Heliophage

Shaw Brothers' classic remake of the Mainland film from 1956 whose wide success had led them to take up the Huangmei opera banner just 7 years earlier. Now with added benefit of Eddie Wang's arrangements and some particularly beautiful sets in glorious color ShawScope (especially the billowing crystal heavens with their rainbow—and dresses to match). Stacked against the leading names of the Huangmei opera stage, this cast's singing and performance holds up quite well on their own graceful appeal

53 _69%

Der junge Medardus (1923) - Rated 30 Mar 2025

There is a lot to hang a tragedy on in this plot: family of the ancien régime are in exile in Austria, and our fictional bourgeois protagonist blames them for his sister's death. He decides seducing one of them is a sort of "revenge," but this only makes him hate himself and her the more. She marries a pretender to the French throne; then she wants him to assassinate Napoleon; it only gets more complicated from there. I don't know that the drama quite hits, but there is a big battle.

29 _33%

Das Versuchskaninchen (1916) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

A loose take on the Pickford schtick, with our 30-something star as an adolescent who acts like a 9-year-old. Herein being subjected to dumb "experiments" (phrenology included) when not playing pranks, making silly faces, or attempting to choke herself with a jumprope. Honestly, it's all rather weak slapstick. Cute toy monkeys, though.

50 _67%

Mr. Hurry-up (1907) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

From rush life to lush life. Our man dashes to work, then the dentist (of course he is not one to stop and brush his teeth), then the bar to numb his mind of the dentist, and then home for strange drunken experiences. This plays out as a sequence of simple physical comedy vignettes, each in a new locale. Things get more complicated when drunk. A rotating spiral staircase prop is introduced. Then the furniture goes in and out of stop-motion in the finale.

64 _81%

Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

Paris as apache playset. A compact little dollhouse of a street to showcase some most inventive cinematography and sound design. Pity such grubby bits of cardboard populate it in those cliché crook caps of theirs. Maybe they forgot the first rule of selling "romance" in this particular setting is to dress it up as a tango. Some may begin to suspect the neighbors have the right idea about those droning accordions and the obnoxious young men behind them. (They can manage a mean knife fight, though

48 _66%

Sumurun (1920) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

From the midst of the crucially successful but mercifully brief Grand Spectacle phase that put Lubitsch on the international map. A prettily-staged if rather melodramatic Oriental fantasy off a German play (the first film of it was in 1910—that version's stars toured it live in the US to considerable success). As often in these epic numbers, I am left with the impression that it is art director Kurt Richter cutting loose with all these sets and costumes, more than Lubitsch or the cast.

45 _62%

Anna Held (1901) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

Comic close-ups—a popular fad of the nickelodeon days. This one bears the distinction of being a celebrity instance, from when it was an unusual novelty for a well-known actor to do such things. Then-wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, the star he whisked from Paris to Broadway, the very woman his Follies would be founded to feature in a few years: Anna Held, doing the bit from a recent musical she starred in recently called Papa's Wife where shes "drunk for the first time".

35 _45%

A Wake in 'Hell's Kitchen' (1900) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

The deceased gets up for some beer. Those in attendance are a few too many glasses in to notice right away, but do eventually, to general excitement.

74 _91%

Enoken no seishun suikoden (1934) - Rated 28 Mar 2025

As they made their spot as the new studio in town, PCL (or Toho, these days), mostly had to rely on fresh acting talent off the stage. But they did land one star everyone knew right away: The King of Comedy himself, Kenichi Enomoto. Enoken starts off starring in a musical (PCL's big debut genre as in Tipsy Life) modeled a fair bit on the sort of thing Eddie Cantor was doing in Hollywood. It's fun.

45 _62%

Singapore Sue (1932) - Rated 28 Mar 2025