Classic Cinema

Starring:Classical Cinema 3pak
Studio: Madacy Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s

Average customer rating:

A cinematic historical potpourri...a rare treat!
A unique pearl!!!
Something to discuss over coffee...
An indispensable set with a special place in my collection
Great

Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s
Starring: Avant-Garde-Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 193
Manufacturer: Kino Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
Un Chien Andalou
The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1
By Brakhage - Anthology - Criterion Collection
Man With the Movie Camera

ASIN: B0009PW450
Release Date: 2005-08-02

Customer Reviews:

A cinematic historical potpourri...a rare treat!.......2007-01-10

This collection is a unique addition for any film/history buff. A must have and well worth the purchase.

A unique pearl!!!.......2006-09-05

This is one of the best film collection ever put together. All the films are extremely interesting and most of them excellent. Ménilmontant alone justifies buying this collection, one of the best films ever made.

The New scores are great and the notes on the films are fairly good. The picture quality varies (from bad to good) and it would have been nice to have a little more extra material. But still, this collection is a must have for anyone interested in film. One of my favorite DVDs.

Something to discuss over coffee..........2006-07-11

If no adjective appropriately suit this vivid collection of avant-garde films from the 20s and 30s, one reviewer came close in his chosen nomenclature: this one-of-a-kind-combilation, indeed, is "indespensable"!

For anyone interested in or in some way connected to film and film studies this box set is a true gem as well as an overwhelming visceral experience. One dare even call it "edenic".

Packed with cinematic treats - ranging from early classics as Joris Ivens' "Regen", through film historical curiosities as Marcel Duchamps' "Cinema Anémic" and Richter's "Rhytmus 21" to absolute rarities such as Kirsanoff's "Ménilmontant" - this impressive collection of short experimental films guides you through all main avant-garde genres of the 1920s and 1930s. From impressionist masterpieces ("Ménilmontant", "La glace a trois faces" [Epstein]), through dadaist art-films (Duchamps), French and German cinéma pur/Absolut Film ("Symphonie Diagonale" [Eggeling], "Rhytmus 21" [Richter]), futuristic statements ("Ballét mecanique" [Leger]), dazzling city symphonies ("Regen") to such seminal early sound experiments as "Romance Sentimentale" (Eisenstein & Alexandrov) and "Le tempestaire" (Epstein).

While some films may, indeed, only be labled "curiosities" others are sheer strokes of genius - my personal favorites being Kirsanoff's rare impressionistic gem "Ménilmontant" (with its impressive - in every sense of the word - use of constant P.O.V.-shots, concealing the first person) and Jean Epsteins masterpiece "Le tempestaire" whose use of suspense-generating musique concrète (or "Slow-Motion Sound", as it were) and vividly, picturesque imagery make for a unique cinematic experience. - As visceral as it is beautiful to behold.

If only for its lack of a few early classics (notably, René Clair's "Entr'act" [1924] and Luis Buñuel's "Un chien andalou" [1929] and "L'Âge d'or" [1930]) this combilation of early experimental films may not be labeled "perfect".

However, I am still to experience any other collection of its kind. For anyone studying film (whether by themselves or in University,) this box set may, indeed, only be ascribed the adjective "indespensible", as done also by a previous reviewer.

An indispensable set with a special place in my collection.......2006-05-19

Let it be said that if your interests somehow brought you to seek out more information about this release, this release is for you. Things happen for a reason, and your instincts have led you to the right place. Other reviewers are correct in saying there is something in this collection to suit just about anyone's tastes, but that said, some films will inevitably be of less interest to some. To my taste, most of the American films (excluding one by Orson Welles) seem far less innovative and interesting, as it was probably avant garde just to be shooting films in America at the time. Personal favourites are films by artists not entirely devoted to the filmic medium: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp come to mind, as well as the excellent German expressionist films reminiscent of the Bauhaus aesthetic (Ghosts before breakfast comes to mind). To me, it is refreshing to see films which don't rely on predictable plots and linear storylines, and which are often photographically stunning and emotively striking. It's also nice to have a collection that allows you to watch three films in fifteen minutes, or an hour and a half. This is a set I keep coming back to.

Great .......2006-03-22

A great package of films !!! great great great

but i just cant understand the music they add to, its just tooooooooo bad !!!! chaep and with out any knoladge... they sound so bad !!!!
But if you turn down the volume its fantastic

Mauricio Valdes San Emeterio

Arabian Nights (Universal Cinema Classics)

Average customer rating:

Arabian Nights
We Want MORE Montez
The Most fun you can have in a film.
Entertaining camp classic is enjoyable "sand and sandals" epic...
KNAB, UTAH IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR!

Arabian Nights (Universal Cinema Classics)
Starring: Sabu , Jon Hall , Maria Montez , Leif Erickson , and Billy Gilbert
Director: John Rawlins
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Tyrone Power: The Swashbuckler Box Set (Blood and Sand / Son of Fury / The Black Rose / Prince of Foxes / The Captain from Castile)
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ASIN: B000KGGJ18
Release Date: 2007-02-06

Amazon.com

Warning: Technicolor silliness ahead, as Universal's nutty series of turban-and-camel movies comes into view. Arabian Nights was the first of these confections, and after it became a big wartime hit it spawned a series of follow-ups, most of them starring some combination of Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu, and Turhan Bey. The story is nonsense, with Hall as a deposed caliph battling his half-brother (Leif Erickson) while remaining incognito amongst a group of traveling players. Montez plays dancing vixen Scheherazade, and her crazy costumes and limited acting range give ample evidence for her later enshrinement as a camp icon. The film's level of seriousness is aptly demonstrated by the casting of Shemp Howard (of the Three Stooges--like there's another Shemp Howard?) as Sinbad; John Qualen plays Aladdin, and vaudeville pro Billy Gilbert plays the leader of the troupe. Coming off best is Sabu, the young star of The Thief of Baghdad and The Jungle Book, whose innate likability is infectious even in these inane circumstances. Arabian Nights probably isn't the most fun of these movies; check out Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Robert Siodmak's crazed Cobra Woman, too. They work on two fronts: family-movie fodder and high camp. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

Arabian Nights.......2007-05-25

Excellent movie from the 40's these old movies are the best with great actors, like jon Hall, Sabu,Shemp,and of Course Maria Montez I think she is one of the most Classical Beauty's of a bygone era I love movies with her in them as well as Jon Hall,Turhan Bay check out Allie Baba and the Forty Theives another great one. Everyone should have this movie.

What can I say Wonderful, Great, good plot ,great actors of a bygone era.

We Want MORE Montez.......2007-04-23

This DVD is absolutely gorgeous. The technicolor is so vivid and beautiful-like an early Disney film. I have watched my new copy already three times- it is so much fun to watch on every level. Lovely to look at and the best campy humor to top it off. While I love this film, it is quite tame compared to some of the wonderful excesses that were to follow in this cycle of cult favorite Maria Montez classics.

Thank you Universal for finally releasing one of your classic "Easterns" onto DVD. But please don't stop!! Maria's fans are legion. Her films are some of the hardest to find and most desireable to collectors. Remember of the six films she did with Jon Hall at Universal, only two were ever even released on VHS. The demand is high. Please Universal- give us a "Maria Montez Collection" with the remaining five Easterns. "Cobra Woman" alone is probably the most famous camp classic to never merrit a DVD release.

We want more!

The Most fun you can have in a film........2007-03-11

This is a great film, and they really dont make them like this anymore. It's funny, has some good action scenes and a light hearted story. It's even got Shemp in it. I saw this for the first time yesterday and I enjoyed it so much i went out and bought it.

Entertaining camp classic is enjoyable "sand and sandals" epic..........2007-03-10

MARIA MONTEZ, JON HALL and SABU made some very entertaining Technicolor "sand and sandals" epics at Universal and this DVD restoration showcases them in brilliant Technicolor.

It's strictly Saturday afternoon matinee stuff, nothing to really ponder in the way of complex plots--just the usual good vs. evil with Hall coming to the rescue of beautiful princess Montez in her usual damsel in distress kind of role.

Exquisitely photographed on desert sands, it's exotic fun fare for adults and children with lots of eye candy to keep things interesting. TURHAN BEY is effective in a brief role but it's Montez and Hall who keep the story moving along at a lively pace. Well worth viewing and nostalgic fun for fans of the Universal series starring this trio of stars.

KNAB, UTAH IN GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR!.......2007-03-02

Universal's first 3-strip Technicolor feature is stunning to behold with Knab, Utah standing in for the Arabian desert. Technicolor is the highlight of this fun film. Inspired by the success of Alexander Korda's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), this was the start of a very popular series of fantasy adventure films from Universal with the beautiful Maria Montez and Jon Hall. The film is a lot of fun, but it pales when compared to THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, which not only had Technicolor, but one of the greatest musical scores (Miklos Rosza) ever created for a film as well incredible sets and art direction. The earlier film is the true classic of fantasy films, but the ARABIAN NIGHTS is a lot of fun in its own way -- just not a classic.

Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

Average customer rating:

Rare Film Festival in a Box!
A collection of films you'll find nowhere else for the serious film history buff
A great collection for anyone seriously interested in film history and it's language
Awesome -- must be seen
Massive Art-exhibition-in-a-box Collecfion of Avant-garde titles

Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
Starring: Orson Welles
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s
Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931
Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)
By Brakhage - Anthology - Criterion Collection

ASIN: B000AYEIJA
Release Date: 2005-10-18

Amazon.com

Avant-garde cinema remains unseen for all sorts of reasons. Because it's rare. Because it's elusive. Because the mainstream distribution and exhibition apparatus is not designed to serve it (and, arguably, to a large extent is designed to suppress and deny it). Because people--that vast army of us proud to be unpretentious "regular moviegoers"--basically don't want to see it, fearing that it's esoteric and challenging and probably boring. These are excellent--which is to say, very real--reasons. Except that, as of autumn 2005, they're obsolete. All but the personal-resistance part, anyway. Now, thanks to Anthology Film Archives, curator Bruce Posner, and the cooperation of the world's foremost film museums, anybody with a DVD player can make the acquaintance of 20some hours of definitive avant-garde film experiences through this often dazzling seven-disc set. And whaddaya know: a lot of "unseen cinema" turns out to be fascinating, thrilling, spectrally beautiful, tantalizingly mysterious--in a word, eye-opening, to both the art of film and the world we all share.

Moreover, it's not all precious, artist(or would-be artist)-in-a-garret stuff. Some of it has glimmered on regular movie screens, from nickelodeon days through the golden age of Hollywood, doing its avant-garde thing (often without knowing it's avant-garde) as one- and two-reel narratives or astonishing sequences in commercial Hollywood pictures. A 1910 D.W. Griffith two-reeler that compresses several decades (including the Civil War) into 16 minutes. Prologue and transitional montages that goosed up pedestrian feature films with lunges into jagged surrealism and abstraction. The erotically crazed, visually dynamic, sometimes nightmarish phantasmagoria that are Busby Berkeley's "By a Waterfall" and "Lullaby of Broadway."

In Posner's own words: "American experimental film has existed since the technological inception of cinema ... The background against which the experimentalists toiled provides a fascinating review of Americana coupled with numerous cross-currents ... and an unfailing desire to create on film an image that can be viewed as an independent and provocative art.... The goal [of this set] is to present the broadest possible spectrum of experimental films produced between the 1890s and 1940s."

Each of the seven discs is organized around a central theme, and which one you first reach for will be determined by individual curiosity and susceptibility. The Devil's Plaything: American Surrealism steps off with Edwin S. Porter's 1902 Jack and the Beanstalk, its visionary transformations of settings and now-you-see-'em, now-you-don't appearances and disappearances of cast members the more remarkable for having been entirely achieved in the shooting, without postproduction optical trickery. Griffith's cameraman-to-be Billy Bitzer sends time scurrying dreamily backwards in Impossible Convicts (1905), while such classic 1920s experiments as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Telltale Heart seek to meet Edgar Allan Poe halfway by portraying distorted/demented worlds via stylized lighting and decor. The ambitious Robert Florey, whose feature-directing career would be almost entirely confined to the B zone, collaborates with montage maestro Slavko Vorkapich on The Life and Death of 9413--A Hollywood Extra and with premier production designer William Cameron Menzies on The Love of Zero.

Inverted Narratives: New Directions in Storytelling includes Suspense, a 1913 two-reeler by Lois Weber that emulates and occasionally tops her august contemporary, D.W. Griffith; the adventurous selection of camera angles and big, then still-bigger closeups continue to amaze. Charles Vidor's The Bridge, a 1929 rendering of the Ambrose Bierce story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," is starker than but not inferior to the more poetic French version that won an Oscar in the 1960s. Josef Berne's Black Dawn, aka Dawn After Dawn, weaves a Gothic spell with its account of love and death on an isolated farm, including a startling passage of sunstruck eroticism. And twelve minutes of Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand's agitprop, allegorical docudrama of American corporate fascism Native Land, narrated by Paul Robeson, inspires an urgent wish to see the entire film.

Light Rhythms: Music and Abstraction moves from surrealist milestones such as Man Ray's Le Retour à la raison, Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique, and Rose Sélavy's Anémic cinéma (an anagram many times over) to never-seen full-length versions of montages created by Slavko Vorkapich for such films as Crime Without Passion and The Firefly. Vorkapich's mesmerizing nature poem Moods of the Sea, set to Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave, is among the most relentlessly stunning passages on celluloid. An ecstatically extended bal sequence from Ernst Lubitsch's So This Is Paris inspires, again, a craving to see that unavailable 1926 feature film, while George L.K. Morris' Abstract Movies is an encyclopedic and hilarious amateur re-creation of fond cliches and tropes of generic filmmaking.

Still, if one had to pick a single DVD to luxuriate in (and one can: it's the only disc available separately), it would have to be Picturing a Metropolis: New York City Unveiled. The Blizzard, a Gotham panorama grabbed by an unknown cameraman standing outside the Mutoscope film company office one day in 1898, is one of the most enchanting moments you'll ever experience on film, with an urban crowd sharing the bemusement of a winter day slipping into evening, and the fairy-tale vastness of a nearby park softened by falling snow: an absentminded documentary record become sheer poetry. Bitzer's Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street, an unbroken take from the front of an onrushing train (with supplementary illumination supplied by lights mounted on another train on a parallel track!), was shot in 1905, though the itinerary looks exactly the same today; only the crowds have changed. (One comical, endearing touch: a mother and her children, caught in passing at Grand Central, stop in their bustling journey to stare at the camera.) The 1901 Demolishing and Building Up the Star Theatre uses time-lapse photography to chronicle the taking down, and then to imaginatively ordain the resurrection, of an urban show palace. And Robert Flaherty's 24 Dollar Island (c. 1926) is so razor-sharp and judiciously observed that it remains the definitive portrait of Manhattan on film--truly a portrait of the city itself as a living, dynamic space, with scarcely any intrusion of humankind to distract us from the place, its light and shapes and rhythms.

There's additional, virtually prehistoric contemplation of urban spaces--including the 1900 Paris Exposition and the Eiffel Tower--in The Mechanized Eye: Experiments in Technique and Form. The Amateur as Auteur: Discovering Paradise in Pictures celebrates the intentional and inadvertent sublimities of home movies. And Viva la Dance: The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance collects everything from the various Annabelle Dances of 1894-97 through Mexican footage shot for Sergei Eisenstein's Que viva México to one more bravura sequence by Busby Berkeley (from Wonder Bar) and the avowedly avant-garde Tarantella and Spook Sport by Mary Ellen Bute in 1940.

It cannot be overstated that much of this footage is beautifully preserved, whether transferred from paper prints or exhumed from still-luminous nitrate footage cached in a European archive. And the brief headnotes by such authoritative commentators as Jan-Christian Horak, David Shepard, Kevin Brownlow, and Bruce Posner himself are marvels of lucidity and concision, supplying just the right context--in a mere 50 words or so--to enable the uninitiated viewer to appreciate the film he or she is about to witness. Unseen Cinema is not just (just!) an awesome collection of film landmarks--it's a landmark achievement in its own right. --Richard T. Jameson

Description

7 DVDs - 20 Hours - 155 Classics of Avant Garde Cinema! "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941" reveals hitherto unknown accomplishments of American filmmakers working in the United States and abroad from the invention of cinema until World War II, and offers an innovative and often controversial view of experimental film as a product of avant-garde artists, of professional directors, and of amateur movie-makers working collectively and as individuals at all levels of film production. Many of the films have not been available since their creation, some have never been screened in public, and almost all have been unavailable in copies as good as these until now. Sixty of the world's leading film archive collections cooperated with Anthology Film Archives to bring this long-neglected period of film history back to life for modern audiences.

Customer Reviews:

Rare Film Festival in a Box!.......2007-01-18

As a Cinephile who travels literally thousands of miles a year in search of
amazing old films at classic film festivals & conventions, it is my opinion
this is the best box set of films I've ever seen. Whether you're a new film
fan or an old one looking for new kicks, this is the set for you. From the
surreal dream sequence in Douglas Fairbanks 1919 masterpiece "When the Clouds
Roll By" to Neil McGuire & William A. O'Connor's dreamy short "Moonland",
you'll see where Hollywood has gone to steal ideas for some of its best (and
most well-loved) sequences. I've personally paid more than the cost of this
set on a 16mm film print of just one of the short films it contains. If I could have
only one collection of these films on dvd, it would be this all-encompassing
box set. I've never written a review before but really wanted you true film
fans out there to know about this amazing set. It is my opinion that you
won't be sorry you bought it. Good Luck and Happy Filmwatching!

A collection of films you'll find nowhere else for the serious film history buff.......2006-12-13

If I was getting a gift for TCM host and film historian Robert Osborne, and I knew he didn't already have this DVD set I would (a) be very surprised and (b) buy it for him. This DVD set is for film buffs who aren't satisfied with the essentials that everyone knows about - "Birth of a Nation", "The Jazz Singer", "Frankenstein", etc., which are great films, but don't tell the whole story of early cinema. The set was organized by Bruce Posner and runs to some nineteen hours, and is an astonishing achievement. The set consists of seven discs each of which explore a different aspect of early cinema.

Among the films included are Douglass Crockwell's "Simple Destiny Abstractions", plus some animations with some very good detail on the level of Windsor McCay. The 1928 version of "The Fall of the House of Usher" focuses more on displaying some complex optical work than the story, reducing Poe's tale to only ten minutes in length. "Night on Bald Mountain" is an example of pinboard animation, in which a film is made completely using shadows from a pin screen. This technique continued to be used for decades. Suspense - a 1913 melodrama in which a housewife and her baby are nearly attacked by a knife-wielding drifter - is included because of its split-screen techniques. However, it is also interesting as the beginnings of what became the psycho-thrillers that exist to this day.

For the budget conscious, the disc entitled "PICTURING A METROPOLIS, New York City Unveiled" is the only disc available for individual purchase. This particular disc is great for history buffs as well as film buffs for all of its views of New York City life during the period from 1890-1940. The New York City disc moves from early footage of the city, including the Edison Company's famous and poetic Coney Island at Night, to Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's well-known Manhattan, to some work by Rudy Burckhardt, the film-maker, photographer, and painter who was also one of de Kooning's earliest friends in New York.

There are also some films financed by the depression-era WPA. Among them, Elia Kazan makes an appearance in a rather odd socialist movie about the poor of New York. There are some pictures sponsored by Labor Unions that offer 'alternative newsreels' that expose illegal business thuggery and a reactionary murder cult known as The Black Legion. Entertainment figures that are later blacklisted for their political beliefs and actions also make an appearance here - most notably, Paul Robeson, an actor often forgotten because of this. Robeson can be seen narrating a film on organized labor in this collection.

The disc entitled "The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance" has quite a bit of variety, but is still clearly delimited, opening with Annabelle Moore's "Butterfly Dance" and offering near its end David Bradley's Peer Gynt of 1941, starring a teenage Charlton Heston.

Some of the best material on the set is from Hollywood, probably due to the larger budgets involved. Included in this category would be some of the original montages of Slavko Vorkapich that were done for some MGM movies. This includes a bit of film in which the entire Napoleanic war appears to play out in just two minutes. Also included is Vorkapich's opening montage to "Crime Without Passion" in which three banshees fly about and terrorize the streets of Manhattan. The Ernst Lubitsch "touch" also apparently includes montages, and there is an excerpt from 1926's "So This is Paris" that shows a flapper dance in montage. It does a good job of conveying the wildness of the place at that time, which is part of the central theme of the movie. Also included are Busby Berkeley's numbers "Lullaby of Broadway" and "By a Waterfall", which are light compared to the other pieces with their more hidden deeper meanings.

I could go on forever describing the contents of this DVD set, but these were the pieces that stood out the most to me, anyway. The label of "Avant Garde" does not really fit this collection as we know the meaning of the term today. After all, there is work here by the Edison Company, D.W. Griffith, and a host of other people who have secure places in mainstream motion picture history. The "Avant Garde" label is more of an indication that film as an artform during the time period covered was inherently avant-garde just because it was new. The quality of the video is quite good considering the probable shape of the originals. I personally love this set and think it is well worth the price.

A great collection for anyone seriously interested in film history and it's language.......2006-09-24

Unseen Cinema is a fascinating collection of films, that shows the development of (and the experiment with) the film language in America from its beginning there and half a century onward.

It's title is a little misleading. Many of the films are not really Avant Garde, unless sound testing and family films showing children opening Christmas gifts is Avant Garde. The goal of the collectors is to prove that there was an Avant Garde film making from the beginning of cinema in America (America meaning films made by Americans anywhere in the world and films made by foreigners in America). They say that this was a needle-in-a-haystack search and I have to admit that sometimes I felt that they mistook the hay for a needle. So if you want to get to know early Avant Garde film making (in general) then I rather recommend "Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s". It has many of the best bits from this collections plus others not found here.

But if you are interested in film history and it's language then this is your thing. There are many fantastic films here, some of them not available anywhere else (to the best of my knowledge), such as The Telltale Heart (Charles Klein: 1928), Portrait of a Young Man in Three Movements (Henwar Rodakiewicz: 1931) and Footnote to Fact (1933: Lewis Jacobs). Portrait of a Young Man in Three Movements (54 min) is one of the greatest cinema poems I have ever seen, a must see.

There are also some great classics, here, like:
Autumn Fire (1930-33)-Herman Weinberg (a 22 min. version!).
The Fall of the House of Usher (1926-27)-J.S. Watson, Jr. & Melville Webber
The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1927)- Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich
The Love of Zero (1928)-Robert Florey & William Cameron Menzies
H20 (1929)-Ralph Steiner

The collection is on 7 disks, some of them more interesting than others. My personal favorite where the first four of them. The New York disc is probably interesting to people who live there or have been there. It did little for me and I think that the Amateur disk was a waste of time.

The transfer is quite good, often surprisingly good. The music varies. Some of it is quite fitting while others are just tiring. I for one liked the music on "Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s" better (comparing the films that both of the collections share).

The real downside to this collection is the extra material. The notes at the beginning of the films are way to short and the extra information on the PDF files are not so great either. I would like to see a better bio with filmography, and some commentaries would have been nice.

So this is a great collection for anyone seriously interested in film history and it's language. Others might want to stay away.

Awesome -- must be seen .......2005-11-22

Old weird Americana takes a bow in the sprawling and richly rewarding DVD set "Unseen Cinema." Running almost 20 hours, the collection provides ample evidence that bold experimental filmmaking thrived in the early days of moving pictures -- decades before the avant-garde torch-bearer "Un Chien Andalou" seared its way onto screens in 1929.

"Unseen" curator Bruce Posner says his goal was to "provide the broadest possible spectrum of experimental films produced between the 1890s and 1940s" -- roughly, the period from Thomas Edison to WWII. And so we have everything from home movies to lavish production numbers; wispy dance performances to strident union propaganda; gothic horror to languid studies of life on a farm. Many of these films have not been seen in decades and some were never screened for the public. Others, surprisingly, were products of the Hollywood studios.

The best of the early works are triumphs of the imagination over technical limits and creaky acting -- in quite a few, the wow factor remains potent. Watching the many bits of fantasy and cinematic sleights of hand, it's easy to draw a loopy line to the works of cinematic descendants such as Ray Harryhausen, Tim Burton and George Lucas.

Plenty of big names are represented in "Unseen" -- Welles, Sergei Eisnenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, Charles Vidor, Victor Fleming, Douglas Fairbanks, Busby Berkeley, Elia Kazan -- but the set shows that much of the heavy lifting in cinema's toddling years was done by inspired amateurs and free-thinking artists known for their work in other media.

The individual discs are arranged by theme, with titles such as "The Devil's Plaything" (surrealism and fantasy), "The Amateur as Auteur" (home movies) and "Inverted Narratives" (storytelling). New York City merits its own disc, with 29 films set in the metropolis (this fascinating time capsule is available separately, retail $24.99).

For orientation, there are informal but to-the-point on-screen notes before the films. The lack of commentaries undercuts the set's many obvious academic applications -- even so, it's a mind-expanding film course in a box. For extra credit, filmographies and biographical information can be accessed via DVD-ROM.

Some of the 155 shorts and excerpts have new recordings of their original music, some have newly written scores and others remain totally silent. In the case of the mind-bending "Ballet mecanique" (1923-24) the complex original score wasn't recorded as the filmmaker intended until five years ago. The DVD set's audio tracks sound as if they came from the same shop, cutting down on jarring transitions and smoothing the way for extended viewing.

The source materials -- rounded up from 60 or so archival collections around the globe -- were restored from 35mm and 16mm prints. The full-screen images are often surprisingly good but quality proves case-by-case, of course.

Massive Art-exhibition-in-a-box Collecfion of Avant-garde titles.......2005-11-03

The contents below are from unseen-cinema; they include the contents of a 160-page softcover Series Catalog, which is sold separately, but I think you would want. This is clearly a labor of love; though I can't imagine trying to watch all this in a month of Sundays, I could see dipping into it from time to time.

=====================================

Disk 1: THE MECHANIZED EYE
Experiments in Technique and Form

The dynamic qualities of motion pictures are explored by cameramen and filmmakers through novel experiments in technique and form. Early cinematographers James White, "Billy" Bitzer, and Frederick Armitage display experimental shooting styles that wowed audiences. Other independent companies further image manipulation through creative staging, editing, and printing, such as a stunning three-screen film that predates Gance's Napoleon. Experiments by photographer Walker Evans, painter Emlen Etting, musician Jerome Hill, and the film collectives Nykino and Artkino record the world in a continual process of flux. A most extreme approach is realized by Henwar Rodakiewicz with Portrait of a Young Man (1925-31), a monumental study of natural and abstract motions.

18 FILMS:
5 Paris Exposition Films (1900)-James White
Eiffel Tower from Trocadero Palace (1900)
Palace of Electricity (1900)
Champs de Mars (1900)
Panorama of Eiffel Tower (1900)
Scene from Elevator Ascending Eiffel Tower (1900)
Captain Nissen Going through Whirpool Rapids, Niagra Falls (1901)-creators unknown
Down the Hudson (1903)-Frederick Armitage & A.E. Weed
The Ghost Train (1903)-creators unknown
Westinghouse Works, Panorama View Street Car Motor Room (1904)-G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea (c. 1924-25)-creators unknown
Melody on Parade (c. 1936)-creators unknown
La Cartomancienne (The Fortune Teller) (1932)-Jerome Hill
Pie in the Sky (1934-35)-Nykino: Elia Kazan, Ralph Steiner & Irving Lerner
Travel Notes (1932)-Walker Evans
Oil: A Symphony in Motion (1930-33)-Artkino: M.G. MacPherson & Jean Michelson
Poem 8 (1932-33)-Emlen Etting
Storm (1941-43)-Paul Burnford
Portrait of a Young Man (1925-31)-Henwar Rodakiewicz

Disk 2: THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING
American Surrealism

Edwin S. Porter and other early filmmakers used bizarre sets, fantastic costumes, and magic lantern tricks to illuminate their fantasy films. American parody supplied Douglas Fairbanks with enough unusual material to produce the truly surreal When the Clouds Roll By (1919). The expressionistic Cabinet of Dr. Calagari (1919) influenced American sensibilities throughout the 1920s as seen in Beggar of Horseback (1925), The Life and Death of 9413-A Hollywood Extra (1927) and The Telltale Heart (1928). The emphasis shifted when amateurs J.S. Watson, Jr., Joseph Cornell, and Orson Welles crafted a unique variety of American surrealism on film unfettered by European concerns.

17 FILMS:
Jack and the Beanstalk (1902)-Edwin S. Porter
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906)-Edwin S. Porter
The Thieving Hand (1907)-creator unknown, Vitagraph
Impossible Convicts (1905)-G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
When the Clouds Roll By (1919)-Douglas Fairbanks & Victor Fleming (excerpt)
Beggar on Horseback (1925)-James Cruze (excerpt)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1926-27)-J.S. Watson, Jr. & Melville Webber
The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1927)- Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich
The Love of Zero (1928)-Robert Florey & William Cameron Menzies
The Telltale Heart (1928)-Charles Klein
Tomatos Another Day (1930/1933)-J.S. Watson, Jr. & Alec Wilder
The Hearts of Age (1934)- William Vance & Orson Welles
Unreal News Reels (c. 1926)-Weiss Artclass Comedies (excerpt)
The Children's Jury (c. 1938)-attributed Joseph Cornell
Thimble Theater (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell
Carousel: Animal Opera (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell
Jack's Dream (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell

Disk 3: LIGHT RHYTHMS
Music and Abstraction

The rhythmic elements of cinema are explored by artists and filmmakers fascinated by the abstract qualities of light. The American authors of avant-garde classics Le Retour á la raison (1923), Ballet mécanique (1923-24), Anémic cinéma (1926), and Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve (1934), are finally acknowledged for their seminal artistic achievements made in Europe. Pioneer abstract films by Ralph Steiner, Mary Ellen Bute, Douglass Crockwell, Dwinnell Grant, and George Morris are compared and contrasted with Hollywood montages created by Ernst Lubitsch, Slavko Vorkapich, and Busby Berkeley. For the first time on video, composer George Antheil's original 1924 score accompanies Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy's film Ballet mécanique, a truly avant-garde cacophony of image and sound.

29 FILMS:
Le Retour à la raison (1923)-Man Ray
Ballet mécanique (1923-24)-Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy
Anémic cinéma (1924-26)-Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp)
Looney Lens: Anamorphic People (1927)-Al Brick
Out of the Melting Pot (1927)-W.J. Ganz Studio
H20 (1929)-Ralph Steiner
Surf and Seaweed (1929-30)-Ralph Steiner
7 Vorkapich Montage Sequences (1928-37)-Slavko Vorkapich
The Furies (1934)
Skyline Dance (1928)
Money Machine (1929)
Prohibition (1929)
The Firefly- Vorkapich edit (1937)
The Firefly-MGM release version (1937)
Maytime (1937)
So This Is Paris (1926)-Ernst Lubitsch (excerpt)
Light Rhythms (1930)-Francis Bruguière & Oswell Blakeston
Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve (Night on Bald Mountain) (1934)-Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker
Rhythm in Light (1934)-Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Melville Webber
Synchromy No. 2 (1936)-Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
Parabola (1937)-Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
Footlight Parade - "By a Waterfall" (1933)-Busby Berkeley
Glen Falls Sequence (1937-46)-Douglass Crockwell
Simple Destiny Abstractions (1937-40)-Douglass Crockwell
Abstract Movies (1937-47)-George L.K. Morris
Scherzo (1939)-Norman McLaren
Themis (1940)-Dwinell Grant
Contrathemis (1941)-Dwinell Grant
1941 (1941)-Francis Lee
Moods of the Sea (1940-42)-Slavko Vorkapich & John Hoffman

Disk 4: INVERTED NARRATIVES
New Directions in Story-Telling

Early directors D.W. Griffith and Lois Weber develop the radical language of cinema narrative through audience-friendly melodramas made for nickelodeon theaters. Experimental fantasies are depicted in such independent productions as Moonland (c. 1926), Lullaby (1929), and The Bridge (1929-30). Depression era films by socially-conscious filmmakers reshape drama as demonstrated in Josef Berne's brooding Black Dawn (1933) and Strand and Hurwitz's biting Native Land (1937-41): each pictures a raw reality. Parody and satire find their mark in Theodore Huff's Little Geezer (1932) and Barlow, Hay and Le Roy's Even as You and I (1937). David Bradley's Sredni Vashtar by Saki (1940-43) boasts an inadvertent post-modern attitude.

12 FILMS:
The House with Closed Shutters (1910)-D.W. Griffith & G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Suspense (1913)-Lois Weber & Philips Smalley
Moonland (c. 1926)-Neil McQuire & William A. O'Connor
Lullaby (1929)-Boris Deutsch
The Bridge (1929-30)-Charles Vidor
Little Geezer (1932)-Theodore Huff
Black Dawn (1933)-Josef Berne & Seymour Stern
Native Land (1937-41)-Frontier Films: Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand (excerpt)
Black Legion (1936-7)-Nykino: Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
Even As You and I (1937)-Roger Barlow, Harry Hay & Le Roy Robbins
Object Lesson (1941)-Christoher Young
"Sredni Vashtar" by Saki (1940-43)-David Bradley

Disk 5: PICTURING A METROPOLIS
New York City Unveiled
Only Unseen Cinema DVD released as a SINGLE

The DVD depicts dynamic images of New York City and scenes of New Yorkers among the skyscrapers, streets, and night life of America's greatest city during a half century of progress, while at the same time showing changes in film style and the history of cinema experiments. Avant-garde moments pop up in the most unlikely of places including turn-of-the-twentieth-century actualities, commercial and radical newsreels, and Busby Berkeley's "Lullaby of Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935. Included are spectacular prints of Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta (1921), Robert Flaherty's Twenty-four-Dollar Island (c. 1926), Robert Florey's Skyscraper Symphony (1929), Jay Leyda's A Bronx Morning (1931), and Rudy Burckhardt's Pursuit of Happiness (1940).

26 FILMS:
The Blizzard (1899)-creators unknown
Lower Broadway (1902)-Robert K. Bonine
Beginning of a Skyscraper (1902)-Robert K. Bonine
Panorama from Times Building, New York (1905)-Wallace McCutcheon
Skyscrapers of NYC from North River (1903)-J.B. Smith
Panorama from Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge (1903)-G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Building Up and Demolishing the Star Theatre (1902)-Frederick Armitage
Coney Island at Night (1905)-Edwin S. Porter
Interior New York Subway 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)-G.W. "Billy" Bitzer
Seeing New York by Yacht (1902)-Frederick Armitage & A.E. Weed
2 Looney Lens: Split Skyscrapers (1924) and Tenth Avenue, NYC (1924)-Al Brick
4 Scenes from Ford Educational Weekly (1916-24)-creators unknown
Manhatta (1921)-Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand
Twentyfour-Dollar Island (c. 1926)-Robert Flaherty
Skyscraper Symphony (1929)-Robert Florey
Manhattan Medley (1931)-Bonney Powell
A Bronx Morning (1931)-Jay Leyda
Footnote to Fact (1933)-Lewis Jacobs
Seeing the World (1937)-Rudy Burckhardt
Pursuit of Hapiness (1940)-Rudy Burckhardt
Gold Diggers of 1935 - "Lullaby of Broadway" (1935)-Busby Berkeley (excerpt)
Autumn Fire (1930-33)-Herman Weinberg

Disk 6: THE AMATEUR AS AUTEUR
Discovering Paradise in Pictures

These home-made films incorporate avant-garde strategies and techniques to achieve a true sense of cinematic intimacy. Glimpses of life caught unawares are found in the home movies of Elizabeth Woodman Wright, Archie Stewart, Frank Stauffacher, and John C. Hecker. Poetic lyricism finds a voice in city symphonies: Lynn Riggs and James Hughes' A Day in Santa Fe (1931) and Rudy Burckhardt's Haiti (1938). Professionally minded films, like Theodore Case's sound tests (c. 1925) and Lewis Jacobs' Tree Trunk to Head (1938), operate from a similar home-spun perspective of sincerity. Joseph Cornell offers an enigmatic but lovely homage to childhood with Children's Trilogy (c. 1938).

20 FILMS:
7 Case Sound Tests (c. 1924-25)-Theodore Case & Earl Sponable
Windy Ledge Farm (c. 1929-34)-Elizabeth Woodman Wright
A Day in Santa Fe (1931)-Lynn Riggs & James Hughes
4 Stewart Family Home Movies (c. 1935-39)-Archie Stewart
Children's Party (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell
Cotillion (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell
The Midnight Party (c. 1938)-Joseph Cornell
Haiti (1938)-Rudy Burckhardt
Tree Trunk to Head (1938)-Lewis Jacobs
Bicycle Polo at San Mateo (1940-42)-Frank Stauffacher
1126 Dewey Avenue, Apt. 207 (1939)-John C. Hecker

Disk 7: VIVA LA DANCE
The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance

Dance and film have shared the aspiration to creatively sculpt motion and time. Some of the first films ever made featured Annabelle's skirt dance, hand-painted in glowing colors. Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis' innovations found their way into Diana the Huntress (1916) and The Soul of the Cypress (1920). Highly cinematic renditions of dance evolved in Stella Simon's Hände (1928), Hector Hoppin's Joie de vivre (1934), and Busby Berkeley's "Don't Say Goodnight" from Wonder Bar (1934). In counterpoint, ciné-dances by Mary Ellen Bute, Douglass Crockwell, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, Ralph Steiner, and Slavko Vorkapich dispensed with actual dancers in favor of color, shape, line, and form choreographed into abstract light-play.

33 FILMS:
7 Annabelle Dances and Dances (1894-1897)-W.K.L. Dickson, William Heise & James White
Davy Jones' Locker (1900)-Frederick Armitage
Neptune's Daughters (1900)-Frederick Armitage
A Nymph of the Waves (1900)-Frederick Armitage
Diana the Huntress (1916)-Charles Allen & Francis Trevelyan Miller (excerpt)
The Soul of the Cypress (1920)-Dudley Murphy
Looney Lens: Pas de deux (1924)-Al Brick
Hände: Das Leben und die Liebe eines Zärtlichen Geschlechts (Hands: The Life and Loves of the Gentler Sex) (1928)-Stella Simon & Miklos Bandy
Mechanical Principles (1930)-Ralph Steiner
Tilly Losch in Her Dance of the Hands (c. 1930-33)-Norman Bel Geddes
2 Eisenstein's Mexican Footage (1931)-Sergei Eisenstein (excerpts)
Oramunde (1933)-Emlen Etting
Hands (1934)-Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
Joie de vivre (1934)-Anthony Gross & Hector Hoppin
Wonder Bar: "Don't Say Goodnight" (1934)-Busby Berkeley (excerpt)
Dada (1936)-Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
Escape (1938)-Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
An Optical Poem (1938)-Oskar Fischinger
Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome (c. 1940s)-Slavko Vorpapich
NBC Valentine Greeting (1939-40)-Norman McLaren
Stars and Stripes (1940)-Norman McLaren
Tarantella (1940)-Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren
Spook Sport (1940)-Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren
Danse Macabre (1922)-Dudley Murphy
Peer Gynt (1941)-David Bradley, starring Charlton Heston (excerpt)
Introspection (1941/46)-Sara Kathryn Arledge

SERIES CATALOG
"Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941"

Unseen Cinema catalog features 30 essays, articles, and documents and 65 annotated photographs. Authors are scholars, critics, and filmmakers whose knowledge of the early avant-garde derives from either direct experience as a participant or years of scholarly research. Many hard-to-find photographs and sources detail the first decades of American experimental cinema in the United States and abroad.

Table of Contents
Foreword-Jan-Christopher Horak
Words and Pictures-annotated photographs
1. The Grand Experiment-Bruce Posner
2. Hollywood Extras: One Tradition of `Avant-Garde' Film in Los Angeles- David James
3. Emlen Etting: Three Films-R. Bruce Elder
4. The Attraction of Nature in Early Cinema-Scott MacDonald
5. "Le Retour á la raison": Hidden Meaning-Deke Dusinberre
6. Music for "Ballet Mécanique": 90s Technology Realizes a 20s Vision-Paul D. Lehrman
7. Sara Kathryn Arledge: "Introspection"-Terry Cannon
8. Busby Berkeley and America's Pioneer Abstract Filmmakers-Cecile Starr
9. Joseph Cornell: An Exploration of Sources-Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
10. Discussing D.W. Griffith-Jay Leyda
11. Maurice Tourneur and "The Bluebird"-Jan-Christopher Horak
12. Diva of Decadence: "Salome"-Kenneth Anger
13. W.K.L. Dickson: Pioneer Filmmaker-Paul Spehr
14. Elizabeth Woodman Wright: "Windy Ledge Farm"-Karan Sheldon & Bruce Posner
15. Robert Florey and the Hollywood Avant-Garde-Brian Taves
16. Working on "The City"-Henwar Rodakiewicz
17. Warren Newcombe: "The Enchanted City"-Stephen J. Schneider
18. My Films-J.S. Watson, Jr.
19. J.S. Watson, Jr.: "Nass River Indians"-Lynda Jessup
20. ...And Melville Webber-Dale Davis
21. Making "Twenty-four Dollar Island"-Robert Flaherty
22. Avant-Garde Production in America-Lewis Jacobs (excerpts)
23. Rutherford Boyd and "Parabola"-Douglas Dreishpoon
24. Notes on New Cinema of 1929 and 1930-Harry Alan Potamkin
25. Herman G. Weinberg: "Autumn Fire"-Robert A. Haller
26. Unanswered Questions: Eisenstein's "Qué Viva México!"-Herman G. Weinberg
27. My First Movie and "The Hearts of Age"-Orson Welles interviewed by Peter Bogdanovich
28. Highway 66: Montage Notes for a Documentary Film-Lewis Jacobs
29. The American Vanguard: Flux and Experience-R. Bruce Elder
30. New Artistic Process-Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff

Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954

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Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954
Starring: Avant-Garde 2
Manufacturer: Kino Video
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The Milky Way (Criterion Collection)
La Jetee/Sans Soleil (Criterion Collection)
Raymond Bernard - Eclipse Series 4 (Wooden Crosses / Les Miserables) (Criterion Collection)
Ivan's Childhood: Criterion Collection
Ace in the Hole - Criterion Collection

ASIN: B000QCU52U
Release Date: 2007-07-24

Average customer rating:

Great movie for Car Lovers
Shade Tree Mechanics of the World, Unite!
Buena Vista Social Club with Cars!

Yank Tanks - Carros Classicos De Cuba
Director: David Schendel
Manufacturer: Vanguard Cinema
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Cuba Feliz
Cubanissimo: A History of Cuban Music
Cuban Story
Waiting List
Hoy Como Ayer

ASIN: B0001LYFRC
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Customer Reviews:

Great movie for Car Lovers .......2007-03-29

I saw this at Cinequest film festival in San Jose, CA a few years back. It's a great film about the ingenious ways the Cubans keep these beautiful cars running and looking good. I recommend it to any car lover who appreciates the classic value of the 50's American cars.

Shade Tree Mechanics of the World, Unite!.......2006-09-17

Fortunately politics are left behind to take an endearing look at the
army of homegrown chewing gum and baling wire engineers that keeps Cuba
rolling. Meet the artisans who use chain link fence for welding rods,
and and can refit your cherry Studebaker woody with a Soviet tractor
engine. Suspended between old-fashioned Communism and Yankee freedom
and capitalism, a unique culture not yet lost to Toyotaland.
Recommended for any documentary fan who's ever been or aspired to be a shade tree
mechanic.

Buena Vista Social Club with Cars!.......2005-06-16

I loved this movie so much I blogged it. Gorgeous shots of urban Cuba and Cubans and the craft of keeping old cars on the road for nearly half a century. The ingenuity and zest of these old dudes will inspire you. The music is great too. Watch a guy make motorcycles out of bicycles and chain saw motors. Watch a guy in a golden Cadillac he's had for 42 years with babes (maybe they're his grand-daughters) grinning in delight. Watch guys squirm when asked, "would you pick your wife or your car?" "My car! You can find another woman later." "Both have thirty years with me - it is an equally balanced love."

More seriously, there's a lot to learn about the way Cubans have adapted to being so isolated and lacking in things we think of as necessities. I hope we would not be too fat and lazy to do the same, if the need arises.

The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913

Average customer rating:

An extensive collection of earliest cinema
Essential, but by no means perfect
Best Silent Film Library Around
The Movies Begin
Awesome...

The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913
Starring: Film Preservation Associates , and British Film Institute
Manufacturer: Kino Video
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Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)
Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931
Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s
Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

ASIN: B00005YUO9
Release Date: 2002-02-12

Amazon.com

The home-video revolution has yielded a wealth of valuable compilations, but few are as miraculously definitive as The Movies Begin. Equally suited to home or classroom viewing, this authoritative five-volume set is a vital document of film history, providing a one-stop destination for anyone wishing to witness the first two decades of motion pictures. That period--from 1894 to 1913--saw movies develop at a breakneck pace, from the earliest "actualities" of the Lumière brothers in France to D.W. Griffith's audacious development of dramatic action in the Biograph shorts of the early 1910s. Sensibly organized into pivotal stages of technical and creative progress, each of these volumes represents the priceless value of film preservation; all 133 films in the set are presented in the finest condition available, from archival prints to complete restorations, and accompanied by music that perfectly captures the spirit of each film and the time of their creation.

Under the expert guidance of film historian David Shepard, this collection is uniquely comprehensive, with fact, fiction, and fantasy represented in equal measure. All major figures are included; it's fitting that one volume is devoted to astonishing shorts by movie magician Georges Méliès, while other volumes serve as "greatest hits" compilations of movie innovations by Edwin S. Porter, Cecil Hepworth, Max Linder, Alice Guy Blanche, and many others. The breathtaking growth of movies is fully apparent by volume 5 ("Comedy, Spectacle, and New Horizons"); most viewers will find this the most entertaining, but each volume is a revelation, offering films that haven't been widely seen since they were first produced. To understand and appreciate the foundation upon which modern filmmaking is built, The Movies Begin is truly essential. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

An extensive collection of earliest cinema.......2007-01-06

This is an incredible collection of 133 complete films from the earliest days of cinema. The first 20 years of movies are covered, with numerous examples from many of the pioneers of the cinema. The condition of these old pieces of film is often less than stellar, but they are almost always fascinating as we see the development of cinema as it happens before us. The five-disc set is broken down by topic, with a certain unavoidable amount of overlap.

Disc One: The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works

The motion picture had its beginnings in the sequential photography of Eadweard Muybridge. In a short film, about ten of Muybridge's sequences are presented in real time, providing the illusion of movement. That led to the kinetoscope of Edison, and a number of his kinetoscopes from the late 1890s are included. Among these are "The Kiss" and "Feeding the Doves". The next important development came with the work of the Lumiére brothers in Paris. They first developed a way to project motion pictures, and a number of their 50-foot films of such items as a day at the zoo, the beach, babies fighting and other slices of life, such as workmen loading a boiler, make up their 15 works presented on this disc.

While the movies were a popular novelty, two works of 1902 and 1903, Georges Mèliés' "A Trip to the Moon" and Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery", paved the way for the motion picture industry we know now. Each used a greater length to tell an extended story and, in Mèliés' film, we find the importance of special effects and lavish set design made clear. While somewhat awkward and peculiar to modern eyes, it's clear to see how "Trip to the Moon" became the first blockbuster motion picture hit. The Great Train Robbery still manages to generate plenty of excitement in its nonstop action and gunplay.

A number of "actualities" make up the next segment, and these feature the skyscrapers of New York City which were then only 15 or so stories high, the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, various train rides and the like. Those with a bent toward history will find these to be quite fascinating. Some of the early American Biograph blue films are presented here, though they are racier in title than in content. An extremely funny one involves an enormously obese woman attempting to put on a corset with the aid of her much smaller husband. Nothing beyond a glimpse of limb is presented here, but they were surely seen as naughty in their day. A set of shorts from the early 1900s wraps up this disc. The double entendres of "The Whole Dam Family" and "The Dam Dog" will still bring a smile. "The Golden Beetle" has some attractive hand coloring and makes great use of stopped-camera effects to cause visual transformations.

Disc Two: The European Pioneers

The second disc, compiled by the British Film Institute, features the European groundbreakers in motion pictures. You again see the Lumiéres here, with 13 more of their 50-foot marvels. These include the famous shot of workers leaving their factory, arrival of a train and demolition of a wall. "Come Along, Do!" (1898), gives us the first film carrying action from one shot to another. In "Countryman and the Cinematograph" (1901), the first film-within-a-film appears, and in "A Chess Dispute" (1903), there the innovation of using the frame to suggest action rather than show it. G.A. Smith's "The Kiss in the Tunnel" (1899) demonstrates an early use of editing to help tell the story, and "Grandma's Reading Glass" (1900) demonstrates both POV shots and masking. "Sick Kitten" (1903) intersperses closeups into the action. Perhaps the most intriguing of the British pioneers is James Williamson, who produced a series of imaginative shorts such as "The Big Swallow" (1901) and "An Interesting Story" (1905). The latter seems to be the first instance of a steamroller-running-over a person gag, and manages to be highly entertaining nearly a hundred years later. There is one short which is a Lumiére piece on a boat leaving port contained in the program but not listed on the insert. There are also eleven shorts that are provided as Easter Eggs and are discussed in Extras.

Disc Three: Experimentation and Discovery

This third volume takes us into somewhat more accomplished filmmaking. The pictures of Hepworth Manufacturing have a number of innovative features, including the earliest known use of intertitles in "How it Feels to Be Run Over" (1901). They also produced one of the seminal dog-rescue pictures, "Rescued by Rover" (1905), which plays upon the common fears at the time of theft of infants by gypsies. "That Fatal Sneeze" shows many of the conventions of slapstick film being established as a trick with sneezing powder backfires.

Several documentaries are also included. The first is a lengthy Visit to Peek Frean & Co. Biscuit Works from 1907, which not only includes much footage of the cookie-making process, but manages to fit in a firefighting sequence as well. Fire rescue films were hugely popular with early audiences and was probably needed to spice the picture up a bit. A second documentary is "A Day in the Life of a Coalminer", which glosses over the hardships of the miner and instead focuses on the positive results of his labors. Not surprisingly, this picture was financed by a railroad company - some things haven't changed at all.

About half of the program is devoted to the Pathé brothers and their studio, which featured stencil-coloring prominently in its films. Among the eight shorts here are their notable fantasies, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" (1906) and "Aladdin and the Marvelous Lamp" (1907). Among the other intriguing material here is "Revolution in Russia", a 1905 recounting of the Potemkin riots in Odessa that same year, later made into the classic "Battleship Potemkin" by Sergei Eisenstein. Wrapping up disc three are several shorts from the Edison studios, including the oldest surviving advertising film, an 1898 bit for Dewar's Scotch. The final short is Edwin S. Porter's adaptation of the Winsor McCay comic, "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". This picture is window-boxed, because much of the action goes to the very edge of the frame. Plenty of special effects and a wild sense of abandon make this one highly enjoyable even today.

Disc Four: The Magic of Méliès

Trained in stage magic, George Méliès quickly seized upon the motion picture camera and its capabilities for providing a magical experience not possible on any stage. This disc includes fifteen of Méliès' later works, after he had made a sensation with A Trip to the Moon. Many of these pictures take the form of a magic show, such as "Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer", "The Mermaid", "The Living Playing Cards" and "The Enchanted Sedan Chair". Others involve pictures that come to life, such as "Long Distance Wireless Photography", an incredibly early satire on television. Fantasy is still one of Méliès' strong points, noted in "The Impossible Voyage" (1904). Unfortunately, this short suffers from poor narration. "The Eclipse" features a blatantly erotic encounter between the sun and the moon. "The Black Imp" features one of the many demonic impersonations that Méliès favored throughout his early films. Méliès was not above knockdown farce, anticipating endlessly reused Three Stooges schtick in "Good Glue Sticks" (1907).

Disc Five: Comedy, Spectacle and New Horizons

Wrapping up the package are eight fairly mature shorts from the very end of the nickelodeon era. Slapstick comedy gets a workout in The" Policemen's Little Run" (1907), "Bangville Police" (1913), "Troubles of a Grass Widower" (1908) and "Onésime, Clock-Maker" (1912).

With the Italian one-reel "Nero and the Fall of Rome" (1909), we see what will clearly become the epics of a few years later. Even though the sets here are clearly just painted scenery, the characters already are dwarfed by the scale and there is nonetheless an epic feel behind the proceedings. In an odd choice most of this picture is tinted emerald green. It switches to red as Nero goes mad. In a more modern tone is Alice Guyy-Blaché's "The Making of an American Citizen" (1912). Ivan Orloff (Lee Beggs), a Russian immigrant, treats his wife worse than he would cattle. He even has her pulling his cart while he whips her. He is advised in none too pleasant terms that this is not acceptable in America, leading to a derisively optimistic transformation.

This set provides an excellent example of his D.W. Griffith's late work at Biograph. "The Girl and Her Trust" (1912) features Dorothy Bernard as one of a long line of plucky Griffith telegraph operators trying desperately to save the payroll. This is one of Griffith's wild 'race to the rescue' films, and it's quite breathtaking. The pursuit is via speeding locomotive, with the camera also speeding along. Griffith uses rapid cuts to build the suspense far beyond what the trivial melodrama really deserves. "Bangville Police" (1913) wraps things up. Young Grace (Mabel Normand) thinks she's in danger, and the Keystone Kops, alas, come to her rescue. Unfortunately, the only source of danger is the Kops themselves. Where Griffith supplies tension by his editing, Keystone provides humor. Despite melodramatic touches, these pictures both hold up well even 90 years later.

This is a great boxed set for film history buffs that will provide hours of entertainment and exploration. I highly recommend it.

Essential, but by no means perfect.......2005-08-10

There's no doubt that this is an essential purchase for anyone interested in early cinema: MOVIES BEGIN includes many of the landmarks, as well as some fascinating rarieties. There are tons of fun: classics by Cecil Hepworth, Edison, the Lumieres, and many others. There's no other such extenstive DVD compillation on the market and KINO ON VIDEO should be immensly praised.

However, if you consider it not for its educational values, but as a DVD edition per se, there are major flaws. First of all, commentary track (no matter how insightful) isn't optional, which is below any standards. Secondly, all the foriegn films have electronically imposed English subtitles which are impossible to reduce - it makes a bad old video tape" impression. Film notes included on the disc itself are very interesting, but the edition as a whole simply yields for a booklet which could accompany you while watching. Furthermore, there's no precise information on the sleeve notes about the exact duration of each separate movie, only enigmatic total running time", which makes it less comfortable to use e. g. during classes.

It may seem that I sneer at something very beautiful and indeed it is so - but every beautiful thing may be improved upon. In fact, the amazing recent edition of the Edison films also by KINO proves that they are learning.

Whatever are my complaints, this one remains a compulsory viewing.

Michal Oleszczyk, Tarnowskie Gory, Poland

Best Silent Film Library Around.......2004-08-19

Covers history of silent films with textual menu and includes 133 complete motion pictures. The best historical treasury of silents films I have ever seen.

The Movies Begin.......2003-05-11

... I'd reccomend this for anyone(except the first part)So here's my review and description of each Volume.
Volume one produced by D. Shepard, starts with Animated Muybridge photos. I was hoping that it'd be of galloping horses, but it's not and that's why I skip it. Then there's Edison's Kinetoscope films, AT THE WRONG SPEED! These were possibly "overcranked" so at 24 fps, it appears very slow. Same with the Lumiere films, only this time these were cranked at a higher speed so instead of being super-slow, they're plain jerky.(But some aren't that bad, and these are more rare, least Known ones.) Now there's "A trip to the Moon", Melies most famous film.(Note the cover, that picture used to give me the creeps!) Followed by a Pathe film on Moscow, and "Aeroplane, flight and wreck." We are given some Mutoscope films after this(I was hoping the rare, 1894 animated pictures!" After that the main film of this Volume is given "The Great Train Robbery" Which uses Modern Editing and this print is said to be Mint Condition and is a Rare part colourised version. After "The Dam Family and The Dam Dog" "The Golden Beetle" is next.
Volume 2 produced by Heather Stewart, has a nice commentary by Barry Salt, nice Piano accompiant, and starts with Lumiere actualities. The well known ones like "Men playing cards" and at the right speed! Some Robert Paul films are after Acres' "Rough Sea". Paul had action being carried out of the frame, and stop motion and Model effects("The (?) Motorist") G.A. Smith Originated breaking a scene down in shots("Mary Jane's Mishap") and Point-of-view shots("As seen through a telescope") Shffield Photo and W. Haggar contain early chase films. J. Bamforth is variations on previous films, An J. Williamson is Chase and action being carried over from scene to scene.
The Same People as Vol.2 Made this volume(my favorite!). Cecil Hepworth begins, who "tried to inject a little novelty in his films" has nice ones like "How it feels to be run over". G.H. Cricks brings "A Visit to Peek Freans" and Kineto has "A day in the Life of a Coal Miner. The Pathe films are the main part and are the best. They vary from Melies and Smith inspired films, to rare stencil coloured ones. We end with Edison Films, which are also good.
Volume 4 is Melies films. Some like "The Impossible Voyage" and "The Eclipse" are not to missed. In fact, this volume is one of the best ones. Produced by Davied Shepard has nice music, and nice ending documentary.
Volume 5 is the last one. With some Pathe films, A forerunner of the Keystone C(K)ops, A D.W. Griffith film and more show main begginings of "proper" cinema. Title cards, edtiting, andwell made plots is what I mean. Note: The Winsor Mckay Film is not complete. "Winsor Mckay:Animation Legend" contains more of Mckay drawing and talking with his friends, and even more to the cartoon(which is hand coloured version, not on here) Both are editied differently.
I hope my review told you enough of this set. I didn't want to give spoilers. This is not to be missed(sorry for copying antoher review's title that was here in May 10 2003 that may later be gone)

Awesome..........2003-02-20

This was a magnificent look back into history. My one set of grandparents were born respectively in 1927 and 1930. They never thought that movies were older than the 1920's. It shocked them that movies in kinetiscope were appearing in 1894. I love pulling out this collection and shocking people. I tell them I watch movies form the 1800's and they get huffy and self-important and tell me there were no movies form the 1800's. This always amazes them.

Plus, unlike most of Hollywood's movies, these are real people. Even if the stories are false, these people aren't beautiful. They have missing teeth and nappy hair. They don't all have model figures either. It's a look at real history moving right in front of you. If you look carefully you can notice all the little things that we take for granted now. I wondered about cars and traffic regualtions. Those are in the background here.

Product Description

IN IT'S GLORIOUS BLACK AND WHITE THIS MULTI REGION DVD (1 & 4)WILL PLAY IN U.S. DVD PLAYERS, CANADA AND SOUTH AMERICA. IT IS IN SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE ALTERNATIVE ENDING, BIOGRAPHIES, ANECDOTARIA AND PHOTO GALLERY. THIS CLASSIC MOVIE WON 11 ARIELES INCLUDING BEST PICTURE AND BEST DIRECTOR ALSO WON AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL IN 1951

Customer Reviews:

In the World of the Young and Damned.......2007-02-26

The story of troubled youth and urban violence has been told many times, but this is, perhaps, the best film on the subject ever made. This is an unblinking look at the hell on earth that looks like slums of Mexico City. It is also a masterful combination of gritty realism and Buñuel's surrealism like in the scene of young Pedro's dream of Virgin Mary with a face of his mother whose love he desperately needs but never knows.

All the characters, including a young boy caught up in a criminal world but trying to be good, his tired mother who does not have time to love her children, the brutal and cruel gang leader with his own story that breaks your heart are not just wonderfully written and acted, they are absolutely real and would stay with you long after the film is over. Shocking, erotic, and sad, this is a masterpiece - the perfect film from the beginning until the harrowing and devastating end.

Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 2: The Magic of Melies

Average customer rating:

A master magician
pretty good early french cinema
Melies is fabulous!
wonderful introduction to the work of a film pioneer
Truly Astounding.

Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 2: The Magic of Melies
Starring: Landmarks of Early Film
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1
Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s
Melies the Magician
The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913
Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

ASIN: 6305301840
Release Date: 1999-03-30

Description

Decades before the term "special effects" was coined, audiences of the newborn cinema were witnessing spectacular screen illusions, courtesy of the medium's first master magician: Georges Melies. Melies' astounding employment of double exposure, makeup, editing and theatrical trickery still command the power to surprise and bewilder and can now be seen for the first time with crystal clarity in fifteen beautifully restored films, accompanied by newly composed scores. Includes the documentary "Georges Melies: Cinema Magician," plus the Melies shorts "An Impossible Voyage" (struck from an original hand-colored negative), "The Black Imp," "The Cook in Trouble," "The Living Playing Cards," and 11 more!

Customer Reviews:

A master magician.......2007-01-29

Even though these films are nearly all 100 years old or older, they still have the power to entertain, fascinate, delight, and charm. Decades before moviegoing audiences were familiar with computer special effects and had lost the sense of wonder that audiences had at the turn of the last century, Georges Méliès (one of my favorite directors) was creating amazing magical trick shots and special effects just by drawing on his own past career as a magician and by using his imagination. He did all of these tricks by himself instead of relying on a computer, and not only did he do the special effects by himself, he did everything else associated with the film-making process. He directed, produced, wrote, acted in, and distributed all of these films. People who only know him by his best-known film 'Le Voyage Dans la Lune' are missing out on a whole lot. The 15 films contained on this disc show that he did a lot more than just that early sci-fi film. The first film, the longest, is 'Le Voyage à Travers l'Impossible' (1904), which in many ways seems like a sequel to 'Le Voyage Dans la Lune.' Here the travellers and their brave leader are travelling into the Sun, and also have a series of mishaps along the way before coming home victorious. This film is also hand-colored (though given its extreme age, the colors are a bit faded), and with a narration by Fabrice Zagury, the same one who narrates 'Le Voyage Dans la Lune.' The narration doesn't bother me, since it's my understanding that both of these films were originally meant to be accompanied by this narration when shown in theatres, and besides, without any intertitles, this story can seem a bit confusing because of how complex it is. There are also 14 shorter subjects, many of them reenactments of Monsieur Méliès's magic act, only even better and with more potential to stun an audience thanks to the moving image and what appears to be a nonstop stream of magic tricks instead of the more mundane explanation of stopping and starting the camera again to achieve these breathtaking stunts. The short documentary which starts the disc is also very good, giving the viewer a concise but nevertheless compelling and detailed look into Monsieur Méliès's life and career. My only complaint about the disc is that it wasn't longer and didn't have a lot more than just 15 of these amazing films on it!

pretty good early french cinema.......2005-09-07

The movies are in good order, however I wasn't able to play the first few without dealing with the commentary. I enjoyed the sidebars but there are times too when I want only the film. Beyond that the films are in a state or repair that I would expect and the musical acccompaniment was very suitable. Very enjoyable for a novice collector(my self).

Melies is fabulous!.......2003-07-29

For my money one of the most underrated filmmakers in history, Melies' movies are a joy to watch. It's true you don't see the sophistication in film style that D.W. Griffith brought to his movies, but for anyone who today understands what the expression "film magic" means, Melies is the one who started it all. Not all of the films on this disk are completely captivating, but they certainly capture someone playing around with different ways to perform film magic and entertain an audience. Although his "voyage to the moon" is well placed in volume 1 of the "landmarks" series, along with other important early films, it is missed here. I can't say for certain because I AM a fan, but some may not enjoy this DVD as much because it is so heavy on Melies' shorter pieces (there is only one longer film in here, and for me it is a highlight). The short pieces can be fun, but I don't think they necessarily show Melies at his best - telling a complete, if totally whimsical and fantastic story.

wonderful introduction to the work of a film pioneer.......2002-01-13

Between 1896 and 1912, Georges Melies produced over 500 films. Fifteen of them are found here, along with a twenty minute documentary about Melies. The documentary is unusual, told as a first person narrative with other voices occasionally reminiscing about Georges as a boy, etc. As I say, it is unusual but interesting, and we learn that Monsieur Melies' parents allowed him to leave the family shoe factory so that he could pursue his own different drummer. He became a magician and actor, later falling in love with the Lumiere brothers' cinematographe; unable to buy a Lumiere machine, he invented his own combination camera-projector and began showing his films at carnivals and fairs. After making many films, Melies finished his life running a toy shop with an old flame.

If the Lumieres were the first film documentarians, Melies was the first film wizard, and these fifteen examples of his work are still a pleasure to watch. Magnificently preserved and restored, they look fabulous and are entertaining almost one hundred years later. The films found here are: The Impossible Voyage; The Untamable Whiskers; The Cook in Trouble; Tchin-chao, the Chinese Conjurer; The Wonderful Living Fan; The Mermaid; The Living Playing Cards; The Black Imp; The Enchanted Sedan Chair; The Scheming Gambler's Paradise; The Hilarious Posters; The Mysterious Retort; The Eclipse; Good Glue Sticks; and Long Distance Wireless Photography. Melies' best known work, A Trip to the Moon (1902), is not here, but on the Landmarks of early Film, Volume 1, collection.

Truly Astounding........2001-11-11

It has been over one hundred years since Georges Melies first began making movies. He was a true pioneer in every sense of the word. He invented his own camera and projector and built his own studio so that he could have complete control over what he was doing. His use of nudity in 1897 created a scandal and some of his films had very unhappy endings. I bring this up only to illustrate the old French proverb "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Of the hundreds of films that he made it's the trick films as he called them that he is best remembered for. It was in these that Melies developed the art of special effects. Double exposures, dissolves, and stop motion animation were used and refined to create films that even today are truly astounding. Even people who aren't film buffs are familiar with his 1902 A TRIP TO THE MOON (which is not included in this anthology. It's in LANDMARKS OF EARLY FILM, VOLUME 1). The shot of the rocket hitting the Moon in the eye is one of the most famous in film history. What makes this collection so valuable are the 15 short films presented in virtually mint condition that allow us to sample the genius of Melies 100 years later. While they are all fascinating and entertaining, there is a block of four in a row beginning with TCHIN-CHAO, THE CHINESE CONJURER through THE LIVING PLAYING CARDS that show off Melies at his best. There is even a short documentary GEORGE MELIES: CINEMA MAGICIAN that gives a brief look at his life and work which opens the set although the credits don't appear until the end of the DVD. I would have left the documentary at the end of the presentation as on the VHS edition. This not only puts the credits where they belong but doesn't give away the secrets until after the shorts are finished. The musical accompaniment by Alexander Rannie is ideal and enhances the magic of these enchanting films. They may be 100 years old but true magic remains timeless.

Naughty Nudes '64 - The Classic American Peep Show

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Naughty Nudes '64 - The Classic American Peep Show
Starring: 42nd Street Pete
Director: Michael Raso
Manufacturer: Retro-Seduction Cinema
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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The Curiously Obsessive Peep Show
42nd Street Pete's 8mm Madness
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Sex in the Seventies: The Times Square Store Front Collection
42nd Street Pete's Euro-Trash Collection

ASIN: B000A7JKPE
Release Date: 2005-07-26

Description

"Retro-Seduction Cinema" is proud to introduce classic 16mm Nudie Loops from the 1960s - newly transferred from original film elements, pre-mastered to High-Definition, and presented for the first time ever in widescreen format enhanced for 16x9 televisions…with newly recorded, retro musical accompaniment!

"Naughty Nudes - 1964" showcases 12 of the wildest, super erotic darlings ever to tease and tempt and strip their way into your heart. See them bump, see them grind, see them thrust, stroke and fondle, see them do the kinds of things that no self-respecting girl would ever dare to do…even behind closed doors with no camera running! Get a taste of the genuine peep show experience that always left the patron wanting more.

Short nude films had been around since the dawn of cinema, but it was early in the 1960s that the "nudie loop" exploded across the flickering screens of 10 cent arcades and became a mainstay in Peep Shows establishments and Grindhouse theaters throughout the U.S. Retro-Seduction Cinema now has gathered together many of the hottest loops featuring the most luscious, buxom and voluptuous women of the day - naughty, girl-next-door exhibitionists! - and packaged them in special Retro Collector Editions that are a true voyeur's dream-come-true.

Description

Since the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have been infatuated with dynamic images of New York City. The 26 short films on this DVD lovingly depict scenes of New Yorkers among the skyscrapers, streets, and night life of America's greatest city during a half century of progress, while at the same time showing changes in film style and the history of cinema experiments. Avant-garde moments pop up in the most unlikely of places including turn-of-the-twentieth-century actualities, commercial and radical newsreels, and Busby Berkeley's spectacular "Lullaby of Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935. City symphonies are represented by such landmark American films as Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta (1921), Robert Flaherty's Twenty four-Dollar Island (c.1926), Robert Florey's Skyscraper Symphony(1929), Jay Leyda's A Bronx Morning (1931), an Bonney Powell's Manhattan Medley (1931).

Customer Reviews:

amazing, beautiful, ahead of it's time.......2007-05-12

ahead of it's time, all of these shorts are beautiful windows into a very different part of history.

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