Tigris
(Vincenzo Denizot, Italy 1913, 48 min., 35mm)
The Gangsters and the Girl
(Scott Sidney, US 1914, 21 min., 35mm)
Films depicting robbery, murder, and kidnapping were wildly popular in early cinema, to the point where social reformers decried the cinema as a breeding ground for moral depravity. At the same time, the urgency of crime stories and their often semi-documentary quality pushed cinema towards greater rhythmic pacing, scenic realism, and dramatic flair. These early films comprised one of James Card’s early lectures on silent films. In Tigris, Edoardo Davesnes plays three roles — criminal, victim, and detective — in this caper that will remind you of Fantômas. And in The Gangsters and the Girl, Molly (Betty Burbridge), a child of the slums, is mistakenly implicated in a shoplifting case. She falls in with a group of gangsters until a policeman (Charles Ray) goes undercover in the gang.
Live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli.
35mm Prints from the George Eastman Museum collection.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Film Screenings | The Wildcat (DCP)
Silent Tuesdays | Schweigen! | Polish Film Festival Years before his iconic “touch” was established, Ernst Lubitsch directed this broad farce about the military-and-marriage complex starring Polish emigré Pola Negri. Rischka (Negri), the daughter of a gang of robbers high in the snowy mountains of Germany, is a real wildcat and runs her father’s gang with ruthlessness.
Film Screenings | Faust (DCP)
Silent Tuesdays | Schweigen! Following Nosferatu and The Last Laugh, master expressionist F.W. Murnau hit a crest with his rendering of Goethe’s classic Faust. Emil Jannings plays the diabolical Mephistopheles, who tempts an aging alchemist with the promise of eternal youth for a small price — his everlasting soul.
Film Screenings | A Kiss for Cinderella (16mm)
Silent Tuesdays Director Herbert Brenon and star Betty Bronson reunite after Peter Pan for another adaptation of a J.M. Barrie play. Jane (Bronson) is a house slave who dreams of a Prince Charming and is nicknamed Cinderella by an artist whose studio she cleans because she always talks of the wonderful things that will one day befall her.