
Cruel and ignorant, Matthew Ryan threatens to destroy his business competitor, Schuyler, unless Schuyler's daughter Marion succumbs to his demands, Marion likens Ryan to Attila the Hun. Puzzled by Marion's reference, Ryan returns home to read an account of Attila.

Cinema, that flickering séance of shadows, rarely grants monsters the luxury of self-interrogation. Yet in the forgotten 1917 one-reeler A Common Level, director-producer duo Lawrence Grattan and Lloyd Lonergan stage a moral autopsy inside a fever dream, forcing a Gilded-Age predator to confront the barbarian whose n...


Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

Burton L. King

Burton L. King
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" Cinema, that flickering séance of shadows, rarely grants monsters the luxury of self-interrogation. Yet in the forgotten 1917 one-reeler A Common Level, director-producer duo Lawrence Grattan and Lloyd Lonergan stage a moral autopsy inside a fever dream, forcing a Gilded-Age predator to confront the barbarian whose name his victim hurls like a hand-grenade. The result is a compact 14-minute shockwave whose tonal tremors anticipate everything from Murnau’s Sunrise to the corporate-cannibal guil..."
Lloyd Lonergan
United States


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