Scott Lord

Directed during 1922 by Frank Borzage, "The Pride of Palomar" (eight reels) features actress Marjorie Draw with Warner Oland in the supporting cast. Silent Film Silent Film Silent Film

Directed by Irving Cummings during 1923"Broken Hearts of Broadway" (seven reels) starred actresses Colleen Moore, Alice Lake and Kate Brice. Silent Film Silent Film Silent Film

Silent Film Silent Film Silent Film

The periodical Motography during 1914 gave the date of the settings of the film "Anne Boleyn (1912) as 1532 during the reign of Henry VIII, typifying the film as an early example of the costume drama genre, "its exteriors typical of England", the interiors including the Tower. The periodical Motion Picture World reviewed the Eclipse-Kleine of Anne Boleyn using the word photodrama rather photoplay, "Max Pemberton has wrote the scenario, and he has kept close to the historical narrative in the main facts...so strong in vindication of her innocenece and so adverse to the merciless monarch that a view of these films forces the spectator to take the side of the ill-fated Anne with a feeling of bitter animosity toward her royal mate." The specific instance use of the word "spectator" in the historiography of the extatural discourse of the period's fan magazines was refreshingly from 1914.
An earlier version of the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII was filmed the previous year in the United States during 1912 starring actrees Ckara Kimball Young. Shakespeare's King Henry VIII proclaims that Anne Boleyn will be his queen in the one reel Vitagraph film "Cardinal Wolsey", directed by J.Stuart Blackton.
"Henry VIII" by William Shakespeare was directed by William Barker during 1911 starring the renowned Herbert Beerbohm Tree with acress Violet Vanburgh as Queen Catherine. The film is presumed to be a Lost Silent Film with no surving copies existing but features the same actress as Anne Boleyn as the 1913 French version.
Ernst Lubitsch directed "Anna Boleyn" during 1920 with actress Henny Porten and actress Aud Egede-Nissen as Jane Seymour. Pictures and Pictures and Picturegoer Magazine related that the narrative of the film centered around the "beautiful and impressive" Henny Porten by disclosing that "the end is foreshadowed in the opening shots". Film historian Arthur Knight explains an interest in transnationalism during the silent era, "There would seem to be three main types of German productions during this period, all more or less concurrent. First and probably most popular were great costume spectacles like "Passion" (1919), "Ann Boleyn" (1920) and "Danton" (1921). At the outset, these dealt with less than savory incidents from the history of Germany's recent enemies, but they did so withgreat flair."
Silent Film Scott Lord

Danish Silent Film Silent Film August Blom

Silent Film Silent Film

The Lesser of Evil starred actresses Blanche Sweet and Mae Marsh and was directed for Biograph by D.W. Griffithduring 1912. The film was photographed by G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film Biograph Film Company

Mary Picford's director Marshall Neilan was quoted by Peter Milne during 1922 in the volume Motion Picture Directing. "Above all, I consider the director's appreciation of the human side of life his greatest assest. Unless a director is human down to the bery earth and appreciative of the tings in life that are common to the ordinary mortal, he cannot hope to any degree of success." Silent Film Mary Pickford Mary Pickford

The first film directed by Rune Carlsten, an adaptation of a story by Bjornestejerne Bjornson which Carlsten coscripted with Sam Ask, was for Filmindustri Skandia, a short lived merger which shortly thereafter merged again, other directors for the company having been Elis Ellis and John Brunius. "A Dangerous Wooing/A Dangerous Courtshipt" (Ett Farlit Frieri) was the first of five films directed by Rune Carlsten to be photographed by Raol Reynolds. The film stars actress Gun Cronvall in her only on screen performance. Actor Lars Hanson also during 1919 starred underthe direction of Mauritz Stiller with actress Greta Almroth in the film "The Song of the Scarlet Flower" as well as under the direction of Swedish Silent Film director John Brunius in the 1919 film "Synnove Solbakken", with actress Karen Molander, who, then married to director Gustaf Molander, was later to become Lars Hanson's wife. Silent Film Lars Hanson Victor Sjostrom

"A Narrow Escape" is evidently the only film in which both the doubling narrative, or bification narrative, used in crosscutting and the last minute rescue were present before their use in the films of D.W. Griffith. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier has noted that crosscutting had been present in the film "The One Hundred to One Shot" made by Vitagraph in 1906. D. W. Griffith used crosscutting frequently to depict the last minute rescue frequently during the beginning of 1909, particulalrly in the film "The Lonely Villa". The director at the Biograph Film Companyhad been Wallace McCutcheon (Personal,1904) and it is him to whom, rightly or not, crosscutting has been attributed (Her First Adventure,1906;The Elopement,1907); on occaision directors were beginning to hint at cutting on action by 1907 and were also beginning to link scenes together, as when the same character appears in two scenes that are adjacent.
Author Tom Gunning, in his volume D.W. Griffith and the origins of Narrative Film, likens The Lonely Villa to "A Narrow Escape", only to descry D.W. Griffith's having developed its elementary techniques into a more narratively integrated work. "'A Narrow Escape' creates suspense through parallel editing, using the pattern tocreate an agonizing delay....which is a direct prefiguration of the narrator system." Gunning sees the techniques appearing in "The Lonely Villa" as only haing briefly appeared in "The Narrow Escape", included among those habing been a "three-pronged editing pattern" around which centered its principal characters. "Indebted although it may be, Griffith's film elaborates on the Pathe pattern through further articulation."
If within a cinema of attractions narrative exposition had previously used a discontinuous style, one of filming a single action within what was then an autonomous shot, it would acquire as form a continuous style; where there were to be juxtapositions within narrative from shot to shot, there would be decisions of editing used for the advancement of plot. Technique would become the ordering of images within an arrangement of shots that would bring seperate compositions into a relation with narrative-the film technique that would be later described by Christian Metz as consisting of syntagmatic categories, technique that would avail questioning whether a segment would be autonomous, chrological, linear, narrative or descriptive, chronological, linear, narrative or descriptive, continuous or whether it would be organized, was beginning to be decided. Metz in fact had viewed the narrative function in cinema as being what had brought about its development, it being more possible that the techniques developed by Ince and D. W. Griffith. Narrative would no longer need to be only linear in regard to its structure and the syntax of the film could include transitions between scenes: technique, in part could become the attraction. In fact, Roger Manvell quotes an author who credits Griffith with developing the "cinematic or conjunctive" method of narrative, where the tempo of "continuity movement" was accelerated.
During 1908, The Pathe studio, Societe Pathe Freres, founded by Charles Pathe in 1896, performed a magic trick exactly opposite of the break from non-narrative by the cinema of attractions and the temporalities being adapted by narrative form; while George Melies continued toward his 1912 Conquest of the Pole", Pathe invented the newsreel that was to be shown with cartoons and short subjects. Newsreels went to London during 1910 under the name Pathe's Animated Gazette. The temporality created by Segundo de Chemon in the Pathe film "The House of Ghosts" would become friendly competition for the immediacy of royal coronations being filmed as they happened, a diegesis of reality. Screen time transpired just outside the theater, based on an event, if not reverting to an earlier form of attraction. Perhaps at the core of the cinema of attractions are the actuality films of American Mutoscope and Biograph, despite Edison's choosing subjects which could be filmed theatrically indoors, including his film of Annie Oakley shooting. Crosscutting and D.W. Griffith Silent Film

Three years before the premier of "Intolerance" (D.W. Griffith, 1916), author Eustace Ball, in the volume "The Art of the Photoplay" advised, "Put one plot at a time; the single reel picture lasts only eighteen minutes and only one line can be worked out well in this time. This is another important detail in which the photplay differs from the drama."
David Bordwell sees cinematic history as a "Basic Story" and that within this approximation, D.W. Griffith is attributed with having invented "cinematic syntax". This syntax is apparent in what Raymond Spottiswoode referred to as the "grammar of film", or shot structure and perhaps in what is expanded later into semiotics and the "grande syntagmatique". While crediting Edwin S. Porter with the use of crosscutting two simultaneous actions, Bordwell notes the crosscutting of four historical periods (seperate storylines, which thematically merge) in Griffith's film Intolerance, filmed thirteen years later.
Susan Jean Craig, The City University of New York, in her dissertation "Skin and Redemption-Theology in Silent Films 1902 to 1927 describes the editing of motifs as film technique, "Filmmakers learned that they could use simple shorthand of now widely recognized filmic devices to amplify characterization and backstory: creating metaphoric links between seemingly unrelated storylines by shifting the action betwen them, called intercutting, underscoring human behavior and emotion through high-contrast lighting of scenes and subjects; and stressing subtle psychological shifts in motivation simply by moving the camera closer to the actor's faces. Thus, when D.W. Griffith wanted to introduce a prostitute in his 1916 epic "Intolerance, Love's Struggle through the Ages (Triangle Film Corp.) he didn't need to showa young woman trading sexual favors for payment. Instead he cut from a simple two second shot of a woman dressed too elaborately for her station in life to an intertitle that dubbed her "The Friendless One" to make his point crystal clear. Scholar Phillipe Gauthier sees crosscutting as a programmed languague and dismisses the need to view D.W. Griffith as its inventor, but rather as his "method of film construction", which having previous existed, he "developed and systemized", specifically that editing used in chase scenes and last minute rescue scenes to meet the exingencies of his narrative technique. While properly evaluating the work of D.W. Griffith and the canonical structuring of editing through a "suspensefull call for help, the proximity of the threat and the last minute rescue", Phillipe Gauthier finds early examples of the origins of film technique neglected by earlier prominent film historians. The director of the 1908 Pathe film "A Narrow Escape", if nothing else, certainly does quite often cut on the action of the character leaving the frame.
Author Stanley J. Solomon, in The Narrative Structure of the Film, from his volume The Film Idea eescribes the use of simultaneuous threads of action to climax thematically, "The last two reels (of the total thriteen in extant circulating versions) are among the most exciting sequences in all cinema. As the four stories head toward their conclusions, Griffith begins to cut back and forth much more quickly than he did earlier- mainly without the interference of the image of the rocking cradle...delaying the outcome of each story and building up a tremendous amountof suspense." Solomon looks to Iris Barry often. Iris Barry herself, author of D.W. Griffith, American film master, notes "Intolerance" directed by D. W. Griffith as being seminal. "The film Intolerance is of extreme importance to the history of the cienema." She singles out shots that use only part of the screen's area, tracking shots and rapid crosscutting as techniques used by Griffith in extraordinary combinations with his camera angles.
Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema implies that the storyline to "Intolerance" was entirely improvization on the part of D.W. Griffith; not only is there no credit for the photodramatist that wrote the photoplay, but there was originally no scenario to the film. Peter Cowie adds, "Like all Griffith's work, 'Intolerance' has a didactic ring that makes the captions seem pompous. But it lives up to the director's dictum 'Art is always revolutionary, always explosive and sensational."

Stanley J. Solomon in turn finds a thematic continuity in the film, "The four stories demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between individual acts and broadly calamitous events....That concept held in that the peculiarly suggestive medium of film, visual information should consist of fragments which, when carefully chosen and sensitively edited, would produce the idea of a completed action."
Both Lillian Gish and Paul Rotha write of Griffith having found lines in a poem by Walt Whitman that were to connect the stories thematically, Gish appearing at intervals throughout the film to contrast the dramatic quickening of the pace of the film and lending it a symbolism, "Intolerance was, and still is, the greatest spectacular film." Motion Picture World during 1916 popularized the film as bringing Griffith to a pantheon by subtitling its review with, "Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form are Successfully Revolutionized." Paragraph subtitles were to include, "Original Method of Construction", "Human Interest in Abundance" and "Marvelous Spectacular Effects".
In her book entitled Screen Acting, Mae Marsh explains the differences between the acting required for each camera distance. She begins with telling us that during a long shot facial expressions register indifferently and need to be compensated by body movement. She allows that most dramatic action is filmed in three quarters legnth, from the face to the knees, intermediate shots that require both facial expressions and body movement. Lillian Gish writes, "It took a while before we became friends with Mae Marsh and the fault was ours. At the beginning we thought ourselves superior because we had been trained in the theater."
To return to the syntax of film, its grammar of cinematic shot structure, film historian Arthur Knight explains D.W. Griffith's use of the close-up, stressing that it could also be used to reveal inanimate objects, as in the insert shot. "But the close up does more than merely emphasize what is important in a scene, it eliminates everything else. It forces the audience to see what the director wants it to see- and only that.It concentrates attention on the slightest detail, whether it be an object, an actor, or a portion of an actor...It was Griffith's unique ability to reveal filmically the inmost thoughts and emotions of his characters to reveal them clearly and intimately to his audiences."
It is thought that the later films of D. W. Griffith, including "The White Rose" (1923) with Mae Marsh, more elaborately presented theme as being intertwined with the drama in which the characters were situated. D. W. Griffith
Actress Constance Talmadge appeared in a cornocopoia of short comedies for The Vitagraph Company of America between 1914-1916 before being cast by Griffith in "Intolerance". Lillian Gish in her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me gives an account of Constance Talmadge wearing pads to "make her figure more womanly" while in costume for the film. Added to that she reports long delays between shots while filming. Although during 1918 Lillian Gish had talked D.W. Griffith out of casting Constance Talmadge in the film "Hearts of the World" in favor of her sister Dorithy Gish, Constance Talmadge would later become Dorothy's "constant companion", travelling to Europe with her, the two "inseperable".
G.W. Bitzer, in his autobiography "Billy Bitzer, his story" writes, "All Griffith pictures after 1913 were made with a Pathe camera, including 'Intolerance'. It was a camera he preferred and happened to be the least expensive camera made. Bitzer claimed the camera enabled him to be the first to use wash-drawing effects, which were to become popular with cameramen later.
D.W. Griffith at Biograph Film Company Victor Sjostrom

Silent Film
Having directed "The Indian Massacre" and Across the Plains" the year before, Thomas Ince during 1912 directed the films "The Invaders" (three reels) starring its co-director Francis Ford and Ethel Grandin and "Custer's Last Fight" (three reels) for the New York Motion Picture Company and "Shadows of the Past" for the Vitagraph Company of America.
It is often acknowledged that Thomas Ince was the first director to use a shooting script. These were detailed shooting scripts, known to be meticulous in their planning, where plotline would emerge as having precedence over action and spectacle.
Author Kenneth MacGowan notes that Thomas Ince "strove for theatric effect", but only with scripts that were "direct and tight" and used intertitles to advance character action dramatically relating to events as a technique of exposition.
As late in the century, the internet century, as 2025, a film presumed to be lost, directed in 1915, was found, restored and copied digitally: a copy Universal's "The Heart of Lincoln" (Francis Ford, three reels) was discovered in a film archive in Long Island and has a 2025 date of availability. Directed by Francis Ford, who himself stars in the film as Abraham Lincoln, the film also stars actress Grace Cunard, to whom the photoplay is attributed. Advertisements placed in magazin es by the studio, thinly masquerading with a newspaper look as The Universal Weekly News announced the release of a "Marvelous and Thrilling Drama for Lincoln's Birthday" with, "Lively Grace Cunard in romantic scenes with a handsome officer, a happy ending after the war, serve to round out this virile yet tender story of the Heart of Lincoln to the supremest satisfaction of all." In regard to Lost Films, Found Magazines, now that the film has been found, perhaps our view of Thomas Ince might be sharper, particularly since we've been given an automatic reminder of how many silent films that do appear in the magazines of the time period are still presumed lost, with no existing copies that survive. Not incidentally, Keene State College holds a copy of the film "When Lincoln Paid" (Francis Ford,1913, two reels) starring Francis Ford as Abraham Lincoln and costarring actresses Ethel Grandin and Grace Cunard- the film was presumed lost with no surviving copies existing untill the year 2006 when it was found in New Hampshire.

Silent Film Civilization directed by Thomas Ince D. W. Griffith

Silent Film Silent Film

In addition to using closeups to isolate the actor from their diegetic surroundings and the particular background to the action of the scene, which, while viewing the emotion of the character as seperate in turn embeds, or immerses the character into the diegesis, locking and intertwining them into the word within the frame, D. W. Griffith would establish the relationship between character and environment as well through the use of editing and by varying spatial relationships, notably in the silent film "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" (two reels) through the use of the longshot and the use of interiors.
The two reel film stars actresses Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh and was photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Biograph Film Company. Edward Wagenknecht, in his volume The Films of D.W. Griffith writes of a film including a subplot which divides itself, "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch is one of the most complex Biograph films. This is fascilitated by the fact that it is in two reels, although Griffith had previously attempted similarly constructed films with a main narrative supported by subsidiary threads in one reel ABS (eg. Home Folks)....The use of parallel action is put to use here with more effect and extraordinary dexterity than before in part due to the film's elaborate construction."
The cameraman to "The Battle of Elderbush" was G.W. Bitzer. Silent Film
Silent Film Biograph Film Company

Swedish Silent Film director John W. Brunius during 1921 directed acresses Pauline Brunius, Renee Bjorling and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson in the film "The Wild Bird" ("En Vindfagel"). Photographed by Hugo Edlund, the film was co-scripted by Brunius with screenwriter Sam Ask. The film was shown in the United States as "Give Me My Son". During its first run the periodical Moving Picture World subtitled its review with "Feature That Will Please Whenever Naturalness Is Appreciated". It provided the "exploitation angle" of "Get interest in it chiefly because it is foreign." The periodical The Film Daily wrote, "Its gets away from the conventional happy ending. It is not tragic, but unexpected, and not what you think it will be. The denoument is particularly well handled." Under the "story" section, it wrote, "Involved, but maintains the quality of coherence and stands out as unusual" and under the "direction" section it wrote, "handles more dramatic moments effectively but otherwise is average." Scandinavian Silent Film Silent Film

Tags: mystery

Tags: sherlock holmes

Mauritz Stiller directed "Karleck och Journalistick", a comedy based on the writing of Harriet Bloch, in 1916. The film stars Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Stina Berg, Gucken Cederberg and Karin Molander.
The most widely known films directed by Mauritz Stiller during 1916 were "The Ballet Primadonna" (Balletprimmadonnan), starring Lars Hanson, and Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson and "The Wings" (Vingarne), a film in which both photographer Julius Jaenzon and director Mauritz Stiller appear on screen, starring Lars Hanson and Lilli Bech.
The film "The Ballet Primmadonna" was phtographed by Julius Jaenzon and featured one of the only two photoplays written for Svenska Biografteatern by Djalmer Christophersen.
When "The Wings" was recently screened by curator Jon Wengstrom of the Swedish Institute, Mauritz Stiller was commended for his onscreen appearance by virtue of his adding a self-reflexive scene with the on the set filming of a film to the framing structure when adapting the original story written by Herman Bang. The film currently screened by Wengstrom at Silent Film Festivals is in fact a restoration of an incomplete print which includes the footage of Stiller and Jaenzon, which had been unpopular and neglected as a lost film sequence. Wengstrom writes, "The erotic drama, and the delightful play of ancient myth and urban modernity is framed by a prologue and epilogue where Stiller gets the idea to the manuscript, casts and shoots the film"
In outlining the initial differences between Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller, the former having a propensity toward serious, artistic film, the latter making more comedic satires, Aleksander Kwaitkowski, in his volume Swedish Film Classics looks at the technique used by Mauritz Stiller as the film "Love and Journalism" unfolds, "Stiller's narration is purely visual (only twenty five intertiles in the whole picture), streamlined, lucidly carrying the plot forward."
Although there have been films directed by Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller that have been rediscovered, restored and preserved during the twenty-first century, the 1916 film "The Fight For His Heart" (Kampen om hans hjarta) directed by Maurtiz Stiller and starring actresses Karen Molander and Anna Diedrich is a Lost Silent Film with no surviving copies or fragments. Also directed that year by Stiller and also lost is the Swedish Silent Film "The Lucky Brooch" (The Lucky Pin/Lyckonalen), photographed by Hugo Edlund and satrring Greta Almroth and Stina Berg.
In regard to Lost Film, Found Magazines according to Peter Cowie, author of the volume Scandinavian Cinema, the film "Love and Journalism" directed by Mauritz Stiller, taken with Stiller's film "The Wings", is one that has "miraculously survived", the bulk of the films made by Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom before 1916 now lost with no surviving copies existing.
Of "Love and Journalism" Peter Cowie, in his volume Swedish Cinema, writes, "Only about a half hour in legnth, it remains sparkling fresh and worldly-wise."
Harriet Bloch, who wrote the screenplay to Stiller's film "Love and Journalism" also during 1916 wrote the photoplay to the film "Old Age and Folly" (Alderdom och darskap) directed by Swedish Silent Film director Edmond Hansen, the cinematographer to the film Carl Gustaf Florin. Starring in the film, a lost silent film with no surviving copies, were Edith Erastoff and Greta Almroth. During the following year Harriet Bloch wrote the photoplay to "The Millionaire Inheritance" (Miljonarvet) directed by Konrad Tollroth and starring Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, Greta Almroth, Stina Berg and Hedvig Nenzen. The film is also a lost silent film.
Norman J. Zierold, in his biography entitled Garbo, explains that some of the noteriety that Mauritz Stiller did have, complemented by his "dashing" public image of fur coats and jewlery, may have been well deserved. "In his major efforts, Stiller was an authentic innovator, not unlike D.W Griffith. He was the first European director to use closeups, to employ the shifting camera, to develop new and striking canera angles."
Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom Silent Film