number of significant inventions, primarily in the field of
telegraphic systems, and established himself in West Orange, the third and largest of his
New Jersey laboratories, when he wrote on October 8, 1888, "I am experimenting upon an
instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear." This instrument
was developed by Edison's assistant, amateur photographer W.K.L. Dickson. Dickson
followed the experiments of European photographers Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard
Muybridge, who had been working with the notion of "persistence of vision"—whereby
a quickly moving series of pictures gives the illusion of movement. Dickson improved
on the European "zoetrope" or "magic lantern," which was constructed of separate glass
plates mounted on a turning cylinder, by using strips of John Carbutt's (and later George
Eastman's) newly invented flexible celluloid film. Rather than Marey's "photographic rifle,"
or Muybridge's closely spaced cameras going off in rapid succession, Dickson devised an
electrically controlled camera called the "Kinetograph." November 1890 saw the production
of Dickson's debut film, MONKEYSHINES, featuring the antics of Fred Ott, another Edison
assistant.
At first, Edison rejected the notion of projected film. Instead, he had Dickson perfect
the "Kinetoscope," a small cabinet with a peephole, suitable for solitary viewing. The first
nickelodeon "parlor," a storefront of ten Kinetoscopes with each viewing costing a nickel,
opened April 14, 1894, at 1155 Broadway, in New York. It was soon followed by others in
major cities in the US and Europe.
Early movies were 60 to 90 second action shorts with titles such as BARBER SHOP,
BARROOM, WRESTLING, HIGHLAND DANCE, TRAPEZE and so on. These were
produced in the West Orange "Black Maria" studio, a black tar-papered building on a pivot
so that it could be turned to follow the path of the sun through its one skylight giving natural
light. "Documentaries" of activities on Valley Road outside the lab were also filmed. Because
he had failed to patent the Kinetoscope properly, however, Edison's developments were much
copied. Although the 1894 prize fight between Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing, fought in
the "Black Maria," proved a financial coup, he did not in general make much profit from his
motion picture devices.
This situation changed in 1895, when Edison joined forces with Thomas Armat, who
was working on a "Vitascope" projector. Projected films, with the potential to reach large
audiences, premiered on April 23, 1896, at Koster and Bial's Music Hall, at 34th and
Broadway, in New York, sharing the bill with vaudeville acts.
Classics such as Edwin S. Porter's THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN (1903)
and THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903) were filmed at the "Black Maria" before the
construction, in 1905, of a large glass studio in the Bronx, New York. In 1909 Edison, along
with several other fledgling movie producers, formed the Motion Picture Patents Company to
try to impede independent film production. In 1917, however, this monopoly was broken and
Edison retired from the film business.
MGM immortalized "the Wizard" in two 1940 movies, YOUNG TOM EDISON and
EDISON, THE MAN.
Edwin S. Porter (1869 - 1941)
Preeminent figure among early American filmmakers and one of the first to use techniques
such as closeups and intercutting for narrative purposes. Porter was a projectionist, inventor
and entrepreneur before starting work in 1900 for the Edison company, where he was soon
promoted to head of film production. By 1901 he was making multi-shot films such as
THE EXECUTION OF CZOLGOSZ, a drama about the execution of President McKinley's
assassin which juxtaposed documentary footage of the prison with a staged dramatization of
the execution itself.
Porter's first major achievement was THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN (1902),
usually considered a landmark work thanks to its sophisticated editing techniques. The
film cuts back and forth between the interior and exterior of a burning building in order to
heighten dramatic effect, and is thus frequently cited as the first American use of editing
in order to "drive" a narrative. (An alternative print of the film was recently discovered in
which the exterior and interior scenes are juxtaposed as two continuous sequences, leading to
speculation that the intercut version may have been a later development.)
Porter is probably best known for THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), a sophisticated,
12-minute narrative broken up into separate scenes and using camera movement and
continuity editing to advance the story. His last important contribution to film was to give
an unknown actor and playwright named David Wark Griffith his debut role in the 1907
production, RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST. Porter formed his own company, Rex
Films, in 1911, but soon afterward went to work for Famous Players. There he directed
several competent but unexceptional features as well as experimenting with various aspects of
the filmic process.
1901
SMASHING A JERSEY MOSQUITO
producer, photography
1901
TRAPEZE DISROBING ACT
producer, photography
1901
WHAT HAPPENED ON 23RD STREET, NYC
photography
1902
THE BURNING OF DURLAND'S RIDING ACADEMY photography
1902
THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN director
1902
THE MESSENGER BOY'S MISTAKE
director
1903
ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT
photography
1903
THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
director
1903
RUBE AND MANDY AT CONEY ISLAND
photography
1903
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TUNNEL
photography
1904
THE EUROPEAN REST-CURE
producer, photography
1904
STRENUOUS LIFE producer, photography
1905
CONEY ISLAND AT NIGHT
photography
1905
THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER
director, photography
1906
GETTING EVIDENCE
producer, photography
1906
THREE AMERICAN BEAUTIES
producer, photography
1907
RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST
director
1913
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO director, screenwriter
1914
A GOOD LITTLE DEVIL
director, photography
1914
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY director, photography
1915
BELLA DONNA
director
1915
THE ETERNAL CITY
director
1915
SOLD director
1915
ZAZA director
1916
LYDIA GILMORE
director
Motion Picture Patents Company
A powerful trust founded in 1908 by a group of pioneer film producers and distributors
representing the companies Edison, Vitagraph, Biograph, Kalem, Lubin, Selig, Essanay,
Pathé Exchange, Méliès, and Gaumont. These companies pooled all their patents claims and
formally assigned them to Edison. They then proclaimed that no one was entitled to produce,
distribute, or exhibit films in the United States unless so licensed by their corporation. They
also set a system of fees and royalties to be paid for the use of cameras, projectors, or any
other motion picture equipment covered by their patents. The Patents Company, soon to
become known as the "Edison Trust," established the General Film Company in 1910 to
distribute the films of its member companies only to licensed theaters. Through this concern
the Patents Company launched a campaign of pressure and intimidation, at the end of which
they bought out or drove out of business all but one of the large exchanges in the country. The
sole survivor was headstrong William Fox, who filed a suit against General in the Federal
courts which eventually led to the dissolution of the Patents Company as a trust operating
in restraint of trade. In another acquisition spree the Patents Company had also taken over
control of most of the large motion picture theaters in the country. Its biggest headache was
the enforcement of its regulations on a growing number of independent producers. Mavericks
like Carl Laemmle engaged in clandestine production, seeking refuge from the long reach
of the New York-based Patents Company in California and Europe. Jeremiah J. Kennedy of
Biograph, the Patent Company's staunchest executive, organized a vast espionage network to
track down rebel producers and conducted frequent raids on their businesses. But there was
too much money to be made in the film business for his disciplinary schemes to succeed.
As a result of Fox's court suits, the government started dissolution hearings against the
Patents Company in 1913. The case dragged on until 1917, when the company was ordered
to "discontinue unlawful acts." By that time both the Patents Company and its subsidiary
General Film Company were no longer much of a factor in the film business. Of all the
production companies that comprised the Patents group, only Vitagraph survived past WWI.
Hollywood
A section of Los Angeles, California, and for many years the center of the American motion
picture and television industries. It was named by a Mrs. Deida Wilcox, the wife of a Kansas
City real estate man, who in 1886 retired with her husband to a huge ranch that stood on
the site. In 1891 they began dividing their land and in 1903 the growing community was
incorporated as a village, retaining the original name of the ranch, Hollywood. In 1910,
Hollywood was annexed to Los Angeles so that it could avail itself of the city's water supply
and sewage system.
In the early days of American cinema, the center of film production was New York City
(Westerns were shot in the wilderness of New Jersey), with some activity taking place in
Chicago and other American cities. Southern California, with its eternal sunshine and variety
of terrain, attracted occasional film production. In 1907, Col. William N. Selig, Edison's chief
rival, moved part of his company from Chicago to Los Angeles, soon to become the first
producer to make films regularly on the West Coast. In 1909 he opened California's first large
motion picture studio, on Los Angeles' Mission Road. But the greatest impetus to the growth
of Hollywood was provided in 1913 by a man named Cecil B. De Mille. Earlier that year he
had entered a partnership with Jesse L. Lasky and glove salesman Samuel Goldfish (later Sam
Goldwyn), forming the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They purchased the rights to
a Western novel, THE SQUAW MAN, and De Mille and (co-director) Oscar C. Apfel were
dispatched to Flagstaff, Ariz., to do the shooting on location.
Finding the snow-capped Arizona mountains unsuitable for their story, De Mille and Apfel
got back on the train and continued to the end of the line. And that's how they stumbled
upon Hollywood. They found the small town to be peaceful and pastoral, surrounded by
acres of citrus and avocado groves. They converted a large stable into a studio and began
their production, shooting the exteriors in the nearby countryside. Within months, other
producers followed, partly because of the inviting climate but largely to escape the long reach
of the Motion Picture Patents Company, the huge eastern trust that tried to force all small,
independent producers out of the film business. In 1917 the Patents Company was disbanded
by government antitrust action, and Hollywood was well on its way to becoming the movie
capital of America and a cosmopolitan Mecca of a rapidly growing show business industry.
By 1920, thanks to the phenomenal growth of several major studios and the emergence of the
star system, Hollywood was turning out nearly 800 films annually, and its name became a
synonym for luxury, glamour, and illusory magic.
Hollywood remained the world's greatest dream factory through the late '40s, when its
supremacy began to be threatened by a growing tendency of producers and stars to seek tax
shelters by filming abroad. At the same time, the emergence of television as a competitor
drastically cut into cinema audiences. This and government antitrust action that forced major
studios to divest themselves of their chains of motion picture theaters combined to undermine
the financial basis of many large companies. By the early '60s, the era of independent
production, based on individual packaging, was firmly established. More often than not,
films were being shot away from Hollywood and an increasing number of resident actors and
technicians found themselves out of work.
If it hadn't been for the regular production of TV films, the impact would have been even
greater and perhaps would have knocked Hollywood off the motion picture production map.
Hollywood has no set physical boundaries. Many of the studios are located in other
communities, some many miles away. It has always been and will continue to be a state of
mind, a dream shared by millions, rather than a mere place where movies are made. And that's
probably why it will never die.
3
D.W. Griffith (1875 - 1948)
David Wark Griffith's achievement is two-fold: he developed for Americans a syntax
for expression in the movies, and he showed how the feature film could be a significant
commercial and cultural element of American culture. The first achievement is less
understood but more important than the second.
Griffith did not enter film with a record as a successful artist. He was a failure as a
playwright, with but one of his plays actually produced. But because he approached film with
the attitude that it was a temporary job, he saw it as an opportunity to experiment, to break the
conventions of his era, to develop new means of relating narratives for the screen.
In 1907, when Griffith tried to sell a story to movie producer Edwin S. Porter who signed
him on as an actor instead, American movies all too often consisted of series of scenes
(originally called views) of events usually taken from the popular press or the stage. Static
cameras recorded scenes connected by titles and little else. Four years earlier in THE GREAT
TRAIN ROBBERY, Porter had stumbled onto more eloquent means of expression—shorter
scenes, multiple locations, use of natural landscapes with actors moving through them, even
the close-up—but he declined to develop these techniques. In fact when Griffith played the
lead in Porter's RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST (1907), the young actor was so
carelessly filmed that he was obscured by the edge of the frame. Later that year, Griffith got
his chance to direct and he showed an immediate talent for creative use of the frame, as well
as developing rhythmic editing to build dramatic tension. Griffith also sought out younger
performers who were less bound to the broad style of stage acting and more open to the
nuances required for acting for a camera.
From 1907 to 1913, Griffith averaged 21 films a week, most of them for Biograph, using
overlapping schedules and a stock company of actors who rapidly moved from one film to the
next, sometimes in the same day. Griffith paid special attention to his actresses, developing a
number of important women performers, including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mary Pickford,
Blanche Sweet and Mae Marsh.
In the midst of this whirlwind of production Griffith was developing new ways of telling
stories that were uniquely suited to film. Editing became as important an element as
cinematography, most notably in his use of cross cutting between parallel story lines. This
offered opportunities to contrast behavior or social circumstance, as in A CORNER IN
WHEAT (1909), or to develop suspense with a rising tempo of action, as in THE LONELY
VILLA (1909). Griffith's collaborators in this adventure of inventing film language included
not only his cameraman, Billy Bitzer, but also the actors themselves, who were encouraged to
suggest mannerisms to enrich their performances.
At this time, filmmakers in other countries, especially France and Denmark, were making
comparable discoveries about the importance of editing; often their films were shown in the
United States, just as Griffith's Biograph productions were exported to Europe. This ongoing
dialogue has made it nearly impossible to clearly define sources of innovation and influences
which many historians have consigned solely to Griffith.
In 1913 Griffith broke with the Biograph Company when it declined to let him make
feature-length films and the following year he began production on his first feature, THE
BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). Its release brought Griffith enormous acclaim and infamy.
Audiences were dazzled by the film's sweep and epic power, as well as its intimate moments
of pain and joy, but Griffith's embrace of the Ku Klux Klan and his insensitive depiction of
black characters stirred up a storm of controversy. Previously relegated to the status of an
amusement on the fringes of culture, movies were catapulted by Griffith and his film into
social and financial prominence.
Griffith won financial independence with THE BIRTH OF A NATION and almost
immediately moved on to another epic, an elaboration on the notion of parallel historical
developments, which he would present through cross-cutting across time rather than
geography. INTOLERANCE (1916) was a quartet of stories of man's inhumanity to man
which some historians charge was Griffith's compensation for the accusations of racism made
against him after THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Enormously expensive to produce, the film
was nearly as big a box-office flop as BIRTH had been a hit. Its reputation over the years has
in some ways surpassed its predecessor, and its influence is apparent in the works of Carl
Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang and many other directors.
As great an artistic achievement as INTOLERANCE was, it also left Griffith on a permanent
financial treadmill, as he sought to pay off his debts with proceeds from future productions.
From 1916 to 1931, he made over two dozen more features. At least five of these—BROKEN
BLOSSOMS (1919), WAY DOWN EAST (1920), ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1922),
THE WHITE ROSE (1923) and ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL (1924)—were either commercial
or critical successes, but the financial dividends went to Griffith's creditors or producers. On
one film, THE SORROWS OF SATAN (1926), Griffith's producers inflated the cost of the
production by pressuring Griffith to film material he did not need and then recut the film after
he had completed it. By the end of the silent era, Griffith was saddled with a reputation for
extravagance, which was undeserved, and sentimentality, which was an integral part of his
personality, although a steadily less compelling component of his films.
Griffith made two sound films, the starched and safe ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1930) and
THE STRUGGLE (1931). THE STRUGGLE is a haunting final work, full of melancholy and
dread of alcoholism, but also distinguished by superb sequences photographed on New York
City streets and an inventive use of sound in factory sequences which revealed Griffith still
seeking new ways to narrate stories on film.
Ignored by the industry he played such an important role in creating, Griffith retreated to over
a decade of isolation at Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel, where he died in 1948. For years,
the scurrilous content of THE BIRTH OF A NATION and the unabashed sentiment of many
of the other features consigned Griffith to the status of irrelevancy, but in the mid-1960s,
a Griffith revival began, with re-appraisal of his early works and acknowlegements of his
immense contributions.
1907
RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST
performer
1908
THE ADVENTURES OF DOLLIE director
1908
AFTER MANY YEARS
director
1908
THE AWFUL MOMENT
director, screenwriter
1908
BALKED AT THE ALTAR director, screenwriter, performer
1908
THE BANDIT'S WATERLOO
director, screenwriter
1908
THE BARBARIAN INGOMAR
director, screenwriter
1908
BEHIND THE SCENES: WHERE ALL IS NOT GOLD THAT GLITTERS
director, screenwriter
1908
BETRAYED BY A HAND PRINT director, screenwriter
1908
THE BLACK VIPER director, performer
1908
A CALAMITOUS ELOPEMENT
director, screenwriter, performer
1908
THE CALL OF THE WILD director
1908
THE CHRISTMAS BURGLARS
director, screenwriter
1908
THE CLUBMAN AND THE TRAMP
director, screenwriter
1908
CONCEALING A BURGLAR
director, screenwriter
1908
THE DEVIL director, screenwriter, performer
1908
THE FATAL HOUR director, screenwriter
1908
FATHER GETS IN THE GAME
director, screenwriter
1908
THE FEUD AND THE TURKEY
director, screenwriter
1908
FOR A WIFE'S HONOR
director, screenwriter
1908
FOR LOVE OF GOLD
director, screenwriter
1908
THE GIRL AND THE OUTLAW
director, screenwriter
1908
THE GREASER'S GAUNTLET
director, screenwriter
1908
THE GUERRILLA
director, screenwriter
1908
HEART OF O YAMA
director, screenwriter, performer
1908
THE HELPING HAND
director, screenwriter
1908
THE INGRATE
director, screenwriter
1908
THE MAN AND THE WOMAN
director, screenwriter
1908
MONEY MAD
director, screenwriter
1908
MR. JONES AT THE BALL director, screenwriter
1908
MRS. JONES ENTERTAINS
director, screenwriter
1908
THE PIRATE'S GOLD
director, screenwriter
1908
THE PLANTER'S WIFE
director, screenwriter
1908
THE RECKONING
director, screenwriter
1908
THE RED GIRL
director, screenwriter
1908
THE REDMAN AND THE CHILD director, screenwriter
1908
ROMANCE OF A JEWESS director, screenwriter
1908
A SMOKED HUSBAND
director, screenwriter
1908
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT director, screenwriter
1908
THE STOLEN JEWELS
director, screenwriter
1908
TAMING OF THE SHREW director, screenwriter
1908
THE TAVERN KEEPER'S DAUGHTER
director
1908
THE TEST OF FRIENDSHIP
director, screenwriter
1908
THE VALET'S WIFE director, screenwriter
1908
THE VAQUERO'S VOW
director, screenwriter
1908
WHERE THE BREAKERS ROAR director, screenwriter
1908
A WOMAN'S WAY director, screenwriter
1908
THE ZULU'S HEART
director, screenwriter
1909
'TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD
director, screenwriter
1909
1776
director, screenwriter, performer
1909
AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
director, screenwriter
1909
AT THE ALTAR
director, screenwriter, performer
1909
THE AWAKENING director
1909
A BABY'S SHOE
director, screenwriter
1909
THE BETTER WAY director
1909
THE BRAHMA DIAMOND director, screenwriter
1909
THE BROKEN LOCKET
director, screenwriter
1909
A BURGLAR'S MISTAKE director, screenwriter
1909
THE CARDINAL'S CONSPIRACY director
1909
A CHANGE OF HEART
director
1909
THE CHILDREN'S FRIEND director
1909
COMATA, THE SIOUX
director
1909
A CONVICT'S SACRIFICE director, screenwriter
1909
THE CORD OF LIFE director, screenwriter
1909
A CORNER IN WHEAT
director, screenwriter
1909
THE COUNTRY DOCTOR director, screenwriter
1909
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH director
1909
THE CRIMINAL HYPNOTIST
director, screenwriter
1909
THE CURTAIN POLE
director, screenwriter
1909
THE DEATH DISK director
1909
THE DECEPTION
director
1909
DRIVE FOR A LIFE director, screenwriter
1909
DRUNKARD'S REFORMATION
director, screenwriter
1909
THE EAVESDROPPER
director, screenwriter
1909
EDGAR ALLAN POE
director, screenwriter
1909
ELOPING WITH AUNTY
director, screenwriter
1909
ERADICATING AUNTY
director, screenwriter
1909
THE EXPIATION
director, screenwriter
1909
THE FADED LILIES director, screenwriter
1909
A FAIR EXCHANGE
director
1909
THE FASCINATING MRS. FRANCIS
director, screenwriter
1909
A FOOL'S REVENGE
director, screenwriter
1909
FOOLS OF FATE
director
1909
THE FRENCH DUEL
director, screenwriter
1909
THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY
director, screenwriter
1909
GETTING EVEN
director, screenwriter
1909
THE GIBSON GODDESS
director, screenwriter
1909
THE GIRLS AND DADDY director, screenwriter, performer
1909
THE GOLDEN LOUIS
director, screenwriter
1909
HER FIRST BISCUITS
director, screenwriter
1909
THE HINDOO DAGGER
director, screenwriter
1909
HIS DUTY
director
1909
HIS LOST LOVE
director, screenwriter
1909
HIS WARD'S LOVE director, screenwriter
1909
HIS WIFE'S MOTHER
director, screenwriter
1909
HIS WIFE'S VISITOR
director, screenwriter
1909
THE HONOR OF THIEVES director, screenwriter
1909
I DID IT, MAMA
director, screenwriter
1909
IN A HEMPEN BAG director, screenwriter
1909
IN LITTLE ITALY
director
1909
IN OLD KENTUCKY
director
1909
IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
director, screenwriter
1909
IN THE WINDOW RECESS director
1909
THE INDIAN RUNNER'S ROMANCE
director
1909
JEALOUSY AND THE MAN
director, screenwriter
1909
THE JILT
director, screenwriter
1909
JONES AND HIS NEW NEIGHBORS
director, screenwriter
1909
JONES AND THE LADY BOOK AGENT director, screenwriter
1909
JONES' BURGLAR director, screenwriter
1909
THE JONESES HAVE AMATEUR THEATRICALS
director, screenwriter
1909
LADY HELEN'S ESCAPADE
director
1909
LEATHER STOCKING
director
1909
THE LIGHT THAT CAME director, screenwriter
1909
LINES OF WHITE ON A SULLEN SEA
director, screenwriter
1909
THE LITTLE DARLING
director, screenwriter
1909
THE LITTLE TEACHER
director
1909
THE LONELY VILLA
director
1909
LOVE FINDS A WAY
director, screenwriter
1909
LUCKY JIM director
1909
THE LURE OF THE GOWN director, screenwriter
1909
THE MANIAC COOK
director, screenwriter
1909
THE MEDICINE BOTTLE director, screenwriter
1909
THE MENDED LUTE
director
1909
THE MESSAGE
director
1909
MEXICAN SWEETHEARTS
director, screenwriter
1909
A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE
director, screenwriter
1909
THE MILLS OF THE GODS director, screenwriter
1909
THE MOUNTAINEER'S HONOR
director, screenwriter
1909
MR. JONES HAS A CARD PARTY director, screenwriter
1909
MRS. JONES' LOVER
director, screenwriter
1909
THE NECKLACE
director
1909
A NEW TRICK
director, screenwriter
1909
THE NOTE IN THE SHOE director, screenwriter
1909
NURSING A VIPER director, screenwriter
1909
OH, UNCLE! director, screenwriter
1909
ONE BUSY HOUR
director, screenwriter
1909
ONE TOUCH OF NATURE director
1909
THE OPEN GATE
director, screenwriter
1909
THE PEACHBASKET HAT director, screenwriter
1909
PIPPA PASSES
director, screenwriter
1909
THE POLITICIAN'S LOVE STORYdirector, screenwriter
1909
PRANKS
director
1909
THE PRUSSIAN SPY
director, screenwriter
1909
THE REDMAN'S VIEW
director
1909
THE RENUNCIATION
director, screenwriter
1909
THE RESTORATION
director, screenwriter
1909
RESURRECTION
director
1909
THE ROAD TO THE HEART
director, screenwriter
1909
THE ROCKY ROAD director
1909
ROUE'S HEART
director, screenwriter
1909
THE RUDE HOSTESS
director, screenwriter
1909
A RURAL ELOPEMENT
director, screenwriter
1909
THE SACRIFICE
director, screenwriter
1909
THE SALVATION ARMY LASS
director, screenwriter
1909
SCHNEIDER'S ANTI-NOISE CRUSADE director, screenwriter
1909
SEALED ROOM
director
1909
THE SEVENTH DAY
director, screenwriter
1909
THE SLAVE director, screenwriter
1909
THE SON'S RETURN
director, screenwriter
1909
A SOUND SLEEPER director, screenwriter
1909
A STRANGE MEETING
director, screenwriter
1909
THE SUICIDE CLUB
director
1909
SWEET AND TWENTY
director
1909
SWEET REVENGE director, screenwriter
1909
TENDER HEARTS
director, screenwriter
1909
THE TEST
director, screenwriter
1909
THEY WOULD ELOPE
director
1909
THOSE AWFUL HATS
director, screenwriter
1909
THOSE BOYS!
director, screenwriter
1909
THROUGH THE BREAKERS
director
1909
TO SAVE HER SOUL
director, screenwriter
1909
TRAGIC LOVE
director, screenwriter
1909
A TRAP FOR SANTA CLAUS
director, screenwriter
1909
THE TRICK THAT FAILED director
1909
A TROUBLESOME SATCHEL
director
1909
TRYING TO GET ARRESTED
director, screenwriter
1909
TWIN BROTHERS
director
1909
TWO MEMORIES
director, screenwriter
1909
TWO WOMEN AND A MAN
director, screenwriter
1909
THE VIOLIN MAKER OF CREMONA
director
1909
THE VOICE OF THE VIOLIN
director, screenwriter
1909
WANTED: A CHILD director, screenwriter
1909
WAS JUSTICE SERVED?
director, screenwriter
1909
THE WAY OF MAN director, screenwriter
1909
THE WELCOME BURGLAR
director, screenwriter
1909
WHAT DRINK DID director, screenwriter
1909
WHAT'S YOUR HURRY?
director, screenwriter
1909
THE WINNING COAT
director, screenwriter
1909
WITH HER CARD
director, screenwriter
1909
THE WOODEN LEG director, screenwriter
1909
A WREATH IN TIME
director, screenwriter
1910
AN ARCADIAN MAID
director
1910
AS IT IS IN LIFE
director
1910
AS THE BELLS RANG OUT
director
1910
THE BANKER'S DAUGHTERS
director
1910
THE BROKEN DOLL
director
1910
THE CALL
director, screenwriter
1910
THE CALL TO ARMS
director
1910
A CHILD OF THE GHETTOdirector
1910
A CHILD'S FAITH
director
1910
A CHILD'S IMPULSE
director
1910
A CHILD'S STRATAGEM director
1910
THE CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCHdirector
1910
CHOOSING A HUSBAND director, screenwriter
1910
THE CLOISTER'S TOUCH director
1910
THE CONVERTS
director
1910
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
director
1910
THE DANCING GIRL OF BUTTE director, screenwriter
1910
THE DUKE'S PLAN director, screenwriter
1910
THE ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL
director, screenwriter
1910
EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL
director
1910
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
director
1910
FAITHFUL
director
1910
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT director
1910
A FLASH OF LIGHTdirector
1910
THE FUGITIVE
director
1910
GOLD IS NOT ALL director
1910
A GOLD NECKLACE
director
1910
THE GOLD SEEKERS
director
1910
THE GOLDEN SUPPER
director
1910
HER FATHER'S PRIDE
director
1910
HER TERRIBLE ORDEAL director, screenwriter
1910
HIS LAST BURGLARY
director
1910
HIS LAST DOLLAR director
1910
HIS SISTER-IN-LAW
director
1910
THE HONOR OF HIS FAMILY
director
1910
THE HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS director
1910
THE ICONOCLAST director
1910
THE IMPALEMENT director
1910
IN LIFE'S CYCLE
director
1910
IN OLD CALIFORNIA
director
1910
IN THE BORDER STATES director
1910
IN THE SEASON OF THE BUDS
director
1910
A KNOT IN THE PLOT
director
1910
THE LAST DEAL
director, screenwriter
1910
THE LESSONdirector
1910
LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK
director
1910
LOVE AMONG THE ROSES
director
1910
THE MAN
director
1910
THE MARKED TIME-TABLE
director
1910
MAY AND DECEMBER
director
1910
THE MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN director, screenwriter
1910
A MIDNIGHT CUPID
director
1910
A MOHAWK'S WAY
director
1910
MUGSY BECOMES A HERO
director
1910
MUGSY'S FIRST SWEETHEART director
1910
NEVER AGAIN
director, screenwriter
1910
THE NEWLYWEDS director, screenwriter
1910
NOT SO BAD AS HE SEEMED
director
1910
THE OATH AND THE MAN
director
1910
ON THE REEF
director, screenwriter
1910
ONE NIGHT AND THEN
director, screenwriter
1910
OVER SILENT PATHS
director
1910
A PLAIN SONG
director
1910
THE PURGATION
director
1910
RAMONA
director, screenwriter
1910
A RICH REVENGE director
1910
A ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS director
1910
ROSE O' SALEM TOWN
director
1910
SERIOUS SIXTEEN director
1910
SIMPLE CHARITY director
1910
THE SMOKER
director
1910
THE SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTEdirector
1910
THE SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL director
1910
A SUMMER IDYLL director
1910
A SUMMER TRAGEDY
director
1910
SUNSHINE SUE
director
1910
TAMING A HUSBAND
director
1910
THOU SHALT NOT director
1910
THE THREAD OF DESTINY
director, story
1910
THE TWISTED TRAIL
director
1910
THE TWO BROTHERS
director
1910
TWO LITTLE WAIFS: A MODERN FAIRY TALE
director
1910
THE UNCHANGING SEA director, screenwriter
1910
UNEXPECTED HELP
director
1910
THE USURER
director, screenwriter
1910
A VICTIM OF JEALOUSY director
1910
WAITER NO. 5
director
1910
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
director
1910
WHAT THE DAISY SAID
director
1910
WHEN WE WERE IN OUR TEENS director
1910
WHITE ROSES
director
1910
WILFUL PEGGY
director
1910
WINNING BACK HIS LOVE
director
1910
THE WOMAN FROM MELLON'S director, screenwriter
1911
THE ADVENTURES OF BILLY
director, performer
1911
AS IN A LOOKING GLASS director
1911
THE BATTLE
director
1911
THE BLIND PRINCESS AND THE POET director
1911
BOBBY THE COWARD
director
1911
THE BROKEN CROSS
director
1911
THE CHIEF'S DAUGHTER director
1911
CONSCIENCE
director
1911
A COUNTRY CUPID
director
1911
DAN, THE DADDY director
1911
A DECREE OF DESTINY
director
1911
THE DIAMOND STAR
director
1911
ENOCH ARDEN
director
1911
THE FAILURE
director
1911
FATE'S TURNING
director
1911
FIGHTING BLOOD director
1911
FISHER FOLKS
director
1911
FOR HIS SON
director
1911
THE HEART OF A SAVAGE
director
1911
HEARTBEATS OF LONG AGO
director
1911
HER AWAKENING director
1911
HER SACRIFICE
director
1911
HIS DAUGHTER
director
1911
HIS MOTHER'S SCARF
director
1911
HIS TRUST
director
1911
HIS TRUST FULFILLED
director
1911
HOW SHE TRIUMPHED
director
1911
IN THE DAYS OF '49
director
1911
THE INDIAN BROTHERS director
1911
THE ITALIAN BARBER
director, screenwriter
1911
ITALIAN BLOOD
director
1911
A KNIGHT OF THE ROAD director
1911
THE LAST DROP OF WATER
director
1911
THE LILY OF THE TENEMENTS director
1911
THE LONEDALE OPERATOR
director
1911
THE LONG ROAD
director
1911
LOVE IN THE HILLS
director
1911
MADAME HEX
director
1911
THE MAKING OF A MAN director
1911
THE MISER'S HEART
director
1911
THE NEW DRESS
director
1911
THE OLD BOOKKEEPER director
1911
THE OLD CONFECTIONER'S MISTAKE director
1911
OUT FROM THE SHADOWdirector
1911
PARADISE LOST
director
1911
THE POOR SICK MEN
director
1911
THE PRIMAL CALL director
1911
THE REVENUE MAN AND THE GIRL
director
1911
A ROMANY TRAGEDY
director
1911
THE ROSE OF KENTUCKY
director
1911
THE RULING PASSION
director
1911
SAVED FROM HIMSELF
director
1911
A SMILE OF A CHILD
director
1911
A SORROWFUL EXAMPLE
director
1911
THE SPANISH GYPSY
director
1911
THE SQUAW'S LOVE
director
1911
SUNSHINE THROUGH THE DARK
director
1911
SWORDS AND HEARTS
director
1911
A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY director
1911
THE THIEF AND THE GIRL
director
1911
THREE SISTERS
director
1911
THROUGH DARKENED VALES director
1911
THE TRAIL OF BOOKS
director
1911
THE TWO PATHS
director
1911
THE TWO SIDES
director
1911
THE UNVEILING
director
1911
THE VOICE OF THE CHILD
director
1911
WAS HE A COWARD?
director
1911
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD?director
1911
WHEN A MAN LOVES
director
1911
THE WHITE ROSE OF THE WILDE
director
1911
A WOMAN SCORNED
director
1912
THE BURGLAR'S DILEMMA
director
1912
A CRY FOR HELP
director
1912
THE ETERNAL MOTHER director, screenwriter
1912
IN THE AISLES OF THE WILD
director
1912
THE INFORMER
director
1912
THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY
director
1912
MY HERO
director
1912
THE NEW YORK HAT
director
1912
THE OLD ACTOR
director
1912
ONE IS BUSINESS, THE OTHER CRIME director
1912
THE ONE SHE LOVED
director
1912
A TALE OF THE WILDERNESS
director
1912
THE TELEPHONE GIRL AND THE LADY
director
1912
TWO DAUGHTERS OF EVE
director
1912
AN UNSEEN ENEMY
director
1913
THE BATTLE AT ELDERBUSH GULCH director
1913
DURING THE ROUND UP director
1913
HER MOTHER'S OATH
director
1913
THE HOUSE OF DARKNESS
director
1913
JUDITH OF BETHULIA
director
1913
JUST GOLD director
1913
JUST KIDS
director
1913
THE LADY AND THE MOUSE
director
1913
THE LEFT-HANDED MAN director
1913
THE MADONNA OF THE STORM director
1913
THE MISTAKE
director
1913
A MISUNDERSTOOD BOY director
1913
A MODEST HERO
director
1913
THE MOTHERING HEART director
1913
OIL AND WATER
director
1913
THE PERFIDY OF MARY director
1913
SO RUNS THE WAY
director
1913
A TIMELY INTERCEPTION
director
1913
THE UNWELCOME GUEST
director
1913
A WOMAN IN THE ULTIMATE
director
1914
THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE
director, screenwriter
1914
THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES
director, screenwriter
1914
THE ESCAPEdirector, screenwriter
1914
HOME, SWEET HOME
director, screenwriter
1915
THE BIRTH OF A NATION producer, director, screenwriter, composer
1915
ENOCH ARDEN
performer
1915
JORDAN IS A HARD ROAD
producer
1915
THE LAMB
director
1915
THE LILY AND THE ROSE director
1916
BETTY OF GREYSTONE
producer
1916
DAPHNE AND THE PIRATE
screenwriter
1916
FIFTY-FIFTY producer
1916
THE GOOD BAD MAN
producer
1916
THE HABIT OF HAPPINESS
producer
1916
HOODOO ANN
screenwriter
1916
AN INNOCENT MAGDALENE
producer, story
1916
INTOLERANCE
director, screenwriter, composer
1916
LET KATIE DO IT
director
1916
MANHATTAN MADNESS producer
1916
THE MISSING LINKS
director
1918
THE GREAT LOVE producer, director
1918
THE GREATEST THING IN LIFE producer, director
1918
HEARTS OF THE WORLD producer, director, screenwriter— English translation,
music, music arrangement
1918
THE HUN WITHIN screenwriter
1919
BROKEN BLOSSOMS
producer, director
1919
THE GIRL WHO STAYED AT HOME
producer, director
1919
THE GREATEST QUESTION
director
1919
A ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY
producer, director, screenwriter
1919
SCARLET DAYS
producer, director
1919
TRUE HEART SUSIE
producer, director
1920
THE IDOL DANCERdirector
1920
THE LOVE FLOWER
director, screenwriter
1920
WAY DOWN EAST producer, director, screenwriter
1921
DREAM STREET
director, screenwriter
1922
ONE EXCITING NIGHT
producer, director, screenwriter, story
1922
ORPHANS OF THE STORM
producer, director
1923
THE WHITE ROSE director, screenwriter, story
1924
AMERICA
producer, director
1924
ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL? producer, director, screenwriter
1925
SALLY OF THE SAWDUST
producer, director
1925
THAT ROYLE GIRL producer, director
1926
THE SORROWS OF SATAN
director
1928
THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES
director
1928
DRUMS OF LOVE
producer, director
1929
LADY OF THE PAVEMENTS
director
1930
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
director
1931
THE STRUGGLE
director, screenwriter
1936
SAN FRANCISCO
director
1939
ONE MILLION B.C. director
4
Mack Sennett (1880 - 1960)
Mack Sennett was often known by his self-endowed title "The King of Comedy." In truth,
Sennett was not so much a king as a ringmaster for a motley menagerie of other-worldy
grotesques that slipped, slid and slapped their way at breakneck speeds across American
movie screens of the 1910s. The anarchic world of cross-eyed rubes, nightmare-bearded
villains, pulchritudinous bathing beauties and bumbling cops falling off cliffs, out of
buildings, and into and out of cars was the quite unexpected creation of a gentleman whose
first ambition in life was to be an opera star.
Born in Canada, Sennett moved with his family at the age of 17 to Connecticut. An encounter
with fellow Canadian Marie Dressler led to an introduction to producer David Belasco and
a new career for young Sennett on the vaudeville stage. In New York, he met the formidable
film producer-director D.W. Griffith, for whom he played a bevy of roles, including the lead
in THE CURTAIN POLE (1909), Griffith's only directorial attempt at a comedy. Sennett
stumbled into directing by accident: when a director fell ill at the last minute, he was told to
replace him. Griffith then assigned Sennett to supervise production of his comedy unit and,
by 1912, Sennett had set up his own studio in Hollywood and had become America's self-
appointed comic showman—"a producer of laughs."
And a producer he was. Sennett's Keystone operation became a California version of Henry
Ford's automobile plant in Michigan. Comedies were cranked out at bracing, production-line
speed, with several produced in one day from an outline prepared under Sennett's supervision.
The formula was unrepentently drawn from French models; as Sennett put it, "I stole my first
ideas from the Pathés."
In spite of the appearance of frenzied freedom in Sennett's slapstick orgies, the formula was
in fact strict and unbending. Characterization was eschewed in favor of stereotypes with
whom the audience could make an immediate identification. Sennett also issued strict rules
governing the type of gags that could be used; in fact, he declared, there were only two real
categories of gags: "the fall of dignity and the mistaken identity."
The roster of Sennett talent was impressive. At one point Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson,
Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd, Raymond Griffith and Frank
Capra worked for Sennett. But, for an innovator, Keystone was a graveyard, and any comic
talent with ideas bolted at the first opportunity.
Sennett, however, refused to change and clung to his threadbare formula through the 1920s
and into the 30s, churning out tired, low-budget variations of his successes of the teens. He
had, nevertheless, created the ground rules for American screen comedy. Among the pratfalls,
chases, stereotypes and pantomime, Sennett set the tone and composed the basic melody. It
was left to other, more inspired artists, to pick up that tune and transform it into a symphony.
1908
THE BLACK VIPER performer
1909
THE CURTAIN POLE
performer
1912
THE WATER NYMPH
producer, director, performer
1914
A FILM JOHNNIE
director
1914
MABEL AT THE WHEEL
director
1914
MABEL'S STRANGE PREDICAMENT
director
1914
TANGO TANGLES director
1914
TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE
director
1921
HOME TALENT
producer, director
1921
MOLLY O'
story
1921
A SMALL TOWN IDOL
screenwriter
1922
THE CROSSROADS OF NEW YORK
screenwriter, story
1922
OH, MABEL BEHAVE
director, performer
1923
THE EXTRA GIRL story
1923
THE SHRIEK OF ARABY
producer, story
1923
SUZANNA
screenwriter
1928
THE GOODBYE KISS
director, screenwriter
1928
THE OLD BARN
director
1930
MIDNIGHT DADDIES
producer, director
1931
I SURRENDER DEAR
director
1931
THE LOUD MOUTH producer
1931
ONE MORE CHANCE
director
1931
WRESTLING SWORDFISH producer
1932
HYPNOTIZED
director, screenwriter, story
1935
THE TIMID YOUNG MAN director
1939
HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE
performer
1949
DOWN MEMORY LANE
performer
1955
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS
performer
Harold Lloyd (1893 - 1971)
Harold Lloyd brought a journeyman's precision and a craftsman's expertise to American
comedy at a time when its style was rapidly headed towards the idiosyncratic. In the process,
Lloyd created a bespectacled comic Everyman that tapped the pulse of flashy and brash 1920s
America, making Lloyd one of the richest and most popular comic performers of that era.
In high school, Lloyd gave vent to his competitive energies as a boxer and debator, but the
theater bug hit him and, after graduating, he obtained an acting spot in a traveling repertory
company. When the company closed in Los Angeles, Lloyd began to make the rounds of the
movie studios, seeking out a living as a movie extra. Another extra trying to scrape together a
living was Hal Roach and the two became friends. When Roach inherited money and decided
to make his own films, Lloyd went to work for him. Together they created the character of
Willie Work in several shorts made from 1913 to 1915, but only the last one, JUST NUTS,
found its way to theatrical distribution. On the basis of that film, Mack Sennett hired Lloyd,
but, after an unsuccessful year at Keystone, Lloyd came back to Roach, where he created
another character, Lonesome Luke. With Luke, Lloyd joined the legion of Charlie Chaplin
imitators so popular at the time. Restless and unhappy with this less-than-original creation,
Lloyd was trapped by its success, and the film exchanges were reluctant to allow him to try
something different. However, Lloyd was determined to find a new character, even if it meant
forsaking his newfound success.
After seeing a play featuring a fighting priest who wore horn-rimmed glasses, Lloyd
experimented with the concept of a more realistic looking character who also wore glasses,
not an outsider (as Chaplin's tramp was), but rather a working member of society. Lloyd
featured his new character in a series of shorts, starting with OVER THE FENCE (1917),
reducing his output from two-reelers to one-reelers to insure exposure of his new character in
a new film once a week instead of twice a month. But it wasn't until THE CITY SLICKER
(1918) that Lloyd finally developed the formula for this bespectacled character, a brash
young go-getter whose single-mindededness leads him to succeed and get the girl by the
story's end. In fact, what Lloyd had done was adapt the Douglas Fairbanks persona from
the 1910s to his own talents, converting Fairbanks's aristocrat to a clean-cut Horatio Alger-
type from the middle class. Lloyd's early films with this character were nothing more than
remakes of old Fairbanks comedies: GRANDMA'S BOY (1922) is a remade version of THE
MOLLYCODDLE (1920); DOCTOR JACK (1922) is a remake of DOWN TO EARTH
(1917); WHY WORRY? (1923) another version of HIS MAJESTY THE AMERICAN
(1919). But in adapting the Fairbanks type to the middle class, Lloyd had hit on a national
archetype, a character who celebrated the 20s boom and consumer consumption. There was
no criticism of the social structure—in fact, according to Lloyd, the character reveled in
it: "I think my character represented the white-collar middle class that felt frustrated but was
always fighting to overcome its shortcomings. We had a big appeal for businessman."
A more realistic comic character emerged, giving rise to a more realistic comedy style which
linked the energy and movement of the character clowns with the psychological realism of
the dramatic tradition. Since the character was not essentially funny in himself, jokes had to
be constructed around him, the gags more tightly controlled and used to propel the storyline.
Each gag followed the next in a logical progression until the film's climactic vindication and
triumph of the Lloyd hero.
Building the gags into a narrative line made it much easier for Lloyd to expand into feature
production. Throughout the 20s Lloyd was a box-office draw, from A SAILOR-MADE
MAN (1921) to SPEEDY (1928). His steady output—two features a year—kept his public
happy with such pictures as GRANDMA'S BOY (1922), SAFETY LAST (1923), THE
FRESHMAN (1925), and THE KID BROTHER (1927). But after the 1929 stock market
crash, Lloyd's character became obsolete, his brashness coming off as abrasive.
And just as Lloyd had reworked the type from Fairbanks, the type was reworked again,
transformed into the success-at-any-price gangsters of Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson and
James Cagney. The sociable character with glasses had become a murderous sociopath. By
the late 1930s, Lloyd's character had become merely wholesome and Newsweek noted that
Lloyd was "the leading representative of 100 per cent American purity." After PROFESSOR
BEWARE (1938), Lloyd left films, only to resurface ten years later in an aborted comeback,
THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK/MAD WEDNESDAY, a subversion of his 20s
persona to fit the doom-laden 40s, a film that one critic called "a slapstick equivalent of
DEATH OF A SALESMAN."
Although Lloyd's films seem mechanical today, he made important contributions, with
detailed gag constructions and dramatic structure integrated with slapstick, to leave a lasting
mark on the film comedy landscape.
1913
FROM ITALY'S SHORES
performer
1914
HIS HEART, HIS HAND AND HIS SWORD
performer
1914
SAMSON
performer
1914
WILLIE
performer
1915
A FOOZLE AT THE TEA PARTY performer
1915
INTO THE LIGHT
performer
1915
JUST NUTS performer
1915
MISS FATTY'S SEASIDE LOVERS
performer
1916
LONESOME LUKE LEANS TO THE LITERARY performer
1916
LUKE LUGS LUGGAGE
performer
1917
BLISS performer
1917
BY THE SAD SEA WAVES performer
1917
THE FLIRT
performer
1917
LUKE'S BUSY DAY performer
1917
LUKE'S LOST LIBERTY
performer
1917
OVER THE FENCE performer
1917
PINCHED
performer
1917
RAINBOW ISLAND performer
1918
THE BIG IDEA
performer
1918
THE CITY SLICKERperformer
1918
IT'S A WILD LIFE
performer
1918
ON THE JUMP
performer
1918
PIPE THE WHISKERS
performer
1918
SPRING FEVER
performer
1919
BUMPING INTO BROADWAY
performer
1919
CAPTAIN KIDD'S KIDS
performer
1919
FROM HAND TO MOUTH performer
1919
HIS ROYAL SLYNESS
performer
1920
AN EASTERN WESTERNER
performer
1920
GET OUT AND GET UNDER
performer
1920
HAUNTED SPOOKSperformer
1920
HIGH AND DIZZY performer
1920
NUMBER, PLEASE performer
1921
AMONG THOSE PRESENT performer
1921
BE MY WIFE performer
1921
I DO
performer
1921
NEVER WEAKEN
performer
1921
NOW OR NEVER
performer
1921
A SAILOR-MADE MAN
performer
1922
BACK TO THE WOODS
performer
1922
DOCTOR JACK
performer
1922
GRANDMA'S BOY performer
1923
SAFETY LAST
screenwriter, performer
1923
WHY WORRY?
performer
1924
GIRL SHY
performer
1924
HOT WATER performer
1925
THE FRESHMAN
performer
1926
FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE
performer
1927
THE KID BROTHER performer
1928
SPEEDY
performer
1929
WELCOME DANGER
producer, performer
1930
FEET FIRST performer
1932
MOVIE CRAZY
producer, performer
1934
THE CAT'S PAW
producer, performer
1936
THE MILKY WAY performer
1938
PROFESSOR BEWARE
producer, performer
1941
A GIRL, A GUY, AND A GOB
producer
1942
MY FAVORITE SPY producer
1947
THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK/MAD WEDNESDAY
performer
1962
HAROLD LLOYD'S WORLD OF COMEDY
footage compiler, performer
Buster Keaton (1895 - 1966)
Buster Keaton's films enjoyed only moderate commercial success at the time of their release;
it is with the passage of time that their subtle riches have been fully appreciated. Keaton's
public signature was his stone face, which seemed never to betray his feelings. But this
impassivity was belied by his body, a dynamo of movement and acrobatic grace that carried
Buster through many a hostile situation. Trains, automobiles, hot air balloons, houses of all
kinds (haunted, electric and build-it-yourself), ocean liners, river boats, row boats, herds of
cattle, squads of police, armies of women—even the mechanism of cinema itself—all imperil
Keaton as he seeks love, the promise of wealth or the comfort of his family. Unlike Fatty
Arbuckle, the comedian who gave Keaton his start in films and who took savage glee in
delivering vengeance to the pompous, Keaton sought a measure of serenity in a world where
peace is hard to find.
Keaton set up his "style" of comedy in ONE WEEK (1920), a short about a man trying to
assemble a build-it-yourself house. In collaboration with Eddie Cline as scenarist and director,
Keaton followed with the surreal NEIGHBORS (1920) and THE BOAT (1921), to cite
two highlights from a prolific period. THE BALOONATIC (1923) and THE LOVE NEST
(1923) were next, and then he and producer Joseph M. Schenck (who was married to Norma
Talmadge, sister of Keaton's wife, Natalie) expanded their horizons with the feature THE
THREE AGES (1923). Thereafter Keaton devoted his primary attention to feature films,
directing by himself.
Within 18 months, he came out with OUR HOSPITALITY (1923), SHERLOCK, JR. (1924)
and THE NAVIGATOR (1924), a string of first features almost unmatched in film history.
SHERLOCK, JR. involves a projectionist stepping into and out of the movies he casts upon
the screen, becoming subject to the plastic worlds of space and time that Keaton so deftly
manipulated in all of his films. A sure sense of what was appropriate and possible on film
is what ultimately animates his films for later generations. A few examples from SEVEN
CHANCES (1925): Keaton wants to show the passage of time, so we see a montage of a
puppy growing to become a huge dog; to move his character across town in an automobile,
Keaton has him enter the car, dissolves the background to the new location, and the
character promptly exits, a new form of shorthand uniquely appropriate to the movies, one
that is thoroughly artificial, anything but realistic, but works consistently because Keaton
uses his film audience as an "accomplice," and we appreciate it. Keaton took delight in
exploring the properties of the medium as in SEVEN CHANCES, a silent film in which his
character is trying to propose to a woman on a golf course; she is unable to "hear" what we
have "seen" (thanks to the titles), and a crowd gathers around him, listening to the words we
cannot "hear!"
Keaton continued for several years to make works of this high caliber, including his
masterpiece, THE GENERAL (1927), a Civil War romance. But his career came undone
when Schenck persuaded him to abandon his own studio and join MGM. From 1928 on,
Keaton's ability to improvise and develop his narratives was compromised by the studio
production system, which eventually rejected him. Abandoned by his wife, retreating to
alcohol, Keaton was reduced to work as a gag man and to bit parts until a 1962 retrospective
at Paris' Cinémathčque Française sparked a revival of interest in his early films.
In 1965, he acted in two notable short films, FILM, from a screenplay by Samuel Beckett,
and THE RAILRODDER; that September, he appeared at the Venice Film Festival to a
tumultuous reception. Keaton's art and life were splendidly taken up by Kevin Brownlow and
David Gill in their TV documentary series, "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow" (1987).
1917
THE BUTCHER BOY
performer
1917
CONEY ISLAND
performer
1917
A COUNTRY HERO performer
1917
HIS WEDDING NIGHT
performer
1917
OH, DOCTOR!
performer
1917
A RECKLESS ROMEO
performer
1917
THE ROUGH HOUSE
performer
1918
THE BELL BOY
performer
1918
THE COOK
performer
1918
GOOD NIGHT NURSE
performer
1918
MOONSHINE
performer
1918
OUT WEST
performer
1919
BACK STAGE
performer
1919
THE GARAGE
performer
1919
THE HAYSEED
performer
1919
LOVE performer
1919
THE ROUND UP
performer
1920
CONVICT 13 director, screenwriter, performer
1920
NEIGHBORS director, screenwriter
1920
ONE WEEK director, screenwriter, performer
1920
THE SCARECROW director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE BOAT
director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE GOAT
director, screenwriter, performer
1921
HARD LUCK director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE HIGH SIGN
director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE PALEFACE
director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE PLAYHOUSE director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE SAPHEAD
producer, performer
1922
THE BLACKSMITH director, screenwriter, performer
1922
COPS director, screenwriter, performer
1922
DAY DREAMS
director, screenwriter, performer
1922
THE ELECTRIC HOUSE
director, screenwriter, performer
1922
THE FROZEN NORTH
director, screenwriter, performer
1922
MY WIFE'S RELATIONS
director, screenwriter, performer
1923
THE BALLOONATIC
director, screenwriter, performer
1923
THE LOVE NEST
director, screenwriter, performer
1923
OUR HOSPITALITY director, performer
1923
THE THREE AGES director, screenwriter, performer
1924
THE NAVIGATOR performer
1924
SHERLOCK, JR.
director, performer
1925
GO WEST
director, story, performer
1925
SEVEN CHANCES director, performer
1926
BATTLING BUTLER
director, performer
1927
COLLEGE
performer
1927
THE GENERAL
director, story, performer
1928
THE CAMERAMAN producer, performer
1928
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
producer, performer
1929
THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929
performer
1929
SPITE MARRIAGE producer, performer
1930
DOUGHBOYS
producer, performer
1930
FREE AND EASY/EASY GO
performer
1931
PARLOR, BEDROOM AND BATH producer, performer
1931
SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK
producer, performer
1931
SPLASH
director
1932
THE PASSIONATE PLUMBER
producer, performer
1932
SPEAK EASILY
performer
1933
WHAT! NO BEER? performer
1934
ALLEZ OOP performer
1934
THE GOLD GHOST performer
1934
LE ROI DES CHAMPS-ELYSÉES performer
1935
THE E-FLAT MAN performer
1935
HAYSEED ROMANCE
performer
1935
ONE-RUN ELMER performer
1935
PALOOKA FROM PADUCAH
performer
1935
TARS AND STRIPES
performer
1935
THE TIMID YOUNG MAN performer
1936
BLUE BLAZES
performer
1936
THE CHEMIST
performer
1936
GRAND SLAM OPERA
performer
1936
JAIL BAIT
performer
1936
LA FIESTA DE SANTA BARBARA
performer
1936
MIXED MAGIC
performer
1936
AN OLD SPANISH CUSTOM/THE INVADER
performer
1936
THREE ON A LIMB performer
1937
DITTOperformer
1937
LOVE NEST ON WHEELS performer
1938
HOLLYWOOD HANDICAPdirector
1938
LIFE IN SOMETOWN, USAdirector
1938
LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY
director
1938
STREAMLINED SWING
director
1938
TOO HOT TO HANDLE
director
1939
AT THE CIRCUS/MARX BROTHERS AT THE CIRCUS director
1939
HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE
performer
1939
THE JONES FAMILY IN HOLLYWOOD story
1939
THE JONES FAMILY IN QUICK MILLIONS
story
1939
MOOCHIN' THROUGH GEORGIA performer
1939
NOTHING BUT PLEASURE
performer
1939
PEST FROM THE WEST
performer
1940
COMRADE Xdirector
1940
LI'L ABNER performer
1940
NEW MOON performer
1940
PARDON MY BERTH MARKS
director
1940
THE SPOOK SPEAKS
director
1940
THE TAMING OF THE SNOOD
performer
1940
THE VILLAIN STILL PURSUED HER
performer
1941
GENERAL NUISANCE
performer
1941
HIS EX MARKS THE SPOT performer
1941
SHE'S OIL MINE
performer
1941
SO YOU WON'T SQUAWK performer
1942
TALES OF MANHATTAN screenwriter
1943
EL MODERNO BARBA-AZUL
performer
1943
FOREVER AND A DAY
performer
1943
I DOOD IT
director
1944
BATHING BEAUTY director
1944
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE director
1944
SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU performer
1944
TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR
performer
1945
SHE WENT TO THE RACES
director
1945
THAT NIGHT WITH YOU performer
1945
THAT'S THE SPIRIT performer
1946
BOOM IN THE MOON
performer
1946
EQUESTRIAN QUIZ (WHAT'S YOUR I.Q.? NO. 11)
director
1946
GOD'S COUNTRY
performer
1947
CYNTHIA
uncredited screenwriter
1947
IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN
director
1947
MERTON OF THE MOVIES
director
1948
A SOUTHERN YANKEE
director
1949
IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME
performer
1949
THE LOVABLE CHEAT
performer
1949
NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTER
director
1949
YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING
performer
1950
SUNSET BLVD.
cameo
1950
UN DUEL Ŕ MORT screenwriter, performer
1950
WATCH THE BIRDIE
director
1951
ÇA C'EST DU CINÉMA
director
1951
EXCUSE MY DUST director
1951
PARADISE FOR BUSTER performer
1952
LIMELIGHT performer
1953
L'INCANTEVOLE NEMICA
performer
1956
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
performer
1960
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN performer
1960
WHEN COMEDY WAS KING
performer
1962
TEN GIRLS AGO
performer
1963
30 YEARS OF FUN performer
1963
THE GREAT CHASE
performer
1963
IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD
performer
1963
THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER
director
1964
PAJAMA PARTY
performer
1965
BEACH BLANKET BINGO performer
1965
BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN performer
1965
FILM performer
1965
HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI performer
1965
THE RAILRODDER performer
1965
SERGEANT DEADHEAD
performer
1966
DUE MARINES E UN GENERAL performer
1966
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
performer
1967
WAR, ITALIAN STYLE
performer
Oliver Hardy (1892 - 1957)
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, one a lank, childlike innocent with a penchant for anarchy, the
other a rotund, bossy incompetent with a naďve pomposity, arrived on the film scene late
in the silent era. Their brand of comedy served as a link between the era of silent character
comedy, with its emphasis on aspirations to success and happiness, and the chaotic comedies
of the 1930s, with its complete bedlam created by the characters' consistent failures. Laurel
and Hardy slowed down the pace of silent slapstick, adjusting its gag structure for the more
mundane pacing of sound film comedy. In the process, the duo became two of the most
recognized faces in the film world.
Before their pairing in 1927, Laurel and Hardy had separate film careers, Stan's dating back to
1917 and Ollie's to 1913. As a teenager, Laurel joined Fred Karno's British music hall troupe,
understudying Charlie Chaplin. During the Karno troupe's first tour of the United States, he
quit the company in 1911, seeking success on the American vaudeville stage. He would later
rejoin Karno, only to quit a final time. Although he did meet with limited success in American
vaudeville, he made his first film appearance in NUTS IN MAY (1917), a slapdash slapstick
chaser. He then signed with Universal to make a series of shorts as the character Hickory
Hiram. In 1919, Laurel appeared in a modestly successful group of comedies that parodied
contemporary film hits. Despite two stints with the successful producer Hal Roach, by the
mid-20s, Laurel had practically given up the hope of being a successful comic performer; he
signed once again with Roach in 1926, this time as a writer and gagman.
As a young man, Oliver Hardy liked to sneak out of college and music school to go on the
road singing with theater quartets and minstrel shows. At 18, he managed the first movie
theater in Milledgeville, Georgia, but in 1913, he abandoned theatrical management for a
film career, joining the Lubin Company as a character player and general assistant. After
three years with Lubin, Hardy appeared through the late teens and early 20s in the Frank
Baum "Oz" series and as a comic foil for various silent film comedians such as Billy West,
Earl Williams, Jimmy Aubrey and Larry Semon. By the mid-20s, Hardy, like Laurel, had
signed with Roach.
At that point, Roach was frantically seeking to regain the commercial success he had enjoyed
with Harold Lloyd, who had left him for feature film stardom. In an act of desperation, Roach
formed the Hal Roach Comedy All-Stars, into which he thrust his stock company of James
Finlayson, Max Davidson, Clyde Cook, Eugene Pallette, Edgar Kennedy, Noah Young, Mae
Busch, Anita Garvin and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
It was only a matter of time before Roach's shuffling of his players would deal Laurel and
Hardy into the same film. SLIPPING WIVES (1927), however, found Laurel supporting
Hardy. It was PUTTING PANTS ON PHILIP (1927) in which the Laurel and Hardy team
first flowered. The famous mannerisms appeared, in Hardy's pomposity and Southern
courtliness and Laurel's squeaky, squashed-faced cries. Previously known for his frenetic
slapstick pace, Laurel slowed down and instead of a catalyst of action became a reactor to the
destruction raining down upon Hardy's head.
In their methodical style, Laurel and Hardy transformed silent comedy and conducted a
scientific investigation of gag structures. The jokes became rituals in which a gag is dissected,
studied and explained in a process of passionless stateliness. In this emotionless artifice, the
characters paused to await their fate. One character would stand by as his partner clipped
off his tie with a pair of garden shears. Equally detached, the second character would watch
as the tie-less gentleman clasps the shears and hurls them through the second character's
car windshield. In the world of Laurel and Hardy, there are continually dispassionate shifts
between victims and victimizers, resulting in mammoth destruction of hundreds of pies, a
traffic jam of dozens of cars or the gutting of an entire residential neighborhood.
Over the next several years, Laurel and Hardy refined their pace in such shorts as
LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING (1928), FROM SOUP TO NUTS (1928), BIG BUSINESS (1929)
and THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY (1927). The pair easily made the transition to sound,
their slapstick style perfectly suited to its reality-bound pacing. From 1930 to 1935, Laurel
and Hardy made several dozen shorts containing their best screen work, highlighted by the
Academy Award-winning THE MUSIC BOX (1932).
But the popularity of sound animated cartoons forced Laurel and Hardy into features, which
either encased the team in cumbersome operettas or expanded their short-subject comic
routines into clumsy assemblages. For every success—SONS OF THE DESERT (1933) or
WAY OUT WEST (1937)—there were several stumbles—BABES IN TOYLAND (1934),
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES (1932) or SAPS AT SEA (1940). The end came when Laurel
and Hardy signed on with the big Hollywood studios (RKO, Fox, MGM), who emasculated
the darker aspects of their comedy and forced them into hackneyed formula films that denied
them the creative freedom permitted by Roach. By the time their last film, UTOPIA/ATOLL
K, was released in 1951, the team was bedraggled and gutted, Laurel looking seriously ill and
Hardy shocked and embarrassed.
But in their early films of 1927-35, Laurel and Hardy created brilliant comic structures and
developed two characters who perfectly complemented one another in a poetic, primordial
relationship that shifted from the realm of the comic into something broader which found its
ultimate reflection in the barren landscapes of Samuel Beckett.
1914
OUTWITTING DAD performer
1915
CHARLEY'S AUNT performer
1915
MIXED FLATS
performer
1915
PAPERHANGER'S HELPER
performer
1915
SPAGHETTI AND LOTTERY/SPAGHETTI A LA MODE
performer
1916
AUNT BILL performer
1916
BETTER HALVES
performer
1916
DREAMY KNIGHTSperformer
1916
THE HEROES
performer
1916
HUMAN HOUNDS performer
1916
LOVE AND DUTY performer
1916
THE SERENADE
performer
1917
BACKSTAGE
performer
1917
THE FLY COP
performer
1917
THE HOBO
performer
1917
A LUCKY DOG
performer— isolated
1917
THE MILLIONAIRE performer
1917
THE PEST
performer
1917
THE VILLAIN
performer
1918
THE CHEF
performer
1918
THE HANDYMAN performer
1918
HELLO TROUBLE performer
1918
HIS DAY OUT
performer
1918
PLAYMATES
performer
1919
MULES AND MORTGAGES
performer
1920
MARRIED TO ORDER
performer
1921
BLIZZARD
performer
1922
FORTUNE'S MASK performer
1922
LITTLE WILDCAT performer
1923
ONE STOLEN NIGHT
performer
1923
THE THREE AGES performer
1924
THE KING OF THE WILD HORSES
performer
1925
THE WIZARD OF OZ
performer— as Tin Woodsman
1926
45 MINUTES FROM HOLLYWOOD
performer— joint appearance but not as a
team
1926
THE GENTLE CYCLONE
performer
1926
MADAME MYSTERY
performer
1926
THE PERFECT CLOWN
performer
1926
STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN assistant director, performer
1927
THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY performer
1927
CALL OF THE CUCKOOS performer
1927
DO DETECTIVES THINK? performer
1927
DUCK SOUP performer
1927
FLUTTERING HEARTS
performer
1927
HATS OFF
performer
1927
LOVE 'EM AND WEEP
performer
1927
NO MAN'S LAW
performer
1927
PUTTING PANTS ON PHILIP
performer
1927
SAILORS, BEWARE!
performer
1927
THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS performer
1927
SLIPPING WIVES
performer
1927
SUGAR DADDIES
performer
1927
WHY GIRLS LOVE SAILORS
performer
1927
WITH LOVE AND HISSES performer
1928
THE FINISHING TOUCH
performer
1928
FLYING ELEPHANTS
performer
1928
FROM SOUP TO NUTS
performer
1928
HABEAS CORPUS performer
1928
LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING
performer
1928
SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME?
performer
1928
THEIR PURPLE MOMENT performer
1928
TWO TARS
performer
1928
WE FAW DOWN
performer
1928
YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN'
performer
1929
ANGORA LOVE
performer
1929
BACON GRABBERS
performer
1929
BERTH MARKS
performer
1929
BIG BUSINESS
performer
1929
DOUBLE WHOOPEE
performer
1929
THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929
performer
1929
THE HOOSE-GOW performer
1929
LIBERTY
performer
1929
MEN O' WARperformer
1929
PERFECT DAY
performer
1929
THAT'S MY WIFE
performer
1929
THEY GO BOOM
performer
1929
UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE
performer— first talkie
1929
WRONG AGAIN
performer
1930
ANOTHER FINE MESS
performer
1930
BELOW ZERO
performer
1930
BLOTTO
performer
1930
BRATS
performer
1930
HOG WILD
performer
1930
THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE performer
1930
THE NIGHT OWLS performer
1930
THE ROGUE SONG performer
1931
BE BIG
performer
1931
BEAU HUNKS
performer
1931
CHICKENS COME HOME performer
1931
COME CLEAN
performer
1931
LAUGHING GRAVY
performer
1931
ON THE LOOSE
cameo
1931
ONE GOOD TURN performer
1931
OUR WIFE
performer
1931
PARDON US performer
1931
THE STOLEN JOOLS
performer— cameo appearances
1932
ANY OLD PORT
performer
1932
THE CHIMP performer
1932
COUNTY HOSPITAL
performer
1932
HELPMATES performer
1932
THE MUSIC BOX
performer
1932
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES
performer
1932
SCRAM!
performer
1932
THEIR FIRST MISTAKE
performer
1932
TOWED IN A HOLE performer
1933
BUSY BODIES
performer
1933
THE DEVIL'S BROTHER/FRA DIAVOLO/BOGUS BANDITS performer
1933
DIRTY WORK
performer
1933
ME AND MY PAL
performer
1933
THE MIDNIGHT PATROL performer
1933
SONS OF THE DESERT
performer
1933
TWICE TWO performer
1933
WILD POSES performer— cameos in "Our Gang" comedy
1934
BABES IN TOYLAND/MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS
performer
1934
GOING BYE-BYE! performer
1934
HOLLYWOOD PARTY
performer
1934
THE LIVE GHOST
performer
1934
OLIVER THE EIGHTH
performer
1934
THEM THAR HILLS performer
1935
BONNIE SCOTLAND
performer
1935
THE FIXER UPPERS
performer
1935
THICKER THAN WATER performer
1935
TIT FOR TATperformer
1936
THE BOHEMIAN GIRL
performer
1936
ON THE WRONG TREK
performer— cameos in Charlie Chase comedy
1936
OUR RELATIONS
performer
1937
PICK A STAR/MOVIE STRUCK
performer
1937
WAY OUT WEST
performer
1938
BLOCK-HEADS
performer
1938
SWISS MISS performer
1939
THE FLYING DEUCES/FLYING ACES
performer
1939
ZENOBIA
performer
1940
A CHUMP AT OXFORD
performer
1940
SAPS AT SEA
performer
1941
GREAT GUNS
performer
1942
A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO
performer
1943
AIR RAID WARDENS
performer
1943
THE DANCING MASTERS performer
1943
JITTERBUGS performer
1943
THE TREE IN A TEST TUBE
performer
1944
THE BIG NOISE
performer
1944
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE performer
1945
THE BULLFIGHTERS
performer
1949
THE FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN
performer
1950
RIDING HIGH
performer
1950
UTOPIA/ATOLL K/ROBINSON CRUSOELAND performer
1957
THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMEDY performer
Stan Laurel (1890 - 1965)
The son of an actress and an actor-director-producer-playwright-impresario, he made his own
stage debut at 16 at a small Glasgow, Scotland, theater and for the next few years played both
drama and comedy in plays and danced and clowned in British music halls. In 1910 he joined
the famous Fred Karno company and became Charlie Chaplin's understudy in the troupe's first
American tour that same year. He also played various roles in the company's feature attraction
A Night in an English Music Hall. He was Chaplin's understudy again during Karno's second
US tour in 1912. When the troupe returned to England, he stayed behind and began a lengthy
stint in American vaudeville, changing his name to Stan Laurel. In 1917 he made the first of
76 film appearances that preceded his fortuitous teaming with Oliver Hardy in 1927. The two
comedians appeared in the same two-reel short, LUCKY DOG (1917), but their pairing in that
film was accidental, with Hardy playing a bit and Laurel starring.
Laurel's screen character in those early days was that of a clown, typically wearing oversized
clothes and playing the misfit. He continued performing in vaudeville while pursuing a
part-time film career in comedy shorts. He worked for various studios, including Universal,
Vitagraph, Hal Roach-Pathé and Metro, where he performed for a unit supervised by G. M.
Anderson of "Broncho Billy" fame. Many of these comedy shorts were spoofs of popular
feature films of the period. Laurel wrote many of his own comedy routines and occasionally
helped with the directing. In 1926 he signed a long-term contract with Hal Roach as a gagman
and director but shortly after was persuaded to return to acting, and to begin his long and
auspicious partnership with Oliver Hardy.
The "thin man" of the fat-thin duo, Laurel was often also the funnier member of the team,
with a wide array of mannerisms that endeared him to film audiences, among them a babylike
weep, a confused eye-blink, and a bewildered scratching of the top of the head. He was
the creative mind behind many of the team's comedy routines, a master of comedy nuance
and technique. Unconsolable after Hardy's death in 1957, he refused to resume performing
although he continued writing until his own death in 1965. In the Academy Award ceremony
for 1960, he received a special Oscar "for his creative pioneering in the field of cinema
comedy."
1917
A LUCKY DOG
performer— isolated, fortuitous co-appearance in same film
1917
NUTS IN MAY
performer
1918
FRAUDS AND FRENZIES performer
1918
HICKORY HIRAM performer
1918
HUNS AND HYPHENS
performer
1918
IT'S GREAT TO BE CRAZY
performer
1919
HOOT MAN performer
1919
SCARS AND STRIPES
performer
1921
MAKE IT SNAPPY performer
1922
THE EGG
performer
1922
MUD AND SAND
performer
1922
THE PEST
performer
1922
WEEK END PARTY performer
1923
COLLARS AND CUFFS
performer
1923
FROZEN HEARTS
performer
1923
THE HANDY MAN performer
1923
KILL OR CURE
performer
1923
A MAN ABOUT TOWN
performer
1923
ORANGES AND LEMONS performer
1923
ROUGHEST AFRICA
performer
1923
SEARCHING SANDS
performer
1923
SHORT ORDERS
performer
1923
THE SOILERS
performer
1923
UNDER TWO JAGS performer
1923
WHEN KNIGHTS WERE COLD
performer
1923
THE WHOLE TRUTH
performer
1924
BROTHERS UNDER THE CHIN
performer
1924
DETAINED
performer
1924
RUPERT OF HEE-HAW
performer
1924
SHORT KILTS
performer
1924
SMITHY
performer
1924
WEST OF HOT DOGperformer
1924
WIDE OPEN SPACES
performer
1924
ZEB VS. PAPRIKA performer
1925
DR. PICKLE AND MR. PRIDE
performer
1925
HALF A MAN
performer
1925
NAVY BLUE DAYS performer
1925
PIE-EYED
performer
1925
THE SLEUTH
performer
1925
THE SNOW HAWK performer
1925
TWINS
performer
1926
45 MINUTES FROM HOLLYWOOD
performer— joint appearance but not as a
team
1926
ATTA BOY
performer
1926
GET 'EM YOUNG
performer
1926
MADAME MYSTERY
co-director
1926
ON THE FRONT PAGE
performer
1927
THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY performer
1927
CALL OF THE CUCKOOS performer
1927
DO DETECTIVES THINK? performer
1927
DUCK SOUP performer
1927
HATS OFF
performer
1927
LOVE 'EM AND WEEP
performer
1927
PUTTING PANTS ON PHILIP
performer
1927
SAILORS, BEWARE!
performer
1927
THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS performer
1927
SLIPPING WIVES
performer
1927
SUGAR DADDIES
performer
1927
WHY GIRLS LOVE SAILORS
performer
1927
WITH LOVE AND HISSES performer
1928
THE FINISHING TOUCH
performer
1928
FLYING ELEPHANTS
performer
1928
FROM SOUP TO NUTS
performer
1928
HABEAS CORPUS performer
1928
LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING
performer
1928
SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME?
performer
1928
THEIR PURPLE MOMENT performer
1928
TWO TARS
performer
1928
WE FAW DOWN
performer
1928
YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN'
performer
1929
ANGORA LOVE
performer
1929
BACON GRABBERS
performer
1929
BERTH MARKS
performer
1929
BIG BUSINESS
performer
1929
DOUBLE WHOOPEE
performer
1929
THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929
performer
1929
THE HOOSE-GOW performer
1929
LIBERTY
performer
1929
MEN O' WARperformer
1929
PERFECT DAY
performer
1929
THAT'S MY WIFE
performer
1929
THEY GO BOOM
performer
1929
UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE
performer— first talkie
1929
WRONG AGAIN
performer
1930
ANOTHER FINE MESS
performer
1930
BELOW ZERO
performer
1930
BLOTTO
performer
1930
BRATS
performer
1930
HOG WILD
performer
1930
THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE performer
1930
THE NIGHT OWLS performer
1930
THE ROGUE SONG performer
1931
BE BIG
performer
1931
BEAU HUNKS
performer
1931
CHICKENS COME HOME performer
1931
COME CLEAN
performer
1931
LAUGHING GRAVY
performer
1931
ON THE LOOSE
cameo
1931
ONE GOOD TURN performer
1931
OUR WIFE
performer
1931
PARDON US performer
1931
THE STOLEN JOOLS
performer— cameo appearances
1932
ANY OLD PORT
performer
1932
THE CHIMP performer
1932
COUNTY HOSPITAL
performer
1932
HELPMATES performer
1932
THE MUSIC BOX
performer
1932
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES
performer
1932
SCRAM!
performer
1932
THEIR FIRST MISTAKE
performer
1932
TOWED IN A HOLE performer
1933
BUSY BODIES
performer
1933
THE DEVIL'S BROTHER/FRA DIAVOLO/BOGUS BANDITS performer
1933
DIRTY WORK
performer
1933
ME AND MY PAL
performer
1933
THE MIDNIGHT PATROL performer
1933
SONS OF THE DESERT
performer
1933
TWICE TWO performer
1933
WILD POSES performer— cameos in "Our Gang" comedy
1934
BABES IN TOYLAND/MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS
performer
1934
GOING BYE-BYE! performer
1934
HOLLYWOOD PARTY
performer
1934
THE LIVE GHOST
performer
1934
OLIVER THE EIGHTH
performer
1934
THEM THAR HILLS performer
1935
BONNIE SCOTLAND
performer
1935
THE FIXER UPPERS
performer
1935
THICKER THAN WATER performer
1935
TIT FOR TATperformer
1936
THE BOHEMIAN GIRL
performer
1936
ON THE WRONG TREK
performer— cameos in Charlie Chase comedy
1936
OUR RELATIONS
producer— also produced by Laurel, performer--also produced
by Laurel
1937
PICK A STAR/MOVIE STRUCK
performer
1937
WAY OUT WEST
producer— also produced by Laurel, performer--also produced
by Laurel
1938
BLOCK-HEADS
performer
1938
SWISS MISS performer
1939
THE FLYING DEUCES/FLYING ACES
performer
1940
A CHUMP AT OXFORD
performer
1940
SAPS AT SEA
performer
1941
GREAT GUNS
performer
1942
A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO
performer
1943
AIR RAID WARDENS
performer
1943
THE DANCING MASTERS performer
1943
JITTERBUGS performer
1943
THE TREE IN A TEST TUBE
performer
1944
THE BIG NOISE
performer
1944
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE performer
1945
THE BULLFIGHTERS
performer
1950
UTOPIA/ATOLL K/ROBINSON CRUSOELAND performer
1957
THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMEDY performer
1960
WHEN COMEDY WAS KING
performer
1963
30 YEARS OF FUN performer
5
Charles Chaplin (1889 - 1977)
James Agee wrote that "the finest pantomime, the deepest emotion, the richest and most
poignant poetry were in Chaplin's work." Andrew Sarris called Chaplin "the single most
important artist produced by the cinema, certainly its most extraordinary performer, and
probably still its most universal icon." In a career spanning half a century, the soaring flicker
of the Chaplin myth has been immense, enveloping both the cinema and world culture in its
glow.
Chaplin's childhood was marked by wretched poverty, hunger, cruelty and loneliness—
subjects which became major themes in his silent comedies. Born in London to music hall
entertainers, the young Chaplin saw his father die of alcoholism and his mother go insane,
forcing him and his brother Sydney into a succession of workhouses. His escape from
grueling poverty was through the theater, where by the age of 16 he was playing the featured
role of Billy in William Gillette's West End production of Sherlock Holmes (1905). At the
prompting of his brother, Chaplin secured a spot in Fred Karno's music hall revue, appearing
as a drunk in "A Night in the English Music Hall" and in the sketches "Mummingbirds"
and "Harlequinade in Black and White." While the Karno troupe was touring the US, Chaplin
was spotted by film producer Mack Sennett and signed to his Keystone Company.
Chaplin's performances drew on the pantomime traditions of the French and British music
halls—a style decisively out of place in the mechanized world of Sennett, who ran his studio
with production-line efficiency, churning out two films a week and allowing no more than ten
camera setups per film. For an actor used to refining a set character night after night with the
Karno company, the Sennett style was a loud slap in the face.
In his first film for Sennett, MAKING A LIVING (1914), Chaplin played a boulevard roué
in the finicky Max Linder manner. But in KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE (1914) and
MABEL'S STRANGE PREDICAMENT (1914), Chaplin emerged in his emblematic costume
(influenced by Dan Leno and Fred Kitchen from his Karno days) of baggy pants, decrepit
shoes on the wrong feet, carefully trimmed moustache, cane and dirty derby hat, moving with
a gait and manner contrary to his slovenly appearance.
KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE demonstrated Chaplin's uncanny ability to communicate
with his audience. As Sennett's comic buffoons mugged on the sidelines of a kiddie car
race, Chaplin held the camera with his gaze. By his thirteenth film, CAUGHT IN THE
RAIN (1914), Chaplin had begun to direct himself, and the fissure between the Sennett and
Chaplin styles was beginning to widen. Chaplin began to move the camera closer than Sennett
permitted, allowing his costume to function as an extension of character rather than a simple
jester's emblem. Chaplin brought to the frenetic Keystone world a comedy of emotions, an
ability to convey thoughts and feelings more in line with a Lillian Gish than a Ford Sterling
or Ben Turpin. He also slowed the breakneck Keystone pace, reducing the number of gags per
film and increasing the time devoted to each.
Within a year, Chaplin had revolutionized film comedy, transforming it from the rag-tag
knockabout farces of Sennett into an art form by introducing characterization, mime and
slapstick pathos. As a director, Chaplin rebelled against the montage technique of Griffith; he
introduced, in André Bazin's words, a "comedy of space" in which the Tramp interacted with
other objects in the mise-en-scčne and reconstructed them through his presence. Chaplin's
subtle and reflective acting techniques also radically changed the notion of film performance,
allowing action to be motivated through character rather than through some exterior force.
Thanks to Chaplin, comedy began to be centered on the performer as opposed to the events
which befall him or her—an emphasis on character which paved the way for the subsequent
achievements of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon and Stan Laurel.
But it was the public, most of all, who transformed Chaplin from a star into a mythic figure.
By 1915 he was a household word. Cartoons, poems and comic strips under the Chaplin name
appeared in newspapers. Chaplin dolls, toys and books were manufactured. While the public
eagerly awaited the release of the next Chaplin production, pretenders to the throne raced in,
comics like Lloyd, Billy West, Billy Ritchie and even someone who billed himself as Charlie
Alpin.
Chaplin took advantage of his fame to consolidate control over his career and Tramp
character. The years 1915-25 not only marked the period of his greatest popularity, but
the time in which Chaplin, bucking the newly formed studio system, held his own as an
independent filmmaker. His spiraling salaries reflected both his popularity and his artistic
freedom. After leaving Sennett, where he had begun at $150 a week, Chaplin signed with
Essanay Studios at a salary of $1250 per week. By 1918, Chaplin's fame led to film's first
million-dollar contract, with First National, which also agreed to build a studio for him.
At Essanay, Chaplin began to assemble his stock company and, with the emergence of Edna
Purviance as his leading lady, introduced an element of sentimentality and gentlemanly
respect into his films. The Sennett knockabout factor was still a dominant ingredient, but
it was tempered with humanity and the gags featured a degree of experimentation. With
THE BANK (1915) and THE TRAMP (1915), Chaplin introduced a new comic twist—the
unhappy ending. In THE TRAMP, Chaplin for the first time exits the film alone, with a kick
of the feet and a twirl of the cane, down a deserted road.
Chaplin's twelve Mutual films of 1916 and 1917 rank among his greatest achievements.
ONE A.M. (1916), THE PAWNSHOP (1916), BEHIND THE SCREEN (1916), THE RINK
(1916), EASY STREET (1917), THE CURE (1917), THE IMMIGRANT (1917) and THE
ADVENTURER (1917) all revealed a master at work, with mime and satire, sentimentality
and slapstick all stitched into a seamless whole.
In such First National films as A DOG'S LIFE (1918), SHOULDER ARMS (1918) and THE
PILGRIM (1923), Chaplin took his first serious steps toward feature-length comedy. THE
KID (1921), expanded from a planned three-reeler, proved that the Chaplin persona could
sustain his comic appeal for the duration of a feature-length film, broadening the parameters
of screen comedy and paving the way for the works of Lloyd and Keaton.
In 1919, Chaplin (along with fellow stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and director
D.W. Griffith) formed United Artists as a vehicle for distributing their films without studio
interference. Chaplin's first United Artists production was the atypical A WOMAN OF
PARIS (1923), a comedy of manners and the swan song for Chaplin's costar Edna Purviance.
He appeared in the film only in a cameo role and it was his first financial failure (although it
proved to be an influence on Ernst Lubitsch, who adapted its understatement and ellipses for
his 1924 film THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE).
With THE GOLD RUSH (1925), Chaplin basked once again in the public's adulation. By this
time, however, his output had begun to slow as he assiduously refined his art, subjecting his
comic persona to an increasingly microscopic scrutiny. THE CIRCUS (1928) investigates the
nature of comedy and audience acceptance. CITY LIGHTS (1931) is a chamber study musing
on the fine line between comedy and tragedy, as well as a deification of the Tramp character.
In MODERN TIMES (1936) Chaplin bid farewell to the Tramp, leaving society in satirical
ruins and again walking into the sunrise, but this time with a street urchin in tow.
The look of Chaplin's films also changed during this period. In what may have been a
response to a series of emotionally draining scandals, Chaplin had increasingly restricted his
productions to the studio; the settings consequently took on an otherworldly look in a kind of
retreat from the reality of 1930s America. His sentimentality had also become laced with dark
strains of cynicism and hopelessness. ("An old tramp is not funny," he once explained.)
The startling transformation of Chaplin into the murderous MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947)
turned his once adoring public against him. Finally, in 1952, amid an atmosphere of Red-
baiting hysteria, Chaplin, who had never become an American citizen, found his re-entry
permit to the US revoked after he had attended the London premiere of LIMELIGHT (1952).
Public reaction against Chaplin was so rabid that A KING IN NEW YORK (1957), a gentle
satire on American consumerism and political paranoia, remained unreleased in the United
States until 1976. Chaplin's last film, A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (1967), proved
to be a sadly anachronistic farce more appropriate to the 1930s and totally out of place in a
cinematic era that included WEEKEND, BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE.
Chaplin was the subject of Richard Attenborough's affectionate biographical film, CHAPLIN
(1992), in which Robert Downey, Jr. gave a remarkably convincing performance in the
demanding title role.
1914
BETWEEN SHOWERS
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
A BUSY DAY
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
CAUGHT IN A CABARET director, screenwriter, performer
1914
CAUGHT IN THE RAIN
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
CRUEL, CRUEL LOVE
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
DOUGH AND DYNAMITE director, performer
1914
THE FACE ON THE BARROOM FLOOR director, screenwriter, performer
1914
THE FATAL MALLET
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
A FILM JOHNNIE
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
GENTLEMEN OF NERVE director, screenwriter, performer
1914
GETTING ACQUAINTED director, screenwriter, performer
1914
HER FRIEND THE BANDIT
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
HIS FAVORITE PASTIME uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
HIS MUSICAL CAREER
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
HIS NEW PROFESSION
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
HIS PREHISTORIC PAST
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
HIS TRYSTING PLACE
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
THE KNOCKOUT
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
LAUGHING GAS
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
MABEL AT THE WHEEL
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
MABEL'S BUSY DAY
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE director, screenwriter, performer
1914
MABEL'S STRANGE PREDICAMENT
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
MAKING A LIVING uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
THE MASQUERADER
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
THE NEW JANITOR director, screenwriter, performer
1914
THE PROPERTY MAN
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
RECREATION
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
THE ROUNDERS
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
THE STAR BOARDER
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
TANGO TANGLES uncredited screenwriter, performer
1914
THOSE LOVE PANGS
director, screenwriter, performer
1914
TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE
performer
1914
TWENTY MINUTES OF LOVE
uncredited screenwriter, performer
1915
THE BANK
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
BY THE SEA director, screenwriter, performer
1915
THE CHAMPION
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
HIS NEW JOB
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
HIS REGENERATION
performer
1915
IN THE PARK
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
A JITNEY ELOPEMENT
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
A NIGHT IN THE SHOW
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
A NIGHT OUT
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
SHANGHAIED
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
THE TRAMP director, screenwriter, performer
1915
A WOMAN
director, screenwriter, performer
1915
WORK
director, screenwriter, performer
1916
BEHIND THE SCREEN
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1916
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S BURLESQUE ON CARMEN
director, screenwriter,
performer
1916
THE COUNT director, screenwriter, performer
1916
THE FIREMAN
director, screenwriter, performer
1916
THE FLOORWALKER
director, screenwriter, performer
1916
ONE A.M.
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1916
THE PAWNSHOP
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1916
POLICE!
director, screenwriter, performer
1916
THE RINK
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1916
THE VAGABOND
director, screenwriter, performer
1917
THE ADVENTURERdirector, screenwriter, performer
1917
THE CURE
director, screenwriter, performer
1917
EASY STREET
director, screenwriter, performer
1917
THE IMMIGRANT
director, screenwriter, performer
1918
THE BOND
director, screenwriter, performer
1918
A DOG'S LIFE
director, screenwriter, performer
1918
SHOULDER ARMS director, screenwriter, performer
1919
A DAY'S PLEASURE
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1919
SUNNYSIDE producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE IDLE CLASS
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE KID
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1921
THE NUT
performer
1922
NICE AND FRIENDLY
director, screenwriter, performer
1922
PAY DAY
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1923
THE PILGRIM
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1923
SOULS FOR SALE performer
1923
A WOMAN OF PARIS
producer, director, screenwriter, music, performer
1925
THE GOLD RUSH
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1926
A WOMAN OF THE SEA
producer, idea
1928
THE CIRCUS producer, director, screenwriter, editor, performer
1928
SHOW PEOPLE
performer
1931
CITY LIGHTS
producer, director, editor, performer
1932
CHASE ME CHARLIE
performer
1936
MODERN TIMES
producer, director, screenwriter, composer, performer
1938
CHARLIE CHAPLIN CARNIVAL producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1938
CHARLIE CHAPLIN CAVALCADE
producer, director, screenwriter,
performer
1938
CHARLIE CHAPLIN FESTIVAL
director, screenwriter, performer
1940
THE GREAT DICTATOR
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1947
MONSIEUR VERDOUX
producer, director, screenwriter, composer, performer
1952
LIMELIGHT producer, director, story, choreography, performer
1955
GASLIGHT FOLLIES
performer
1957
A KING IN NEW YORK
producer, director, screenwriter, composer, performer
1958
THE CHAPLIN REVUE
producer, director, screenwriter, performer
1960
WHEN COMEDY WAS KING
performer
1963
30 YEARS OF FUN performer
1967
A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG
executive producer, director,
screenwriter, music, song, performer
1972
CHAPLINESQUE, MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES performer
1975
SMILE
composer
1976
IT'S SHOWTIME
performer
6
Fritz Lang (1890 - 1976)
HUMAN DESIRE (1954), made during Fritz Lang's last decade as a film director, begins
with an emblematic image: a locomotive rushes forward, swift and dynamic, but locked to the
tracks, its path fixed, its destination visible. Like Lang's films the train and the tracks speak of
a world of narrowly defined choices. The closing image is even more severe: survivor Glenn
Ford departs, his locomotive passing a sign on a bridge. Ford does not see the sign, but we
do; abbreviated by intervening beams we suddenly see "The world takes" just before the film
ends.
This vision of a hostile universe, constraints on freedom and messages that are missed or
misunderstood but always seen by someone, can be found in all of Fritz Lang's films. His
work has a consistency and a richness that are unique in world cinema. In Germany, in
France, in Hollywood, then in Germany again, Lang built genre worlds for producers and
audiences and veiled meditations on human experience for himself.
Lang's vision is that of the outsider. James Baldwin, an outsider himself, catches
Lang's "concern, or obsession … with the fact and effect of human loneliness, and the ways
in which we are all responsible for the creation, and the fate, of the isolated…" Born an
Austrian, Lang fled his training as an architect for a jaunt through the middle and far east,
returned to Paris just in time for the beginning of WWI, then fought on the losing side of the
war. Recovering from wounds which cost him the sight in his right eye, Lang wrote his first
scenarios: a werewolf story which found no buyers, and WEDDING IN THE ECCENTRIC
CLUB and HILDE WARREN AND DEATH, which were sold and eventually produced by
Joe May. May's deviations from Lang's scripts motivated Lang to become a director himself;
his first movie was HALBBLUT (1919)/THE HALF-CASTE, a still-lost film about the
revenge of a half-Mexican mistress. Later that year he directed the first film of a two-part
international thriller called THE SPIDERS (1919)/DIE SPINNEN. Part one, subtitled THE
GOLDEN LAKE, proved so popular that his producers insisted Lang immediately make part
two, THE DIAMOND SHIP. He had been working on another script which he hoped to film,
so he reluctantly gave up THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) to Robert Wiene. His
contribution to that landmark film nevertheless was crucial: Lang thought up the framing
device, in which it is revealed at the story's end that we have been watching a tale told by a
madman, thus significantly undercutting the audience's perceptions of the story.
Lang's career in the 1920s was one of spectacular rise to fame. With each film, he became
more assured, garnering critical acclaim as well as a popular following. DR. MABUSE: DER
SPIELER (THE GAMBLER) (1922), DIE NIBELUNGEN (1924), METROPOLIS (1926),
and SPIES (1928) are among the greatest silent films produced anywhere. Lang also made
a remarkable transtition to sound, with M (1931), but he ran afoul of Nazi authorities with
THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933)/DAS TESTAMENT DES DR. MABUSE/
THE LAST WILL OF DR. MABUSE, whose villains mouthed Nazi propaganda. When the
film was banned and Lang was requested to make films for the cause of the Third Reich, he
immediately fled Germany, leaving behind most of his personal possessions, as well as his
wife, screenwriter Thea Von Harbou (who had joined the Nazi party and become an official
screenwriter).
Lang made one film in France, then moved on to Hollywood, where he spent the next 20
years working in a variety of genres, mainly thrillers (e.g. MAN HUNT, 1941, SCARLET
STREET, 1945, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, 1956) and some outstanding westerns (THE
RETURN OF FRANK JAMES, 1940, RANCHO NOTORIOUS, 1952). Tired of warring
with insensitive producers, Lang left the US in the mid-50s to make a film in India and then
returned to Germany for his last set of films, including a final chapter in the Dr. Mabuse saga.
The disorienting frame in CALIGARI is an important part of Lang's distinctive vision. His
films are punctuated by shifts of viewpoint and discoveries which transform the reactions of
his characters—and of his audience. The most obvious of these shifts of viewpoint come in
CALIGARI and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944), in which the drama is suddenly
revealed to be a dream. But they also occur in the Mabuse films; in M, with the policeman
mistaken by a burglar for another thief; and in THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER (1950), when a
servant is strangled because another maid appears to be responding to her cries for help.
Lang's films are also about contingency, the recognition that extra-personal forces mold our
lives, shape our destiny in ways we cannot predict and only somewhat modify. In the two-
part film, DIE NIBELUNGEN, Kriemhild is transformed from a secondary figure in the first
film (SIEGFRIED) into a whirlwind of fury in the second (KRIEMHILD'S REVENGE).
Even the characters in the film are shaken by these transformations. The king of the Huns is
staggered by Kriemhild's thirst for death; the vengeful underworld in M that has captured and
tried Peter Lorre is taken aback by Lorre's confession that he "must" rape and murder, that he
is something of a spectator to his crimes.
These moments of perception are the foundation of Lang's importance and continuing strength
as a filmmaker. They constitute a kind of morality that he never abandoned. In the script for
LILIOM (1934), his French film made after he fled the Nazis, Lang wrote, "If death settled
everything it would be too easy… Where would justice be if death settled everything?" Thirty
years later, playing himself in Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (1963), Lang wrote for his
character, "La mort n'est pas une solution." ("Death is no solution.") Nor does death erase
human striving. In BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (1921)/DER MÜDE TOD/BEYOND THE
WALL/DESTINY the force of love survives, in FURY (1936) the cycle of vengeance is
broken, in CLASH BY NIGHT (1952) Barbara Stanwyck chooses reponsibility, in THE BIG
HEAT (1953) Glenn Ford finally turns to the police and ends his vendetta, and in HUMAN
DESIRE Ford again leaves the scene of the crime, choosing life over the locus of death.
1916
DIE PEITSCHE
screenwriter
1917
HILDE WARREN AND DEATH/HILDE WARREN UND DER TOD
director,
performer
1917
WEDDING IN THE ECCENTRIC CLUB/DIE HOCHZEIT IN EXZENTRIC-CLUB
uncredited screenwriter
1918
DIE BETTLER-G.M.B.H.
screenwriter
1918
DIE RACHE IST MEIN
screenwriter
1919
DER HERR DER LIEBE
director, performer
1919
DIE FRAU MIT DEN ORCHIDEENscreenwriter
1919
DIE PEST IN FLORENZ
screenwriter
1919
THE HALF CASTE/HALBBLUT
director, screenwriter
1919
HARAKIRI
director
1919
LILITH UND LY
screenwriter
1919
MISTRESS OF THE WORLD/DIE HERRIN DER WELT assistant director
1919
SPIDERS/DIE SPINNEN
director
1919
TOTENTANZscreenwriter
1919
WOLKENBAU UND FLIMMERSTERN
screenwriter
1920
DAS WANDERNDE BILD director, screenwriter
1921
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/DER MÜDE TOD/BEYOND THE WALL/DESTINY
director, screenwriter
1921
THE INDIAN TOMB/DAS INDISCHE GRABMAL
director
1921
VIER UM DIE FRAU
director, screenwriter
1922
DR. MABUSE, KING OF CRIME
director
1922
DR. MABUSE: DER SPIELER (THE GAMBLER)/DR. MABUSE DER SPIELER/
DR. MABUSE
director
1924
DIE NIBELUNGEN/KRIEMHILD'S REVENGE/SIEGFRIED
screenwriter
1924
DIE NIBELUNGEN/KRIEMHILD'S REVENGE/SIEGFRIED
director
1926
METROPOLIS
director, screenwriter
1928
SPIES/SPIONE
producer, screenwriter, story
1928
SPIES/SPIONE
director
1929
WOMAN IN THE MOON/DIE FRAU IM MOND/GIRL IN THE MOON/BY
ROCKET TO THE MOON
producer, director, co-screenwriter
1931
M
director, screenwriter
1933
THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE/DAS TESTAMENT DES DR. MABUSE/
THE LAST WILL OF DR. MABUSE/CRIMES OF DR. MABUSE
producer, director,
screenwriter
1934
LILIOM
director, screenwriter
1936
FURY director, screenwriter
1937
YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE
director
1938
YOU AND ME
producer, director
1940
THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES director
1941
MAN HUNT director
1941
WESTERN UNION director
1942
MOONTIDE director
1943
HANGMEN ALSO DIE
producer, director, adaptation, story
1944
MINISTRY OF FEAR
director
1944
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW director
1945
SCARLET STREET producer, director
1946
CLOAK AND DAGGER
director
1948
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR
producer, director
1950
AMERICAN GUERILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES director
1950
THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER
director
1951
M
from screenplay
1952
CLASH BY NIGHT director
1952
RANCHO NOTORIOUS
director
1953
THE BIG HEAT
director
1953
THE BLUE GARDENIA
director
1953
HOLLYWOOD GOES A-FISHIN'
performer
1954
HUMAN DESIRE
director
1955
MOONFLEET
director
1956
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
director
1956
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS director
1958
THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR/DER TIGER VON ESCHNAPUR/JOURNEY TO
THE LOST CITY/DAS INDISCHE GRABMAL
director, screenwriter
1959
THE INDIAN TOMB/DAS INDISCHE GRABMAL/JOURNEY TO THE LOST
CITY director
1960
THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE/DIE TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR.
MABUSE/DIABOLICAL DR. MABUSE/SECRET OF DR. MABUSE
producer, director,
screenwriter
1963
CONTEMPT/LE MEPRIS
performer
1964
BEGEGNUNG MIT FRITZ LANG performer
1972
75 YEARS OF CINEMA MUSEUM performer
F.W. Murnau (1888 - 1931)
F.W. Murnau's brief career remains an emblem of the darkly romantic Hollywood of the
1920s. Between 1919 and his death in 1931, he completed 22 films. Arriving in Hollywood
from Germany in 1926 with an "enviable reputation" based on THE LAST LAUGH (1924)
/DER LETZTE MANN and FAUST (1926), Murnau immediately began to run afoul of the
developing studio system as he started a five-picture contract with Fox Film. In February
1929, as he was completing the third film (CITY GIRL), Fox severed the relationship.
Although SUNRISE (1927) had been a great success, FOUR DEVILS (1928) had failed to
match it. With the coming of sound, and Murnau's contract scale increasing, Fox became
anxious about the work of this European artist and began to interfere with his projects.
Like so many Europeans in Hollywood at the time, he had come to the new world to
harness the enticing technical apparatus of the Hollywood studio system, and, he declared,
to make "finer films with an international appeal." But more than most of his compatriots,
Murnau failed at the politics of Hollywood. His untimely accidental death marked the end of
an era, completing the myth of the romantic artist destroyed by the "well-meaning cruelty of a
mighty industry," as one critic described it.
Murnau had first attracted attention after WWI as an exponent of the German expressionist
style which evoked the instability, disorientation and despair of the period. His films deal with
universal themes of human frailty, decline, self-conflict and redemption in a tragic world.
His characters struggle to find psychological peace and self-revelation, external love and
commitment. Like much of the best in silent film, it is a Victorian world.
Since only a few of Murnau's films made in 1919 and 1920 exist, it is difficult to establish
a thematic framework before NOSFERATU (1922). Lotte Eisner's description of Murnau's
first film, THE BLUE BOY (1919)/DER KNABE IN BLAU, indicates that the protagonist's
obsessive quest for a cursed family jewel leads to tragedy, meliorated finally by a woman's
love. From the melodramatic plot twists of JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT (1920)/DER
GANG IN DIE NACHT emerges a failed quest to capture a love.
In NOSFERATU (1922), Jonathan's quest to contain external evil fails; he realizes that the
evil within himself is the cause. Nora, his wife, must sacrifice herself to redeem mankind.
In THE LAST LAUGH a proud doorman is stripped of status and self-esteem, reduced to
a lavatory attendant. Murnau transforms this simple drama into a psychological quest for
self-integrity. The quest of FAUST, on the other hand, is for world redemption. He must fall
from grace and experience his own internal demon before realizing a potential for love and
sacrifice.
In SUNRISE Murnau builds a "city from nowhere," a universal setting. The film abounds
with dramatic oppositions: family versus illicit love; life versus death; urban civilization
versus nature. The husband in SUNRISE finds internal salvation by returning to the
commitment of a relationship and the sanctuary of marriage.
For Murnau, the natural world is as passionate and volatile as his characters. In
NOSFERATU, darkness struggles with light. In SUNRISE, the violent storm leads to
resolution. In CITY GIRL, a hailstorm almost destroys the family but also acts as a catalyst
for self-realization.
If natural elements are characters for Murnau, so is the camera. Few other filmmakers of the
1920s revel so in mise-en-scčne. The opening title of FAUST announces a "poem in pictures."
(Murnau generally disdained intertitles, claiming, "I'd do away with all film titles. They are
really unnecessary if the continuity runs smoothly.") In THE LAST LAUGH, CITY GIRL
and SUNRISE the characters are constricted within a cramped frame which conveys the harsh
social reality of their lives. The continuously gliding camera of THE LAST LAUGH captures
the silent dignity, joyous abandon, and—finally—internal torment of the doorman.
Murnau's camera finds its most eloquent expression in SUNRISE. Camera movement entraps
characters, intensifying conflict. The great tracking shot on the tram, as the husband and wife
enter the city, remains a subject of study for student filmmakers even today.
1919
THE BLUE BOY/DER KNABE IN BLAU director
1919
SATANAS
director
1920
THE HUNCHBACK AND THE DANCER/DER BUCKLIGE UND DIE TÄNZERIN
director
1920
THE JANUS HEAD/DER JANUSKOPF
director
1920
JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT/DER GANG IN DIE NACHT
director
1920
LONGING/SEHNSUCHT
director
1921
THE HAUNTED CASTLE/SCHLOSS VOGELÖD director
1921
MARIZZA, CALLED THE SMUGGLERS' MADONNA/MARIZZA, GENNANT
DIE SCHMUGGLERMADONNA
director
1922
BURNING SOIL/DER BRENNENDE ACKER
director
1922
NOSFERATU/NOSFERATU—EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS/NOSFERATU
THE VAMPIRE
director
1922
PHANTOM
director
1923
THE EXPULSION/DIE AUSTREIBUNG—DIE MACHT DER ZWEITEN FRAU
director
1923
THE GRAND DUKE'S FINANCES/DIE FINANZEN DES GROSSHERZOGS
director
1924
THE LAST LAUGH/DER LETZTE MANNdirector
1925
TARTUFFE/TARTÜFF
director
1926
FAUST
director
1927
SUNRISE
director
1928
FOUR DEVILS
director
1930
CITY GIRL
producer, director
1931
TABU director,
7
Yakov Protazanov (1881 - 1945)
A prolific, energetic, sure-handed filmmaker, he began his career in 1905 as an actor, then
directed more than 40 Russian films between 1909 and 1917. Many of these were grand-scale
historical panoramas and literary adaptations, often starring Ivan Mozhukhin. Protazanov
continued his activity in Soviet films during and after the October Revolution with the
exception of the early 20s, which he spent working in France. His AELITA (1924) is the
Soviet cinema's first science fiction film.
1909
THE DEATH OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE
director
1909
THE FOUNTAIN OF BAKHCHISRAI
director
1910
A NIGHT IN MAY
director
1911
THE PRISONER'S SONG
director
1912
ANFISA
director
1912
DEPARTURE OF A GRAND OLD MAN
director
1913
A CHOPIN NOCTURNE
director
1913
HONORING THE RUSSIAN FLAGdirector
1913
HOW FINE HOW FRESH THE ROSES WERE
director
1913
KEYS TO HAPPINESS
co-director
1913
THE SHATTERED VASE
director
1914
DANCE OF THE VAMPIREdirector
1914
GUARDIAN OF VIRTUE
director
1914
LOVE director
1915
THE DEVIL director
1915
NIKOLAI STAVROGIN
director
1915
PLEBEIAN
director
1915
SIN
co-director
1915
WAR AND PEACE co-director
1916
HOUSE OF DEATH director
1916
THE QUEEN OF SPADES/PIKOVAYA DAMA
director
1916
WOMAN WITH A DAGGER
director
1917
ANDREI KOZHUKHOV
director
1917
DAMNED MILLIONS
director
1917
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR
director
1917
SATAN TRIUMPHANT
director
1918
FATHER SERGIUS/OTETS SERGEY
director
1918
PARASITES OF LIFE
director
1919
THE BLACK HORDE
director
1919
THE QUEEN'S SECRET
director
1920
MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
director
1921
JUSTICE D'ABORD director
1922
LE SENS DE LA MORT
director
1923
L'OMBRE DU PÉCHÉ
director
1923
POUR UNE NUIT D'AMOUR
director
1924
AELITA
director
1925
HIS CALL/BROKEN CHAINS
director
1926
THREE THIEVES/THE CASE OF THE THREE MILLION
director
1927
THE FORTY-FIRST director
1927
THE MAN FROM THE RESTAURANT
director
1928
THE LASH OF THE CZAR/THE WHITE EAGLE director
1929
AN HOUR WITH CHEKHOV/RANKS AND PEOPLE
director
1930
HOLIDAY OF ST. JORGEN director
1930
THREE THIEVES
director
1931
SIBERIAN PATROL/TOMMY
director
1934
MARIONETTES
director
1937
WITHOUT DOWRY director
1941
SALAVAT YULAYEV
director
1943
ADVENTURES IN BOKHARA/NASREDDIN IN BUKHARA
director
Dziga Vertov (1896 - 1954)
Dziga Vertov was born as Denis Abramovich (later changed to Arkadievich) Kaufman to a
Jewish book-dealer's family. His younger brothers, renowned Soviet documentary filmmaker
Mikhail Kaufman and cameraman Boris Kaufman, would later establish their own niches
in film history. As a child he studied piano and violin, and at the age of ten began to write
poetry; Vertov's films would reflect these early interests.
After WWI started the Kaufman family fled to Moscow. In 1916 Vertov enrolled in Petrograd
Psychoneurological Institute. For his studies of human perception, he recorded and edited
natural sounds in his "Laboratory of Hearing," trying to create new sound effects by means of
rhythmic grouping of phonetic units. Familiar with the Russian Futurist movement, he took
on the pseudonym "Dziga Vertov" (loosely translated as "spinning top"). In 1918 Mikhail
Koltstov, who headed Moscow Film Committee's newsreel section, hired Vertov as his
assistant. Among Vertov's colleagues were Lev Kuleshov, who was conducting his legendary
montage experiments, and Edouard Tissé, Eisenstein's future cameraman. Vertov would recall
later that they were most strongly influenced by Griffith's INTOLERANCE.
Vertov began to edit documentary footage and soon was appointed editor of Kinonedelya, the
first Soviet weekly newsreel. His first film as a director was THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE
REVOLUTION (1919), followed by two shorts, BATTLE OF TSARITSYN (1920) and THE
AGIT-TRAIN VTSIK (1921), and the thirteen-reel HISTORY OF CIVIL WAR (1922). In
editing those documentaries, Vertov was discovering the possibilities of montage. He began
joining pieces of film without regard for chronology or location to achieve an expressiveness
which would politically engage the viewers.
In 1919 Vertov and his future wife, the talented film editor Elisaveta Svilova, plus several
other young filmmakers created a group called Kinoks ("kino-oki," meaning cinema-eyes).
In 1922 they were joined by Mikhail Kaufman, who had just returned from the civil war.
From 1922 to 1923 Vertov, Kaufman, and Svilova published a number of manifestos in avant-
garde journals which clarified the Kinoks' positions vis-á-vis other leftist groups. The Kinoks
rejected "staged" cinema with its stars, plots, props and studio shooting. They insisted that the
cinema of the future be the cinema of fact: newsreels recording the real world, "life caught
unawares." Vertov proclaimed the primacy of camera ("Kino-Eye") over the human eye.
The camera lens was a machine that could be perfected infinitely to grasp the world in its
entirety and organize visual chaos into a coherent, objective picture. At the same time Vertov
emphasized that his Kino-Eye principle was a method of "communist" deciphering of the
world. For Vertov there was no contradiction here; as a true believer he considered Marxism
the only objective and scientific tool of analysis and even called a series of the 23 newreels he
directed between 1922 and 1925 Kino-Pravda, "pravda" being not only the Russian word for
the truth but also the title of the official party newspaper.
Nevertheless, Vertov's films weren't mere propoganda. Created from documentary footage,
they represented an intricate blend of art and rhetoric, achieved with a sophistication that,
among Vertov's contemporaries, would be rivaled only by Leni Riefenstahl. Vertov's
achievement was also his tragedy. He considered his films documentaries, but they also
strongly reflected his personal, highly emotional poetic vision of Soviet reality, a vision he
maintained throughout his life. As early as the mid-1920s Vertov was arousing suspicion
from party authorities with his utopian and ecstatic cine-tracts and his pioneering techniques,
including slow and reverse motion, "candid camera" tricks, bizarre angles, shooting in
motion, split screens and multiple superimpositions, the inventive use of still photography,
constructivist graphics, animation and most importantly rapid montage that sometimes
consisted of only several frames. All these advances also left the masses indifferent. Among
filmmakers Vertov acquired the reputation of an eccentric, an extremist who rejected
everything in cinema except for the Kinoks' work. Fortunately Vertov, like Eisenstein,
received the support of the influential European avant-garde. His feature-length KINO-
EYE—LIFE CAUGHT UNAWARES (1924) was awarded a silver medal and honorary
diploma at the World Exhibit in Paris, and that success led to two more films commissioned
by Moscow: STRIDE, SOVIET! (1926) and A SIXTH OF THE WORLD (1926).
By now, the central authorities were fed up with Vertov's formal experimenting, and they
refused to support his most ambitious project, THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
(1929). To make the film, Vertov had to accept the invitation of the film studio VUFKU in the
Ukraine, where he moved with Svilova and Kaufman. These changes resulted in the collapse
of the Kinoks group and by the time the project was finally realized there were already several
similar "city symphonies" completed by such innovative filmmakers as Alberto Cavalcanti
(in Paris), Mikhail Kaufman (in Moscow) and Walter Ruttmann (in Berlin). Then too,
Vertov's youngest brother Boris Kaufman, who lived in France, was about to start shooting A
PROPOS DE NICE for Jean Vigo. However, Vertov's film was significantly different from
its brethren: its goal was not only to present a mosaic of the life of a city (a combination of
Kiev, Moscow and Odessa) by use of the most advanced cinematic means, but also to engage
spectators in theoretical discourse on the relationship between film and reality, on the nature
of cinematic language and human perception.
In so doing Vertov was at least 30 years ahead of his time: his ideas of the self-reflective
cinema, of the viewer identifying himself with the filmmaking process, would reemerge only
at the end of the fifties in the work of Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Snow and
Stan Brakhage. But in 1929, when THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA was publicly
released, it was too obscure, even for Eisenstein. Mikhail Kaufman was also dissatisfied by
the final version of the film and it marked the end of his collaboration with Vertov.
In the transition to sound Vertov outstripped Eisenstein and most of the other silent cinema
masters. He was prepared for the sound revolution because of his early experiments with
noise recording, and in A SIXTH OF THE WORLD he had even discovered substitutes for
the human voice: by using various prints in his intertitles and by rhythmically alternating
the phrases with images, Vertov achieved the illusion of off-screen narration. His first sound
picture, ENTHUSIASM: DONBASS SYMPHONY (1931), was an instant success abroad;
Chaplin wrote that he had never imagined that industrial sounds could be organized in such a
beautiful way and named ENTHUSIASM the best film of the year. Yet at home it was widely
ridiculed as cacophony, in spite of its ideological fervor. Vertov's next film, THREE SONGS
OF LENIN (1934), made in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Lenin's death,
had to wait six months for its official release, allegedly because it had failed to emphasize
the "important role" of Stalin in the Russian Revolution. Subsequently, the proper footage
was added. In spite of these complications, the film turned out to be a popular success both at
home and abroad. Even those who had little reason to adore Lenin couldn't help praising the
overall elegance of its structure, the elegiac fluidity of montage, the lyrical inner monologue
and the highly expressive and technologically innovative synchronous sound shots of people
talking.
In spite of such success, by the end of the 1930s Vertov was deprived of any serious
independent work. He was not persecuted, like many of his avant-garde friends; he lived for
almost 20 years in obscurity, editing conventional newsreels, the same kind of films he had
once proven so capable of transforming into art.
Six years after his death, French documentary filmmakers Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin
adopted Vertov's theory and practice into their method of cinéma vérité. In recent years
Vertov's heritage of poetic documentary has influenced many young filmmakers all over
the world. In 1962 the first Soviet monograph on Vertov was published, followed by Dziga
Vertov: Articles, Diaries, Projects, which was published in English as Kino-Eye, The
Writings of Dziga Vertov. In 1984, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Vertov's
death, three New York organizations—Anthology Film Archives, the Collective for Living
Cinema and Joseph Papp's Film at the Public—mounted the first American retrospective of
Vertov's work, with panels and lectures by leading Vertov scholars and screenings of films by
Vertov's contemporaries and his followers from all over the world.
1919
ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION/GODOUSCHINE REVOLYUTSII
director
1919
CINEMA WEEK/KINO-NEDELYA director
1922
HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR/ISTORIYA GRAZHDANSKOY VOYNY
director
1924
KINO-EYE—LIFE CAUGHT UNAWARES/KINO-GLAZdirector
1925
CINEMA-TRUTH/KINO-PRAVDA director
1926
A SIXTH OF THE WORLD/SHESTAYA CHAST MIRA director
1926
STRIDE, SOVIET/SHAGAI, SOVIET
director
1928
THE ELEVENTH YEAR/ODINNADTSATYI
director
1929
THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA/CHELOVEK S KINOAPPARATOM
director
1931
ENTHUSIASM: DONBASS SYMPHONY/ENTUZIASM: SIMFONIYA DONBASA
director
1934
THREE SONGS OF LENIN/TRI PESNI O LENINE
director
1937
LULLABY/KOLIBELNAYA
director
1937
SERGE ORDJONIKIDZE
director
1938
THREE HEROINES/TRI GEROINI director
1954
NEWS OF THE DAY/NOVOSTNI DNIA director
Lev Kuleshov (1899 - 1970)
Undeservedly overlooked by film historians, Lev Kuleshov was the first theorist of Soviet
cinema whose experiments with juxtaposing the face of an actor and various other images
revealed the impact of montage. Pudovkin and Eisenstein have often been credited with
this discovery, although their own testimony shows they credited Kuleshov, who was their
teacher.
In 1917, just before the Revolution, the 18-year-old Kuleshov made his first short film,
THE PROJECT OF ENGINEER PRITE, and published his first articles which reflected an
expressionistic vision, comparable to that of German filmmakers, and exceptionally advanced
for the relatively primitive state of Russian cinema. His radical aesthetics suited the leaders of
the Revolution and he was dispatched to lead a corps of cameramen on the eastern front.
In peacetime Moscow, Kuleshov joined the faculty of the First State Film School, only to
be sent to the western front to document a Polish uprising. These experiences informed ON
THE RED FRONT (1920), but the style of the film owed a great deal to American chase
films and D.W. Griffith, whose INTOLERANCE exerted a strong influence on Kuleshov
and his teaching. These American enthusiasms would eventually cause Kuleshov political
problems, particularly after BY THE LAW (1926), adapted from a Jack London story about
the Klondike gold rush.
Meanwhile, however, Kuleshov's famous "films without film" workshops, held from
1920 to 1923, prepared filmmakers for the days when they could obtain raw stock to put
in their empty cameras. Kuleshov's next important work was THE EXTRAORDINARY
ADVENTURES OF MR. WEST IN THE LAND OF THE BOLSHEVIKS (1924), a comedy
about an American confused and exploited by Revolutionaries. A steady output of films, THE
DEATH RAY (1925), BY THE LAW, THE JOURNALIST (1927), THE GAY CANARY
(1929), TWO-BULDI-TWO (1929) and FORTY HEARTS (1931), paralleled his career as a
gifted teacher, but his increasing emphasis on internationalism made him a target of Stalinists
in the 30s and his filmmaking career was temporarily halted in 1933.
In 1940, he was allowed to make THE SIBERIANS, followed by INCIDENT ON A
VOLCANO (1941), TIMOUR'S OATH (1942) and WE FROM THE URALS (1944),
but these were films with no particular appeal beyond the USSR. Kuleshov's considerable
importance to Soviet filmmaking, including the publication of his classic textbook on
direction (Fundamentals of Film Direction, 1941) was not acknowledged until 1960, when
film historian Jay Leyda published Kino, a reassessment of Soviet film history. With his
significance now recognized even in the West, Kuleshov was invited to sit on juries of film
festivals and attend retrospectives of his work.
1917
CHERNAIA TREX DNEI
art director
1917
KOROL PARIZHA
art director
1917
NABAT
art director
1917
TENI LIUBVIart director
1917
ZA SCHASTEM
director, art director, performer
1917
ZHIZN TREX DNEI art director
1918
MISS MERI
art director
1918
PESN'LIUBVI NEDOPETAIA
director, art director, performer
1918
THE PROJECT OF ENGINEER PRITE/PROEKT INZHENERA PRAITA
director, art director
1918
SLIAKOT BULVARNAIA art director
1918
VDOVA
art director
1920
ON THE RED FRONT/NA KRASNOM FRONTE director, screenwriter, performer
1924
THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MR. WEST IN THE LAND OF THE
BOLSHEVIKS/NEOBYCHAINYE PRIKLUCHENIYA MISTERA VESTA V STRANYA
BOLSHEVIKOV
director, screenwriter
1925
THE DEATH RAY/LUCH SMERTI director, performer
1926
BY THE LAW/PO ZAKONU
director
1926
PAROVOZ NO. 10006
director
1927
YOUR ACQUAINTANCE/ZHURNALISTA
director
1929
THE GAY CANARY/VESELAIA KANARAIKA director
1930
DVA-BULDI-DVA
director
1930
SASHA
screenwriter
1931
FORTY HEARTS/SOROKSERDETS
director
1932
GORIZONT director, screenwriter
1933
VELIKII UTESHITEL
director, screenwriter, art director
1934
DOHUNDA
director
1934
THEFT OF SIGHT
production supervisor
1940
SIBERIANS/SIBIRAKI
director
1941
INCIDENT IN A VOLCANO/SLUCHAI V VULKANE
director
1942
TIMOUR'S OATH/KLIATVA TIMURA
director
1943
BOEVOI KINOSBORNIK 13
director
1944
WE FROM THE URALS/MY S URALA
director
Sergei Eisenstein (1898 - 1948)
As a youth, Sergei Eisenstein attended the science-oriented Realschule, to prepare himself
for engineering school. However, he did find time for vigorous reading in Russian, German,
English and French, as well as drawing cartoons and performing in a children's theater troupe
which he founded. In 1915, he moved to Petrograd to continue his studies at the Institute of
Civil Engineering, his father's alma mater. On his own, he also studied Renaissance art and
attended avant-garde theater productions of Meyerhold and Yevreinov.
After the February 1917 Revolution, he sold his first political cartoons, signed Sir Gay, to
several magazines in Petrograd. He also served in the volunteer militia and in the engineering
corps of the Russian army. Although there is little record that Eisenstein was immediately
affected by the events of October 1917, in the spring of 1918 he did volunteer for the Red
Army. His father joined the Whites and subsequently emigrated. While in the military,
Eisenstein again managed to combine his service as a technician with study of theater,
philosophy, psychology and linguistics. He staged and performed in several productions, for
which he also designed sets and costumes.
In 1920 Eisenstein left the army for the General Staff Academy in Moscow where he joined
the First Workers' Theater of Proletcult as a scenic and costume designer. After he gained
fame from his innovative work on a production of The Mexican, adapted from a Jack
London story, Eisenstein enrolled in his idol Meyerhold's experimental theater workshop
and collaborated with several avant-garde theater groups, all of whom shared a mistrust
of traditional art forms and "high" culture in general. The new theater's contribution to the
revolutionary cause was to destroy the old art entirely and create a new, democratic one. The
young Soviet artists resorted to "low" culture—circus, music hall, sports, fair performances—
to educate the largely illiterate Russian masses in a "true" communist spirit.
Eisenstein's studies of commedia dell'arte paid off in his 1923 staging of The Sage, a huge
success not only as propaganda but also as sheer entertainment. For that production he made a
short comic film, GLUMOV'S DIARY (1923), a parody of newsreels whose hero's grotesque
metamorphoses anticipated the metaphors of STRIKE (1924), Eisenstein's first feature. But
even more important for his career as a filmmaker was the structure of The Sage. Eisenstein
took an old Ostrovsky play and reassembled it as a series of effective, circus-like attractions.
The assemblage of such shocking scenes, as he claimed in his 1923 manifesto, The Montage
of Attractions, would lead the public's attention in a direction planned by the "montageur."
Having studied the films of Griffith, Lev Kuleshov's montage experiments and Esfir Shub's
re-editing techniques, Eisenstein became convinced that in cinema one could manipulate time
and space to create new meanings, epecially if the images were not to be merely linked, as
Kuleshov suggested, but juxtaposed. Because at that time he believed that his duty as an artist
was to contribute to the forging of the new life for his country, Eisenstein eagerly embraced
the film medium as the most efficient tool of communist propaganda. However, as much as
STRIKE was a condemnation of czarism, it was also an innovative work of art. With this
film, an inexperienced director immediately caught up with the work of Soviet, German and
French avant-garde filmmakers. STRIKE is filled with expressionistic camera angles, mirror
reflections and visual metaphors. In a story of police spies, the camera itself turns into a spy,
a voyeur, a trickster. The film was the first full display of Eisenstein's bold new cinematic
grammar, a montage of conflicting shots that served as words and sentences endowed with the
maximum power of persuasion. Although his command of this new technique was shaky—
some sequences did not convey the intended message—STRIKE was a ground-breaking
accomplishment.
As Eisenstein's second film, the enormously successful and influential POTEMKIN (1925),
demonstrated, his art could be even more powerful when it achieved a balance between
experimental and traditional narrative forms. If STRIKE was an agitated visual poem arousing
emotions within a receptive audience, POTEMKIN, the fictionalized story of one of the tragic
episodes of the 1905 Russian revolution, was a work of prose, highly emotional but clear in
its logical, public speech. The close-ups of suffering human faces and the soldiers' boots in
the now legendary "Odessa steps" sequence carried such impact that some screenings of the
film outside the USSR provoked clashes with police when audiences were convinced they
were watching a newsreel.
Later in his career Eisenstein would compare the film director's art with the craft of a shaman.
But in the 20s he was trying hard to find a rational basis for it: in Bekhterv's reflexology, in
Russian formalist literary theory, in Marxist dialectics. As his films became more complex,
they raised the ire of the new breed of ideologues who called for art accessible to the
masses and flexible enough to illustrate the latest party line. However, Eisenstein was too
deeply involved with his personal research to follow everyday politics. Thus, OCTOBER,
commissioned for the tenth anniversary of the October revolution of 1917 was not released
until 1928; for one thing, all sequences featuring Trotsky, one of the leaders of the revolt, had
to be deleted. Then too, the authorities were disappointed with Eisenstein, for while the edited
OCTOBER was considered ideologically correct, its confusing structure and abundance of
abstract metaphors diminished it propagandistic message, and it did not carry the same impact
as POTEMKIN. Attacking him for the "sins of formalism," critics claimed that he "lost his
way in the corridors of the Winter Palace" and pointed to the more intelligible anniversary
films shot by his colleagues on more modest budgets and in less time. In a way, the critics
were correct; in none of his other films was Eisenstein's search for the new cinematic
language so radical.
After OCTOBER, Eisenstein was able to resume work that had been interrupted on THE
GENERAL LINE (1929), a film meant to demonstrate the advantages of collective labor in
the village. However, during the production of OCTOBER, the party policy toward peasantry
had drastically changed from persuasion to coercion, and the film's surrealistic imagery
and sophisticated montage, which anticipated Godard, were considered inappropriate.
Stalin summoned Eisenstein and his co-director Grigori Alexandrov and ordered them to
make radical changes. They made a few cuts and immediately embarked on a trip abroad
to investigate the new sound technology. With Eisenstein out of the country, the film was
released under the neutral title OLD AND NEW to vicious attacks. His claim that the film
was an experiment which could be understood by the millions was ridiculed as wishful
thinking; according to one of his critics, the public needed "simple, realistic pictures with
clear plot."
Meanwhile, Eisenstein's reception in Europe nurtured his opinion that he could be both avant-
garde artist and creator of popular and ideologically "correct" films. In every country he
visited he was hailed by radical students and intellectuals. He met with Joyce, Cocteau, Abel
Gance, Marinetti, Einstein, Le Corbusier, and Gertrude Stein, all of whom seemed excited
about his work. In May 1930 Eisenstein arrived in the United States, where he lectured at
several Ivy League schools before moving on to Hollywood, where he hoped to make a
film for Paramount. Although he was welcomed by leading Hollywood figures, including
Fairbanks, von Sternberg, Disney and especially Chaplin, who became his close friend, his
proposal for an adaptation of An American Tragedy was rejected as too complicated, as were
several other highly original projects.
Just before he left America, Eisenstein was encouraged by Robert Flaherty and Diego Rivera
to make a film about Mexico, and in December 1930, with funding from writer Upton
Sinclair, he began work on QUE VIVA MEXICO. This project, which promised to become
Eisenstein's most daring, took a tragic turn when Sinclair, caving in to pressures from his
family, who cited financial reasons, and Stalin, who was afraid that Eisenstein might defect,
cancelled the film with shooting almost finished. Although Eisenstein was told the footage
would be sent to Moscow for editing, he was never to see it again.
Upset over the loss of his footage and shocked at the differences in the political and cultural
climate that he noticed after three years abroad, he suffered a nervous breakdown. One after
another, his ideas for projects were bluntly rejected, and he became the target of intense
hostility from Boris Shumyatsky, the Soviet film industry chief whose objective was to create
a Stalinist Hollywood. With his bitter memories of commercial filmmaking and strong ties to
European modernism, Eisenstein could not make the switch to directing cheerful agitkas and
was thus perceived as a threat. He took an appointment to head the Direction Department at
the Moscow film school and became a devoted teacher and scholar. In January 1935, he was
villified at the All-Union Conference of Cinema Workers but eventually was allowed to start
working on his first sound film, BEZHIN MEADOW.
On this notorious project Eisenstein tried to create a universal tragedy out of the true story of
a young communist vigilante who informed on his father and was murdered in retaliation by
the victim's relatives. The authorities wanted to demonstrate that family ties should not be an
obstacle to carrying out one's duty—a theme common to Soviet and German cinema of the
time. Why Eisenstein agreed to deal with such dubious subject matter is not clear, but what
has been saved from the allegedly destroyed film suggests that he once again confounded
the Soviet authorities' expectations. After BEZHIN MEADOW was banned, Eisenstein had
to repent for his new "sins of formalism." As one Soviet film scholar put it, "Eisenstein was
apologizing for being Eisenstein."
As if to save his life, Eisenstein next made ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1938), a film about
a 13th-century Russian prince's successful battle against invading German hordes. This
monumental costume epic starring familiar character actors was a striking departure from
Eisenstein's principles of montage and "typage" (casting non-professionals in leading
roles). NEVSKY was a deliberate step back, in the direction of old theater or, even worse,
opera productions which Eisenstein has been fiercely opposed to in the 20s. Still, the film
demonstrated Eisenstein in top form in several sequences, such as the famous battle scene on
the ice. Also significant were his attempts to achieve synthesis between the plastic elements
of picture and music with the film's memorable score by Prokofiev, possibly reflecting
Eisenstein's prolonged admiration for the cartoons of Walt Disney.
NEVSKY was a huge success both in the USSR and abroad, partially due to growing anti-
German sentiment, and Eisenstein was able to secure a position in the Soviet cinema at a
time when many of his friends were being arrested. On February 1, 1939, he was awarded the
Order of Lenin for NEVSKY and shortly thereafter embarked on a new project, The Great
Fergana Canal, hoping to create an epic on a scale of his aborted Mexican film. Yet after
intense pre-production work the project was cancelled, and following the signing of the non-
aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany, NEVSKY was quietly shelved as well. In
February 1940, in a Radio Moscow broadcast to Germany, Eisenstein suggested that the pact
provided a solid basis for cultural cooperation. At that time he was commissioned to stage
Wagner's opera Die Walküre at the Bolshoi theater. At the November 21, 1940, premiere,
the German diplomats in Moscow, not unlike Stalin's henchman before them, were dismayed
by Eisenstein's artistry. They accused him of "deliberate Jewish tricks." Yet when the Nazis
attacked Russia less than a year later, it was Die Walküre's turn to be banned while NEVSKY
could once again be screened.
In 1941 Eisenstein was commissioned to do an even larger scale historic epic, a three-
part film glorifying the psychopathic and murderous 16th-century Russian czar, Ivan the
Terrible. However, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART ONE (1943) was an enormous success
and Eisenstein was awarded the Stalin Prize. But IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO
(1946) showed a different Ivan: a bloodthirsty tyrant, the unmistakable predecessor of Stalin.
Naturally, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO was banned and the footage of IVAN THE
TERRIBLE PART THREE destroyed. Eisenstein was hospitalized with a heart attack, but he
recovered and petitioned Stalin to be allowed to revise IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO
as the bureaucracy wanted, only to be dismissed. In fact, Eisenstein was too weak to resume
shooting, and he died in 1948, surrounded by unfinished theoretical works and plans for new
films. IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO was first shown in 1958 on the 60th anniversary
of Eisenstein's birth. In 1988, at the international symposium at Oxford marking Eisenstein's
90th anniversary, Naum Kleiman, the director of the Eisenstein Museum in Moscow, showed
a scene that survived from IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART THREE. In it, Ivan is interrogating
a foreign mercenary in a manner resembling one of Stalin's secret police.
With the abundance of literature on Stalin's crimes now available even in the USSR, the
significance of IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO as a document of its tragic time has
diminished, but as a work of art it is still significant. In his last completed film, Eisenstein
achieved what he had dreamt of since 1928, when he saw a Japanese Kabuki troupe
performance: the synthesis of gesture, sound, costume, sets and color into one powerful,
polyphonic experience. Both NEVSKY and Walküre were steps in that direction, but only the
celebrated danse macabre of Ivan's henchmen comes close to the synthesis of the arts which
has haunted artists for ages.
Eisenstein's death prevented him from summing up his theoretical views in the areas of
the psychology of creativity, the anthropology of art and semiotics. Although not many
filmmakers have followed Eisenstein the director, his essays on the nature of film art have
been translated into several languages and studied by scholars of many nations. Soviet
scholars published a six-volume set of his selected works in the 60s. 1988 saw the publication
of a new English-language edition of his writings.
1923
GLUMOV'S DIARY/KINODNEVIK GLUMOVA director, screenwriter, editor,
performer
1924
STRIKE/STACHKA director, screenwriter, story, editor
1925
POTEMKIN/BRONENOSETS POTYOMKIN/BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
director, screenwriter, editor, performer
1928
OCTOBER/OKTYABAR/TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
screenwriter
1928
OCTOBER/OKTYABAR/TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
director
1929
THE GENERAL LINE/GENERALNAYA LINYA/OLD AND NEW
director,
screenwriter, editor
1929
STURM UBER LA SARRAZ
director, performer
1930
ROMANCE SENTIMENTALE
director
1937
BEZHIN MEADOW/BEZHIN LUG director
1938
ALEXANDER NEVSKY/ALEKSANDR NEVSKI editor, sets, costumes
1939
FERGHANA CANAL
director, screenwriter
1941
AN APPEAL TO THE JEWS OF THE WORLD
performer
1943
IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART ONE/IVAN GROZNY PART I
producer, director,
dialogue, editor
1943
SEEDS OF FREEDOM
director
1946
IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO/IVAN GROZNY PART II producer, director,
dialogue, editor
1947
IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART III
director, screenwriter
1979
QUE VÍVA MEXICO/TIME IN THE SUN co-director, screenwriter
Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893 - 1953)
Pudovkin is often designated as the second great artist of the Soviet silent film; his
accomplishments have often taken a back seat to those of his more bellicose contemporary,
Sergei Eisenstein. The difference between the two directors is typified in the oft-quoted
statement of French critic Léon Moussinac: "Pudovkin's films resemble a song, Eisenstein's
a scream." But if Eisenstein gained notoriety as the more resolutely avant-garde film artist, it
was Pudovkin who arguably made the more enduring contributions to the medium, refining
the body of techniques—pioneered by D.W. Griffith—which today compose the seamless
continuity of the psychological film.
Pudovkin's entrance into the arts came at the relatively late age of 27. After studying
chemistry, he was drafted into the military service, was wounded in 1915 and spent three
years in a prisoner of war camp. During that time he learned to speak English, German and
Polish. Upon his release, Pudovkin went to work in the laboratory of a military plant, but a
viewing of Griffith's INTOLERANCE had a profound effect on him and in 1920 he decided
to abandon chemistry in favor of a career in cinema.
Pudovkin began to study under Vladimir Gardin, one of the few successful prewar directors
to continue working after the Revolution. Working as both actor and assistant director,
Pudovkin's projects with Gardin included SICKLE AND HAMMER (1921) and HUNGER…
HUNGER… HUNGER (1921), the latter a film which attempted to increase public awareness
about a famine devastating the Ukraine.
In 1922 Pudovkin left Gardin to join the seminal group of film talents—which included
Eisenstein—working under Lev Kuleshov at the State Film School. There he participated in
the famous series of editing experiments designed to demonstrate how montage is responsible
for the psychological coherence of cinematic cognition. For the group's first feature,
THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MR. WEST IN THE LAND OF THE
BOLSHEVIKS (1924), Pudovkin wrote the screenplay, was an assistant director, and played
a role. He also wore several hats, as writer, designer, and actor, in the workshop's next project,
THE DEATH RAY (1925)—a film intended to showcase the collective's comprehensive
knowledge of the medium.
Pudovkin was commissioned by "Mezraboom-Russ" to make an educational film
popularizing the principles of Pavlov's studies in reflex conditioning. MECHANICS OF THE
BRAIN (1926) allowed the director to practice a disciplined application of his principles
of film exposition; it also initiated his career-long relationship with cameraman Anatoli
Golovnya, who worked almost exclusively with Pudovkin. Before this project was completed,
Pudovkin directed a short, CHESS FEVER (1925), a comedy which incorporated footage
from Moscow's International Chess Tournament of 1925.
Pudovkin's next film would secure his place in the history of cinema. Adapted from
Maxim Gorky's novel by Pudovkin's frequent scenarist, Nathan Zarkhi, MOTHER (1926)
distinguishes Pudovkin as a director of economy and precision. The film demonstrates his
methodological differences with Eisenstein; Pudovkin advocated a theory of linkage, in
which montage "builds" not for an Eisensteinian abstraction but the impact of emotional
identification. To support that theory, Pudovkin choses to structure his tale of the Revolution
around its effect on an individual.
His next project, THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG (1927), was, like Eisenstein's OCTOBER
(1928), commissioned in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. The
Russian public, familiar with the rivalry between the two men, saw the films as a way of
comparing the virtues of their philosophies. Pudovkin's film, the first of many to benefit
from the assistance of Mikhail Doller, was well-received and its sophisticated analysis of
the Revolution is considered by some critics to be superior to Eisenstein's effort. Pudovkin's
later films saw the director "increasingly seduced by the charm of the image," as in STORM
OVER ASIA (1928)/THE HEIR OF GENGHIS KHAN, a film on which Pudovkin also began
to run afoul of the stringent and constricting ideological specifications of the Party. Although
popular with audiences and well-received abroad, the film was officially condemned for
the "formalist indulgence" of its cinematic sheen. Pudovkin's last silent film, STORM OVER
ASIA, achieved a level of accomplishment and recognition that the director would never
reach again.
To contemporary film students, Pudovkin is perhaps best known for his books of film theory,
Film Director and Film Material (1926) and Film Scenario and Its Theory (1926), which were
later combined into one volume, Film Technique. Although many of his ideas are tied to the
techniques of silent film, Pudovkin's writing is still studied in many film courses all over the
world.
1920
IN DAYS OF STRUGGLE
performer
1921
HUNGER…HUNGER…HUNGER director, screenwriter
1921
SICKLE AND HAMMER
director, performer
1923
THE LOCKSMITH AND THE CHANCELLOR
screenwriter
1924
THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MR. WEST IN THE LAND OF
BOLSHEVIKS
assistant director, screenwriter, performer
1925
BRICKLAYERS
performer
1925
CHESS FEVER
director
1925
THE DEATH RAY/LUCH SMERTI director, performer
1926
MECHANICS OF THE BRAIN
director, screenwriter
1926
MOTHER/MAT'
director, screenwriter
1927
THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG
director
1928
STORM OVER ASIA/THE HEIR OF GENGHIS KHAN director
1929
THE HAPPY CANARY
performer
1929
THE LIVING CORPSE
performer
1929
THE NEW BABYLON
performer
1929
ZHIVOI TRUP
editor, performer
1933
THE DESERTER
director
1938
A SIMPLE CASE
director
1939
MININ AND POZHARSKI director
1940
SUVOROV
director
1940
TWENTY YEARS OF CINEMA
director
1940
VICTORY
director
1941
THE FEAST AT ZHIRMUNKA
director
1942
MURDERERS ARE ON THEIR WAY
director
1943
IN THE NAME OF THE HOMELAND
director, screenwriter
1943
IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART ONE/IVAN GROZNY PART I
performer
1946
ADMIRAL NAKHIMOV
director, performer
1946
IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART TWO/IVAN GROZNY PART II performer
1948
TRI VSTRECHI
director
1950
ZHUKOVSKY
director
1953
VOZVRASHCHENIE VASILIYA BORTNIKOVAdirector
Alexander Dovzhenko (1894 - 1956)
Born to illiterate, impoverished peasants who were descendants of Cossacks, Alexander
Dovzhenko completed his education and left the Desna River Valley to become a school
teacher. His aspirations in the arts led to involvement in literary circles after the Communist
Revolution of 1917, a revolution he embraced as the first step toward Ukrainian national
independence. He joined the army and later studied art in Berlin. In 1923, he returned to
his beloved Ukraine to launch a career as an illustrator. His painter's eye was expressed in
detailed political cartoons and book illustrations which supported the "People's Republic."
His films would express his strong ties to Ukrainian culture, particularly in the romantically
nationalistic ZVENYHORA (1928) and ARSENAL (1929), considered his most complete and
masterful works.
With no formal training and little knowledge of how a film is made, Dovzhenko, having
explored the potential of writing, painting and architecture, turned suddenly to what he
considered a perfectly political medium by assuming an apprenticeship at the film studios
at Odessa. His first film, VASYA THE REFORMER (1926), was a laughable attempt at
comedy.
Dovzhenko's enduring contribution to world cinema is found in the poetic vision of
ARSENAL (1929) and EARTH (1930), contemplative, rhythmically edited works that one
critic called "biological, pantheistic conception(s)."
Stylistically, Dovzhenko's work, as exemplified by EARTH, is a montage of associations
and impressions. The film has very little camera movement or movement within the frame.
Narrative flow is the product of editing and composition, with each shot composed and
framed according to the director's painterly vision.
After serving as a war correspondent for Red Army and Izvestia during WWII, Dovzhenko
assumed writing and producing chores at Mosfilm studios. But for years he complained
of creative suffocation in Stalin's political bureaucracy, which caused several Dovzhenko
projects to be shelved.
Although his final output was relatively modest, it was the young Dovzhenko, along with
his contemporaries V.I. Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, who best combined the principle of
montage with a realistic appreciation for the natural landscape.
1926
LOVE'S BERRIES
director, screenwriter
1926
VASYA THE REFORMER/VASYA REFORMATOR
director, screenwriter
1927
THE DIPLOMATIC POUCH
director, adaptation, performer
1928
ZVENYHORA
director
1929
ARSENAL
director, screenwriter
1930
EARTH/ZEMLYA/SOIL
director, screenwriter, editor
1932
IVAN director, screenwriter
1935
AEROGRAD director, screenwriter
1939
SHCHORS
director, screenwriter
1940
LIBERATION/OSVOBOZHDENIE director, screenwriter, editor
1941
ALEKSANDR PARKHOMENKO
production supervisor
1941
BOGDAN KHMELNITSKII production supervisor
1945
STRANA RODNAYA
director, editor, commentary
1948
MICHURIN
producer, director, screenwriter— from play
1958
POEM OF THE SEA/POEMA O MORYE screenwriter
1960
CHRONICLE OF FLAMING YEARS/POVEST PLAMENNIKH LET
screenwriter