Curated Recommendations Seeking the Same Brilliance as The Flirt: C...

Dir: Phillips Smalley

A poor shopgirl is offered a "good time" for a week by the son of her employer. She accepts, but the offer is misunderstood by her brother, who informs the girl's parents of her "fling."

Dir: Phillips Smalley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Betty in Search of a Thrill perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

When Betty arrives from the Convent to visit her uncle's family they are careful to hide all the extreme low-necked gowns and other worldly things lest they shock the devout convent girl. Instead of shocking, Betty finds them fascinating and they install in her a desire to learn more about the fascinations of the world. When Jim Denning proposes to her, she says she loves him but she must see the world first. Angrily he leaves her as she sits beside the fireplace, whose dreamy flames inspire her to tempt a knowledge of things unknown to her. Out into the world she goes, where she sees and learns many things but with pangs and heartache. At a vital moment when she is about to faint dead away, the faithful Jim arrives and catches her in his arms. Betty awakens to find it has all been just a dream, and faithful Jim has no problem convincing her of the full meaning of a home and that the world and its false promises are not for her.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

Olaf writes his memoirs, before his execution. He tells of his life as a struggling farmer when Renie, stranded in the village, stays one night in his home and Olaf falls in love with her. Later, two men take rooms in the house, and Olaf, to get all their money, kills one of them and wounds the other, Paul. Paul is convicted of the murder and goes to jail, while Olaf, guiltily feeling the "eye of God" upon him, leaves his farm and starts wandering. Meanwhile, Renie, who had been Paul's fiancée, vows to find the real murderer. She once again meets Olaf, whom she has always suspected, and pretends to love him. Then she accuses him of the murder and keeps on accusing him until he, worn down, finally confesses, thereby freeing Paul.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

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

Wally Dreislin commits suicide because his family disapproved of his romance with chorus girl Estelle Ryan, the newspapers, delighting in all the details of the affair, turn Estelle into a national celebrity. Fame only increases her power to attract men, and she soon is involved in a romance with Jansen Winthrop, another young man from a wealthy family. Jansen's alarmed mother then begs Robert, her other son, to end the relationship. Obediently, Robert kidnaps Estelle and takes her to a remote hunting lodge with plans to keep her there until she agrees to leave Jansen. After several weeks, however, Robert realizes that Estelle's reputation as a vamp has been completely engineered by the press. As a result, Robert sends for Jansen to retrieve his sweetheart, but when he arrives, Estelle announces that she has fallen in love with her abductor, and then begins a romance with him.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

John Needham is the last of a long line of profligate Englishmen and just in the nick of time to save him from beggary, comes word that he has been appointed guardian of Thomas Creighton, and placed in charge of the millions which have been left as the heritage of the boy. Packing young Creighton off to a boarding school, Needham takes possession of the Creighton estate and begins a life of riotous dissipation. Several years elapse, until one morning Needham receives a letter from America stating that young Creighton is coming home to demand possession of his estate and will require an accounting for every penny. Joseph Norbury lives in a quiet English village and reads the news that Needham has been appointed executor of the Creighton estate. Norbury's wife remarks that with his mustache off. Norbury could easily be taken for Needham. In after years Norbury moves to London, where he and Needham met at the same club and become fast friends. When Needham learns that he is to be called to account for his stewardship, he realizes that imprisonment faces him and to avoid disgrace, he undertakes to devise measures to commit murder. Having sent to the Creighton country seat the servants from the Creighton townhouse, he invites Norbury to visit him. During the evening, Needham contrives to drop poison into the wine which Norbury drinks and after Norbury falls dead upon the floor, Needham changes clothes with the corpse. The murderer then goes to Norbury's home and undertakes to pass himself off as Norbury. The papers next morning relate how John Needham has been found a suicide in the Creighton mansion. Upon discovery of the corpse, Parks, who has been Needham's valet, refuses to believe that the dead man was his master, and through this suspicion and some good detective work by Parks, Needham is subsequently accused of the crime. Taking advantage of momentary opportunity, Needham drinks some of the same poison which he had given to Norbury and dies.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Saving the Family Name perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Lydia Jansen is a faithful and loving wife, though unknown to her husband, a customs inspector, she has become addicted to smoking opium. In the parlance of the underworld this devil's brew is called "hop." Her own father, a politician in the city in which they live, is the head of an opium importing gang, which is the principal medium whereby the addicts obtained their supply of opium. Lydia's craving for the drug is so great, and her desire to conceal the habit from her husband so strong, that she is embroiled in a series of blackmailing attempts by her maid, who is affianced to the stevedore through whom most of the opium is landed from the vessels by which it is smuggled. Her attempts to satisfy her craving for hop, at a time when the government is closing in upon the smugglers, excites her husband's suspicion, and of course he thinks another man has entered her life, and it is only through an almost superhuman exercise of willpower that she finds the strength to conquer her appetite and confess to her husband the terrible habit which she had formed, and thus relieving the terrible suspicion which had grown like a hunting nightmare into his very life. The shock of finding that he himself had contributed to his own daughter's downfall causes the father's suicide and the capture of the entire opium smuggling gang.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

Inspired by the true story of immigrant Charlie Stielow who was currently on death row for a double murder. The movie was released 2 years before the conclusion of his case, and was purposely made to sway public opinion about the death penalty.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of John Needham's Double perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Newly elected police court judge John Fairbrother is impassioned when it comes to the laws affecting the dives and cabarets of the city, and promises equal justice for all. The source of his crusading passion is the loss of his own sister to the lure of the notorious Johnson Café years earlier. His wife Grace's two prominent brothers, newspaper editor George Ferguson and Episcopal Bishop William Ferguson, worked hard to elect Fairbrother to office, and although they are initially puzzled by the judge's intent to shut down dance halls and cabarets, they agree to stand behind him after he confides to them about his fallen sister. However, on the day when Fairbrother takes his seat on the bench, he is called upon to sentence Mace and Lily, two young women arrested for disorderly conduct during a police raid on the same Johnson's Café that claimed the purity and ultimately the life of his sister. Lily is a brazen city girl, while Mace is a shy "country mouse" who fell into bad company. When the judge demands to know the names of the men who accompanied Mace and Lily at the time of their arrest and are therefore guilty of the same charge, the arresting detectives shock him with the revelation that one is Charles Ferguson, the son of the editor, and the other is the nephew of the bishop. Enforcing his principles, Fairbrother demands that the young men be sentenced with the women. This causes much consternation, but the judge devises a fair method for solving the double standard. He declares all four defendants guilty, but then suspends their sentences pending good behavior. He convinces Mace to return home to the country, and secures an office job for Lily. Discovering that the young ladies' apartment building is owned by his wife's family, Judge Fairbrother realizes that the roots of evil sometimes grow close to home.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

A woman runs a birth control information bureau until police intervene. Though wealthy have access to this knowledge, the poor don't. She defies speaking bans, gets arrested, and wins over her doctor husband and a judge.

Dir: Phillips Smalley

K is a mysterious man who settles into a small town and becomes a beloved figure there. However, when the life of his rival in love suddenly depends on K's previously unsuspected abilities, his past life is revealed.