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6.2/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.2/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Movie Album remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you're the type of person who spends their Sunday afternoons digging through crates of old postcards or reading the footnotes of biographies, you might actually get a kick out of The Movie Album. For everyone else? It’s probably going to feel like sitting through someone else’s history homework. It’s definitely not a movie in the traditional sense, more like a flickering scrapbook of things that were almost lost to the trash heap of time.
The whole thing is built on these tiny, disjointed clips from the 1910s. You get to see actors like Norma Shearer before they became legends, looking young and slightly confused by the camera. There’s something inherently spooky about watching people who are long dead go about their business in a silent, jerky frame rate. It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in Grandma's Boy, though without the actual jokes.
The most bizarre moment—and the one that clearly kept the filmmakers up at night—is the supposed appearance of Leon Trotsky as an extra. They point it out with such confidence, but you’re squinting at the screen thinking, Is that a revolutionary leader or just some guy with a mustache? It’s that kind of unverified, messy detail that makes the whole project feel oddly human. It’s not trying to be a scholarly documentary. It’s just trying to show you something cool it found.
Some of the stars featured here, like John Bunny, feel like they belong to another planet. Their acting is so broad, so physically desperate to be seen, that it almost circles back to being funny. It’s a total 180 from the more grounded performances you’d see in something like Voruntersuchung, which feels like a completely different medium by comparison.
You can tell they really wanted to cram in as much as possible. Sometimes it works, like when you spot a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting. Other times, it just feels like you’re being pelted with random images of people you’ve never heard of. It lacks the cohesive, breezy flow of something like Whoopee!, but that’s clearly not the point here.
Is it worth your time? If you’re a film nerd, sure. It’s a weird, lopsided artifact. It doesn’t pretend to be important, and that’s its best quality. Just don’t expect a polished narrative. It’s just a bunch of ghosts dancing in the dark. 📽️
IMDb 5
1931
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