100 years ago this month, Charlie Chaplin became the highest paid entertainer in the world when he signed with the Mutual Film Corporation; the dozen shorts he produced for them include some of the funniest and most brilliant sequences of his career. Program includes: “The Immigrant” (1917, 22 min.) The Tramp sails to America and ... [Read more...]
Our "Retroformat," movies on 8mm series presents “Fatty and Mabel at Keystone” in our intimate, Spielberg Theatre. This two hour program is an evening of silent shorts on 8mm featuring two of the era’s most beloved stars, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. The program includes a 100th anniversary screening of the beautifully made comedy ... [Read more...]
A famous opera singer lost her voice when her son was born, and has drowned her sorrows in drink. When a murder is committed near her house, she invents a story in order to get herself back in front of the public again. However, the story she comes up with results in her son being ... [Read more...]
A rare comedy from the typically austere D.W. Griffith, Sally of the Sawdust is a delightful gem and the veritable kick off of W.C. Fields’s unmatched career. Based on the 1923 stage musical Poppy, Sally is rife with what we now know as trademark Fields — bumbling idiocy, juggling, dog-kicking — all in the midst of circus antics galore. ... [Read more...]
With Surprise Shorts! In possibly his best pre-swashbuckling comedy, Douglas Fairbanks stars as a young New Yorker who longs for the excitement of the Old West. Energetically directed by John Emerson, with a witty script and wryly ironic intertitles by husband and wife Emerson and Anita Loos, and cinematography by Victor Fleming.
