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Wings
: :Wings, the first movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and the only silent film to win, is still remarkably enjoyable to watch. The story is a fairly conventional one--two flyboys, both in love with the same girl, go off to fight World War I, and male bonding and heartbreak ensue. It's a perfectly serviceable plot, except for the key logical flaw that both young men have inexplicably fallen in love with the boring girl down the ...
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Beau Geste
: essential video:Gary Cooper plays the oldest of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion to cover a mysterious theft, and are soon caught up in high adventures. The opening scene in a fort full of corpses sticks in the memory forever, and Brian Donlevy's role as a sadistic sergeant makes a striking impression as well. Director William Wellman (Wings), a veteran pilot of World War I, drew--as he often did--upon the authenticity of his own experiences in ...
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Last Command (1928) (Silent)
: essential video:Gary Cooper plays the oldest of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion to cover a mysterious theft, and are soon caught up in high adventures. The opening scene in a fort full of corpses sticks in the memory forever, and Brian Donlevy's role as a sadistic sergeant makes a striking impression as well. Director William Wellman (Wings), a veteran pilot of World War I, drew--as he often did--upon the authenticity of his own experiences in ...
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Nosferatu
: essential video:F.W. Murnau changed the name and ghastly appearance of his villain, but this unauthorized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula couldn't fool the Stoker estate, and it became the center of a lawsuit that almost resulted in its complete destruction. Thankfully this masterpiece survives (though in a somewhat altered form), for despite its liberties with the novel, this 1921 horror classic remains the most beautiful and resonant interpretation of Stoker. Though the plot remains essentially the same--naive real-estate ...
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The Circus /A Day's Pleasure
: :Made in 1928 while he was in the middle of a painful divorce case, Charlie Chaplin's The Circus was so associated with bad memories for its maker that he refused even to mention it in his 1964 autobiography. Consequently, it has enjoyed less of a reputation than such films as The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931). However, while it's not quite in their league, The Circus undoubtedly deserves to be rescued from relative obscurity. Here, Chaplin's Tramp ...
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Greed (75th Anniversary Restoration)
: :Originally running an astonishing 10 hours when it was produced in 1925, Greed suffered one of Hollywood's unkindest cuts. Much to the devastation of its Austrian creator, Eric von Stroheim, MGM slaughtered his ambitious silent epic based on Frank Norris' solemn novel, McTeague, reducing it from 42 reels to 10 with a running time of just over two hours (von Stroheim broke down upon watching the finished piece). Yet, it's a testament to the director's vision and talent that ...
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Crowd, The
: :Originally running an astonishing 10 hours when it was produced in 1925, Greed suffered one of Hollywood's unkindest cuts. Much to the devastation of its Austrian creator, Eric von Stroheim, MGM slaughtered his ambitious silent epic based on Frank Norris' solemn novel, McTeague, reducing it from 42 reels to 10 with a running time of just over two hours (von Stroheim broke down upon watching the finished piece). Yet, it's a testament to the director's vision and talent that ...
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The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
: :Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this sentimental romantic drama, a famous operetta about a young prince who falls in love with a commoner. A kindly tutor (Jean Hersholt) effectively raises the boy in a splendorous kingdom of rolling hills and vast forests while his distant father rules in the cold, tradition-bound palace. When he turns 18, Prince Karl Heinrich (Ramon Novarro) is sent to Heidelberg for an education, in more ways than one. He enrolls incognito to ...
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Silent Movie
: essential video:One of Mel Brooks's weaker vehicles, this 1976 feature finds a movie producer (Brooks) deciding that the public is ready for the silent film form again. Reasonably ambitious and promising, the film ultimately doesn't do for silent cinema what Brooks did for atmospheric horror (by reviving it while parodying it) in Young Frankenstein. Lots of famous faces pass through Silent Movie, to varying effect. Perhaps the best joke in the movie is the one performer who actually ...
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The Wind
: essential video:One of Mel Brooks's weaker vehicles, this 1976 feature finds a movie producer (Brooks) deciding that the public is ready for the silent film form again. Reasonably ambitious and promising, the film ultimately doesn't do for silent cinema what Brooks did for atmospheric horror (by reviving it while parodying it) in Young Frankenstein. Lots of famous faces pass through Silent Movie, to varying effect. Perhaps the best joke in the movie is the one performer who actually ...
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