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

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

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (opens silentfilm.org in a new tab)

Festival guide to Cooper and Schoedsack's jungle documentary-drama.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

On Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

The First Horror Film, Georges Méliès' The Haunted Castle (1896) (opens openculture.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Méliès' pioneering horror film and its technical innovations in stop-motion effects.

Open Culture

On Le manoir du diable

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

To the stars and beyond: movies dream of outer space, 1898-1910 — Silent Please (opens silentsplease.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Scholarly essay placing the film within the context of early science fiction cinema.

On The Astronomer's Dream

Willing Seduction: The Blue Angel, Marlene Dietrich, and Mass Culture (opens berghahnbooks.com in a new tab)

Book-length study of the film's relationship to mass culture and Dietrich's star image.

Berghahn Books

On The Blue Angel

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 – The Unwritten Record — Library of Congress (opens unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov in a new tab)

Library of Congress essay on the film's historical significance and its pioneering narrative techniques.

On The Great Train Robbery

The Impossible Voyage Was Méliès' Trip to the Sun (opens trettleman.medium.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Méliès' ambitious science fiction film and its satirical treatment of scientific exploration.

Medium

On The Impossible Voyage

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 Trip to the Moon | Spectacular Attractions — Spectacular Attractions (opens drnorth.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Scholarly essay examining the film's theatrical traditions and special effects innovations.

On A Trip to the Moon

MoMA | A Corner in Wheat — Museum of Modern Art (opens moma.org in a new tab)

Museum essay examining the film's innovative use of juxtaposition and social commentary.

On A Corner in Wheat