Silent film
Babylon review – Brad Pitt suaves through a grand hymn to golden age Hollywood
Pitt and Margot Robbie, and many razzle dazzle setpieces, help lift a story in no hurry to engage with the true-life nastiness of its era
Peter Bradshaw
19, Jan, 2023 @10:30 AM
Amaryllis review – the oddest split-screen silent-movie musical you’ll ever see
Thomas Lawes plays a synth score on screen as a teen drama plays out above – a bold experiment that doesn’t fully work
Phil Hoad
21, Nov, 2022 @7:00 AM
Nosferatu at 100: a silent horror masterwork that continues to chill
FW Murnau’s eerie chiller might have been seen as a legally problematic Dracula rip-off at the time, but has endured since
Jesse Hassenger
31, Oct, 2022 @7:03 AM
Anna May Wong: the legacy of a groundbreaking Asian American star
The actor will soon be featuring on quarter-dollar coins, an honor that reflects a vital yet difficult career in Hollywood’s golden age
Pamela Hutchinson
19, Oct, 2022 @4:54 PM
Salt for Svanetia review – poetic, dreamlike Soviet documentary of forgotten world
Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1930s film gives a fascinating account of a medieval-style society about the supposed blessings of the USSR’s modernising impact
Peter Bradshaw
26, Sep, 2022 @12:00 PM
Laurel and Hardy review – a dream of slapstick and sadness
Stephen McNicoll and Barnaby Power make a consummate team as the comedy legends, delivering knockabout hilarity with a melancholy undertow
Mark Fisher
08, Jun, 2022 @9:40 AM
The Real Charlie Chaplin review – the elusive personality of the little tramp
New archive material brings Chaplin’s unparalleled celebrity, downfall and the women in his life into greater focus
Peter Bradshaw
16, Feb, 2022 @4:00 PM
Asta Nielsen, the silent film star who taught Garbo everything
The Danish actor was a cinema pioneer and wildly popular all over the world. She is largely forgotten – discover her in a BFI season dedicated to her extraordinary talent
Pamela Hutchinson
27, Jan, 2022 @3:00 PM
South review – startling filmed record of Shackleton’s gruelling Antarctic odyssey
Frank Hurley’s 1919 silent footage turns Sir Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling expedition into a travelogue with cute penguins
Peter Bradshaw
26, Jan, 2022 @2:00 PM
‘I felt a sickening pain’: how the ‘first true Hitchcock movie’ almost killed its star
Alfred Hitchcock described his third film, The Lodger, as the true beginning of his directorial career but it would prove a near fatal screen debut for its leading light June Tripp
Henry K Miller
12, Jan, 2022 @1:00 PM
Stage Struck: Gloria Swanson before the pictures got small
Twenty-five years before the hard-bitten Hollywood tale Sunset Boulevard, Swanson played a small-town waitress with a dream to act
Chris Wiegand
18, May, 2021 @5:00 AM
'Sexism stands at the door': 11 female film-makers written out of mainstream Hollywood history
Maya Angelou and Jean Seberg were just some of the women who faced everything from racism and sexism to transphobia, yet produced some of cinema’s most defining pictures
Helen O'Hara
02, Mar, 2021 @10:53 AM
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