THE CAMERAMAN
****
USA
Buster Keaton's first MGM assignment isn't as consistently ingenious as his masterworks, but it's jolly fun with a clever point about the kind of artistry that impresses studio-heads. The highlights include - and are not restricted to - a bunch of poetic and all-too-brief double exposures in the Dziga Vertov key, a chaotic Chinatown gang brawl and, above all, the most charismatic organ-grinder's monkey to ever make it to the movies.
dir: Edward Sedgwick
cast: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracey, Harry Gribbon

THE CIRCUS
****
USA
The Tramp stumbles into a circus and, without knowing, becomes its most popular act.
   The least-seen of Chaplin's early comedies, and probably the weakest, since it runs out of energy a bit early. All the same - it holds a few excellent setpieces in the first hour, including one set in a mirror maze, and one in a lion's cage.
wr/dir: Charles Chaplin
cast: Charles Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Allan Garcia, Harry Crocker

THE CROWD
****½
USA
It's always a cause for celebration when Hollywood shows signs of maturity and this is one of the earliest such cases. A valiant effort to find high drama in the everyday lives of working-class citizens, it often threatens to veer off into melodrama, but Vidor drags it back on track. He  stubbornly refuses to separate his protagonists from the anonymous masses - every major event in their lives is witnessed by relatives, peers or bystanders and a crowd motif is employed memorably, as in scenes depicting office life in a giant room filled with endless, indistinguishable rows of working desks. The lead performers do, however, manage to stand out. By Hollywood standards, they are unusually naturalistic and sympathetic.
dir: King Vidor
cast: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark

THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK
****½
USA
A ship stoker marries a prostitute he has saved from suicide on his one night of shore leave.
   An arbitrary storyline is elevated into something quite exceptional by its director's feel for atmosphere, his eye for luminous imagery, as well as a progressive insistence towards unusually subtle and evocative characterisation. The actors are wonderfully natural.
dir: Josef von Sternberg
ph: Harold Rosson
cast: George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova, Mitchell Lewis, Clyde Cook, Gustav von Seyffertitz

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
*****
France
A horror picture that possesses an eerie, otherworldly grip. Ostensibly based on Edgar Allan Poe's famous tale, the plot becomes hard to follow about two-thirds of the way through as well as essentially irrelevant a lot earlier than that.
   Director Jean Epstein does striking things with slow motion, superimposing, discontinuous editing and handheld camerawork. An avowed Surrealist (not unlike assistant director and co-writer, Luis Buñuel), he is uninterested in the mechanics of the events he depicts, aiming instead for a subjective, 'subconscious' impact. You aren't allowed to make sense of the imagery - and it's so unsettlingly, sublimely beautiful that you feel no need to. A sequence where a coffin is transported across a forest variously spotlit by giant, superimposed candles is as visually, viscerally stunning as anything ever filmed.
   The enormous, cavernous hall of the House of Usher recalls Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu - and no wonder, since it was a direct inspiration on its designers.
dir/ed: Jean Epstein
wr: Jean Epstein, Luis Buñuel
ph: Georges Lucas, Jean Lucas
ad: Pierre Kefer
cast: Jean Debucourt, Marguerite Gance, Charles Lamy, Fournez-Goffard, Luc Dartagnan

THE LAST COMMAND
****½
USA
An elderly, decrepit Hollywood extra recalls his days as a powerful general in Imperialist Russia.
   An engrossing, ironic, beautifully observed drama with complex characters and a superbly staged climax. Its original story was based on an actual person.
dir: Josef von Sternberg
wr: John F. Goodrich
ph: Bert Glennon
ad: Hans Dreier
cast: Emil Jannings, William Powell, Evelyn Brent, Nicolas Soussanin

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
***½
France
A poor little match-seller sinks into hallucination on a cold New Year's Eve.
   An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen tale that shows limited imagination up until some striking images towards the end of Death carrying the girl to her grave.
dir: Jean Renoir, Jean Tédesco
cast: Catherine Hessling, Manuel Raaby, Jean Storm

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
*****
France
Carl Theodor Dreyer took Joan of Arc's three-month trial and condensed it into a single, gruelling day of confrontations with the occupying British forces and the corrupt French Church.
   The dialogue is directly lifted from the original transcripts - you can see them for proof in the opening section. The interiors are kept stark. The actors wear no make-up and the photography (by the great Rudolph Maté), dominated by low-angle close-ups, accentuates their every wrinkle, crease and grease patch, lending an unusual naturalism and intensity to their performances. Because of this, even though the picture, with its canted, claustrophobic frames and gliding camera movements, is very much stylised, it still carries the raw, immediate impact that comes with documentary realism.
   Renée Falconetti's Joan of Arc ranks among the greatest of all screen performances and helps the film accumulate considerable power as it reaches its devastating climax.
   The picture received great critical acclaim from day one, but it failed commercially. Several mutilated cuts were released afterwards until the original 82-minute one was rediscovered (in a Norwegian mental asylum!) and restored in 1981. It's only based on the latter version that you can understand why it regularly makes it into all-time Top-10 lists and deserves to as much as just about any other picture.
wr/dir/ed: Carl Theodor Dreyer
ph: Rudolph Maté
cast: Renée Falconetti, Eugène Sylvain, Maurice Schutz, Michel Simon, Antoin Artaud, Louis Ravet, André Berley, Jean d'Yid

THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN
***
France
Germaine Dulac's notorious Antonin-Artaud-penned piece of surrealism is reportedly concerned with the sexual fantasies of a clergyman. You wouldn't necessarily know that from watching it, and certainly the British censor was confounded when announcing: "If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable." It has curiosity value - and tits, if you're into that sort of thing - but it isn't all that sophisticated.
dir: Germaine Dulac
wr: Antonin Artaud
cast: Alex Allin, Lucien Bataille, Gênica Athanasiou

SHOW PEOPLE
****
USA
Marion Davies is famous purely for being William Randolph Hearst's devoted mistress, whose screen career he made and continually sabotaged through aggressive goodwill. As the story goes, he insisted on imposing upon her prestigious roles in overwrought romantic melodramas, despite evidence that her true talent lay in comedy. Fortunately she did manage to score this light, entertaining vehicle about Peggy Pepper, who goes from Georgia to Hollywood to become a movie star, becomes popular in broad slapstick, then reinvents herself as Patricia Pepoire and moves on to pompous melodrama. The plot is often interpreted as a parody of Gloria Swanson's career, which would explain a few of Ms. Pepoire's grimaces. Davies proves herself an intelligent, likable comedienne and the film is decorated with cameos from some of the period's biggest stars. It's still among the more enjoyable films has Hollywood made about itself.
dir: King Vidor
cast: Marion Davies, William Haines, Dell Henderson, Paul Ralli, Charles Chaplin, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Elinor Glyn, Mae Murray, Norma Talmadge, King Vidor

SPIONE
****
Germany
A pair of spies from opposing organisations fall in love.
   It's possible that not enough people had seen this espionage thriller for it to be as influential as it now appears, but it stands quite comfortably as the archetype of the genre. Like much of Lang's filmography, it could have afforded a lighter touch, but it still holds up remarkably well as entertainment. The villain's striking resemblance to Lenin adds to the fun in a way.
dir: Fritz Lang
ph: Fritz Arno Wagner
cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gerda Maurus, Lien Deyers, Louis Ralph

STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
***½
USA
A meek young man tries to prove his manhood to his father, who is a steamboat captain.
   An enjoyable comedy, memorable for a sequence where Keaton tries on an assortment of hats (and demonstrates a fantastic range of expression), and particularly the famous, spectacular stunt that has an entire house collapsing in a cyclone.
dir: Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton
cast: Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron, Tom Lewis, Tom McGuire

THE WEDDING MARCH
***
USA
An immoral prince falls in love with a poor peasant girl in old Vienna.
   A needlessly drawn-out affair - the first of two parts, with the second now classified as lost - bearing the director's trademark opulent production and glamourous backdrop, but none of the haunting, hypnotic impact of his best work. The characterisations are also unusually flat.
dir: Erich von Stroheim
ph: Hal Mohr, Ben Reynolds
pd: Erich von Stroheim, Richard Day
cast: Erich von Stroheim, Fay Wray, ZaSu Pitts, Matthew Betz, George Fawcett, Maude George, Cesare Gravina

THE WIND
***½
USA
A young woman moves from Virginia to East Texas and is hounded by the wild, howling winds that usually drive women into madness.
   Slow-burning melodrama with some memorable imagery, but marred by a shameful, studio-imposed finale.
dir: Victor Sjöström
cast: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle, William Orlamond

ZVENIGORA
****
USSR
An old man tries to protect a centuries-old treasure in the Ukrainian mountains.
   A delirious mix of folklore and propaganda, constantly switching between time frames and settings as it joyously, emphatically celebrates the Ukrainian nation. Sometimes funny, sometimes poetic, not always coherent, but generally impressive.
dir: Alexander Dovzhenko
cast: Nikolai Nademsky, Georgi Astafyev