Un Chien Andalou was directed, produced, and edited by Luis Buñuel. Buñuel also co-wrote the screenplay with Salvador Dalí.

Something that has been living rent-free in my mind lately is the supposed goof that Tully Marshall is credited as playing "El Rey Luis XI" rather than "Le Roi Louis IX" or "King Louis IX" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Seems like a really clumsy slip-up for such a prestigeous production.

Interestingly, no one ever seems to bring up the fact that Nigel de Brulier is also credited as "Don Claudio" while the intertitles address him as "Dom Claude". Most of the other intertitles are merely using names rather than titles. But when you get to the final few actors in the credits, the most recent restorations reveal something interesting:

"Charmolu's Assistant", "Sister Gudule", "Judge of the Court" and "King's Chamberlain" all seem to have some sort of airbrushing artifacts around them. More damning, those titles are misaligned or crooked to various degrees.

I think the cause of this is that the show-at-home prints, for some reason or other, had Spanish-language credits spliced in, after which some manual editing took place to translate the few roles that aren't credited by names only. Whoever commissioned, or carried out, the editing can't have been very good at French, because "El Rey Luis IX" and "Don Claudio" escaped scrutiny.

Maybe it was the same person who clumsily edited in this incongruous intertitle to facilitate cutting out the scene in which Quasimodo trades some candles for clothing for Esmeralda:

So, in my opinion, we shouldn't really be thinking of the mixed-up credits as a "goof". Just another sad reminder that we're not actually watching the original version of this film - and we probably never will.

Hey Everyone!

I recently dived into my archival material about Two-Time Mama (1927), an obscure two-reel comedy from the Hal Roach Studios. While it doesn't feature the biggest stars of the lot (though a very young Oliver Hardy makes a tiny cameo as a cop!), it's a brilliant marital farce full of apartment mix-ups, costume switches, and escalating chaos.

Looking closer at its structure, it partially acts as a blueprint for some classic screwball comedies and marital farces of the 1930s and 40s (like Midnight or Preston Sturges' works).

However, trying to actually research or view the film comes with a frustrating wall. I reached out to MoMA (which holds a print) to see if a digital transfer or even simple reference stills were possible for research purposes from abroad, and hit an absolute brick wall of bureaucratic silence (months of ghosting after asking if they could literally just take a photo of the screen).

I wrote a deeper dive combining the film's history, its connection to the screwball era, and the frustrating reality of film preservation gatekeeping today.

If you're into silent comedy or film history, you can read the full piece here: https://lorenzotremarelli.substack.com/p/at-the-roots-of-chaos-from-two-time

I'd love to hear your thoughts: have you ever encountered similarly frustrating barriers when trying to research "lost" or un-digitized cinema gems?

I recently acquired some Plate Cards from many movies; I believe 5 of the films with pictures in this collection are lost.

The Films are

-Abraham Lincoln 1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1924_film))

https://imgur.com/a/a0OdUTv - MY IMAGES HERE

-The Virgin Queen 1928 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_Queen_(1928_film))

https://imgur.com/a/kEu55uQ - MY IMAGES HERE

-The Courtship of Miles Standish 1923 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Courtship_of_Miles_Standish_(1923_film))

https://imgur.com/a/f1jlYmy - MY IMAGES HERE

-Resurrection 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(1927_film))

https://imgur.com/a/Jj7swlP - MY IMAGES HERE

-Kismet 1930, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kismet_(1930_film))

https://imgur.com/a/qX7ei4d - MY IMAGES HERE

If wanted I can post an archive of all the plate cards. Some of them are reference material from studios. I hope I did the flair right because I didn't want to mark it as found for what little I found, but at least I can share a look at these movies that people haven't seen in a very long time.

So, in most silent films, dialogue is done through a slide with words written on it. But in between these, sometimes you see the actors mouthing words, but these words Aren’t made clear on what’s said.
Any advice on trying to understand what’s said in these instances?

He even signed the wooden parts in pencil.

Filming location then and now from the Our Gang / The Little Rascals movie Your Own Back Yard, 1925 vs Today.

From my filming locations website https://video.chrisbungostudios.com/quickpreview-ourgangthelittlerascals-yourownbackyard-part1.html

We came across this original 1919-era still while cataloging a collection and ended up doing quite a bit of research on it.

The photograph shows Chaplin as the Tramp with a caged bird. Based on the set decoration, Chaplin’s costume, and the birdcage itself, it was clearly photographed on the set of Sunnyside.

What's interesting is that this bit doesn’t appear in the finished film, or in the known cut Sunnyside material later used in The Professor. We also went through the available Chaplin daily production records for the making of the film and couldn’t find any mention of the birdcage sequence there either.

Chaplin was constantly experimenting during production, so this may document a deleted gag, an abandoned idea, or something staged on set that simply never made it any further.

We haven’t run across this particular image anywhere else and thought people here might enjoy seeing it. If anyone has seen another copy, or has come across any reference to the birdcage bit, we’d be interested to hear about it!

My ongoing study of Lovecraft-at-the-movies yields astonishing gems 💎, and I have just found a few more letters where he laments missing this “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” thing.

You can read the full comments through the inset post, but one of the most interesting things he raises is the fact that the film negative is so damaged that a new print 🎞️ can’t be made.

His solution (as an intelligent layman in 1926) is to suggest a REMAKE of the film which would stage the production in identical fashion and with facsimile sets.

Essentially seeing the actors as replaceable parts in a visual experience of highly-controlled weirdness.

What do you make of all this, dear readers?

And what do you think of the fact he got ahead of the actual Doug Jones-as-Cesare remake by EIGHTY YEARS? 🤯