Reading Room

La fée aux choux | film by Guy-Blachê (opens britannica.com in a new tab)

Encyclopedia entry on Alice Guy-Blachê's pioneering narrative film, the first fiction film ever made.

Britannica

On The Cabbage-Patch Fairy

The first fully animated film ever, the 1908 'Fantasmagorie' was made by Émile Cohl (opens thevintagenews.com in a new tab)

Historical article on Cohl's pioneering animation and its conceptual uniqueness.

The Vintage News

On Fantasmagorie

The Strong Man - San Francisco Silent Film Festival (opens silentfilm.org in a new tab)

Festival documentation of Capra and Langdon's comedic masterpiece.

On The Strong Man

Thoughts On: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (opens silentology.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Mary Pickford's performance in this literary adaptation examining collaboration with director Marshall Neilan.

Silent-ology

On Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Watch the Film That Invented Cinema: Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895) (opens openculture.com in a new tab)

Educational analysis of the film's historical importance as a foundational work of cinema history.

Open Culture

On Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

Thoughts On: 'The Four Troublesome Heads' (1898) (opens silentology.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Critical analysis of Méliès' pioneering use of multiple exposure and substitution splicing techniques.

Silent-ology

On The Four Troublesome Heads

Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930) – The Films in My Life (opens oncriterion.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Analysis of this controversial film's poetic approach to collectivization and Soviet modernization.

On Criterion

On Earth

On Art and Aesthetics: The Big Swallow (opens onartandaesthetics.com in a new tab)

Scholarly examination of the film's innovative approach to extreme close-up and film form itself.

On Art and Aesthetics

On The Big Swallow

Even Incomplete, the First Alice in Wonderland Film Charms (opens trettleman.medium.com in a new tab)

Critical analysis of Hepworth's adaptation and its innovative special effects for fantasy cinema.

Medium

On Alice in Wonderland

The Great Train Robbery (opens filmsite.org in a new tab)

Comprehensive analysis of the film's narrative structure, editing innovations, and commercial impact.

Filmsite

On The Great Train Robbery

The height of visual extravagance (opens rogerebert.com in a new tab)

Ebert's great movies essay on Sternberg's surrealist approach to historical drama.

Roger Ebert

On The Scarlet Empress

West of the Divide (opens publicdomainmovie.net in a new tab)

Essay on this early John Wayne western and its themes of child abuse within a morality play tradition.

Public Domain Movies

On West of the Divide

An Inn in Tokyo – 1935, Yasujiro Ozu (opens wondersinthedark.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Essay on Ozu's last silent film and its neo-realist approach to depicting urban poverty.

Wonders in the Dark

On An Inn in Tokyo

AN INN IN TOKYO (Yasujiro Ozu, 1935) (opens grunes.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Critical analysis of Ozu's transitional film blending silent melodrama with postwar formalism.

Dennis Grunes

On An Inn in Tokyo

Minding the Gaps: 'The Devil Is a Woman' (1935) (opens thereveal.substack.com in a new tab)

Essay on Sternberg's final Dietrich collaboration and its extreme aestheticism and pessimism.

The Reveal

On The Devil Is a Woman

The New Gulliver (opens neweastcinema.pitt.edu in a new tab)

Essay on Ptushko's pioneering stop-motion animated feature with its Communist allegory.

New East Cinema Symposium

On The New Gulliver

Home Movies: By the Bluest of Seas (opens filmcomment.com in a new tab)

Essay on Barnet's joyful romance combining Soviet realism with musical theater elements.

Film Comment

On By the Bluest of Seas

DISORDER IN THE COURT (1936) -- ThreeStooges.net (opens threestooges.net in a new tab)

Overview of this Three Stooges courtroom comedy short known for anarchic slapstick.

ThreeStooges.net

On Disorder in the Court

My Man Godfrey: The Right Kind of People (opens criterion.com in a new tab)

Criterion essay on La Cava's screwball comedy and its Depression-era commentary on class.

Criterion Collection

On My Man Godfrey

The man who came to buttle (opens rogerebert.com in a new tab)

Ebert's great movies essay celebrating this quintessential 1930s screwball comedy.

Roger Ebert

On My Man Godfrey

City Lights movie review & film summary (opens rogerebert.com in a new tab)

Ebert's essay on Chaplin's masterpiece and its lyrical romanticism and defiance of sound cinema.

Roger Ebert Great Movies

On City Lights

Beginner's Guide to Alfred Hitchcock: Juno and the Paycock (1930) (opens talkfilmsociety.com in a new tab)

Guide to Hitchcock's adaptation of Sean O'Casey's play and his frustrations with theatrical material.

Talk Film Society

On Juno and the Paycock

A History of Screenwriting – The Cabbage Fairy (La Fée aux Choux) (opens rosannewelch.com in a new tab)

Scholarly analysis of the film's significance as the first narrative film and its pioneering screenwriting.

On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

On The Cabbage-Patch Fairy

Sublime Tragicomedy: I Was Born, But… (1932) — Establishing Shot (opens blogs.iu.edu in a new tab)

Essay analyzing Ozu's blend of comedy and social critique in his exploration of class and family.

On I Was Born, But...