Pre-Cinema

In one sense, film and photography differ from older arts like painting and sculpture in that one can nearly always determine finite dates for the production and exhibition of specific works. But it’s not quite that simple. As these two documentaries show, there was, in fact, an evolutionary process in the development of the movies.

Read the curator's extended film notes at MoMA Voices.

Origins of the Motion Picture 

1956. USA. 21 min.

Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer 

1975. USA. Thom Anderson. 60 min.

Actualities and Glimmerings of More

The earliest films that audiences saw, both in the U.S. and abroad, exuded the exotic novelty of a penny arcade attraction. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, filmmakers were beginning to explore the possibilities of the medium as more than a mere novelty, and audiences began to clamor for more ambitious—even “artistic”—fare.
Films of the 1890s. 1894–99. USA. Produced primarily by the Edison Company. 18 min.
Lumière Program I. 1895–96. France. Directed by Louis Lumière, Auguste Lumière. 21 min.
Lumière Program II. 1895–98. France. Directed by Louis Lumière, Auguste Lumière. 20 min.
The Classic American Mutoscope. 1897–1907. USA. Produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. 10 min.
Pioneer Films by Max Skladanowsky. 1895–96. Germany. Directed by Max Skladanowsky. 8 min.
The Beginnings of British Film. 1901–11. Great Britain. 29 min.

A Portrait of Edwin S. Porter

Edwin S. Porter (1869–1941) was among the first notable directors to emerge on this side of the Atlantic. Charles Musser’s documentary—narrated by Blanche Sweet, one of D. W. Griffith’s earliest and greatest stars—is a charming and touching look at Porter’s life and career.
Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter. 1982. USA. Directed by Charles Musser. 60 min.
Edwin S. Porter Program I. 1903–08. USA. Directed by Porter. Program includes The Life of an American Fireman, The Gay Shoe Clerk, The Great Train Robbery, The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, and Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest (produced by Porter, directed by E. Searle Dawley, and featuring D. W. Griffith). 33 min.
Fighting the Flames, Dreamland, Coney Island. 1904. USA. Directed by Porter. 6 min.
Hippodrome Races, Dreamland, Coney Island. 1905. USA. Directed by Porter. 4 min.
All films silent, except Before the Nickelodeon.

Lesser-Known Pioneers of Cinema

While D. W. Griffith is the director most associated with the birth of film as art, the history of this early period would be incomplete without mention of several other pivotal figures. This program includes a sampling of competing passion plays and films by Griffith’s rival at Vitagraph (J. Stuart Blackton) and his predecessor at Biograph (Wallace McCutcheon, Jr.).
La Vie et la passion de Jésus Christ. 1902. France. Directed by Ferdinand Zecca, Lucien Nonguet. 30 min. La Vie du Christ. 1906. France. Directed by Alice Guy Blaché. 28 min.
The Automobile Thieves (incomplete). 1906. USA. Directed by J. Stuart Blackton. 10 min. Francesca di Rimini. 1908. USA. Directed by J. Stuart Blackton. 10 min.
At the Crossroads of Life. 1908. USA. Directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Jr. With D. W. Griffith. 10 min.
Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker. 1908. USA. Directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Jr. Screenplay by D. W. Griffith. Cinematography by G. W. “Billy” Bitzer. 15 min.

Georges Méliès and His Rivals

While the development of film narrative at Biograph, Edison, and other smaller studios in the United States took a mostly naturalistic turn, filmmaking in France, led by Georges Méliès (1861–1938), leaned toward the fantastical, in the tradition of Jules Verne. Upon learning of the Lumière Brothers’ invention, Méliès, the entrepreneur behind Paris’s Theatre Robert-Houdin, transferred his successful stage conjurations and visual sorcery to the screen. His films, marked by the inspired artificiality of his sets and costumes, became increasingly complex and ambitious. The superficiality of these “trick films,” however, soon lost currency with audiences, whose tastes veered toward longer, more reality-based films, and Méliès retired in 1913. This program provides a sampling of Méliès’s films and those of some of his imitators. All films silent.

Le Voyage dans la lune (A Voyage to the Moon)

1902. France. Georges Méliès. 13 min.

Barbe-Bleue 

1901. France. Georges Méliès. 10 min.

Les Sept Chateaux du diable (Seven Castles of the Devil)

1902. France. Ferdinand Zecca. 12 min.

Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (Impossible Voyage)

1904. France. Georges Méliès. 17 min.

La Caverne infernale 

1905. France. Gaston Velle. 2 min.

Créations renversantes (Stunning Creations)

1905. France. Gaston Velle. 2 min.

La Garde fantôme (Phantom Guard)

1905. France. Gaston Velle. 3 min.

La Peine du talion (Tit for Tat)

1905. France. Gaston Velle. 4 min.

Robert Macaire et Bertrand (Foxy Hoboes)

1906. France. Méliès. 10 min.

Le Tunnel sous la manche (The Nightmare of the Submarine Tunnel)

1907. France. Georges Méliès. 14 min.

Excursion dans la lune 

1908. France. Segundo de Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca. 10 min.

D. W. Griffith at Biograph

Between the summers of 1908 and 1913, mediocre actor and failed writer David Wark Griffith (1874–1948) transformed the medium of film more drastically than any other filmmaker in the history of cinema. During his time at Biograph, Griffith transcended the primitive visual grammar of his predecessors, distilling a mature expressiveness capable of wielding great emotional power over his audiences. Aided by the cinematographic wizardry of G. W. “Billy” Bitzer, Griffith developed the technical facility to translate the vivid workings of his imagination into motion pictures. This small selection of shorts (mostly in newly restored prints preserved by the Museum), drawn from the approximately four hundred that he made at Biograph, offers a mere glimpse of his prodigious accomplishments during this period. All films silent.

The Country Doctor 

1909. USA. D. W. Griffith. 15 min.

A Corner in Wheat 

1909. USA. D. W. Griffith. 15 min.

The Honor of His Family 

1910. USA. D. W. Griffith. 16 min.

The Lonedale Operator 

1911. USA. D. W. Griffith. 16 min.

The Painted Lady 

1912. USA. D. W. Griffith. 15 min.

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch 

1913. USA. D. W. Griffith. 32 min.

The Scandinavian Connection

Throughout film history the northernmost countries in Europe have produced many artists of note, and their films often reflect the traditional austerity of Scandinavian society. Although Urban Gad (Danish, 1879–1947) achieved only modest success as a director, he discovered (and later married) Asta Nielsen, who was the first international film star. The first of their nearly three dozen films together was The Abyss, which displays an eroticism far removed from that of Nielsen’s American rivals. Sweden’s Victor Sjöström (1879–1960) was arguably the first great European director, and he and his friend Mauritz Stiller, a Finnish Jew, turned the Swedish company Svenska Bio into one of the most important film companies in the world. Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm displayed a mature psychological intensity and complexity not previously seen in the cinema.

Afgrunden (The Abyss)

1910. Denmark. Urban Gad. Approx. 30 min.

Ingeborg Holm 

1913. Sweden. Victor Sjöström. Approx. 65 min.

Two Danish Innovators

When Stellan Rye (1880–1914) was killed fighting for the Kaiser in World War I, the world of cinema lost one of its most promising talents. The director of sixteen films in the two years before his death, Rye had a clear impact on the development of German Expressionism with his landmark film The Student of Prague. Benjamin Christensen (1879–1959) began his career with The Mysterious X, a sophisticated spy drama in a stunningly original visual style that would heavily influence the great Expressionist directors of the 1920s. He would go on to make the landmark Häxan (Witchcraft through the Ages) before a brief tenure in Hollywood.

Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague)

1913. Germany. Stellan Rye. Approx. 58 min.

Det Hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious X)

1914. Denmark. Benjamin Christensen. Approx. 60 min.

D. W. Griffith Leaves Biograph

Chafing under the constraints of having to make shorter films while European filmmakers were making increasingly ambitious multi-reel epics, Griffith decided leave Biograph. His parting shot, at more than twice the length of any of his previous films, was Judith of Bethulia, which was intended to compete with the Italian “sword and sandal” spectacles that were flowing into the American market. Yet the performances of stars Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall lend a human element to his sprawling canvas. These same two actors also enrich The Avenging Conscience, the director’s homage to Edgar Allan Poe.

Read curator Charles Silver's extended screening notes at INSIDE/OUT, a MOMA/P.S.1 blog.

Judith of Bethulia 

1914. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 55 min.

The Avenging Conscience 

1914. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 65 min.

Musical accompaniment by Ben Model

Cabiria 

1914. Italy. Giovanni Pastrone. Approx. 120 min.

The Birth of a Nation 

1915. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 130 min.

Intolerance 

1916. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 130 min.

D. W. Griffith’s Competitors: Ince and DeMille

Although D. W. Griffith dominated the second decade of the twentieth century, he was not without rivals and claimants to his throne. Thomas H. Ince (1882–1924) remains a shadowy figure in film history, both because he frequently ignored the line between production and direction and because of his untimely and mysterious death. Many of the films he produced beginning in 1910 had a distinctively Ince-like look to them, even though they were signed by other directors. His association with William S. Hart helped Ince to play a major role in the development of that most uniquely American of genres, the Western. Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) also started with Westerns, but he soon discovered the audience appeal of another commodity: sex. He would go on to a forty-year career as one of the most famous and commercially successful, if not venerated, Hollywood directors.

Custer’s Last Fight 

1912. USA. Thomas Ince. Approx. 50 min.

The Cheat 

1915. USA. Cecil B. DeMille. Approx. 50 min.

More Competition: Neilan and Vidor

Marshall “Mickey” Neilan (1891–1958), a nearly forgotten, tragic figure, began his film career as D. W. Griffith’s chauffeur and wound up, like Griffith, an unemployable drunk for the last two decades of his life. In between, he was hailed as a young genius, and his sensitive direction elevated Mary Pickford to unprecedented heights of superstardom. Of their collaboration, America’s Sweetheart said, “No director could wring the performance from me that Mickey did.” King Vidor (1894–1982) began a long and distinguished career in 1919 as what we would now call an “independent.” Within six years he saved Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with The Big Parade, and his ascension seemed to coincide with Griffith’s decline.

Amarilly of Clothesline Alley 

1918. USA. Marshall Neilan. Approx. 60 min.

The Jackknife Man 

1920. USA. King Vidor. Approx. 65 min.

And Yet More Competition: Walsh and Tourneur

Politics aside, Raoul Walsh (1887–1980) was not entirely unlike the rakish, swashbuckling John Wilkes Booth, whom he portrayed in The Birth of a Nation. His half-century as a director produced many cinematic milestones, if few genuine masterpieces. Maurice Tourneur (1876–1961) brought with him from France a sense of Gallic, Méliès-ian whimsy and a distinctive visual style that probably influenced his protégé Josef von Sternberg. Politically, he was suspect, first sitting out World War I in America and, after returning to France in the 1920s, running the Vichy film industry during World War II.

Regeneration 

1915. USA. Raoul Walsh. Approx. 60 min.

The Blue Bird 

1918. USA. Maurice Tourneur. Approx. 65 min.

Send in the Clowns

Throughout the silent era an enormous number of talented comedians, mostly refugees from music halls, entertained worldwide audiences with antics that we call “slapstick.” The first of these notables was the Frenchman Max Linder (1883–1925), who committed suicide after a failed Hollywood venture, but not before exerting an enormous influence on Charles Chaplin. Mack Sennett (1880–1960) went from being an actor for D. W. Griffith to founding his own Keystone Studio, a comedy factory that dominated the field and produced the likes of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (1887–1933), Mabel Normand (c. 1894–1930), and Chaplin (1889–1977). Buster Keaton (1895–1966) became apprentice to Arbuckle after Fatty left Sennett.

Max et son chien Dick 

1912. France. Max Linder. 6 min.

Caught in a Cabaret 

1914. USA. Mabel Normand. 15 min.

The Knockout 

1914. USA. Mack Sennett. 22 min.

The Rounders 

1914. USA. Charles Chaplin. 8 min.

A Night Out 

1915. USA. Charles Chaplin. 18 min.

The Butcher Boy 

1917. USA. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. 22 min.

Anthology of Italian Cinema, Part I (1895–1926) 

1954. Italy. 152 min.

D. W. Griffith on a Smaller Canvas

After the massive scope of The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and his World War I epic Hearts of the World, Griffith wisely narrowed his ambitions, and his realization that conveying monumental emotions did not require grandiosity and a cast of thousands led to some of his most memorable films. Most of these smaller masterpieces starred Lillian Gish, the preeminent actress of the silent era.

Broken Blossoms 

1919. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 65 min.

True Heart Susie 

1919. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 65 min.

Foolish Wives 

1922. USA. Erich von Stroheim. 106 min.

The Chaplin Revue

From 1914 to 1917, Charles Chaplin moved successively from Keystone to Essanay to Mutual, and each step increased his wealth and independence. Along the way, he was refining his characterization of The Tramp and developing the technical skills to become an accomplished director. The Chaplin Review, compiled in 1959 (with Chaplin-composed music), consists of three small masterpieces he made for First National after his contract with Mutual expired. The films show that Chaplin had far transcended the confines of slapstick and achieved a unique ability to engage the emotions of his audience.

A Dog’s Life 

1918. USA. Charles Chaplin.

Shoulder Arms 

1918. USA. Charles Chaplin.

The Pilgrim 

1923. USA. Charles Chaplin.

Buster’s Planet

Buster Keaton was ultimately Chaplin’s only serious rival. His inimitable use of space and timing, extraordinary athleticism, and superhuman imagination opened doors to which no other film artist ever even found the knobs. This program contains two of his most accomplished films.

Our Hospitality 

1923. USA. Buster Keaton, John Blystone. 66 min.

Sherlock, Jr 

1924. USA. Buster Keaton. 44 min.

The Lubitsch Touch

Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) went from playing a Jewish clown in crude farces to becoming one of the most sophisticated directors in film history. His German career lasted nearly a decade, intermingling satirical comedies with historical spectacles. Mary Pickford summoned him to Hollywood to direct her in Rosita, a film the actress hated and tried to eradicate. (MoMA has a print of the film in spite of her best efforts.) Lubitsch decided to stay and, heavily influenced by Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris, he ran off a string of excellent films that brought a large measure of European maturity to Yankee filmmaking. In the course of these efforts, he developed what became known as “the Lubitsch touch,” which, although not easily definable, has something to do with revealing his characters’ inner reality through means unavailable to any medium other than cinema—and it’s usually funny, too.

So This Is Paris (excerpt) 

1926. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. Approx. 10 min.

The Marriage Circle 

1924. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. Approx. 85 min.

Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh)

1924. Germany. F. W. Murnau. Approx. 80 min.

Nordic Gods and Directors

Siegfried (Part 1 of Die Nibelungen) 

1924. Germany. Fritz Lang. Approx. 86 min.

Swedish Cinema Classics 

1959. Sweden. 36 min.

The Big Parade 

1925. USA. King Vidor. Approx. 125 min.

Eisenstein Double Bill

No first film (at least, prior to Citizen Kane) had the initial impact of Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike. His montage style, borrowed in part from D. W. Griffith’s films, was the antithesis of the long takes characteristic of F. W. Murnau and the German Expressionists and led to much theoretical writing by Eisenstein and others on the nature of filmic art. Eisenstein (1898–1948) followed up with his most famous film, Battleship Potemkin, the story of a 1905 naval mutiny in Odessa against the czar. In an era when the Bolshevik Revolution was relatively fresh and new, even bourgeois audiences in the West could admire the stirring, manipulative magic of Eisenstein’s work. Later, he would run afoul of Stalin and struggle for his career and his life.

Stachka (Strike)

1924. USSR. Sergei Eisenstein. 80 min.

Bronenosets Potemkin (Battleship Potemkin)

1925. USSR. Sergei Eisenstein. 50 min.

Special Event: Mark Griffin on Vincente Minnelli

Film historian Mark Griffin introduces a screening of Vincente Minnelli’s adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s great Romantic novel Madame Bovary. Griffin’s new book A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli (Da Capo Press) is a model auteurist study of one of Hollywood’s most intriguing, illustrious, and stylistically eloquent directors. Over the course of several years, Griffin has labored tirelessly to interview surviving collaborators of the director, and his book reveals much that was unknown about Minnelli, refutes much of his autobiography, and ties the director’s life and obsessions to his films.

Madame Bovary 

1949. USA. Vincente Minnelli. 115 min.

The Documentary Expands

The documentary model set forth by Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) would not satisfy nonfiction filmmakers for long. Several divergent tendencies soon emerged, including epic scale and poetic lyricism. Merian C. Cooper (1893–1973) and Ernest B. Schoedsack (1893–1979)—soon to be parents of King Kong—opened up Flaherty’s anthropological approach to sprawling proportions in their Grass: A Nation’s Battle For Life, which captured the annual migration of 50,000 Iranian tribesmen in search of grasslands. The Dutch political documentarian Joris Ivens (1898–1989) began his long career with two stunning visual evocations of his native country.

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life 

1925. USA. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. Approx. 64 min.

Die Brug (The Bridge)

1929. The Netherlands. Joris Ivens. 12 min.

Regen (Rain)

1929. The Netherlands. Joris Ivens. 12 min.

Buster’s Best

Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton (1895–1966) was, with the possible exception of Charles Chaplin, the greatest comic artist the movies ever produced. What is intriguing is that some of his best work—as in this program—is not conventionally funny. It requires a certain adjustment of intellect to fully appreciate that Buster’s most harrowing escapades, his narrow escapes from machinery and nature, produced with the most exquisitely precise timing, are not merely breathtaking; they also capture our human frailty in ways that are intrinsically laughable. Who else could make a brilliant comedy about the bloodiest war in American history? Who else could turn a destructive cyclone into a rollicking cinematic farce?

The General 

1926. USA. Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman. Approx. 79 min.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (excerpt) 

1928. USA. Charles F. Reisner (and Buster Keaton, uncredited). Approx. 10 min.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 

1927. USA. F. W. Murnau. 95 min.

Street Angel 

1928. USA. Frank Borzage. 102 min.

La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc)

1928. France. Carl Theodor Dreyer. 82 min.

The French Avant-Garde of the 1920s

Running parallel to the development of narrative cinema and actuality filmmaking was an experimental track. Influenced by the trick cinema of Georges Méliès and his rivals, it was particularly prominent in France during the Surrealist period. Many of the experimenters gradually moved into mainstream commercial cinema, while other artists ceased dabbling in the movies at all. This program provides a sampler of their work. All films made in France.

Le Retour à la raison 

1923. France. Man Ray. 2 min.

Ballet Mécanique 

1924. France. Fernand Léger. 11 min.

Entr’acte 

1924. France. René Clair. 15 min.

Anemic Cinema 

1926. France. Marcel Duchamp. 6 min.

Sur an air de Charleston 

1927. France. Jean Renoir. 17 min.

La Marche des machines 

1928. France. Eugene Deslaw. 6 min.

La coquille et le clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman)

1928. France. Germaine Dulac. 29 min.

Un Chien Andalou 

1929. France. Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí. 16 min.

Dziga Vertov

Between 1922 and 1925, with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s full approval, the first great Soviet documentarian—the Polish-born Dziga Vertov (1896–1954)—produced a series of propagandistic newsreels called Kino-Pravda (Cinema-Truth). (Jean Rouch, the French originator of cinéma vérité, named his movement after the French translation of Vertov’s series, and Jean-Luc Godard named his documentary collective the Groupe Dziga Vertov.) Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera, which came at the end of a cycle of landmark city-symphony films (Alberto Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures, Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, etc.), is a stunning compendium of innovative cinematic techniques envisioned by the director and his compatriots.

Kino-Pravda 

1922. USSR. Dziga Vertov. 14 min.

Chelovek s kinoapparatom (The Man with the Movie Camera)

1929. USSR. Dziga Vertov. 67 min.

Vsevolod I. Pudovkin

Although Pudovkin (1893–1953) shared Sergei Eisenstein’s predisposition toward montage, he was much more “Western” in that he built his films around individuals rather than the collective. Heavily indebted to D. W. Griffith, Pudovkin’s Storm over Asia—like Griffith’s Intolerance—relies a great deal on moving cameras and spectacle to capture the epic sweep of history. And like Griffith, Pudovkin takes pains to develop his characters as they travel across his broad canvas, as in his brilliant adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s Mother (1925). This is something Eisenstein did not seriously attempt until the 1930s, at the cost of the audience’s emotional engagement.

Shakhmatnaya goryachka (Chess Fever)

1925. USSR. V. I. Pudovkin. 17 min.

Potomok Chingis-Khan (Storm over Asia)

1928. USSR. V. I. Pudovkin. 74 min.

Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box)

1928. Germany. Georg Wilhelm Pabst. 88 min.

The Docks of New York 

1929. USA. Josef von Sternberg. 75 min.

Arsenal 

1929. USSR. Alexander Dovzhenko. Approx. 85 min.

The Wind 

1928. USA. Victor Seastrom. 71 min.

Early Animation

From its early days, film offered animated works on a parallel track with live-action narrative. This program surveys some of the highlights of this development. Program includes Drame chez les fantoches (A Love Affair in Toyland) (Emil Cohl, 1908), Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914), Mutt and Jeff in the Big Swim (Dick Huemer, c. 1918), Newman’s Laugh-o-grams (Walt Disney, 1920), Felix Gets the Can (Otto Messmer, 1924), Steamboat Willie (Ub Iwerks, 1928), The Mad Dog (Walt Disney, 1932), Carmen (Lotte Reiniger, 1933), Remembering Winsor McCay (John Canemaker, 1976), Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat (John Canemaker, 1977), Miest Kinomatografitcheskogo Operatora (Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman) (Ladislav Starevich, 1912), La Voix du rossignol (Voice of the Nightingale) (Ladislav Starevich, 1925), Koko Chops Suey (Max Fleischer, 1927), The Proxy Lover (Max Fleischer, 1927), and In My Merry Oldsmobile (Max Fleischer, 1931).

The Circus 

1928. USA. Charles Chaplin. 71 min.

Hallelujah 

1929. USA. King Vidor. 100 min.

Blackmail 

1929. Great Britain. Alfred Hitchcock. 86 min.

Abraham Lincoln 

1930. USA. D. W. Griffith. 93 min.

Applause 

1929. USA. Rouben Mamoulian. 81 min.

Morocco 

1930. USA. Josef von Sternberg. 92 min.

The Dawn Patrol 

1930. USA. Howard Hawks. 108 min.

All Quiet on the Western Front 

1930. USA. Lewis Milestone. 129 min.

Westfront 1918 

1930. Germany. G. W. Pabst. 93 min.

The Big Trail 

1930. USA. Raoul Walsh. 121 min.

The Love Parade 

1929. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. 110 min.

Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris)

1930. France. René Clair. 95 min.

City Lights 

1931. USA. Charles Chaplin. 90 min.

Tabu 

1931. USA. F. W. Murnau. 80 min.

Jean Renoir Birthday Celebration

Jean Renoir, born on September 15, 1894, had, in the 1930s, one of the greatest decades in directorial history.

Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning)

1932. France. Jean Renoir. 85 min.

Une partie de campagne (A Day in the Country)

1936. France. Jean Renoir. 45 min.

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation 

1932. USA. Howard Hawks. 99 min.

Special Event
Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille was one of the most powerful and influential directors in Hollywood history. His early, pioneering “art” films gave way to risqué comedies and Biblical spectacles of singular grandiosity. Everything about DeMille tended to be larger than life, including the political controversies he engendered. Scott Eyman, the distinguished author of definitive biographies of John Ford and Louis B. Mayer, will discuss his imposing Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille (Simon & Schuster, 2010) and introduce two of the director’s rarest features. Special thanks to George Eastman House and The Film Foundation.

The Kindling 

1915. USA. Cecil B. DeMille. Approx. 55 min.

The Golden Chance 

1916. USA. Cecil B. DeMille. Approx. 60 min.

The Man I Killed (Broken Lullabye) (opening sequence) 

1932. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. 3 min.

Trouble in Paradise 

1932. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. 80 min.

Leo McCarey Program

Leo McCarey (1898–1969) entered the film business at the age of twenty and honed his immense talents making silent comedies for Hal Roach. He was largely responsible for the subtle integration of “Stan and Ollie,” and he went on to direct Eddie Cantor, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, Cary Grant, and Irene Dunne. Because of McCarey’s controlling influence, Duck Soup remains the funniest and most rewatchable of the Marx Brothers films.

We Faw Down 

1928. USA. Leo McCarey. 20 min.

Wrong Again 

1929. USA. Leo McCarey. 20 min.

Duck Soup 

1933. USA. Leo McCarey. 69 min.

King Kong 

1933. USA. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. 103 min.

Jean Vigo Program

Jean Vigo (1905–1934) provided the cinema with some of its greatest glories—and one of its greatest tragedies. This program comprises almost his entire corpus of work, a stunning but stunted output that leaves us in permanent perplexity over what he might have lived to achieve. An acknowledged godfather (along with Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock) to the French New Wave, Vigo died at twenty-nine, seventy-six years ago this month. His films provide a glimpse of a unique—but still raw—talent and a haunting legacy.

Zero de Conduite (Zero for Conduct)

1933. France. Jean Vigo. 43 min.

L’Atalante 

1934. France. Jean Vigo. 79 min.

Flaherty and Grierson

Robert Flaherty (1884–1951) remained the central figure in ethnographic filmmaking throughout his life. His major early works (Nanook of the North, Moana) were filmed in remote locales. With Man of Aran, he moved closer to “civilization,” but he still managed to capture in the Aran Islands a culture that no self-respecting Londoner would find any less exotic than the Arctic or the South Seas. As a document on the unforgiving nature of Nature, it is hard to find its equal. John Grierson (1898–1972), Flaherty’s Scottish disciple, was the dominant force in British documentary until 1939, and he spent World War II as the main creative mind behind the National Film Board of Canada.

Granton Trawler 

1934. great Britain. John Grierson. 11 min.

Man of Aran 

1934. Great Britain. Robert Flaherty. 75 min.

Alessandro Blasetti Program

Alessandro Blasetti (1900–1987) was a dominant figure in Italy in the late silent and early sound period, which corresponded with the peak of Fascism. He is credited with laying the groundwork for postwar Italian Neorealism, especially in his use of non-actors and location shooting. He was also heavily influenced by the great Soviet directors, particularly in his film 1860, an epic recreation of a major episode in il Risorgimento (the struggle for Italian unification).

Sole (excerpt) 

1928. Italy. Alessandro Blasetti. 9 min.

1860 (I Mille di Garibaldi) 

1933. Italy. Alessandro Blasetti. 73 min.

The Great Depression

Although there was no dearth of Hollywood depictions of the Depression, most of the major directors steered clear of taking on the subject directly. King Vidor was unable to find studio financing for Our Daily Bread, a tale of fired workers and their families that he saw as a sequel to his silent masterpiece The Crowd. Working independently with some funds supplied by his friend Charles Chaplin, Vidor struggled to present a solution to the country’s problems that was vaguely Socialist—yet borderline Fascist. The Roosevelt administration addressed movie audiences through a series of excellent documentaries, and The River was made in support of the Tennessee Valley Authority (later the subject of the 1960 Wild River, one of Elia Kazan’s best films).

Our Daily Bread 

1934. USA. King Vidor. 74 min.

The River 

1937. USA. Pare Lorentz. 30 min.

The Devil Is a Woman 

1935. USA. Josef von Sternberg. 80 min.

Things to Come 

1936. Great Britain. William Cameron Menzies. 92 min.

Modern Times 

1936. USA. Charles Chaplin. 85 min.

Cesar 

1936. France. Marcel Pagnol. 117 min.

Fascism on the March

With Dziga Vertov’s Kino Pravda in Russia and the productions of the Film and Photo League in America, propagandistic documentaries were nothing new, but the scorching politics of the 1930s drew talented directors into the genre. Leni Riefenstahl, with the resources of the Nazi state at her command, borrowed from the Expressionist filmmakers to glorify Hitler and the 1934 party congress at Nuremberg. Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, whose poetic documentaries were screened earlier in this series, shows himself to be the antithesis of Riefenstahl in his depiction of the Spanish Civil War.

Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will (abridged version))

1935. Germany. Leni Riefenstahl. 42 min.

The Spanish Earth 

1937. USA. Joris Ivens. 53 min.

Camille 

1936. USA. George Cukor. 115 min.

Make Way for Tomorrow 

1937. USA. Leo McCarey. 92 min.

American Musicals: Famous Production Numbers 

1929–35. USA. 38 min.

History Is Made at Night 

1937. USA. Frank Borzage. 97 min.

You Only Live Once 

1937. USA. Fritz Lang. 86 min.

La Marseillaise 

1937. France. Jean Renoir. 132 min.

Abel Gance Program

Abel Gance (1889–1981) was one of the cinema’s most ambitious innovators, and one of its greatest personalities. Through films like La Roue, Napoleon, and his two versions of J’Accuse, Gance sought to do nothing less than revolutionize the movies. These two excellent documentaries serve as an introduction to his life and work.
Abel Gance: Hier et demain. 1963. France. Directed by Nelly Kaplan
Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite. 1968. Great Britain. Directed by Kevin Brownlow

J’Accuse 

1938. France. Abel Gance. 124 min.

Disney, Iwerks, and Fleischer in the 1930s

Following up on our survey of early animation last June, this program highlights three of the key figures in animation during the ensuing decade. By the 1930s Walt Disney and Max Fleischer had their own studios, although most of the creative labor was left to subordinates. However, unlike the live-action Hollywood studio moguls, Disney and Fleischer found ways to put their own, personal stamp on the films they produced: Disney’s reflected traditional “WASP-ish,” middle-American values; Fleischer was Jewish, very New York, and subversive. Disney generally leaned toward anthropomorphic animals like Mickey Mouse; Fleischer preferred (more-or-less) human characters who, like Betty Boop, were short on inhibitions. Films by Mickey Mouse progenitor Ub Iwerks, who worked independently for a few years between stints with Disney, are also included, and it seems clear that Iwerks’s personal proclivities fell somewhere in between his two more famous peers. All films are from the U.S., and producing credits are indicated by last name.
Dizzy Red Riding Hood. 1931. Fleischer. 7 min.
The Mad Doctor. 1933. Disney. 5 min.
Minnie the Moocher. 1932. Fleischer. 8 min.
The Three Little Pigs. 1933. Disney. 9 min.
Snow White. 1933. Fleischer. 7 min.
Stratos Fear. 1933. Iwerks. 6 min.
The Headless Horseman. 1934. Iwerks. 8 min.
Little Black Sambo. 1935. Iwerks. 7 min.
Mickey’s Garden. 1935. Disney. 8 min.
Song of the Birds. 1935. Fleischer. 7 min.
The Brave Little Tailor. 1938. Disney. 8 min.
Betty Boop and Grampy. 1935. Fleischer. 9 min.
The Ugly Duckling. 1939. Disney. 9 min.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves. 1937. Fleischer. 17 min.

Bezhin Lug (Bezhin Meadow)

1937. USSR. Sergei Eisenstein. 28 min.

Alexander Nevsky 

1938. USSR. Sergei Eisenstein. 107 min.

Holiday 

1938. USA. George Cukor. 93 min.

Bringing Up Baby 

1938. USA. Howards Hawks. 102 min.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 

1937. USA. David Hand. 83 min.

Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows)

1938. France. Marcel Carné. 91 min.

Love Affair 

1939. USA. Leo McCarey. 88 min.

Le Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game)

1939. France. Jean Renoir. 110 min.

Young Mr. Lincoln 

1939. USA. John Ford. 100 min.

The Great Dictator 

1940. USA. Charles Chaplin. 127 min.

Pinocchio 

1940. USA. 88 min.

The Grapes of Wrath 

1940. USA. John Ford. 129 min.

Citizen Kane 

1941. USA. Orson Welles, with Herman J. Mankiewicz. 120 min.

How Green Was My Valley 

1941. USA. John Ford. 118 min.

The Maltese Falcon 

1941. USA. John Huston. 100 min.

The Lady Eve 

1941. USA. Preston Sturges. 94 min.

Casablanca 

1942. USA. Michael Curtiz. 102 min.

Why We Fight

The first two in the series of seven propaganda films Frank Capra made for the War Department under the supervision of General George C. Marshall.

Prelude to War 

1942. USA. Major Frank Capra. 54 min.

The Nazis Strike 

1942. USA. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Capra, Major Anatole Litvak. 41 min.

Native Land 

1942. USA. Leo Hurwitz, Paul Strand. 88 min.

Air Force 

1943. USA. Howard Hawks. 124 min.

Ninotchka 

1939. USA. Ernst Lubitsch. 110 min.

Vredens Dag (Day of Wrath)

1943. Denmark. Carl Theodor Dreyer. 92 min.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 

1943. Great Britain. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. 163 min.

Laura 

1944. USA. Otto Preminger. 88 min.

Meet Me in St. Louis 

1944. USA. Vincente Minnelli. 113 min.

The Southerner 

1945. USA. Jean Renoir. 91 min.

Henry V 

1944. Great Britain. Laurence Olivier. 136 min.

Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise)

1945. France. Marcel Carné. Approx. 150 min.

Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II)

1944–46. USSR. Sergei Eisenstein. Approx. 180 min.

Roma, Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City)

1945. Italy. Roberto Rossellini. 100 min.

Notorious 

1946. USA. Alfred Hitchcock. 101 min.

Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna (Utamaro and His Five Women)

1946. Japan. Kenji Mizoguchi. 95 min.

It’s a Wonderful Life 

1946. USA. Frank Capra. 130 min.

Duel in the Sun 

1946. USA. King Vidor. 130 min.

Paisa (Paisan)

1946. Italy. Roberto Rossellini. 116 min.

Monsieur Verdoux 

1947. USA. Charles Chaplin. 124 min.

Great Expectations 

1947. Great Britain. David Lean. 118 min.

Black Narcissus 

1947. Great Britain. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. 99 min.

Letter from an Unknown Woman 

1948. USA. Max Ophuls. 87 min.

Red River 

1948. USA. Howard Hawks. 133 min.

Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief/Bicycle Thieves)

1948. Italy. Vittorio De Sica. 85 min.

Orphee (Orpheus)

1949. France. Jean Cocteau. 94 min.

White Heat 

1949. USA. Raoul Walsh. 113 min.

Banshun (Late Spring)

1949. Japan. Yasujiro Ozu. 108 min.

The Third Man 

1949. Great Britain. Carol Reed. 104 min.

Rashomon 

1950. Japan. Akira Kurosawa. 88 min.

Wagon Master 

1950. USA. John Ford.

La Ronde 

1950. France. Max Ophuls. 97 min.

All About Eve 

1950. USA. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 138 min.

Rossellini and God

Francesco, Giullare di Dio (The Little Flowers of St. Francis)

1950. Italy. Roberto Rossellini. 81 min.

Il Miracolo (The Miracle)

1948. Italy. Roberto Rossellini. 38 min.

Los olvidados (The Young and the Damned)

1950. Mexico. Luis Buñuel. 88 min.