Archival Spaces 395 White Russians in Hollywood Uploaded 20 March 2026 A still photograph from Joseph von Sternberg’s The Last Command (1928) perfectly captures the mixture of reality and fantasy, of historical truth and aesthetic expression that is so much a part of Hollywood cinema and its White Russian colony: Standing in a World WarContinue reading “395: Far From the Revolution”
Tag Archives: Silent Film
392: Czech Silent Cinema
Archival Spaces 392 Czech Silent Film History Uploaded 6 February 2026 Back in Summer 2023 (Blog 326), I wrote about a Czech film playing at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, The Organist at St. Vitus Cathedral (1929), directed by Jan S. Kolár. It is an amazingly atmospheric melodrama, shot mostly in real locations aroundContinue reading “392: Czech Silent Cinema”
386: Giornate del cinema muto
Archival Spaces 386: Pordenone’s Days of Silent Film, 2 – 12 October 2025 Uploaded 14 November 2025 It was the first time in six years I was back in Pordenone, Italy, for the Giornate del cinema muto, having been forbidden by the powers that be at UCLA to travel to the oldest silent film festivalContinue reading “386: Giornate del cinema muto”
385: Tod Browning
Archival Spaces 385: Dark Carnival. The Secret World of Tod Browning Uploaded 31 October 2025 Beginning with D.W. Griffith, but certainly after the Supreme Court’s decision in Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915), American film directors and studios were obsessively and aggressively optimistic in their depiction of an American imaginary. In thatContinue reading “385: Tod Browning”
Archival Spaces 