Treasures from American Film Archives

Starring:Laurence Fishburne
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
It may look like a grab bag at first--50 preserved films from 18 American archives spanning the years 1893 to 1985 and encompassing everything from documentaries and home movies to experimental films and animation--but this unprecedented collection has a clear focus. It celebrates the scope and wealth of cinema history's "orphans," the films abandoned by the marketplace and left to nonprofit organizations to rescue. This is the proof of their efforts, and only a tiny, tantalizing example of what has been preserved. The "stars" of the set are the features: the startlingly savage 1916 William S. Hart Western Hell's Hinges and the luscious 1922 two-strip Technicolor feature The Toll of the Sea (the first color feature ever made) with Anna May Wong. Also included are The Chechahcos from 1924 (the first film ever shot in Alaska) and the extravagant (if stagy) original 1916 Snow White. John Huston's stunning documentary The Battle of San Pietro and Joseph Cornell's obscure but entrancing 1936 surrealist classic Rose Hobart are further highlights.

But there are wonders to be found throughout the collection, from a trip through Interior New York Subway circa 1905, to the gorgeous avant-garde 1928 The Fall of the House of Usher, to the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 Haiti-set stage production of Macbeth in the 1937 documentary We Work Again. The breadth of work is astounding and all of it is fascinating, whether it's a revealing glimpse of a forgotten social landscape in a home movie; the preservation of theater, dance, and concert recitals in one-of-a-kind records; or an ancient work of pioneering cinema.

The four-disc set is handsomely designed, with easy-to-navigate menus featuring extensive notes and short documentaries about each archive (narrated by Laurence Fishburne), and a detailed, informative 150-page booklet accompanies the set. It's a one-of-a-kind project and a true film treasure. --Sean Axmaker
Description
For the first time ever, America's film archives are joining forces to release their most exciting, unseen treasures on DVD. The 50 films in this four disc set have been meticulously preserved by eighteen of the nation's premiere archives, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, UCLA, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Featuring numerous supplements and produced by the nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation, "Treasures from American Film Archives" shows the amazing variety of films made from coast to coast over the last 100 years. With narration by Laurence Fishburne, this set is an absolute must for film collectors! Films include: Groucho Marx's home movies (1933, 2 min.), D.W. Griffith's "The Lonedale Operator" (1911, 17 min.), the earliest film version of "Snow White" (1916, 63 min.), "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1928, 13 min.), "Negro Leagues Baseball" (1946, 8 min.), "The Autobiography of a Jeep" (1943, 10 min.), Joseph Cornell's found footage film "Rose Hobart" (1936, 19 min.), "Returning on the Zeppelin Hindenburg" (1936, 7 min.), the early 2-color Technicolor feature "The Toll of the Sea" (1922, 54 min.), the William S. Hart western "Hell's Hinges" (1916, 64 min.), the first commercially-shown U.S. film "Blacksmithing Scene" (1893, 1 min.), plus silent features, documentaries and newsreels, avant-garde shorts, early animation and special effects films, home movies, and much more.

Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
Average customer rating:

A good collection, but the sequel boxed set was better

A Landmark Box Set

What a gold mine!

Good, but "More" is better

Available again May 2005?!?!

Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
Starring: Treasures from American Film Archives
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941

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

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

Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)

ASIN: B0007WFXYO
Release Date: 2005-05-10

Amazon.com

It may look like a grab bag at first--50 preserved films from 18 American archives spanning the years 1893 to 1985 and encompassing everything from documentaries and home movies to experimental films and animation--but this unprecedented collection has a clear focus. It celebrates the scope and wealth of cinema history's "orphans," the films abandoned by the marketplace and left to nonprofit organizations to rescue. This is the proof of their efforts, and only a tiny, tantalizing example of what has been preserved. The "stars" of the set are the features: the startlingly savage 1916 William S. Hart Western Hell's Hinges and the luscious 1922 two-strip Technicolor feature The Toll of the Sea (the first color feature ever made) with Anna May Wong. Also included are The Chechahcos from 1924 (the first film ever shot in Alaska) and the extravagant (if stagy) original 1916 Snow White. John Huston's stunning documentary The Battle of San Pietro and Joseph Cornell's obscure but entrancing 1936 surrealist classic Rose Hobart are further highlights.

But there are wonders to be found throughout the collection, from a trip through Interior New York Subway circa 1905, to the gorgeous avant-garde 1928 The Fall of the House of Usher, to the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 Haiti-set stage production of Macbeth in the 1937 documentary We Work Again. The breadth of work is astounding and all of it is fascinating, whether it's a revealing glimpse of a forgotten social landscape in a home movie; the preservation of theater, dance, and concert recitals in one-of-a-kind records; or an ancient work of pioneering cinema.

Description

For the first time ever, America's film archives are joining forces to release their most exciting, unseen treasures on DVD. The 50 films in this four disc set have been meticulously preserved by eighteen of the nation's premiere archives, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, UCLA, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Featuring numerous supplements and produced by the nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation, "Treasures from American Film Archives" shows the amazing variety of films made from coast to coast over the last 100 years. With narration by Laurence Fishburne, this set is an absolute must for film collectors! Films include: Groucho Marx's home movies (1933, 2 min.), D.W. Griffith's "The Lonedale Operator" (1911, 17 min.), the earliest film version of "Snow White" (1916, 63 min.), "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1928, 13 min.), "Negro Leagues Baseball" (1946, 8 min.), "The Autobiography of a Jeep" (1943, 10 min.), Joseph Cornell's found footage film "Rose Hobart" (1936, 19 min.), "Returning on the Zeppelin Hindenburg" (1936, 7 min.), the early 2-color Technicolor feature "The Toll of the Sea" (1922, 54 min.), the William S. Hart western "Hell's Hinges" (1916, 64 min.), the first commercially-shown U.S. film "Blacksmithing Scene" (1893, 1 min.), plus silent features, documentaries and newsreels, avant-garde shorts, early animation and special effects films, home movies, and much more. Visit http://www.filmpreservation.org/ for a complete listing of all films included.

Customer Reviews:

A good collection, but the sequel boxed set was better.......2007-05-18

This original set of films from the American Film Archives is interesting to students of cinema history and history in general, but it is not that entertaining in the ordinary sense. The first set I bought, "More Treasures from the American Film Archives" seemed to do a better job of mixing pure entertainment with films that had a social or historical significance than this one. That set included one or two silent feature films including an early Ernst Lubitsch, a Rin Tin Tin silent, and a very early gangster film, on each DVD along with the short subjects. That being said, this is a unique and interesting set of films that I found very worthwhile. However, if you are uncertain, start with the "More Treasures from the American Film Archives" set first. If you don't like that set I am almost sure you will not like this one. Nobody else bothered to list all of the films on this set and their descriptions, so I do that next:

ACADEMY FILM ARCHIVE, ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES ARTS AND SCIENCES:
1. Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (1894, 1 minute), kinetoscope of the Italian acrobat made by the Edison Co.
2. Caicedo, King of the Slack Wire (1894, 1 minute), the first film shot outdoors at the Edison Studios.
3. The Original Movie (1922, 8 minutes), silhouette animation satire on commercial filmmaking, by puppeteer Tony Sarg.
4. League Baseball (1946, 8 minutes), footage featuring Reece "Goose" Tatum, the Indianapolis Clowns, and the Kansas City Monarchs.

ALASKA FILM ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA AT FAIRBANKS
5. The Chechahcos (1924, 86 minutes), first feature shot entirely on location in Alaska. This is a melodrama set during the Alaska gold rush with some great scenery included.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES
6. Rose Hobart (1936, 19 minutes), artist Joseph Cornell's celebrated found-footage film that mainly takes footage from Hobart's film "East of Borneo", combines it with some other scenes, and winds up as a surreal short.
7. Composition 1 (Themis) (1940, 4 minutes), Dwinell Grant's stop-motion abstraction.
8. George Dumpson's Place (1965, 8 minutes), Ed Emshwiller's portrait of the scavenger artist and his home.

GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE
9. The Thieving Hand (1908, 5 minutes), special-effects comedy.
10. The Confederate Ironclad (1912, 16 minutes), Civil War adventure with the heroine saving the day.
11. The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912, 14 minutes), social problem drama about a tattered newspaper boy who yearns for a better life.
12. Snow White (1916, 63 minutes), live-action feature of the Brothers Grimm tale starring Marguerite Clark.
13. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, 13 minutes), avant-garde landmark created by James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber from Poe's short story.

JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
14. From Japanese American Communities (1927-32, 7 minutes), home movies shot by Rev. Sensho Sasaki in Stockton, California, and Tacoma, Washington.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
15. Demolishing and Building Up Star Theatre (1901, 1 minute), the time-lapse demolition of a New York building, preserved from a paper print.
16. Move On (1903, 1 minute), Lower East Side street scene, preserved from a paper print.
17. Dog Factory (1904, 4 minutes), trick film about fickle pet owners, preserved from a paper print.
18. Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy (1909, 5 minutes), special-effects fantasy of a tormented smoker, by the Vitagraph Company.
19. White Fawn's Devotion (1910, 11 minutes), probably directed by James Young Deer and the earliest surviving film by a Native American.

MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
20. Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939, 14 minutes), small town portrait by amateur filmmakers, Dr. and Mrs. Dowidat.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
21. Blacksmithing Scene (1893, 1 minute), first U.S. film shown publicly.
22. The Shoe Clerk (1903, 1 minute), comic sketch with celebrated early editing.
23. Interior New York Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St. (1905, 5 minutes), filmed by Biograph's Billy Bitzer shortly after the subway's opening.
24. Hell's Hinges (1916, 64 minutes), William S. Hart Western about a town that earns its own destruction.
25. The Lonedale Operator (1911, 17 minutes), D.W. Griffith's rescue drama, starring Blanche Sweet.
26. Three American Beauties (1906, 1 minute), with rare stencil color.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
27. We Work Again (1937, 15 minutes), WPA documentary on African American re-employment, including excerpt from Orson Welles' stage play of "Voodoo Macbeth".
28. The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943, 10 minutes), the story of the soldier's all-purpose vehicle, as told by the jeep itself.
29. Private Snafu: Spies (1943, 4 minutes), wartime cartoon for U.S. servicemen, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Dr. Seuss.
30. The Battle of San Pietro (1945, 33 minutes), celebrated combat documentary directed by John Huston.
31. The Wall (1962, 10 minutes), USIA film on the Berlin Wall made for international audiences.

NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
32. From The Keystone "Patrician" (1928, 6 minutes), promotional film for new passenger plane.
33. From The Zeppelin Hindenburg (1936, 7 minutes), movies by a vacationing American family made on board 1 year before its destruction.

NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM
34. From Tevye (1939, 17 minutes), American Yiddish-language film, directed by Maurice Schwartz, adapted from Sholem Aleichem's stories.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY
35. From Accuracy First (ca. 1928, 5 minutes), Western Union training film for women telegraph operators.
36. From Groucho Marx's Home Movies (ca. 1933, 2 minutes).

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
37. From Beautiful Japan (1918, 15 minutes), early travel-lecture feature by Benjamin Brodky.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
38. From La Valse (1951, 6 minutes), pas de deax from George Balanchine's 1951 ballet, featuring Tanaquil Le Clercq and Nicholas Magallanes and filmed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
39. Battery Film (1985, 9 minutes), experimental documentary of Manhattan, by animator Richard Protovin and photographer Franklin Backus.

NORTHEAST HISTORIC FILM
40. From Rural Life in Maine (ca. 1930, 12 minutes), footage filmed by Elizabeth Wright near her farm of Windy Ledge, in southwestern Maine.
41. From Early Amateur Sound Film (1936-37, 4 minutes), scenes of family life captured by sound-film hobbyist Archie Stewart.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE
42. Running Around San Francisco for an Education (ca. 1938, 2 minutes), early political ad, shown in San Francisco theaters, that helped win approval of local school bonds.
43. OffOn (1968, 9 minutes), Scott Bartlett's avant-garde film, the first to fully merge film and video.

UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE
44. Her Crowning Glory (1911, 14 minutes), household comedy, with comic team John Bunny and Flora Finch, about an eight-year old who gets her way.
45. I'm Insured (1916, 3 minutes), cartoon by Harry Palmer.
46. The Toll of the Sea (1922, 54 minutes), Anna May Wong in an early two-strip Technicolor melodrama, written by Frances Marion.
47. The News Parade of 1934 (10 minutes), Hearst Metrotone newsreel summary of the year.
48. From Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert (1939, 8 minutes), excerpt from a concert film, reconstructed from newsreels, outtakes, and radio broadcast materials.

WEST VIRGINIA STATE ARCHIVES
49. From West Virginia, the State Beautiful (1929, 8 minutes), amateur travelogue along Route 60.
50. From One-Room Schoolhouses (ca. 1935, 1 min), amateur footage from rural Barbour County.

A Landmark Box Set .......2005-09-11

The features TOLL OF THE SEA with Anna May Wong and Kenneth Harlan and SNOW WHITE starring Marguerite Clark are worth the price of this set alone!! These two classics are worth repeated viewings. This set is loaded with short films from the era notably the avant-garde FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER which looks amazingly like what someone might make take today if they wanted to make an avant-garde silent film. A set you will go back to time and time again, definately a must for anyone with a serious interest in early film.

What a gold mine!.......2005-09-07

What a gold mine! I purchased this collection due basically to an interest in film as a medium and art form; I've not quite completed the second of four disks.

But what a fascinating collection of excerpts, newsreels, training programs, films, featurettes and commercials. You get to see glimpses of street life in New York City in 1903, baseball in the middle of the last century, staged mini-films on elaborate sets, abstract "art" shows, amateur documentaries, even Groucho Marx at home! ... the variety of what's included only providing for more fascination ("What will be next?!").

As I believe another reviewer said, or implied, people with attention spans for nothing but six violent explosions per millisecond will have some difficulty watching these. Doesn't matter; whether they see them or not, they're indebted to films like these for the films we see today. I've also read the essays included with each film: A *lot* of inspiring work went into this collection.

I hope some of the sales proceeds go to film restoration! At some point, I'll be purchasing the second set not only to see more, but to contribute to preservation of this art form. Film and music ... what would our world be without them?

Good, but "More" is better.......2005-07-26

This collection of 50 preserved films spanning 75 years of film history aptly shows the value of film preservation, and enables fans of film to support preservation by purchasing this collection. There are four classes of film in this box: early commercial films by famous or obscure studios and film makers; amateur films, including sentimental glimpses of a region of the US (rural Minnesota, West Virginia, Maine), news reels or other documentaries, and avant-garde or experimental films. There's something for everyone who likes old movies, but it's only the most committed fanatic of the film medium who will find everything here of equal interest.

The most universally appealing in this box are films with stories that combine the potential to appeal to the modern viewer with a glimpse into the imagination of film pioneers who were defining conventions in technique that are standard today. In this category we include The Lonedale Operator, a Biograph gem from 1911 directed by D.W. Griffith, advanced for its time in editing, story-telling and character development; The Land Beyond the Sunset, an Edison one-reeler from 1912 that shows how far film directors had mastered the ability to squeeze the right amount of story into seven minutes; and Hell's Hinges, an entertaining 1916 Western feature starring W. S Hart in a role that presages the work of Gary Cooper in High Noon and Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven. There are also historically interesting films like a newsreel "year in review" of 1934 (a tough year!) and a one-reeler called The Confederate Ironclad, which was, we learn. one of many movies made during the 50 year anniversary of the Civil War. Finally, there's The Toll of the Sea an early technicolor vehicle with a very powerful performance by 17 year old Anna May Wong, albeit in a rather crude reworking of the Madame Butterfly story.

Pretty much the remainder of this collection is of historical or cultural interest. There's a version of Snow White from 1916 that was alleged to have inspired Walt Disney as a youth; a remarkable, but short, home movie from 1933 of Groucho Marx and his family at home, a brief excerpt from Marian Anderson's historic 1939 Easter Sunday concert on the mall in DC, an amateur movie of the Negro Baseball League in action, and Joseph Cornell's 1936 surrealistic "re-mixing" of a B jungle movie into a faintly erotic fixation on its female star "Rose Hobart", a movie Salvador Dali allegedly flipped over.

I personally liked volume two of this collection ("More treasures") better than this one -- it focused more on important, forgotten commercial films and less on the amateur or the avant garde. But the highlights of volume one make it, and its companion, treasures to own indeed.

Available again May 2005?!?!.......2005-02-03

YES! According to their website. Go to:

http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvd/treasures.html

For me, right now this is the holy grail of OOP DVD box-sets. They never turn up used on this site, and the few auctions that go up on Ebay get up to ridiculous amounts of money (last one went for upwards of $200). I hope to God that this is true. I would love it if Amazon could confirm it and post the date on this page. Finally, it's back (and at a lower price, too!) and I for one am very excited. Let's hope that it goes through OK. Every other reviewer has already spoken for the content you get in this priceless set, all I can say is HALLELUJAH...

More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

Average customer rating:

Entertaining early films, many never seen before on DVD
Selig's 1910 WONDERFUL Wizard of Oz - the BEST!!
More Treasures!
Iris in
Surprising, inspirational and enjoyable

More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931
Starring: More Treasures from American Film Archives
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

( M ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Documentary | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Classics | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Treasures From American Film Archives - Encore Edition
The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913
Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)
Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s

ASIN: B0002JP1VW
Release Date: 2004-09-07

Description

Like the first "Treasures from the American Film Archives" produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation, "More Treasures" takes as its starting point the preservation work of our nation's film archives. More Treasures covers the years from 1894 through 1931, when the motion pictures from a peepshow curio to the nation's fourth largest industry. This is the period from which fewest American Films survive. Five film archives have made it their mission to save what remains of these first decades of American film: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. More Treasures (made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities) reproduces their superb preservation work-fifty films follwed by six previews for lost features and serials.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining early films, many never seen before on DVD.......2007-01-27

Besides the films themselves, this set has a very well done booklet containing detailed information on each film as well as information on the preservation involved. Just about all of the silent films include at least some notes in the form of text that appear on the DVD that are selectable by the user, and most include user-selectable commentary tracks by film historians as well. The first entry on disc one is possibly the first film that ever included sound. In this 1894 entry, frequent director of Edison Company films William Dickson is seen playing the violin into a megaphone while two men dance to the music. It is only 15 seconds long, so the film is repeated several times while the extensive commentary plays. Many early Edison films were experiments such as these. Also included is a D.W. Griffith early short, the melodramatic "The Country Doctor" (1909). The title character must choose between tending his own sick daughter and a neighbor. Thus the doctor must choose between his duty as a physician and his loyalty to his own family. Mary Pickford has a small role.

Running only 13 minutes, Otis Turner's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910) is the first attempt to bring the Frank Baum novel to the screen. There's no commentary on this one, though it would be helpful, because I know I was confused. In this version, two strange unnamed animal creatures plus the scarecrow are blown by the cyclone, along with Dorothy, to Oz. "The Invaders" is a remarkable 1912 film about Native Americans using force to avenge a broken treaty when surveyors unlawfully enter their territory, leaving open the question of who really are the invaders. It has a surprisingly sophisticated depiction of the Native American characters considering when it was made, and deals honestly both with the offenses committed against them and with their own weaknesses. Chester and Sidney Franklin's "Gretchen the Greenhorn" (1916), stars Dorothy Gish in an early gangster film. This film is also "feature-length" and runs 55 minutes. Notice a remarkably slender Eugene Pallette as the bad guy. In the talkies he comes to be known for his portly figure and trademark frog voice. "The Breath of a Nation" is a 1919 cartoon that is making fun of then newly implemented prohibition and whose title is a spoof on D.W. Griffith's ground-breaking film from four years earlier. Next there is the Ford Motor Company's "De-Light: Making an Electric Light Bulb" (1920) which shows each step of assemblage of a bulb at the factory. It's unsubtle message is the praise of progress via mass production, and, of course Ford Motor Company's part in all of this. Disc one ends with a five-minute talkie "greeting" by playwright George Bernard Shaw, shot in 1928, which comes across more as a test run of sound technology than anything.

Disc two starts with five minutes of film shot by Edwin S. Porter of the Edison Company that consists of scenes of ordinary people going about their daily lives in New York City in 1901 and 1903, and is typical of the early "actualities" of which early motion pictures consisted. In a similar, but much later film, "A Bronx Morning" (1931), people are shown going about their daily business one morning in the Bronx. Eleven minutes long, people are shown jumping rope, rocking a baby carriage, entering and exiting the subway, etc. There are also some good shots of some 1930's Bronx neighborhoods themselves. "From Leadville to Aspen: A Hold-Up in the Rockies" (1906) is an eight minute short that documents a train robbery. The hold-up itself is shot from the point of view of a passenger seat, and the thieves' attempted get-away is shot from the vantage point of the very front of the train. The notes for this film say that this short was intended to be shown to passengers onboard a train, one of the earliest examples of films being used to entertain travelers. A contrasting view of big business from that shown in the Ford Motor Company's assembly line film on disc one is seen in "Passaic Textile Strike" and also in 1912's "Children Who Labor". These films show the value of trade unions and the tragedy of child labor via docu-dramas focusing on the hardships of specific families. Another early talkie in this set has "Gus Visser and His Singing Duck" (1925), in which Gus Visser sings the song, "Ma (He's Making Eyes At Me)", and soon the duck begins to accompany him by quacking. Its actual purpose was as an experiment in efforts to create a workable way to add sound to movies. Mr. Visser is not famous for anything else other than this one experiment in sound on film.

My personal favorite in the whole set is the 74-minute "Clash of the Wolves" (1925), starring Rin Tin Tin, that great German Shepherd star of the 20's. Rin is the wolf hybrid everyone wants to shoot, until one day prospector Dave Weston finds him incapacitated by a cactus thorn and dying slowly of thirst in the desert. Dave's compassion overcomes his desire to kill the wolf for the bounty on his head, and he takes him to his cabin and treats his wound. "Lobo" becomes Dave's constant companion, and eventually saves him from the film's villain. Since Rin Tin Tin was so popular in the 1920's and remains so, it is a wonder more of his silent features haven't been preserved and restored for us to enjoy.

Next there is a silent newsreel from 1926 that includes a segment on a strange sport that involves men on horseback and a giant rubber ball, and a short piece on Mussolini. Animators Max and Dave Fleischer are creators of "Now You're Talking" (1927), in which an abused phone goes to the hospital and, as a "phone doctor" takes notes, the phone talks about how he has been mistreated by various users. The film is an attempt to show early phone customers that banging on the phone will do no good at establishing a connection, and also has something to say about proper and safe storage of the device. The message - "treat your phone kindly". "There It Is" (1928) is a silent feature starring writer/director/star Charley Bowers as a detective from "Scotland Yard" sent to investigate the case of the "Fuzz-Faced Phantom". Scotland Yard is spoofed as an actual yard full of Scottish detectives all wearing kilts and sporting bagpipes. Aside from Bowers and the Phantom, the other characters have to play it straight and endure a series of indignities in order to solve the case. Charley's assistant in all of this is MacGregor, a stop-motion animated insect who lives in a matchbox and also wears kilts. Truly an odd choice for a sidekick.

Disc three begins with the short, and somewhat confusing, "Rip Van Winkle" (1896) starring the earliest-born actor to ever appear in a film, Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905), in the title role. This is followed by a film under a minute in length showing the obviously rehearsed actions of Thomas Edison working in his chemical laboratory. There's also a 12-minute film by one of the earliest female filmmakers, Alice Guy Blache, who actually owned her own studio from 1910-1914. Her film "Falling Leaves" (1912) is a melodrama about a young girl who is saved from the consumption by a new miracle cure. The title comes from the initial pronouncement from a doctor that she will live only "until the last leaf falls". Dave Fleischer was author of the "Inklings" series of cartoons, and this set contains "Inklings #12". Here Fleischer draws a picture of Rin Tin Tin, but at an odd angle, asks the audience to guess who it is, then properly orients the drawing so you can recognize the famous canine. Next he performs another puzzle-like animation in which he takes apart a drawing and then reassembles it to produce "The House that Jack Built".

"Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), is one of Ernst Lubitsch's earliest American films, adapted from Oscar Wilde's play, and is the feature film included on disc three. Lubitsch manages to get his famous "touch" across on this film, even without the benefit of spoken dialogue. He is just wonderful at conveying emotion with gestures, glances, and in this movie, with the way a doorbell is pushed. I found the overall story rather uncompelling, but it was still interesting to see such a master director at work.

Disc 3 also contains some real film oddities including two talking shorts via DeForest Phonofilms, one featuring Eddie Cantor and the other Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Phonofilm talkies, which were made between 1923-1926, never caught on with the public. This was partly due to the static nature of the camera, and partly due to the fact that DeForest was not a particularly good salesman. "The Memory of a Nutty Cameraman" (1925) shows some odd visual effects involving New York City landscapes that is similar to the work of Georges Melies, who had been making such films for over twenty years when this short was made.

This set is certainly a must-have for any serious student of early cinema, including all kinds of early films, plus it's very entertaining to boot.

Selig's 1910 WONDERFUL Wizard of Oz - the BEST!!.......2006-12-08

I am reviewing this DVD ONLY because it has the 1910 Selig film of "the Wonderful Wizard of Oz", which I have on the 3-Disk MGM Oz DVD. And despite what you see written, 'Wonderful' IS in the TITLE, not just 'Wizard'!!! This short film, I believe, is the best short Oz film because it is more faithful to L. Frank Baum's original book than the previous stage musical and the later Silent B&W films (especially Larry Semon's horrid Chadwick Picture) and when watched, can be easily seen as a big influence on the MGM Musical. When I first found out about this film from "the Annotated Wizard of Oz", I expected it to be a 1 hr film, so when I found out for myself what was in the film ("Oz: Before the Rainbow" book), I was a little disappointed, but not too much - and I can use my imagine to see a few scenes which were not filmed.
After the opening title, a mule causes trouble on a farm for a farmer, his wife & farmhands (despite no names, believed to be Aunt Em & Uncle Henry; in slow-motion Dorothy can be seen running away in the background). Playing with Toto and his ball (with a cow and the same mule), Dorothy meets and releases the Scarecrow who helps her & her animals friends 'hide' from the on-coming Cyclone (sorry, but we don't actually see any funnel, just wind & stuff blowing), which takes them all to Oz. Meanwhile, King Wizard of Oz sends out a proclamation for somebody to save him from Momba the Wicked Witch, who constantly terrorizes him & his palace courtiers. In a forest Glinda transforms Toto into a *giant* bulldog to protect Dorothy from Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow discovers the Wizard's proclamation. They then all meet and oil up the Tin Woodman who plays a picolo/flute and a appears-out-of-nowehere cat. The friends walk off (arm-in-arm), meets and get captured by witch Momba and her army of creatures & men, but Dorothy destroys her, setting them all free. At the Emerald City Wizard rewards the friends by making Scarecrow King and attempting to return Dorothy to Kansas in a balloon. The film ends with a small parade.
There are many great things about this film, because it contains bits from the book never seen in any other films: Uncle Henry sitting on the front door step (same time as Dorothy, see in slow motion), Dorothy is a little girl (almost 10) who gets a lovely new dress in Emerald City and Toto is a Cairn Terrier, there are many Guards modelled on the Soldier with Green Whiskers (Omby Amby), the girls who make the Wizard's balloon are dressed up as Glinda's Quadling Girl Guards and Glinda herself looks exactly like Denslow's original drawing. When we first see Glinda and the Cowardly Lion, we even see a background cameo of what could be the Fighting Trees and the Yellow Brick Road!! There are a few little disappointments though: first is the ending: Dorothy doesn't actually get back to Kansas until the end of the 2nd Selig Oz film "Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz" and (at least on the MGM DVD) there is no cast listing. Second I think there was a little too much Stage Musical resemblance and finally how Toto stays a bulldog as well as all the extra animals. I do wish this film had been an hour long taking up just about almost all of the book, but I wish even more that all Selig films (this one, 'Dorothy & Scarecrow', 'the Land of Oz' maybe even 'John Dough and the Cherub' as well as making "Ozma of Oz") had been put together to make "The Selig Oz Hour"!
Another important thing: except for Toto, none of the aniamls animals have names, despite earlier appearances - the Mule makes his 1st appearnce here BEFORE Hank from "Tik-Tok (Man?)" and the cat is not the same Eureka from "Dorothy & Wizard".
I would most certainly pick the short Selig Oz Films as the Best Depictions than the 1914-5 feature-length/long 'Oz Film Manufacturing Company' films of "His Majesty, the Scarecrow", "Patchwork Girl" and "Magic Cloak (NOT Oz!!)", all of which have the middle-end focusing on long scenes not always in the books.

More Treasures!.......2006-06-14

Both the first box set and this one are amazing. They're stunning. With credit given to preservation foundations, laboratories, commentators and contributors, each of the box sets presents 50 films of varying lengths which might have been lost forever, and in some cases were found only recently. When I saw the first program on this set, a film 112 years old as of 2006, with synchronized sound, I started flipping out to a friend; I couldn't believe what I was seeing. That it's been preserved. That we still have this.

Not everything on the sets interests me; some items are more "curios" than things of actual interest (to me personally). But I watch every minute of every film, and read every essay included, and listen to every commentary (the first set has essays but no commentaries). There is so much to see and to learn about where film today came from; you see so many influences on today's films in the way that film evolved. After I saw the first box set, I knew I wouldn't be missing this one. It's uplifting, and it's heartbreaking, and the fact that people are taking the time and care to preserve these films and allow us to see them makes the world seem a little bit of a better place.

Special shout-out to the "musical director" who takes great care, and draws upon extensive knowledge of the history of music in and beyond film, in creating amazingly apt piano accompaniments for the pieces without sound, and who defers to orchestral, ethnic or "chamber" musical arrangements always where it is appropriate. He adds another whole dimension to what we're seeing, enhancing the notion of seeing these films, to an extent, as they were originally intended.

Iris in.......2006-05-08

What an astonishing and entertaining box set! This three-disk set with the unwieldy name and robust price tag is one of the best collections I've watched in a long time. These `films' - some are only thirty seconds long - range in date from 1894 to 1931. Almost all are silent, save for a couple of experimental sound films. A comprehensive review is out of the question, so I'll limit myself to short observations on some of my favorites from each disk.

Disk One - Things are kicked off with `Dickson Experimental Sound Film' (ca. 1894), a 15-second film that features two-men dancing and a man playing a violin in front of a huge metal cone, the microphone for the wax cylinder the sound was recorded on. This set is dotted with experimental movies like this one. Out of context they're a little mystifying, but this one comes with a short commentary track. The commentary track lasts a few minutes, and the movie is looped behind it. All films come with program notes which are found both on-screen (handy) and in a two-hundred page book. I think a lot of people will get a kick out of the 13-minute `The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (1910). It's certainly inventive enough, but the Scarecrow, Tin Man & Lion look different, the Wizard looks creepy, and I was never that much of an Oz fan to begin with. My favorites from the first disk are the two feature films, at least feature length for their time: `The Invaders' (1912- 41 mins) and `Gretchen the Greenhorn' (1916- 58 mins.) `The Invaders' is an early western that features real Lakota Sioux playing the indians. It's a smart film that feels authentic. `Gretchen the Greenhorn' is a charming story starring the 18-year-old Dorothy Gish (Lillian's little sister) as a young Dutch girl joining her father in America. There's an innocence and a sincerity to it that I found completely winning.

Disk Two - This is the second set I've acquired recently that contains `Gus Visser and His Singing Duck' (ca. 1925 - 90 sec.) It's another synchronized sound experiment, and remains a hoot. Also of interest was the 12-minute `Early Color Films,' a trio of films from 1916, 1929 and 1926 that used different experimental color processes. This one really benefits from the commentary track. The 1926 entry is `The Flute of Krishna,' choreographed by Martha Graham. My favorite film on this disk has to be `Clash of the Wolves' (1925 - 74 mins), a Rin Tin Tin silent. Rin Tin Tin plays Lobo, a wild dog who gets a thorn in his paw and is rescued by a borax miner. There's a pretty girl, a staid father, an unscrupulous claim-jumper, and stunts galore. Also included on this disk is a Charley Bowers two-reeler (19 mins) from 1928, a silent, titled `There It Is.' Bowers is the great unknown silent movie comedian, a stop-action animation innovator and one of the more surreal moviemakers to come out of Hollywood's early years.

Disk Three - Kicks off with `Rip Van Winkle' (1896- 4 mins.) Rip is a series of very short scenes from the enormously popular stage play starring Joseph Jefferson, who was an established stage actor before the Civil War. The film was produced and shown on mutoscope machines, a flip-card, peep viewer affair that lost out to projector presentation of films. Like many of the films on this set, this isn't inherently interesting, but if you're interested in film history it's fascinating. The big one on this disk in Ernst Lubitsch's `Lady Windermere's Fan,' (1925 - 89 mins) starring Ronald Colman, a witty and sophisticated movie from Oscar Wilde. Perversely, perhaps, I like the rougher, less polished films in this set. `Life of an American Fireman' (1903- 6 mins) and `Falling Leaves' (1912 - 12 mins) are two earlier films that may not be in the same league as Lubitsch's film, but they have an appealing simplicity. What I liked best about `Life of an American Fireman' was its demonstration that movies had to find a narrative strategy. Here's what I mean - there's a scene (hope I'm not blowing the plot), set inside a tenement room, smoke billows and mother and child are trapped in a burning building. Mother opens window and shouts for help. Fireman enters, ladder appears outside window, fireman hauls mother and child out of burning building. This is all done in one continuous shot. Next we're outside the building with the fireman. We see a woman open a window, shout for help. Fireman appears in the window, ladder is emplaced, mother and child are rescued. This just isn't the way scenes are cut. When the film takes us outside, it also goes back in time to the woman in the window calling for help. It seems an intuitive thing - we don't go back in time when we change point of view, but `Life of an American Fireman' proves that, along with close ups and such, continuity had to be figured out as well.

This is a great set, especially for those interested in film history. Heck, it's a lot cheaper than a college course. A couple other highlights - Martin Marks provides the music for all the silent films, and he provides notes for every movie he scores. I think his contribution can't be overstated. Great musical accompaniment. Also on each disk is a silent Fleischer brother animation.

Surprising, inspirational and enjoyable.......2005-03-13

This marvellous second set of rare archival material never before released on video truly is a treasure for anyone interested in the development of motion pictures in all its genres. I found the diverse variety on these 3 dics surprising and impressive, as well as very educational. An excellent book contains all the background information you might start to wonder about once you see some of the unusual and unexpected short films, and there are commentaries by critics and historians on the discs as well. As a silent film enthusiast, I was most delighted to see the four feature films (over an hour in length) in this set, as well as the poignant D.W. Griffith short, "The Country Doctor" an action-packed episode from the movie serial "The Hazards of Helen", and the fascinating 1907 Edison short, "The Teddy Bears" with impressive puppet animation. And I was simply amazed by the fun animations by the Inkwell Studios and in particular, the bizarre comedy short "There It Is" with Charley Bowers.

The four feature films show the development of the movie: from the stirring story about Sioux and Cheyenne conflicts in Thomas Ince's "The Invaders" of 1912, to the plight of Dutch migrants who fall victim to a gang of counterfeiters in "Gretchen the Greenhorn" played superbly by the talented Dorothy Gish, then to "Clash of the Wolves" in 1925 starring Rin-Tin-Tin, the amazing super dog, giving the most impressive performance I've ever seen by an animal actor; and finally the smooth and sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch rendition of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" rounds off this collection. Apart from these feature films, each disc has been carefully arranged to present a balanced and fascinating variety of short films in chronological order, lasting from about 1 to 20 minutes and covering advertisements, documentaries, promotional material, educational films and some surpringly good early experiments with color and sound. Apart from the entertainment value of the feature films and quality shorts, I'm sure most people with an inquisitive mind and a general interest in our recent history and development should find this box set a real treat.