Reading Room

Mabel Normand's Star Image Culminated in The Extra Girl (opens trettleman.medium.com in a new tab)

Essay examining Normand's comedic talents and the film's place at the end of her career.

Medium

On The Extra Girl

The Pilgrim (1923) - Chaplin: Film by Film (opens chaplinfilmbyfilm.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Chaplin's gentle satire on small-town religion with classical theatrical roots.

Chaplin: Film by Film

On The Pilgrim

Foreplays #8: Germaine Dulac's The Smiling Madame Beudet (opens mubi.com in a new tab)

Essay on Dulac's feminist cinema exploring a wife's subjectivity through visual effects and symbolism.

MUBI Notebook

On The Smiling Madame Beudet

THE STREET (Karl Grune, 1923) (opens grunes.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Analysis of German Expressionist street film with hallucinatory visuals of Berlin and innovative lighting.

Dennis Grunes

On The Street

Out of the Vaults: The Ten Commandments, 1923 (opens film-foundation.org in a new tab)

Essay on Cecil B. DeMille's revolutionary biblical epic with innovative special effects.

The Film Foundation

On The Ten Commandments

Watch the First Russian Science Fiction Film, Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) (opens openculture.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Soviet revolutionary science fiction and its bold Martian design vocabulary.

Open Culture

On Aelita: Queen of Mars

Bombast: D.W. Griffith's America (opens filmcomment.com in a new tab)

Critical essay on Griffith's expensive historical epic about the American Revolution.

Film Comment

On America

Watch Entr'Acte: René Clair's Dadaist Masterpiece, Scored by Erik Satie (opens openculture.com in a new tab)

Essay on Clair's Dada cinema with camera tricks and avant-garde performances by Duchamp and Man Ray.

Open Culture

On Entr'acte

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

Great Movie essay on Stroheim's vision of capitalism inscribing chaos through human degradation.

Roger Ebert

On Greed

Thoughts On: Harold Lloyd's Hot Water (1924) (opens silentology.wordpress.com in a new tab)

Essay on Lloyd's domestic comedy exploring his character's married life with family conflicts.

Silent-ology

On Hot Water

Carl Dreyer's Michael - Digitalization and the Rediscovery of a classic Kammerspiel-film (opens kosmorama.org in a new tab)

Essay on Dreyer's intimate chamber drama and its significance in gay cinema history.

Kosmorama

On Michael

Sherlock Jr. essay by Jeffrey Vance — Library of Congress (opens loc.gov in a new tab)

NFPB essay examining Keaton's innovative exploration of cinema and reality through experimental techniques.

On Sherlock Jr.

Review: Sherlock Jr. (1924) (opens philosophyinfilm.com in a new tab)

Philosophical analysis of the film as meditation on cinema's relationship to imagination and dreams.

Philosophy in Film

On Sherlock Jr.

Remembering Buster Keaton and The Navigator (1924) — Now See Hear! (Library of Congress) (opens blogs.loc.gov in a new tab)

Essay on Keaton's commercial breakthrough with mechanical gags and innovative underwater sequences.

On The Navigator

Buster Keaton in COLLEGE (1927) (opens aurorasginjoint.com in a new tab)

Film review examining Keaton's athletic comedy and slapstick innovation.

Aurora's Gin Joint

On College

In the very first scene of The Thief of Bagdad — Library of Congress (opens loc.gov in a new tab)

NFPB essay examining the film's visual grandeur and imaginative special effects.

On The Thief of Bagdad

260: Paul Leni's Waxworks (opens archivalspaces.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Waxworks as the swan song of German Expressionist cinema.

Archival Spaces

On Waxworks

Battleship Potemkin: Utilising Montage to Elicit Emotion (opens duck-eyes.com in a new tab)

Analysis of Eisenstein's dialectical editing approach to create emotional impact.

Duck Eyes

On Battleship Potemkin

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life - The Criterion Channel — The Criterion Collection (opens criterionchannel.com in a new tab)

Critical essay on Cooper and Schoedsack's documentary capturing an epic tribal journey.

On Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life

Film essay for Grass (1925) — Library of Congress (opens loc.gov in a new tab)

NFPB essay on the pioneering ethnographic documentary of the Bakhtiari tribe's migration.

On Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life

He Who Gets Slapped (1924): Life is a cruel joke (opens silentlondon.co.uk in a new tab)

Analysis of Lon Chaney's restrained performance as a scientist turned circus clown.

Silent London

On He Who Gets Slapped

Lazybones (Frank Borzage, 1925) (opens allenjohn.over-blog.com in a new tab)

Essay on Borzage's direction and the film's emotional resonance.

Allen John's attic

On Lazybones

King Vidor's The Big Parade (opens moma.org in a new tab)

Museum analysis of the film's artistic achievement and influence on subsequent war cinema.

MoMA

On The Big Parade

The Freshman - The Criterion Collection (opens criterion.com in a new tab)

Criterion essay on Harold Lloyd's most successful silent comedy.

The Criterion Collection

On The Freshman