Category: Melodrama

A stubborn railroad worker takes a young drifter under his wing.

3026. THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN (1925-USA). With THEDA BARA. During the second decade of the 20th-century, Theda Bara (whose name is an anagram of “Arab Death”) was the movies’ reigning sex star and original screen “vamp.” Her mysterious and alluring appearance dazzled audiences. She specialized in playing exotic femme fatales and chilling mystery womenÑeven though her […]

In this silent comedy-drama based on a short story by the same name, Julia Deep saves Terry, a suicidal playboy, instilling him with a new outlook on life through her kind and endearing ways.

3031. PLAYING DEAD (1915-USA). With MR. and MRS. SIDNEY DREW. Directed by SIDNEY DREW. Scenario by MRS. SIDNEY DREW. Produced by J. STUART BLACKTON, ALBERT E. SMITH. It would be no exaggeration to say that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew were one of the power couples of the early silent cinema. Sidney was a comedy […]

2848. LOVE NEVER DIES (1921-USA). With LLOYD HUGHES, MADGE BELLAMY. Directed and adapted by KING VIDOR. Here is one of the early screen credits of fabled filmmaker King Vidor. Its story begins in the idyllic small southern town of Ridgeville. Liz Trott and Jane Holder are Ridgeville’s two village scandals. They are loose-living women who […]

2738. BIG CITY INTERLUDE (Morals For Women) (1931-USA). With BESSIE LOVE, EMMA DUNN, NATALIE MOOREHEAD, LINA BASQUETTE, CONWAY TEARLE. In this fervent and well-told soap opera, gifted leading lady Bessie Love gives a spirited performance as small-town girl Helen Hutson who moves to New York City to make good. There, she becomes the secretary and […]

2460. WHILE I LIVE (While I Love) (The Dream Of Olwen) (1947-England). This atmospheric and suspenseful ghost story takes viewers to the untamed rocky cliffs of northern Cornwall. There, pianist-composer Olwen Trevelyan struggles to write the ending to her most stirring composition, a tone poem called “The Dream of Olwen.” Driven to complete the musical […]

An educated Miss Carol returns to her rural hometown and crusades to end marriages between older men and underage girls.

2456. THE PHANTOM IN THE HOUSE (1929-USA). With RICARDO CORTEZ, HENRY B. WALTHALL. Henry Walthall made movie history as the courageous “Little Colonel” in the silent epic “The Birth Of A Nation.” In this compelling drama of a man who goes to prison to protect his wife, the gentlemanly actor plays a character very much […]

2225. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN (1914-USA). With SAM LUCAS. Based on the novel by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. A heartrending version of the time-honored American novel, which “is a story of an exotic race whose ancestors…were brought to the New World by heartless traders and sold into slavery.” The setting is the antebellum South. White-haired Uncle Tom […]