Though it’s perhaps difficult for us to fully conceive today, Charles Chaplin (1889-1977) likely remains the most widely recognized great artist in the history of movies. Chaplin’s startling degree of success in his own time, combined with the important fact that he worked in the “universal” language of silent cinema, made him a truly international… Read more »
When I think of Harold Lloyd, that dazzling innovator of silent comedy, I don’t think of the iconic image of him dangling on a clock, high above a bustling city street. I don’t think of him racing a horse-drawn wagon until its wheels pop off or clinging to a girder as its moves through the… Read more »
Guest post by Alyssa Brooks, IU Cinema’s Marketing and Programming Coordinator. In 2019, Jacobs School of Music student Patrick Holcomb was awarded the fifth Jon Vickers Scoring Award, a commission to compose a new orchestral score for a silent film. Holcomb’s score for Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life will premiere Saturday, April 17. This… Read more »
Last month, IU Press published a fascinating book. It is called Love and Loss in Hollywood: Florence Deshon, Max Eastman, and Charlie Chaplin, edited by Cooper C. Graham and Christoph Irmscher, Provost Professor of English and Director of the Wells Scholars Program at Indiana University. Aside from a few minor/undated items, the book contains every… Read more »
Full transparency: all Blu-rays reviewed were provided by Kino Lorber. The unofficial title of this month’s batch of reviews will be called Oops! All Kino. Yes, February’s titles are all from Kino Lorber, and what a batch it is: a sizzlin’ Eartha Kitt vehicle, a Sammy Davis Jr. double feature, two crime pictures, a foundational… Read more »
By the time Buster Keaton made The General (co-directed by Clyde Bruckman) in 1926, Civil War melodramas were already old-fashioned. In the early silent era, the Civil War and the Antebellum South provided fodder for countless narrative films by U.S. studios, so that by the time Keaton made his film, this was well-worn territory. The… Read more »