Essential Cult Cinema Mirroring the Impact of New Movietone Follies...

Dir: Louis J. Gasnier

Hajj, a rascally beggar on the periphery of the court of Baghdad, schemes to marry his daughter to royalty and to win the heart of the queen of the castle himself.

Dir: Mikhail Fokine

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Dying Swan perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

The last moments in the life of a swan.

Dir: James A. FitzPatrick

An innkeeper's daughter loves a shepherd boy and will not listen to her father's plea that she marry a rich young Londoner. The Londoner pleads with the girl, but she will not hear him. He goes back to London and the girl is happy with her shepherd.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Songs of England perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Sid is a postman in a hilly country. He climbs a long set of steps only to find that the family is on vacation. Then a mother calls him up another long flight to tell her child she'll put him in the postman's bag if he isn't good. Sid finally gets home and relaxes for a good vacation. But wifie thinks otherwise and forces Sid on a hike. They meet up with their in-laws and hike some more. All in all, Sid gets no rest for his weary feet, even after they arrive at the cabin, for rain floods the place and the occupants have to flee.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

When the shortcomings of a member of the Bachelors' Club are revealed to him for becoming engaged, he wagers the club president that the latter cannot spend a week at a designated inn without becoming engaged. The president takes the bet and finds the inn run by women and with only women guests, most of them of the beauteous sort. That she may avoid an unwelcome suitor, one of the guests is disguised as a boy. The bachelor persuades her to don girl's attire, thinking her a boy, and to represent herself as being engaged to him, so that he may avoid the other girls. By the time he discovers she is really a girl, he has fallen in love with her. He helps her to evade the rejected suitor and her father and mother, who have made the match for her. The girl and the bachelor are finally married in the middle of the lake at the height of the chase.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of On the Go perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

Fox's clever four-footed comedians, Pep, Max and Moritz, are the stars of this two-reel Monkey Comedy. Beginning with a scene at the seashore in which one monkey appears as a lifeguard, one as a girl and the other as her sweetheart, with the exception of a few scenes in which these animals "stand on their own" and perform some intelligent and amusing stunts centering around the attempts of several chaps to peep through a hole in a bathhouse and the efforts of one monkey to chastise the offenders, the entire action shows them as paralleling the experiences of some of their human friends. There is a beach beauty, her sweetheart and a lifeguard also. Events lead up to a double wedding, with the disappointed suitors kidnapping the two prospective brides and chase by the expectant fiancés, ending in their getting their girls back.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Heart Breaker perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A short film about the legendary baseball Hall-of-Famer Babe Ruth.

Dir: Benjamin Stoloff

Tom Mills's buddy, Ricardo Deane, is killed in France during the war, and after the war Tom is invited to visit Deane's family on the Mexican border. There he discovers that Ed Bardin, Deane's brother-in-law, has been unfaithful to his wife, and that he is a bandit, posing as Tom. Following a stage holdup, a runaway rescue, a near hanging, a rodeo, and cliff and river riding, the gang is captured and Tom wins the heart of Concha, his buddy's sister.

Dir: Manuel Noriega

A woman who arrives Madrid fleeing from their abusive stepmother tries to help her cousin, who has an illegitimate child, pretending to be the real mother.