Silent Film Sunday Memorial Day Addition-Wings

Wings a classic tale of WWI from 1927.  

Silent Film Sunday-Alice in Wonderland from 1903

Silent Film Sunday-Happy Mother's Day

I'm a pet mom and not a human baby mom but I've always had a soft spot for this early silent fllm by the pioneering Lumiere Brothers.  Filmed in 1895 Baby's Meal (french titel Repas de Bebe) shows a cheerful couple feeding their baby.  I love films like this showing every day occurences from over a century ago.  Things change, but the important things stay the same.

Silent Film Sunday-Alice Guy-Blache's The Consequences of Feminism

March is women's history month so its a good time to remember a largely forgotten hero of cinema history, Alice Guy-Blache

At a time when movie making was in its infancy and women where regulated to the home, Alice was making revolutionary films that pioneered ideas about fictional narrative and special effects.   She even ran her own studio with her husband, Solax, out of Fort Lee, New Jersey for a time.  Sadly bankruptcy and divorce cause Solax to close and Blache's promising career ended in the early 1920s.


The following film, The Consequences of Feminism,  from 1906 is a humorous story about a topsy turvy world in which men are the subservient sex; spending time grooming and performing house hold tasks, while women take the dominant role in relationships.   Blache was certainly a feminist so I imagine this film is meant to poke fun abut mens fears regarding the women's rights.

Silent Film Sunday-A Vintage Valentine

This cute little film from 1900 is called The Old Maid's Valentine.  I love the charming cat:

Silent Film Sunday -Snowball Fight 1896

Silent Film Sunday-The Little Matchgirl

From Christmas 1902...

Silent Film Sunday-Family Beach Vacation 1920s

Vintage home movies are such a lovely example of the fact that no matter how much things may change, the important things stay the same. This sweet family could be any of us today, I love how they included their dog. 

Silent Film Sunday Clara Bow in 1927's Hula

Polynesian and Tiki culture first entered American life in the 1930s and peaked in the late 50s and early 60s when Hawaii became a state.   However, as in all things flapper film star Clara Bow was ahead of the times.  In 1927 she starred in the pre-code film Hula as the wild child daughter of a pineapple plantation owner.

Memorial Day Silent Film- Wings 1927

Filmed in 1927 Wings is an epic WWI drama telling the story of three friends, one played by Clara Bow, and their war time adventures.  It's also famous for featuring cinemas first same sex kiss.  Here are four amazing clips from the film:

Clara Bow as the Girl next store:

The Paris party scene: 

The aerial battle: 

The famous kiss

Silent Film Sunday The Cabbage Fairy

Yesterday while  I was wrestling with a large cabbage in an effort to make pan fried Irish cabbage and bacon I was reminded of this strange little Victorian film La Fee aux Choux or The Cabbage Fairy. The 60 second French film is based on an old European Fairy Story that says baby boys come from cabbages and girls from roses.   Most interesting of all the director of this film was Alice Guy Blache the first female film director and a pioneer in narrative fictional film making. 

Silent Film Sunday-Le Roman De Max from 1912

This cute little film from 1912, its English language title was Affinity, tells the story of a man and a lady who go on vacation and stay at the same hotel on the Riveria.  Assigned rooms next door to each other they leave their shoes on the matt and the shoes fall in love and conspire to pull them together.

Silent Film Sunday: The Little Matchmaker

A silent Christmas classic from 1902.

Silent Film Sunday a Christmas Carol 1910

This version of Charles Dicken's Christmas classic was made by Thomas Edison's studio in 1910.

Silent Film sunday Trailer for Louise Brook's Diary of a Lost Girl

November 14 marks the 108th anniversary of the birth of flapper style icon and silent screen legend Louise Brooks.   An iconoclast Brooks fled Hollywood at the height of her popularity to make films in Germany including the  controversial at the time, 1929 classic Pandora's Box:

Silent Film Sunday

The following is the masquerade scene from the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, the first of the Universal Monster Films.  The film has been restored and in the restoration they added color to the masquerade scene.  

Silent Film Sunday The Haunted Castle-A Silent Horror Film from 1896

This short film was made by by pioneering film maker Georges Melies in 1896.  It was shot in his garden in Montreuil France.  It was presumed lost until a copy was found in the New Zealand film archive.

Silent Film Sunday-Girls at Coney Island 1905

In this Thomas Edison film from 1905 the young ladies from Miss Knap's select boarding school go on an outing to Coney Island.  The film has excellent picture quality and is full of fun details: the girls parasols, the giant old car, the 1900s bathing dresses, and the girls obvious delight at the beach and on the rides.

Silent Film Sunday-1925 Wedding

This is just a short little film of an ordinary couple, Miss Rose Carmel and Mr. Solly Gershcowit, and their 1925 wedding. I particularly love the guests hamming for the  camera, which must have been quite a novelty, and the dresses and headbands  on the little girl attendants.

Silent Film Sunday-Wings 1927

Released in 1927 and the first American film to win the academy award for Best picture, Wings remains one of the greatest war films ever made.  The battle scenes, as well as the interior shots, represent many stunning advances in film making and left audiences stunned by their realism.  The film also represented the horror of war in a way that spoke to 1920s audiences, for whom WWI was a recent memory.  The plot focuses on three friends from the same small town Jack, David, and Mary.  Jack and David become soldiers and Mary an ambulance driver.  The three endure many hardships during the war before David looses his life and Mary and Jack are eventually re-united.  The death bed scene of David below is one of the most famous in the history of film, both for its depiction of the tragedy of war and the obvious intimacy between the two men.  While the film never directly implies that Jack and David are lovers the scene below has been interpreted by many viewers as romantic.  It is certainly a beautiful scene that demonstrates that cinema has breaking taboos for far longer then the last decade.  

 

 

Wings is available for instant viewing on Amazon Prime and the entire film can also be scene on you tube, its the perfect movie for Memorial Day weekend.