Author Archive: Retro

When Flora Finch has the leg show that Peggy Shaw is appearing in closed, her son invites the entire chorus home for a party. When his mother, a burglar and a fire appears, chaos ensues in this one-reel comedy.

Porter’s sequential continuity editing links several shots to form a narrative of the famous fairy tale story of Jack and his magic beanstalk. Borrowing on cinematographic methods reminiscent of ‘Georges Melies’, Porter uses animation, double exposure, and trick photography to illustrate the fairy’s apparitions, Jack’s dream, and the fast growing beanstalk.

An adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story about a father trying to gain control of his daughter’s inheritance does not include Watson.

Twelfth and last installment of the series “Who pays” ?, of which only this episode has arrived, written and interpreted by the future director Henry King. Bitter story of a case of labor injustice that ends with terrible consequences.

A cartoonist draws faces and figures on a blackboard – and they come to life.

Several chairs rest against a blank wall; three men, then a fourth and soon seven in all, divide into various pairs and wrestle for the camera. No more than two pairs wrestle at any one time. Some have robes and remove them to wrestle, shirtless. One keeps on a singlet. An older, beefy man seems to be the leader, offering instruction once, and out wrestling a younger, smaller man near the end of the reel. Everyone keeps their good humor.

Gladys falls for a prizefighter who has invited his entire hometown to watch his fight in New York City. However, he gets crazy jealous when he sees Gladys at the fight sitting next to Jimmy. After the bout is over, he sets out for the hotel to teach Jimmy a lesson.

New York beat cronies slumbering through Harry Smith, Burroughs and Ginsberg, University Columbia, Colombia, or the crazy is just what we need, not to “explain” tears in the fabric but to widen them with signs of solidarity that engage with the spiritual every day.