The Dark Mirror (1920)

A young painter: daughter of a dead one, wealthy and pretty, holes herself up in her studio day after day. She even sleeps there, most nights. She avoids her family and rarely socializes. She fears she’s going mad.
 
We could believe she is. Conditions seem right. If Priscilla Maine (Dorothy Dalton) is losing her mind, then living in a tiny space, with no one to talk to, surrounded by the products of her imagination, would certainly help the process along.

This is What I Sound Like.

Here's a podcast featuring me, alongside the eminent director of the Toronto Silent Film Festival, Shirley Hughes. We're discussing silent film, of course: past and present, why we love it, why everyone else should too, and the Festival itself, which begins later this month.

Many thanks to Ryan McNeil of The Matinee, who set up this podcast earlier in March. He chose a local pub for a venue, which gave me the opportunity to drink a beer while trying to sound smart. Good man, that Ryan McNeil.

Regeneration (1915)

Marie Deering sits at her dinner table, dressed to the nines. Beside her is the new D.A., promising to sweep the streets clean of gangsters. He’s already pleased with himself. Marie turns to him. “Really though,” she says, “they must be awfully interesting people.”

Aren’t they just. Raoul Walsh, the man who directed this scene, certainly thought so. Regeneration was one of the first of many movies he made about lowlifes, redeemable or otherwise. It’s a strange story, about men and women outgrowing the roles they’re expected to play. Stranger still, since the film itself seems to do the same thing.

For the Love of Film, Part III

I mistyped that title a moment ago...wrote "Party III"... but hey, why not? This will be fun. The White Shadow (1923) is an early Hitchcock film (sort of), and now, we have an opportunity to view it for free, online, for four months, with a brand-spanking-new score. At least, if the proper funds can be raised. I'll leave the details of this blogathon to the skilled scribe behind Self-Styled Siren--as worthy a classic film blog as you'll ever read--but watch here, in the coming months, for my own contribution to it. Like many great directors, Hitch got his start in the years before sound, so there's a rich selection of silent films for me to watch and write about. I am open to suggestions.

Wings (1927)

Three days ago, The Artist won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture. And so, we celebrate.

It may be a long time before another silent film pulls this off. It was 83 years between The Artist’s victory and that of the only other silent to win it: William Wellman’s Wings. If you’re a fan of this blog, you probably know a bit about Wings, which pops up in Oscar trivia all the time. The film won for two years, not one; it was Best Picture before the award was so named. It was a gargantuan popular hit in its own time, and yet, has been hard to find on video ever since, until this year.

The following is not based on a viewing of the (purportedly spectacular) new Blu-ray edition of Wings. Instead, I saw the movie live, on film, in a Toronto theatre—on the day of the Oscars, appropriately enough. I’m glad I went. This is a big flick, and it needed the space to move around.