Just 10? I chose 10 great films set in the roaring 20s for this beautifully presented piece on the BFI website. Charlie Chaplin, Louise Brooks, Woody Allen, Marilyn Monroe … they’re all there.
The beautiful and the damned
With the release of Baz Luhrmann’s 3D The Great Gatsby just a few days away, I wrote a feature for the June issue of Sight & Sound magazine about the first adaptation: a silent film directed by Herbert Brenon. This trailer is all that survives, as far as we know …
Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee
Mae Murray was a megastar in the 1920s, who is now best remembered for her role in Erich Von Stroheim’s The Merry Widow. For the April 2013 edition of Sight & Sound, I reviewed the fascinating new biography of this troubled star by Michael G Ankerich, Mae Murray: the Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips.
Walk Cheerfully
Walk Cheerfully
Before he made the domestic dramas he is so famous for, Yasujiro Ozu made comedies and even gangster films, three of which are collected in a new BFI box set. There’s a booklet accompanying the DVDs, and I contributed an essay on the fantastic, Hollywood-influenced, Walk Cheerfully (1930). The box set is released on 18 March 2013 – read more and pre-order here.
The Artist at the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema
The Artist
The Hippodrome is a beautiful vintage cinema in Bo’Ness, and once a year it is home to Scotland’s only silent film festival. The lineup this year is longer and more varied than ever. I contributed programme notes for the opening-night screening of 21st-century silent The Artist. Read more about the programme and book tickets here.
1,000 Words on Way Down East
Way Down East in The Big Picture
The latest issue of The Big Picture film magazine is called Winter’s Discontent. In keeping with its icy, snowy theme, I contributed a piece on the magnificent finale of DW Griffith’s Way Down East, in which Lillian Gish drifts on an ice floe toward her surely certain death. You can read more, and download the magazine free, here.
Way Down East in The Big Picture
Sunrise in Winchmore Hill
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
A rare showing of one of my most beloved films, Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans, with live piano accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos, in Winchmore Hill, north London. I wrote screening notes for the occasion, introduced the film, and interviewed Costas after the film. More information here.
