I watched the 1929 talkie Atlantic , a very ambitious disaster film based on the Titanic . The poster for the film boasted the largest cast every assembled for a film (doubtful) and called this the "leviathan" of talkies. While the sound was ok and the sound effects quite good, the overall...

Good info... thanks. It's an absurdist film but it's so cinematic and Jannings is so totally into it, it's very watchable. I liked the almost total absence of intertitles.

Have you seen Captain Salvation ?

I believe, and I may be wrong, that the original ending to The Last Laugh has Jannings die in that basement men's room. The "happy" ending certainly seems tacked on. The original title for the film was The Last Man . Perhaps the new ending was added for American consumption. In any case, J...

Watched The White Sister tonight and enjoyed the tragic romance set in Italy. Lillian Gish was terrific as always as the younger sister cheated out of her birthright by an older sister (Gail Kane) and even losing lover Ronald Colman to a military expedition to Africa. All this set against an imminen...

I watched Arizona , a 1931 film that starred Laura La Plante as a mean-spirited woman who tries to sabotage her ex-boyfriend's military career after he dumps her. She also marries his commanding officer and then tries to poison her sister's infatuation for the old boyfriend. John Wayne, of all peopl...

I watched The Last Laugh, a silent with almost no intertitles. Murnau gives us a visual feast, Emil Jannings gives us another great performance. Great film.

The Coming of Amos (1925) is a weird little film that starts out as a comedy and turns into melodrama with a castle, dungeon, and a damsel to be rescued. Rod La Rocque stars as an Australian sheepherder to goes to Monte Carlo to meet an uncle at his dead mother's final request. Once there the film ...

The 1927 Student Prince directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer just blew me away. Totally charming film with terrific performances by the stars, breezy and funny and then that turn toward rather bitter irony by the end. Great compositions with those massive rooms wit...

Disturbing yes. Ultimately an innocent man is executed. He's guilty of many things but not murder. The pregnancy of Jane is also well handled, implied several times but downplayed. I guess we're supposed to see Tremble's execution as his redemption because it's (apparently) the first time in his lif...

I watched DeMille's 1918 The Whispering Chorus , one of his best films, an intricate plot about a man who starts out imbezzling a small amount of money and paying the price for listening to his inner voices. Raymond Hatton was splendid as the man, Kathlyn Williams as the wife, Elliott Dexter as the ...

As for Gustav von Seyffertitz, I just saw him in the odd DeMille film Old Wives for New.

Watched the bizarre 1930 film Undertow which starred Mary Nolan and Johnny Mack Brown. In this early talkie Brown plays a lifegaurd who clunks his head on a log while saving a kid from drowning. He catches the attention of blonde Nolan who is fighting with her yucky boyfriend (Robert Ellis). They fa...

Winds of Chance is a terrific, sprawling adventure film from a Rex Beach story set against the Klondike and that search for gold. No music track and missing the 2nd reel but it doesn't stop this nicely tinted film from being solid. What a cast! Anna Q. Nilsson, Ben Lyon, Viola Dana, Victor McLaglen...

WOOF.... the only Joan-a-Thon I'm likely to do is for Joan Crawford or Joan Blondell....

Have it but have never watched it....

good article....