Nana - 1926

French movie. Nana is Jean Renoir's second full-length film produced in 1926. It is based on the novel by Émile Zola. A government official, Count Muffat, falls under the spell of Nana, a young actress. She becomes his mistress, living in the sumptuous apartment which he provides for her. Instead of elevating herself to Muffat's level, however, Nana drags the poor man down to hers - in the end, both lives have been utterly destroyed.
The film stars Renoir's wife, Catherine Hessling, in an eccentric performance as the flawed heroine Nana.
Jean Renoir's film is a fairly faithful adaptation of Émile Zola's classic novel. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces - a horse race and an open air ball. The film never made a profit, and it was the commercial failure of this film which robbed Renoir of the opportunity to make such an ambitious film again for several years.
Director: Jean Renoir
Writers: Pierre Lestringuez, Jean Renoir
Stars: Catherine Hessling, Jean Angelo and Werner Krauss

Max et la doctoresse - 1909

Country: France
Language: French
Director: Max Linder
Writer: Max Linder
Stars: Max Linder, Lucy d'Orbel and Georges Gorby
Also Known As: Max and the Fair M.D. USA (reissue title)
Max and the Lady Doctor USA
Production Co: S.C.A.G.L.
The film itself is adorable. Max visits a lady doctor for a chest cold and is alternately anxious and nervous and excited, in a romantic and sexual way, depicted by his clever pantomime. One can easily see his techniques were stolen by Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, etc. Max proposes to the doctor, she accepts, and the next scene you see them married. Max brings their baby to the office waiting room, where several good looking men are waiting to be seen by his wife. Max peeks in and sees his wife with her ear against a patient's back and he goes nuts, hands the baby to one of the men in the waiting room, and rushes into the examining room and kicks the patient out. Then each remaining patient gets the same treatment. Lastly we see Max in happy domestic contentment, at home with his wife and baby. It is obvious the message is that he will take care of her from now on and she won't have to work. Or at least, that's what I took from it. The film ends rather abruptly, but it is definitely a cute one.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - 1916

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1916 American silent film directed by Stuart Paton. The film's storyline is based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne, along with other elements used from Verne's The Mysterious Island.
This version is notable for its groundbreaking work in underwater photography by the brothers George M. Williamson and J. Ernest Williamson. Actual underwater cameras were not used, but a system of watertight tubes and mirrors allowed the camera to shoot reflected images of underwater scenes staged in shallow sunlit waters.
Director: Stuart Paton
Writer: Jules Verne (novel)
Stars: Allen Holubar, Lois Alexander and Curtis Benton

Die Büchse der Pandora - 1929

Pandora's Box (German: Die Büchse der Pandora) is a 1929 German silent melodrama film based loosely on Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904). Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, and Francis Lederer. Brooks' portrayal of a seductive, thoughtless young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her, although initially unappreciated, eventually made the actress a star.
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Writers: Frank Wedekind (plays), Ladislaus Vajda (scenario)
Stars: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner and Francis Lederer

Pool Sharks - 1915

 Pool Sharks (also sometimes known as The Pool Shark) is a 1915 silent short film. The film is notable for being the film acting and writing debut of W. C. Fields, and also features an early stop-motion animation scene, during a game of pool.
Following a standard style of the era, the film is a romantic slapstick comedy short. Fields and his rival (played by Bud Ross) vie over the affections of a woman. When their antics get out of hand at a picnic, it is decided that they should play a game of pool. Both of them are pool sharks, and after the game turns into a farce, a fight ensues. Fields throws a ball at his rival, who ducks. The ball flies through the window and breaks a hanging goldfish bowl, soaking the woman they are fighting over and leaving goldfish in her hair. She storms into the pool hall and rejects both men.
Director: Edwin Middleton
Writer: W.C. Fields
Stars: W.C. Fields

The Land Beyond the Sunset - 1912

American movie. A young boy, opressed by his mother, goes on an outing in the country with a social welfare group where he dares to dream of a land where the cares of his ordinary life fade.
Directed: Harold M. Shaw
Writer: Dorothy G. Shore
Stars: Martin Fuller, Mrs. William Bechtel and Walter Edwin

Shinel (1926, Kozintsev & Trauberg, Soviet Union)

"Shinel" (The Overcoat) was a film directed by the great but communist duet of Herr Grigori Kozintsev und Herr Leonard Trauberg. It was based in the eponymous book written by the Russian Herr Nikolai Gogol. It must said that Herr Kozintsev und Herr Trauberg were inspired by another Gogol oeuvre, "Nevsky Prospect" for the prologue of the film. It shows the anodyne youthful of the poor clerk Akaky Akakiyevich Bashmachkin, the main character of the film. The film extends this and goes deeply into the reason why Herr Akakiyevich needs and spend his savings on an elegant overcoat.

Det hemmelighedsfulde X (1914, Denmark)

Sealed Orders // Orders Under Seal // The Mysterious X // Das geheimnisvolle X
In 1913, Christensen assumed control of the small, Hellborg-based production company for which he worked and reorganized it as Dansk-Biograf Kompagnie. The first film he directed, Det hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious X, 1914), was one of the most astonishing directorial debuts in film history; although a routine spy melodrama, the camerawork, cutting and art direction were revolutionary for the period. Christensen himself played the main role, as he did in his second film, Hævnens nat (Blind Justice, 1916).
Director: Benjamin Christensen
Writers: Benjamin Christensen, Laurids Skands (manuscript)
Stars: Benjamin Christensen, Karen Caspersen and Otto Reinwald

The Bat - 1926

Country: USA
Language: English (intertitles)
Director: Roland West
Writers: Avery Hopwood (play), Julien Josephson, George Marion Jr.(titles), Mary Roberts Rinehart (play "The Bat"), Roland West (adaptation).
Stars: George Beranger, Charles Herzinger and Emily Fitzroy
Release Date: 14 March 1926 (New York City, New York - USA)
Also known as: Das Rätsel der Fledermaus (Austria / Germany), El murciélago (Spain / Venezuela)
Production Co: Roland West Productions, Feature Productions
Plot Keywords: Bat | Animal In Title | Old Dark House | One Night | Revolver | Fireplace | Killer | Evil Man | Psychopath | Bat Costume | Super Villain | Heroine | Lady Detective | Based On Play | Surprise Ending
Genres: Comedy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller
A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer.

A Modern Musketeer - 1917

A young man grows restless living in a small Kansas town, dreaming of the adventures of the Three Musketeers. So in hopes of becoming a modern D'Artagnan, he mounts his steed (a Model T Ford) and sets out across the West in search of excitement and adventure.
Director: Allan Dwan
Writers: Allan Dwan (photoplay), F.R. Lyle Jr. (story)
Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Marjorie Daw and Kathleen Kirkham

Greed - 1924

Greed (1924, USA) is a dramatic silent film. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis.
The plot follows a dentist whose wife wins a lottery ticket, only to become obsessed with money. When her former lover betrays the dentist as a fraud, all of their lives are destroyed. The movie was adapted by von Stroheim (shooting screenplay) and Joseph Farnham (titles) from the 1899 novel McTeague by Frank Norris. (The onscreen writing credit for June Mathis was strictly a contractual obligation to her on the part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the parent studio), as she was not actually involved in the production.) Originally over ten hours long, Greed was ultimately edited against von Stroheim's permission to about two and a half hours, and the full-length version is a lost film.
Director: Erich von Stroheim
Writers: June Mathis (screen adaptation and dialogue), Frank Norris (novel)
Stars: Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts and Jean Hersholt

Pollyanna - 1920

Pollyanna is a 1920 American melodrama/comedy film starring Mary Pickford, directed by Paul Powell, and based upon an Eleanor H. Porter novel. It was Pickford's first motion picture for United Artists. It became a major success and would be regarded as one of Pickford's most defining pictures. The film grossed $1.1 million (the equivalent of more than $100 million in 2008).
Director: Paul Powell
Writers: Eleanor H. Porter (novel), Catherine Chisholm Cushing (play)
Stars: Mary Pickford, Wharton James and Katherine Griffith

Stella Maris - 1918

Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Marshall Neilan
Writers: William J. Locke (novel), Frances Marion (photoplay)
Stars: Mary Pickford, Ida Waterman and Herbert Standing
Release Date: 21 January 1918 (USA)
Filming Locations: Busch Gardens - S. Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California, USA
Production Co: Pickford Film
Runtime: 84 min (alternate version)
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
Plot Keywords: Orphan | Alcoholic | Poverty | Imprisonment | Uncle | Murder | Marriage | Unrequited Love | Dual Role | Disillusionment | Nobility | Adoption
Marital Separation | Suicide | Dog | Aunt | Battered Child | Innocent | London England | Starvation | Invalid | Self Sacrifice | Sailing | Paralysis | Housemaid |
Surgery | Class Distinction | Based On Novel | Character Name In Title
Genres: Drama
Stella Maris is a beautiful, crippled girl, who is cared for by a rich family. They shield her from the harsh realities of the world, so that she has no idea of the cruel things that some people do. Unity Blake is a poor orphan all too familiar with the harsh realities of the real world. These two young women both fall in love with John, love which is complicated by the fact that he is still married to (though separated from) a bad wife.

The Affairs Of Anatol - 1921

The Affairs of Anatol is a 1921 drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Socialite Anatol Spencer (Wallace Reid), finding his relationship with his wife (Gloria Swanson) lackluster, goes in search of excitement. After bumping into old flame Emilie (Wanda Hawley), he lets an apartment for her only to find that she cheats on him. He is subsequently robbed, conned, and booted from pillar to post. He decides to return to his wife and discovers her carousing with his best friend Max (Elliott Dexter).

Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Writers: Arthur Schnitzler (suggested by play of the same name), Jeanie Macpherson
Stars: Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson and Wanda Hawley

Tigre reale - 1916

Italian movie. Also known as The Royal Tiger
Director: Giovanni Pastrone
Writers: Giovanni Verga (novel), Giovanni Verga (screenplay)
Stars: Pina Menichelli, Alberto Nepoti and Febo Mari