The Two Roses - 1910

Country: United States
Released on June 7, 1910, THE TWO ROSES was Thanhouser's 16th release and was advertised as "A powerful, pathetic, pretty story of life in Little Italy." The film featured Marie Eline (Tony, an Italian boy), Frank H. Crane (Tony Prolo, young Tony's father), and Anna Rosemond (Tony Prolo's wife). In this film Marie Eline was billed as "The Thanhouser Kid" for the first time. This beautifully preserved 35mm print comes from the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin. Unfortunately, the surviving film elements had only the French language title card LES DEUX ROSES at the head of the print and otherwise was without intertitles. But, thanks to the excellent work by Urte Alfs and Anke Mebold at the Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF in Frankfurt, new German intertitles were generated based on the synopsis that was published in "The Moving Picture World" on June 10, 1910. This video version also includes English language translation from the German. Original music composed and performed by Günter A. Buchwald. This film may be found on the DVD "Screening the Poor" published in the Edition Filmmuseum Series, #64, visit edition-filmmuseum.com for details.

Source: www.thanhouser.org

For futher information on films by Thanhouser, visit the site above. Let’s keep memories of this great studio alive.

The Second 100 Years - 1927

Country: United States

Language: English (intertitles)

Director: Fred Guiol

Writers: Leo McCarey (story), H.M. Walker (titles)

Stars: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Charlie Hall

Release Date: 8 October 1927 (USA)

Also Known As: Dick und Doof: Dem Henker entronnen (West Germany - TV title), Dick und Doof: Mit dem Pinsel in der Hand (West Germany - TV title), I due galeotti (Italy), Kavaliere für 24 Stunden (Germany), Prisioneiros Azarados (Brazil), The Second Hundred Years (USA - alternative spelling), Toiset sata vuotta (Finland), Zwei Herren Dick und Doof: Mit dem Pinsel in der Hand (West Germany - TV title)

Filming locations: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Plant, Los Angeles, California, USA; Los Angeles County Jail, Culver City, California, USA

Plot Keywords: Prison | Painting | Time In Title | Cherry | Two Reeler  | Candle | Diner |  Car | Laurel And Hardy | Prison Escape | Fork | Number In Title

Genres: Comedy | Short

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Two convicts (Laurel & Hardy), in an escape attempt, tunnel into the warden's office, instead. They then disguise themselves as painters and walk out the front gate. Needing new clothes, they steal suits from visiting dignitaries, take their places in a limousine, and are delivered back to the same prison for a tour.  

Trivia

Laurel and Hardy's heads were shaved for their appearance in this film, and their hair had not yet grown back in their roles in Max Davidson's Call of the Cuckoos (1927), released a week after this film.

This was the first Laurel and Hardy film to be released by MGM.

This is one of the few films in the Laurel & Hardy canon in which they don't use their own names.

Fluttering Hearts - 1927

Country: United States

Language: English

Director: James Parrott

Writer: H.M. Walker (titles)

Stars: Charley Chase, Oliver Hardy and Martha Sleeper

Release Date: 19 June 1927 (USA)

Production Co: Hal Roach Studios

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Genres: Comedy | Short

Ignoring her father's attempts to counsel her, a young woman races off to a sale at a store. Chased by a motorcycle policeman, she eventually wins him over with the help of a friendly millionaire. Meanwhile, her father desperately needs to retrieve a compromising letter that he once wrote, and he will need help to do it.

Charley Chase combines his gift for pantomime and slapstick in this solid entry in his series for Hal Roach. His brand of humor was based on the "comedy of Embarrassment"; a simple situation compounds itself into almost absolute chaos with Chase left in the dust. As this film is generally unavailable unless you are a 16mm film collector, it is a prime example of just how clever and funny Charley Chase could be AND without words! The sequence in a department store during a white sale begins innocently enough but builds into a free for all that includes Martha Sleeper as the spoiled rich girl and Eugene Pallette as a willing policeman. The brilliant Oliver Hardy, at this time on the threshold of his pairing with Stan Laurel, appears as BIG BILL, the man who can make or break Martha Sleeper's rich father, played to perfection by William Burress. The meeting of Chase and Hardy is priceless; one of the best sequences Charley ever had on screen. This film is just one example of the wonderful screen comedy of a great yet forgotten star, Charley Chase. 

Do Children Count? - 1917

Country: United States

Director: Lawrence C. Windom

Writer: Charles Mortimer Peck (scenario)

Stars: Mary McAllister (Little Daisy Erling) , John Cossar (William Erling) and Violet Craig (Sarah Erling)

Release Date: March 1917 (USA)

Production company: The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company

Plot Keywords: Question In Title

Genres: Drama | Short | Family | War

L'invitation Au Voyage - 1927

Country: France

Language: French

Director: Germaine Dulac

Writers: Charles Baudelaire (poem), Germaine Dulac, Irène Hillel-Erlanger             

Stars: Raymond Dubreuil, Emma Gynt and Robert Mirfeuil

Release Date: December 1927 (France)

Also known as: Invitation to a Journey (USA)

Genres: Short

During the younger times of this Germanic count, Damen Germaine Dulac was a complete fräulein of strong character and independent spirit (even though she was Frenchified); well, it is what we, the aristocrats, used to consider as "dangerous longhaired youngsters", because Damen Germaine Dulac had subversive and suspicious tendencies for the aristocracy, like being a specialist in Opera (and to make things worse, she liked it), a radical suffragist (those youngsters with revolutionary ideas), or theater and cinema critic (this last thing is the worst, MEIN GOTT!). With such curriculum and bizarre taste, it was inevitable that she started to get interested by avant-garde film and became an exponent of it.

"L'Invitation Au Voyage" was made some years before "La Coquille Et Le Clergyman" (1928), her most well-known film which also maximizes her restless cinematographic searches, a film that soon will be commented on by this Germanic count. In "L'Invitation Au Voyage", she maintains a transgressor spirit and her eagerness to get at what she considered the "pure cinema", even though the film is less risky and more accessible in its cinematographic proposals than "La Coquille Et Le Clergyman".

At the beginning of the film, the stylistic intentions are very well defined when the director says that she expects with her film "to expose her cinematographic idea without the help of explicative signs", so the image value gets hold of it on this film based on a Herr Baudelaire's poem. The movie shows us in a special and nonconformist aesthetic and technique way, the frustrations and unrealized dreams of its main character in a port establishment (a magnificent multicolour ambiance, a sea cabaret), her dreams as a livelihood for a false and dull life. The search of a chimera that even the main character is well aware of.

Steenkolenmijnen in Limburg - 1919

Country: Netherlands
Director Jules Stoop
Filmed in three different mines in Limburg, The Netherlands. The film shows various activities underground: going down in a lift, digging for coal and even an underground horse stable.

Border River - 1919

Country: United States

Director: Edgar Jones

Stars: Evelyn Brent (Marie Dubuque), Ben Hendricks Jr. (Buck Dubuque) and Edgar Jones (Lieut. Dave Blunt)

Runtime: 23:47

Sound Mix: Silent

Color: Black and White

Plot Keywords: Royal Canadian Mounted Police | Mountie | Moonshiner

Genres: Short | Western

A Mountie searching for known moonshiners falls in love with the sister of a man associated with them. 

Country Nahcho (Old Chechnya) in 1930

Country: Soviet Union

Director: Nikolai Lebedev

Genre: Documentary

Description: Kinoocherk in five parts. Consultant Khalid Oshaev. It is shown the life of Chechnya in the early XX.: Nature, economic, and field work of Chechens (cooking, mill, manufacturing cloaks, plowing the land, etc.), dhikr, newsreels.