Author: Ray Olson

Everybody interested in movies has heard of Leni Riefenstahl. She made the famous, though now quite dull, film of the spectacular 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Party rally, Triumph des Willens (1935), and Olympia (1938), a far more durable record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The silents were perforce the medium in which most masters of the talkies learned their profession. Indeed, many first showed their mastery in silent features. Four titles on my list of favorite silents attest to their makers’ gifts very early on.

…there was a great German expressionist filmmaker whose surname is Leni—Paul Leni. He made his mark in Germany, but his finest work was done in Hollywood. 

Jacques Feyder just must be the font of French cinema in the Renoir tradition. Everything looks very on-location, everyone looks very real-life, every action is quite natural, every development is made as credible as possible through adept, unshowy camerawork, careful lighting, and naturalistic acting.

Some movie classics are one-offs. Their makers never made another film or another film nearly as good or even another film that’s now available to the public. Here are five of them.

Perhaps the greatest film actor I’d never heard of until I discovered him a very few years ago.

For cinéastes of a historical bent, Kino Lorber’s 3-disc set Gaumont Treasures 1897–1913 is a pearl almost beyond price. It showcases the earliest development of narrative cinema in one of the most fertile of its seedbeds.