All the Movies Podcast

Try though I may, I’m still not seeing what others seem to see in Charles Chaplin. Granted, this, like the previous films I’ve seen from him, is an early effort, and I have hope that his later work will be better, but this feels like another forgettable film that is only worth watching because Chaplin starred in and directed it. The plot, so far as there is one, is that an obnoxious man goes to th...

It’s easy to dismiss most of the directors not named D.W. Griffith who were making films in 1915, and for the most part it can be understandable if one does so, but there were a handful of directors doing more than churning out what today would be called “content” at that point in the history of film. Cecil B. DeMille is another big name who was finding his footing in 1915, along with Maurice Tour...

The film opens with the outbreak of the Civil War, with young men rushing to enlist while their girlfriends watch with pride. Only our protagonist, Frank Winslow, played by Charles Ray, seems uncertain, but with some encouragement from his sweetheart he heads into an enlistment center. He doesn’t sign up, however, as he gets cold feet and flees home instead. His girlfriend is heartbroken and humil...

This is most noteworthy as W.C. Fields’ first film. Though only 35 at the time, Fields had already enjoyed a long and successful career in Vaudeville before turning to film. He eventually went on to become one of Hollywood’s hugest stars, and one of only a handful of silent film stars who is still widely remembered today, and this is where that film career began. The story is simple, and really no...

directed by Raoul Walsh I only know Raoul Walsh from a few gangster pictures he made in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, so I was curious to see some of his earlier work. Quite a few films he’s directed are on my list— 17 I believe— and The Regeneration is the first one to show up in the chronology. Despite being made in 1915, it stands up to his later work, and honestly, is as good as any modern fil...

She's more than a bundle of rags! It’s Mary Pickford again, this time as Rags, so-named because she’s so poor she wears ragged clothing. Pickford never disappoints, and she’s as fabulous in this as she has been in any film I’ve seen her in to this point. The film opens with Paul Ferguson, a bank cashier proposing to Alice McCloud, who is played by Mary Pickford. Alice is the ward of Paul’s employe...

William S. Hart stars in another ahead-of-its-time films, and one that I can easily see being remade today. In fact, I feel like it maybe has been remade, or at least homaged, a number of times. In this one, Hart is Bat Peters, a former master gunslinger who has retired from shooting, and taken up mining. He has found some ore, and heads to Chicago to meet with some mining investors to see if his...

Mary Pickford was everything they said she was. I knew very little about her before embarking upon this project, but she has not disappointed me one bit so far. From her bit part in The Country Doctor , to starring roles in My Baby , Tess of the Storm Country and Cinderella , and now as Fanchon, the Cricket , she brings a personality and brightness to the screen every time she shows up. I’m not ev...

Charlie Chaplin was known as “the Tramp,” so this film is sort of like the title track of his filmography. I’m trying very hard to appreciate him, but I’m still having a lot of trouble getting into his films. I could barely make it through this one. Had this not been a Chaplin film, and especially had it not been called The Tramp , I’d likely have never watched it to begin with, and I may have sto...

It’s time for another quick break from watching movies to handle some podcast business. As regular listeners know, I started this podcast as a tool to help me remember the plots and details of films I watch. I often find myself forgetting what happened in a movie I watched, or if I’ve even watched a particular film, so when I heard on another podcast that a way to fix this is to write about the fi...

This is the 40th film I’ve watched as a part of this podcast, and one of just a few that I was truly aware of before beginning. I’ve enjoyed silent films since I was in my twenties, but before starting this project I’d never actively sought them out for home viewing. If I had the chance to see one in a theater, I’d do so, but theaters seem only to show the most well-known silent films, most of whi...

I’ve watched a number of films for this podcast so far that I suppose could qualify as rom-coms, but this is the first that truly embodies that genre. This isn’t a romance that happens to have some funny moments, but rather a romantic comedy built around bringing two similar people, who imagine they aren’t similar at all, together through zany coincidences and situations. This is Roman Holiday, 19...

As the name suggests, this is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . It was released on January 19th, 1915, and directed by W.W. Young. He never directed anything again, and the film itself came from a studio that barely existed. The Nonpareil Feature Film Corporation released this film, which was the second and final production they ever put out. Little, if any, infor...

No, she’s not that kind of vampire. In 1915, the word had a different meaning than it does today. Theda Bara was the original vamp! Before she became Theda Bara, she was Born Theodosia Goodman, and moved from Cincinnati to New York in 1905, hoping to become a stage actress. She spent several years chasing success on Broadway and in Yiddish theater, to no avail. Though initially opposed to working...

This may be my favorite version of the classic fairy tale, though truth be told I think I’ve only ever seen the Disney version from 1950. In this version, Mary Pickford, America’s Sweetheart, shines as Cinderella, and the sequences of the story are perfectly paced. However, while watching I was struck with a melancholy sensation wholly unrelated to the film itself, or at least the film as it was o...

I had no real expectations when I started watching this film. I’d never heard of it, or its star, William S. Hart, before I embarked on my “watch all the movies” project, but I saw it mentioned in a book about silent films I’d read some years back, and added it to the list almost as an afterthought. It’s not exaggeration to say I was stunned by how great this movie is. I expected a primitive Weste...

This is the first horror film I’ve watched, and one of the first feature-length horror films ever made. It’s loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but with some other Poe references tossed in for good measure. Though slow to start, once the horror story elements kicked in, this became a very enjoyable movie. Before that, however, it was feeling like a big of a slog, and a...

The Italians were clearly at the forefront of the motion picture industry in its early days. Until I watched this film, nothing I’d seen so far had come close to Dante’s Inferno , also an Italian film, but Cabiria blows that film out of the water. Released on April 18th, 1914, Cabiria is the first true epic film, and it paved the way for directors like D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, both of w...

Fresh from watching Mary Pickford as Tessibel Skinner, heroine of Tess of the Storm Country , I’m left with mixed feelings. The film isn’t bad, although the story is more than a little heavy-handed and melodramatic, and Edwin S. Porter, as was his nature, simply refuses to move his camera. His tableau-like shots, and almost fundamental misunderstanding of the power of editing, reduce potentially d...

This is the third film of Charlie Chaplin’s career, and it hit screens on February 9th, 1914. If you’ve been following along, you know that is exactly seven day after his film debut, on February 2nd. That’s right, he had three movies come out within the span of a week! That’s unimaginable today, but it was the norm in that era of filmmaking. Mabel’s Strange Predicament is the third of three Charli...

The Keystone Film Company put out Charlie Chaplin’s earliest films, and his first three were released within 7 days of each other in February of 1914. Last time I watched Making a Living , which hit theaters on February 2nd. Five days later, on the 7th, his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice , came out. Just two days after that, he had a third film playing, called Mabel’s Strange Predicament ,...

I decided to watch this film for one specific reason: it’s the first film in which Charlie Chaplin appears. For that, it’s noteworthy, but strictly on its own merit it is a forgettable film. It runs for just under 13 minutes, during which time it gallops along through a number of only loosely connected moments. Chaplin, who I would not have recognized had I not known he was the star of the film, l...

A couple names that kept coming up as I was reading about the earliest years of filmmaking were those of Mabel Normand and Ford Sterling. What a great name— Ford Sterling! I had to find out if that was his actual name, and of course it was not. He was born George Ford Stich Jr., so I can’t blame him for changing his name. I want to change my name to Ford Sterling, too! Sterling got his start in 19...

I thought it might be a good idea to do a short, impromptu podcast to welcome the sudden influx of listeners who subscribed to my podcast yesterday. Before yesterday, I’d been keeping a low profile, and wasn’t doing any sort of promotion for this site. Initially, I wasn’t going to tell anyone about it, but I mentioned it to my nephew, Mike, who is a filmmaker, and to my friend Wei Ti, with whom I...

Suspense is another multi-director film, with the husband and wife team of Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber helming the production. Weber also wrote and starred in the film, which has elements that remind me of The Lonedale Operator , namely the way both films present actions that are happening at the same time. Smalley and Weber use a split screen to show simultaneous action, the first time I’ve s...