From · French Avant-Garde

1926 · Directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff

Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926, independent, almost no titles. Two sisters flee a country killing, reach the Ménilmontant district of Paris; one is used and abandoned, the other works. Nadia Sibirskaïa, Kirsanoff's partner, carries the face the film is built on. Handheld streets, superimpositions, a fair. CNC and the Cinémathèque restored the 38-minute cut that circulates. Made outside the companies, on the cheap, which is why it looks like someone grabbed the city.

From · Silent 101

1922 · Directed by F. W. Murnau

F.W. Murnau's 1922 Prana Film production is an unauthorized Dracula. Max Schreck's Count Orlok arrives in Wisborg with a cargo of rats. Greta Schröder and Gustav von Wangenheim are the couple who wait for him. Florence Stoker sued. In 1925 a German court ordered the negative and the prints destroyed. Copies had already left the country, which is why the film is still here. The shot people remember is not the face. It is the shadow on the stairs.

From · American Spectacle

1920 · Directed by Fred Niblo

Fred Niblo, Douglas Fairbanks Pictures, United Artists, 1920, from Johnston McCulley’s The Curse of Capistrano. Fairbanks is Don Diego Vega, a fop in California under a bad governor, and Zorro when he leaves the house. Marguerite De La Motte is Lolita; Noah Beery the sergeant. Working title The Curse of Capistrano. AFI notes a San Fernando Valley set standing in for Los Angeles about 1840, and that Harry Uttenhoven, a fencing champion, was hired to school Beery and Robert McKim. Fairbanks wrote as Elton Thomas. The Z is a signature, not a thesis.