Always more films to add to the collection . . .

Links to over 900 essays, reviews, and articles have been added to the KINOPOLIS Reading Room from sources like the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the BFI, Movies Silently, and MoMA

I'm still indexing them, and will be adding video essays soon!

www.kino-polis.com/reading-room

Tod Browning's Underworld Tod Browning ran away from his Kentucky home as a teenager to join the circus, and he never really left. He worked as a contortionist, a clown, and a sideshow barker before drifting into the film indu...

Articles also appear on film, person, and collection pages.

For example, you can browse through our Tod Browning collection and also read read Farran Smith's Nehme's ( (@selfstyledsiren.bsky.social ) great essay on Criterion

www.kino-polis.com/collections/...

New on KINOPOLIS - 📚 The Reading Room 🎬

Now all of our linked articles are searchable by Title, Author, Film, and Topic!

The best writing on early cinema from around the web, more added daily. Happy watching and reading!

www.kino-polis.com/reading-room

A quick plug for another film site I maintain.

I love The Criterion Channel, but have been frustrated by its search feature, so I built my own.

Search by composer? Gotcha. Like Czech films of the 1960s? No problem. Custom lists, star ratings, favorites, and box sets!

www.search-criteria.com

The Life of Christ (1906) Alice Guy-Blaché’s La Vie du Christ (1906) is one of the most ambitious films made in the first decade of cinema, a 33-minute telling of the life of Jesus in 25 tableaux that was, at the time of its r...

www.kino-polis.com/films/0b633e...

Today on KINOPOLIS: La Vie du Christ (1906) by Alice Guy-Blaché.

25 tableaux, 300 extras, sets modeled on Tissot’s illustrated Bible.

Released 120 years ago, It was the biggest Gaumont production of its era, directed two years before Griffith ever stepped behind a camera. #filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Out of the Inkwell (1919) The Fleischer brothers' Out of the Inkwell series (1918-1929) is one of the most inventive bodies of work in early animation, and the shorts that launched it remain startling in their formal ambition....

www.kino-polis.com/films/4e1cc5...

Now on KINOPOLIS: the Fleischer brothers' Out of the Inkwell (1918-1929). Max draws a clown, who promptly escapes the page, and this a decade-long series begins, built on the rotoscope, slapstick metaphysics, and the war between creator and creation. #filmsky

Mabel at the Wheel (1914) Mabel at the Wheel (1914) is a pivotal Keystone comedy, not for what it achieves on screen but for the power struggle it triggered behind the camera. Directed by Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett, the tw...

www.kino-polis.com/films/b8ce54...

Now on KINOPOLIS: Mabel at the Wheel (1914). Mabel Normand directs, drives a Stutz Bearcat, and bites Charlie Chaplin’s hand. Their on-set clashes led Sennett to let Chaplin direct his own films. A turning point disguised as a two-reel farce. #filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

G.W. Pabst Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967), known professionally as G. W. Pabst, was an Austrian theatre and film director.

More G.W. Pabst here

www.kino-polis.com/people/6dcce...

www.kino-polis.com/films/47a4e7...

🎬 Film of the Day: SECRETS OF A SOUL (Pabst, 1926)

An experiment in making a Freudian film, to the point that the producers invited the man himself to participate - he declined, but two of his associates served as advisors.

Check out the dream sequence at minute 15.

#Filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

good take and highly relevant

Tod Browning was the Yorgos of the 1920s

Spotlight: Mary Pickford Mary Pickford was the most powerful woman in the history of early Hollywood, and for a time she was the most famous woman in the world. Born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto in 1892, she was a stage veteran by the age of eight and a film star by sixteen, and she leveraged her enormous popularity into a degree of creative and financial control that no actor — male or female — had previously achieved. She co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Griffith, becoming the first major star to own her own distribution company. She produced her own films, chose her own directors, and negotiated contracts that made her the highest-paid performer in the industry. Her screen persona — plucky, resourceful, emotionally transparent — was often dismissed as sentimental, but the performances themselves are far more sophisticated than their reputation suggests. In Stella Maris she played two roles, one a privileged beauty and the other a disfigured orphan, and the contrast revealed a dramatic range that critics consistently underestimated. In Sparrows she combined fairy-tale innocence with genuine physical danger, leading a group of kidnapped children through a swamp full of alligators in sequences she performed without doubles. She was not merely “America's Sweetheart.” She was a complete filmmaker who happened to perform in front of the camera. Pickford retired from acting in 1933, frustrated by the limited roles available to her in the sound era, and spent the rest of her long life as a producer and businesswoman. The nine films collected here span the full arc of her career, from the early features that made her a star through the late silents that showcased the full range of her talent and ambition.

For more on Mary Pickford, visit our Spotlight collection

www.kino-polis.com/collections/...

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) is the first screen adaptation of Kate Douglas Wiggin’s beloved 1903 novel, directed by Marshall Neilan and starring Mary Pickford at the height of her power as Ameri...

www.kino-polis.com/films/ef0f60...

🎬 Film of the Day: REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM (1917)

Happy birthday Marshall Neilan, born this day 1891. Pickford’s favorite director. He was 26, she was 25 playing a child, and Frances Marion wrote the script.

The formula shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.

#Filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

To dive deeper into the life and career of Anna May Wong visit our Spotlight collection

www.kino-polis.com/collections/...

www.kino-polis.com/films/e43201...

Pavement Butterfly (1929)

🎬 Film of the Day: PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (1929)

Anna May Wong had to leave Hollywood for Europe to get roles worthy of her talent. Here she plays a Parisian fan dancer framed for murder. Alexander Granach (Knock from Nosferatu!) plays the spurned clown who set her up

#Filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Terror Island (1920) Terror Island (1920) is one of two features Harry Houdini made for a major Hollywood studio, and it captures everything fascinating and frustrating about his brief film career. Produced by Jesse Lasky...

🎬 Film of the Day: TERROR ISLAND (1920)

Harry Houdini made two films for Paramount and this is the better one. Pure pulp: submarines, sacred pearls, an iron safe tossed into the sea. He couldn’t act (but did it matter?).

www.kino-polis.com/films/5c568d...

#Filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

When possible, I link out to sites like Danish Silent Film, the BFI, MoMa, the Library of Congress, and review sites like @moviessilently.bsky.social

If there are early cinema resources you find valuable, feel free to let me know and I'll add them to the site.

Danish Silent Film

For those who love early cinema, Danish Silent Film is an incredible treasure trove. Much of their catalog of over 200 films can't be found elsewhere (including KINOPOLIS) and are remarkably high quality.

Definitely worth a bookmark.

#filmsky www.kino-polis.com

www.stumfilm.dk/en/stumfilm

The Haunted Castle (1921) Schloß Vogelöd, released in English as The Haunted Castle, is F.W. Murnau’s 1921 mystery drama and one of the earliest surviving films from a director whose later masterworks (Nosferatu, The Last Laug...

www.kino-polis.com/films/ea661b...

🎬 Film of the Day: Murnau’s THE HAUNTED CASTLE, released April 7, 1922

This murder mystery is early, minor Murnau, but has its moments, like a nightmare scene at 47:00 that reads as a warm up to Nosferatu, released a year later

www.kino-polis.com

#Filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Half Shot at Sunrise (1930) Released in 1930, Half Shot at Sunrise is the second starring vehicle for Wheeler & Woolsey, the wildly popular comedy duo whose films kept RKO profitable in the early sound era but who have since fal...

🎬 Film of the Day: HALF SHOT AT SUNRISE (1930)

Happy birthday Bert Wheeler, born today 1895. With Robert Woolsey, the first comedy team to become stars of the talkies, now almost forgotten. Two AWOL doughboys loose in WWI Paris. Pre-Code, free to watch.

www.kino-polis.com/films/bbeb2f...

#Filmsky

Up the River (1930) John Ford's Up the River (1930) is a minor film with major historical significance: the feature debut of both Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart, and the only time the two appeared on screen together. ...

Born on this day in 1900: Spencer Tracy. Today’s film of the day on KINOPOLIS is Up the River (1930), his feature debut, directed by John Ford. Tracy is already completely himself here. Bogart co-stars in their only film together. #filmsky​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

www.kino-polis.com/films/45967e...