The Musketeers of Pig Alley
(D.W. Griffith, US 1912, 17 min., 16mm)
The Soul of Youth
(William Desmond Taylor, US 1920, 60 min., DCP)
The same year they collaborated on the definitive silent version of Huckleberry Finn, director William Desmond Taylor, writer Julia Crawford Ivers, and star Lewis Sargent re-team for this social drama about welfare, politics, and familial love. Ed Simpson (Sargent) becomes the object of taunting and the target of discipline in the orphanage he’s put in. When his beloved dog is sent away, Ed follows, taking to the streets and trying to make ends meet. When he and a friend uncover incriminating evidence on a mayoral candidate, Ed’s life is put on the line. Preceded by The Musketeers of Pig Alley, one of the earliest gangster films, where a poor married couple is caught between a pickpocket and a gangster.
Live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli.
DCP preserved by the Library of Congress. 16mm print from the George Eastman Museum collection.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Film Screenings | A Page of Madness (35mm)
Silent Tuesdays A brilliant avant-garde exploration of the helplessness felt by a mentally ill person’s loved ones, this film tells of a man who works as a janitor in the insane asylum where his wife is a patient.
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.