"I would very much like to attract others into my world, but my world is not the world of crowds, though the crowds have often lined up before my world."

"He is Aladdin and the camera is his lamp." — James R. Quirk

"He could be suave or awkward, likable or pesky, average or eccentric, a winner or a loser, a fussy nerd or the life of the party, all the while remaining Charley Chase."

"Lawrence had become a movie star for many reasons — gentleness, grace, that silky hair, and what Laemmle assessed as 'sensational bubbies.'"

"The shadow of Mabuse falls over the 1926 Soviet adventure serial Miss Mend, too, but without the angst and gloom of Lang's Der Spieler."

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"Buck up! Never say die! We'll get along!"

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to 'the distant music of the falls,' the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her."

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart."

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Life in the ring

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Hats off, dudes! A masterpiece!

"Go sit on a flagpole!"

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"Macheath: I'm not asking you to put on an opera." — Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"When what you write about is what you see/What do you write about when it's dark?"
— Charles Wright

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"Now, Goliath was a big man."

"Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies."

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"Amann's sexuality in Asphalt has little in common with the chilled porcelain passivity of stars like Dietrich and Garbo."

"LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache"

Bigger is better this time — though Wyler and Rozsa helped

"I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?"

The last of the great silent clowns now on DVD

Faith meets flamboyance in DeMille's Jesus epic, beautifully restored

"She's got the eyes of a great one, putting over something incalculable . . ."

"Love backed by force, forgiveness sweet, brings hope and peace to Easy Street"

Kino's unusual series spotlights German silent gay-themed cinema

The first in an occasional series of articles on the life and work of Charlie Chaplin

Lust in translation

In which Lubitsch pioneers the screwball comedy of manners

Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon: the great silent clowns reformatted

Poe's favorite story dressed to kill by a legendary surrealist auteur

All's quiet on the cinematic front in this seductive survey of the artful '20s

Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous — and expensive — DVD-ROM

This forgotten star was caught up — and perhaps crushed — by larger historical forces

Carl Dreyer's 1928 masterpiece about the trial and death of France's fifteenth-century warrior-maiden.

Silent studio Thanhouser Company produced over 1,000 titles between 1909 and 1917. Thanhouser, based in New Rochelle, New York, was known for its attempts to bring quality to an artform still in its creaky infancy. Edwin Thanhouser was the first American studio head who came from legitimate theater, which may explain the company's attention to detail, narrative verisimilitude, and the building of a stock company of the kind that existed in the theater. Subjects were extremely varied, from period melodramas, mysteries, and social reform films to horror movies and fairy tales.

A 1980 interview with silent movie pioneer Allan Dwan. His thoughts on Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, and all the "pansies and poseurs of Hollywood." No one was safe from the cruel barbs of the Great Auteur!

Asta Nielsen, the Danish silent movie actress who is often called "the first great international star," made 74 films between 1910 and 1932. At first glance she seems an unlikely diva. Her enormous dark eyes, thin lips, masklike face, and slender, boyish figure contrast starkly with prevailing female body norms, which tended toward the Rubensesque. But Asta, who started her own production company in 1921, became the model of the self-made, self-possessed androgynous artiste. Garbo herself acknowledged the woman who co-starred with her in The Joyless Street, saying "she taught me everything I know."

With his lacerations, deformities, faux stump legs, and shaved head, Chaney was the original Modern Primitive. He made his first films in the mid-1910s, and by 1920 was already creating roles that required him to be armless, legless, crippled, or otherwise deformed.