Eleanor and Franklin Double Feature (The Early Years / The White House Years)

Description

He was one of America's greatest presidents, leading the nation out of its darkest years and guiding it through one of its most difficult wars. She was his wife, a First Lady who declined the role of White House hostess and instead devoted herself to public service. This exclusive HBO Double Feature brings together the two critically acclaimed films ("The Early Years" and "The Whitehouse Years") detailing the Roosevelt's saga, presenting an intimate portrait of their public and private life, with award-winning performances from Jane Alexander and Edward Herrmann.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2007-08-21

The first part is the very best but both parts are excelent with great actors. You can feel as though you can really know them.

A Miniseries Masterpiece.......2007-06-20

This is the 2-disk set of Eleanor & Franklin, "The Early Years" and "The White House Years." The DVD's present the story of how these two strong individuals met and fell in love and how they survived a tumultous marriage. This would be at a time when the world would face the greatest war in history.

Eleanor & Franklin is a 1976-77 production and runs 6 hours. The series was made for HBO at what must have cost a king's ransom. Costumes, scenery, vintage cars, and all the rest--production values are at the highest level. Yes, the Roosevelts were from the upper crust of American society and lived privileged lives. But they sacrificed a lot for their country in its greatest hour of need as these dramatizations show so well.

Casting is superb. Jane Alexander plays Eleanor Roosevelt and Edward Hermann plays her cousin and later, husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). The outside jacket of the DVD set says the miniseries won 18 Emmys back in the 1970's. After viewing it recently for the first time, I wonder how the series didn't win more. It is a true masterpiece.

In the early-1940's, Benito Mussolini is supposed to have scoffed at the idea of FDR leading the U. S. in a world war. Mussolini ridiculed FDR as a paralytic who could never lead his country to victory. Not long after, Mussolini and his criminal partner, Adolph Hitler, would eat those words. FDR's knowledge of world history and past wars, his experience in the military and in government, and his courage and resolve in the face of evil were exactly what was needed.

For all his flaws as a man, I shudder to think what might have happened had FDR not been U. S. President during this time. Without question, his partnership with Winston Churchill saved Western Civilization. Through it all, Eleanor was his supporter and confidant, although you might wonder at times if he deserved her.

Anyone interested in the 1930's and 40's and the tremendous world conflict known as World War II needs to add this bargain-priced set to his library. These DVD's will provide insight one can get nowhere else.

Eleanor and Franklin Well Worth Watching.......2007-06-08

This double feature DVD is well worth the watching as it illuminates one of the most powerful and faninating couples of the 20th century. From their early years to the final journey of President Roosevelt from Warm Springs to Washington D.C. you will be rivetted by their relationship. I highly recommend this DVD set.Eleanor and Franklin Double Feature (The Early Years / The White House Years)

Awesome.......2007-05-09

In comparison with Warm Springs, Franklin was a complete different man in this movie. Outstanding performances by all actors. This movie was highly captivating. This movie helps you to understand Eleanor Roosevelt and what she went through in her marriage to Franklin. Great movie!

Quality Product at Very Reasonable Price.......2007-05-03

The ABC Miniseries of 1976/1977 has been transfered, and to my eyes the color has been restored, so they both look as good as the original presentations. A plus is that they are presented in a widescreen version. I have never seen them in that presentation format. HBO has does an excellent job on these TV films - I hope they work on other old TV films! And who can argue with a price - two top notch discs for a price one paid for the original DVD release of THE EARLY YEARS! The story of the Roosevelts based on the Lash book presented in an excellent story transfer to film.

Average customer rating:

An excellent choice for history buffs
A glimpse into a vanished world
Quite simply, not to be missed, for academic film buffs
A nice sampler of very early films
Rare collection of early cinema at a very good price

Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1
Director: Thomas Edison , Lumiere Bros. , and Various
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

( L ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: 630507559X
Release Date: 1997-11-26

Amazon.com

A magnificent collection for anyone interested in the earliest days of film history, this compilation of films spans the years from 1886 to 1913, from the first experiments in "serial photography" to the emergence of narrative shorts and the dawn of the feature-length film. It's a veritable archive of nearly every important film from the birth of the medium, including Edison Kinestoscope films (1894-96), films by the brothers Lumière (1895-97), the magical movies of French special effects pioneer Georges Méliès, documentary "actualities" from 1897 to 1910, and selected short films from 1903 to 1913. The two-hour collection offers a fascinating study of how motion pictures quickly developed a variety of applications and a means of artistic and practical expression, with their own emerging language of camera style, editing, and cinematography. Watching these films is like stepping into a time machine to witness the infancy of motion pictures, which would rapidly evolve to become the most powerful medium of the 20th century prior to the development of television. --Jeff Shannon

Description

In celebration of the centennial of the birth of cinema, "Landmarks of Early Film" offers a collection of more than 40 films made in the early days of the medium. All films are mastered at correct speeds from excellent source material with new musical scores. Features a hand-colored copy of "The Great Train Robbery" from 1903, and "A Trip To The Moon" by George Melies with its original 1902 narration restored.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent choice for history buffs.......2007-08-17

This is an amazing collection of early films, ranging from 1877 to 1913. While some are longer pieces, most -- especially the early ones -- are just quick vignettes. I could see why A Trip to the Moon is considered to be such an important film as it was the first film on the disc to tell a story. Previous films were just scenes -- someone getting sprayed with a hose, men playing cards, a father feeding his baby lunch -- but not long narratives like A Trip to the Moon (which is fourteen minutes in length.)

The quality of these old films is excellent. Given the age of the film, these are some of the clearest, best-maintained old bits of film I've ever seen. The musical soundtrack laid over them is non-intrusive and pleasant and seems to have been carefully fit to the images rather than the hack-and-paste job of matching music to silent film I've seen on too many other discs.

One drawback to this disc is that there is a voice-over narration for A Trip to the Moon. The narration does make it much clearer what's occuring in the shots but I would have liked more information about the narration. How old is it? Was it taken from an original source or was it written in modern times? The narration was presented in English with a French accent that was sometimes a strain for me to follow.

If you are at all interested in the history of cinema, this would be an excellent disc to pick up. the films are arranged in chronological order, allowing the viewer to experience the evolution of film in its infancy. I was impressed to see how quickly both the use of the medium and the quality of the technology improved in the first twenty or thirty years of movie-making.

This is also a good choice for general history buffs as many of the vignettes are apparently unstaged scenes of daily life: women in big hats leaving the factory after a day of work, riders on horses swimming a river, a legless beggar being pulled in his cart by a dog, the milkman delivering milk and cream to housewives, and so on. A scene of two babies fighting over a toy is breathtaking for the lace Edwardian clothing the children wear and the beautiful toys they are quarrelling about.

(nudity warning: the first vignettes on the disc are series photography pieces of naked or topless women walking up and down stairs, hopping on one foot, etc. I assume these came from the early coin-operated, hand-cranked pornography machines.)

Taken as a collection, I couldn't give this disc higher praise. It is an excellent archive of early film history.

A glimpse into a vanished world.......2007-06-29

This DVD is very similar to a VHS tape issued by another distributor, Kino Video, "The Movies Begin, Vol. I." That the contents are similar is no surprise, as both are derived from the Film Preservation Associates' archives. The DVD is longer than the VHS tape (117 min. vs. 75 min.), and contains more material. Missing from the DVD is a wonderful sequence found in the VHS: "Moscow in the Snow" (1908). This Pâté documentary provides panoramic shots of pre-revolutionary Moscow, as well as vignettes of the inhabitants. It is such a delight that its exclusion represents a serious loss.

The earliest example included are "pre-movies-movies" consisting of a sequence of E. Muybridge's stills (1885) assembled into films. The effect is very interesting, even today. Muybridge used trip-wires and multiple cameras to obtain a sequence of stills. When Muybridge first published his stop-action motion studies they were positively revolutionary. One of Muybridge's accomplishments was to settle -- once and for all -- the question whether a running horse ever has all four feet off the ground (It does! Unfortunately this segment is not included.) Incidentally, Muybridge's sequences also provide a glimpse of the feminine figure of 100 years ago, and how it might differ from today's ideal.

This is followed by selected Edison Kinetoscopes (ca. 1894); of these I found the "serpentine dances" most interesting. (A dance form no longer practiced, except perhaps in Chinese opera.) Later on there appear additional vignettes. Some, such as the one of President McKinley, the San Francisco Earthquake, and gold prospectors crossing over the Chilkoot Pass, have obvious historical interest.

Five sequences are of special interest:

1) S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery," is a seminal work which set the framework for countless westerns to follow.

2) "A Girl and her Trust" is similar to the above, but better. It even has "feminist" elements.

3) "Nero, or the Fall of Rome" is entertaining, if historically inaccurate: Nero did fall, but Rome did not fall until several centuries later. Nero's troubled relationship with Poppaea Sabina is the subject. Perhaps what it intends is that Nero's evil was amplified by Poppaea, and this set the tone for future emperors, eventually resulting in Rome's downfall. (The historian Josephus however tells of a very different Poppaea: A deeply religious woman who urged Nero to show compassion.)

For me, without question the two best works on this tape are: 1) George Melies's "Le Voyage dans la Lune" (Voyage to the Moon) of 1902; and 2) S. Chomon's "Le Scarabee d'Or" (Golden Beetle) of 1907.

The "Golden Beetle" is a fantasy piece, with similarities to Rimsky-Korsakov's fairytale operas - except of course there is no singing, and it is only 2 minutes long. Synopsis: A sorcerer captures a golden beetle and by means of a magic fire cauldron turns it into a woman. Or perhaps she is a fairy, as she has three pairs of wings. From his unbounded glee, we suspect the sorcerer's intentions are not quite honorable. The fairy however, turns out to be more than the sorcerer had bargained for. My means of two assistants (whose miraculous appearance is unexplained) she throws the sorcerer into the fire cauldron, from whence he disappears. The moral? Perhaps it is similar to "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (remember Mickey and the brooms): don't mess with powerful things you don't fully understand. Or maybe that old men should not have an interest in young women. But ultimately it does not matter, because the plot seems merely a backdrop for the technical wizardry. Segundo de Chomon worked closely with Melies, and was heavily influenced by him. Chomon's specialty was early experimentation with color film, of which "Golden Beetle" is a good example. The coloring process involved hand coloring of individual frames, and was obviously very labor intensive. Chomon also experimented with more automated color techniques.

For me the piece de resistance of this collection is George Melies's "Le Voyage dans la Lune" (Voyage to the Moon) of 1902. This work has great historical interest as the first science fiction film produced. But the genre is peculiar: it is slapstick science fiction - a form occasionally still used, such as in "Mars Attacks."

After slapstick, the film is best characterized as an amalgam of J. Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and H. G. Wells's "First Men in the Moon." The first part of the movie roughly follows Verne's novel: a group of scientists use a giant canon to travel to the moon. The second part roughly follows Wells: the moon travelers discover a civilization of intelligent beings living under the surface of the moon. The travelers manage to get home safely among great rejoicing.

Melies had an abiding interest in science, especially astronomy, and science fiction. It is of interest to note that his scientists tend to be absent-minded, eccentric, and even buffoonish. They are unable to function without the help of down-to-earth assistants (e.g., telescope carriers). All this is very reminiscent of Swift's "flappers" from the "La Puta" section of "Gulliver's Travels."

Why slapstick? Probably Melies thought the audience of 1902 was not ready for a more scientific approach. This had to await "Die Frau im Mond" of 1929, and "Destination Moon" of 1950.

The science in this movie is best described as "absolutely pathetic" (possibly intentionally so). The movie is good training for school children assigned to "find all the mistakes." Two egregious examples: 1) the travelers have absolutely no problem breathing on the lunar surface; and 2) to return to Earth they simply fall off the edge of the Moon (ouch!).

Many viewers are familiar with at least one scene from this movie: the space capsule hitting the man-in-the-moon smack in the eye. This sequence has been excerpted many times - though most people may not know its origin. A second, almost as famous, sequence is the chorus line of beauties giving the travelers a spectacular send-off. (Should NASA consider such a format for its launches?)

Quite simply, not to be missed, for academic film buffs.......2007-05-16

If you love silent film, or if you love film in a scholarly way, or if you are interested in seeing some of the few masterpieces that have survived the silent era, or if you are sentimental about the rudiments of processes that have been later better-defined, this DVD is for you. Enjoy.

A nice sampler of very early films.......2007-01-22

Although some of the films on here do overlap with some of the other early film DVDs out there (such as the Edison set and 'The Lumière Brothers' First Films'), there are also some films on here that can't be found anywhere else, and it provides a very nice introduction to the subject for someone who's just getting into these very early short films from the dawn of motion pictures. Categories include the Edison films, films by the Lumière Brothers, a Keystone short (featuring the charming Mabel Normand in the leading role), a Biograph short, a Max Linder short, short French films, short documentary-style films, and the two very early film classics 'Le Voyage Dans la Lune' and 'The Great Train Robbery' (the latter with beautifully select hand-coloring). Basically, it gives the viewer a good sampling of the various different types of films being made from the 1890s to the early Teens. These very early films are like literally looking back in time, at this bygone world, a world where the moving image was so new and revolutionary that people didn't care the movies only lasted under a minute and showed things like employees leaving a factory or two babies quarreling, since they'd never seen these miraculously moving pictures before. It also opens with the short 1994 film 'Homage to Eadweard Muybridge,' who invented the zoopraxiscope, which projected a series of pictures in a way that suggested movement. He was one of the pioneers in the invention of the motion picture, even though here we're seeing series photography (from 1877-85), not actual motion pictures. (Those who are offended by such things should be aware that the woman in these series photography "films" is naked, at times partially and at other times fully, though there's absolutely nothing sexual or pornographic here; it's just a series of images of a woman who so happens to not have any clothes on.)

My one complaint about this disc (other than the mislabelling of 'I.B. Dam and the Whole Dam Family' as 'The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog') is that most of the films don't have any dates given. Even if one is already familiar with the films from this era instead of a new fan, it's still nice to have them placed into historic context and to see the years they were all made. Some bonus features also would have been nice, to have provided, say, some background to the films, the people who made them, the restoration process, and what film-making was like in these very early days. It's always nice to have supplemental information to enjoy and appreciate these antique films even more.

Rare collection of early cinema at a very good price.......2007-01-05

This set consists of 40 short films and series photographs shot between 1894 and 1913. Arranged in roughly chronological order, with the earlier pieces subdivided into categories ("Edison Kinetoscopes," "Lumiere Films," "Actualities"), they present an overview of the early silent era of motion pictures. Most people have seen stills or excerpts from such films as "A Voyage to the Moon" and "The Great Train Robbery," but seldom have people had the chance to experience such pioneering works in their entirety. This is not a disc for everybody. Only those who have a keen interest in the development of motion pictures at their earliest phase will appreciate it. If you are one of those, like me, consider this a must buy.

In addition to scripted comedies and dramas, there are a number of films that simply record everyday life at the turn of the last century. There is "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat", which is said to have panicked early audiences who failed to grasp that the approaching train wasn't going to come through the screen and run them over. Other films, such as "Snowball Fight" and "Seminary Girls" are staged with the intent of creating the appearance of spontaneity. Either way, these rarely seen films are important documents of a recent past that is so different from our present that it's hard to believe that they were shot only a century ago.

The Dolby Digital mono sound is clear and well presented. Many of the films are tastefully scored with newly recorded piano music, while others are paired with period recordings. "Skyscrapers of New York City From North River," for example, is particularly haunting when viewed with its mysterious, unidentified musical accompaniment drifting from the speakers. A good number of films in this collection date back to the 1890's, and a lot of them are a lot better looking than I would have thought. Some films, like Train Robbery, even have their original hand painted color tints intact. One of the neat things about the DVD is the freeze frame, because I was able to spot a single frame in one of the Kinetiscope films that was slipped in to read "Copyright 1907 T.A. Edison." This is not a disc that's about features, other than being able to zip from film to film versus fast forwarding on VHS, nor is it one to show off your home theatre. This is a film for those with a serious interest film history only.

Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues - A Musical Journey

Average customer rating:

This is real
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues
A Must For ALL Blues Lovers
If you really want to know something about the blues
Wonderful, alternative history

Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues - A Musical Journey
Starring: Various Artists
Manufacturer: Sony
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Chicago Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Contemporary Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Delta Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

General | Blues | Styles | Music

Memphis Blues | Regional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Texas Blues | Regional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

East Coast Blues | Regional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

West Coast Blues | Regional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Traditional Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Electric Blues Guitar | Blues | Styles | Music

Acoustic Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

Modern Blues | Blues | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | R&B | Styles | Music

Blues Rock | Rock | Styles | Music

General | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

General | Music Video & Concerts | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B0000CBHOI
Release Date: 2003-10-14

Amazon.com

It may have been underrated when first broadcast on PBS on consecutive nights in the fall of '03, but executive producer Martin Scorsese's homage to the blues is a truly significant, if imperfect, achievement. "Musical journey" is an apt description, as Scorsese and the six other directors responsible for these seven approximately 90-minute films follow the blues--the foundation of jazz, soul, R&B, and rock & roll--from its African roots to its Mississippi Delta origins, up the river to Memphis and Chicago, then to New York, the United Kingdom, and beyond. Some of the films (like Wim Wenders's The Soul of a Man and Charles Burnett's Warming by the Devil's Fire) use extensive fictional film sequences, generally to good effect. There's also plenty of documentary footage, interviews, and contemporary studio performances recorded especially for these films.

The last are among the best aspects of the DVDs, as the bonus material features the set's only complete tunes. Lou Reed's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and the ElektriK Mud Kats' (with Chuck D. of Public Enemy) hip-hop-cum-traditional updating of Muddy Waters's "Mannish Boy" are among the best of them; on the other hand, a rendition of "Cry Me a River" by Lulu (?!) is a curious choice, even with Jeff Beck on hand. The absence of lengthier vintage clips, meanwhile, is the principal drawback. For that reason alone, Clint Eastwood's Piano Blues is the best of the lot; a musician himself, Eastwood simply lets the players play, which means we get extensive file footage of the likes of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Nat "King" Cole, as well as new performances by Ray Charles, Dr. John, and others. Overall, this is a set to savor, a worthwhile investment guaranteed to grow on you over the course of repeated viewings. --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews:

This is real.......2007-06-08

I learned blues this DVD. This is my teacher about blues.
I met several musicians in this DVD, I remembered lot's of person.
Thank you Mr. Maetin Scorses.

Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues.......2007-01-11

I purchased this for my son for Christmas. He likes it very much.

A Must For ALL Blues Lovers.......2007-01-09

This DVD set takes you to all reaches of the musical spectrum and is a MUST for all blues lovers. You will learn the beginnings of the Blues music and can appreciate the sound and the feeling that inspired the music.

If you are a Blues musician, you have got to get this and learn the origins of this genre and pull from it. And watch your your own music soar. Plus, as a blues dancer, you use all all the feleings a rhythms into your dance.

As Willie Dixon said, "The Blues are the roots, and everything else is the fruits.

If you really want to know something about the blues.......2006-10-22

Scorcese is not your guy. This review covers disk one only. Scorcese is a great director no doubt. He's also presented some fantastic clips from the period. But his understanding of the blues is so warped by the search for authentic African origins that you have to wonder whether he's ever read anything about the subject. An unintentionally hilarious classic of clueless romanticism. Reminded me of another Italian-American director's tribute to the cult of phony authenticity, the Corleone village scenes in Godfather I and II.

Wonderful, alternative history.......2006-06-26

A wonderfully absorbing history of the people and the music. Fabulous old footage that will introduce you to artists who, unless you're already a connoisseur, may be unknown to you--Son House, for example, comes up again and again. Wenders' movie is imaginative, and the best of the others are Scorsese's Africa piece, the Memphis Chitlins Circuit movie and Warming by the Devil's Fire. The only sour moment comes with Clint Eastwood's documentary. First, it stands out as the least imaginative of all the movies. Second, the Hollywood ego bursts all over the piano keyboard as Clint insists on talking over the great pianists he interviews, so that we end up hearing more from him than Ray Charles et al. The silly old fool even includes himself playing piano (in a scene clipped from Honky Tonk Man) in his montage of great blues pianists: Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and...Clint Eastwood. Finally, Clint shows that he doesn't have any idea what the blues are about. Repeatedly during the series great old bluesmen talk about how the blues is essentially about a man and a woman who for some reason can't be together. Clint idiotically suggests that America the Beautiful is the blues, simply because he shows Ray Charles singing it. If he'd watched the other movies, Eastwood would've been ashamed to suggest that patriotic songs can be the blues--tell that to the downtrodden bluesmen of the 1930s Delta, discriminated against by white overlords. Watch all the other movies, but don't even bother with Eastwood's egotistic, jingoistic claptrap.

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

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

Classics | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

( U ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Documentary | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Drama | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Mystery & Suspense | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video
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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.

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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

A Newsreel History of the Third Reich, Vol. 1: The Early Days to 1935

Average customer rating:

A Newsreel History of the Third Reich, Vol. 1: The Early Days to 1935
Starring: Newsreel History of the Second World War
Manufacturer: Arts Magic
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B000G1QU98
Release Date: 2006-07-25

Description

This series, `A Newsreel History of the Third Reich', includes unique footage plundered by Russian Troops in 1945. Compiled as it is from German newsreels which were made under the influence of Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda, these are by no means accurate histories but allow unique insight into how the period leading up to and including WW2 was presented to the German people.

Volume 1 deals with the period from the end of the Great War to the emergence of Hitler as the German chancellor. It covers the 1930 collapse of the German economy and the subsequent poverty; the SA implementing the anti-Jewish campaign; the turbulent elections; the death of Hindenburg and the re-building of Germany under the new chancellor amongst other subjects.

Average customer rating:

A Riveting Two-Part Documentary about Sibelius and His Music

Long overdue

Sibelius: Early Years/Maturity & Silence
Starring: Sibelius , Ashkenazy , Soderstrom , and Belkin
Manufacturer: Christopher Nupen
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Classical | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Music Video & Concerts | Genres | DVD | Video
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( E ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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Roots Roots

Nathan Milstein - In Portrait

Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was / Tony Palmer

Schubert: Greatest Love & Greatest Sorrow

Carl Nielsen, Orchestral Music

ASIN: B000M2EBWO
Release Date: 2007-02-27

Customer Reviews:

A Riveting Two-Part Documentary about Sibelius and His Music.......2007-04-22

Christopher Nupen is one of the most creative and talented of the video documentarians of the classical music world. It all began many years ago when he made the wonderful film about du Pré, Barenboim, Perlman, Zukerman and Mehta -- the so-called 'Israeli Mafia.' That film has never gone out of style and was brought out on DVD a few years ago, made available for a new generation of viewers. This film, also originally on VHS, was made in the 1980s and is just now coming out on DVD. The transfer, I must say, is simply magnificent; I certainly would not have known it was originally on VHS if I hadn't seen it in its original form. The visuals are crisp, the sound excellent.

The subject is the life and, more important, the music of Jean Sibelius and the two sections are 'The Early Years' and 'Maturity and Silence.' Nupen, who wrote, directed and narrates the film, takes us through the important biographical details of the composer's life, including his struggle in his thirties with alcoholism on which he conquered only after he had a growth removed from his throat and was told that drinking and smoking would aggravate it and possibly hasten its return, and of the thirty year silence during which he strove to complete an Eighth Symphony but which he finally consigned to flames.

The visuals comprise many gorgeous views of the fields, forests and lakes of Sibelius's Finland, as well as a fascinating black-and-white silent film of the elderly Sibelius. There are also many views of photographs and paintings of the composer and his wife, as well as visits to Ainola, the country home where he and wife Aino lived for over fifty years.

There are some marvelously played and photographed excerpts from all but one of his symphonies -- the Sixth, for whatever reason, is mentioned but none of its music played -- all done by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Vladimir Ashkenazy, a real Sibelian, conducting. There is also excerpts from Finlandia, Kullervo, the Karelia Suite and Tapiola by the same artists as well as a sizable excerpt from the Violin Concerto with Boris Belkin, violin. There are a couple of songs (in Swedish, as most of Sibelius's songs were) sung by Elisabeth Söderström. The first, with orchestral accompaniment, is 'Since then I have questioned no further', and the second, with Ashkenazy playing the piano accompaniment, the intensely dramatic 'Jubal.'

There is a clip of Sibelius's first composition, 'Water Drops', for two violins, written at age 11. The film begins and ends with an excerpt from a recording, made in 1939, of Sibelius conducting his 'Andante festivo.'

This is a brilliant and riveting account, aided by Nupen's beautifully written narration, of the artistic life of one of the twentieth century's great composers and one hopes that it will again be seen widely, as it was originally when shown on television.

Although Amazon doesn't indicate it, this DVD is in a format that can be played worldwide. Sound is LPCM Stereo, narration is in English, subtitles are in German, Spanish, French and Italian. Total time (which includes a couple of clips about other Nupen films) is 151 minutes; the Sibelius films run just over 100 mins.

Strongly recommended.

Scott Morrison

Long overdue.......2007-01-13

Transfer of this excellent two-part documentary to DVD is long overdue. I rented it many years ago on VHS from a library. The life of the twentieth century composer is explored through narrative, old photos, musical exerpts and ravishing scenic segments showing his native Finland. More than a standard documentary, this film really brings to life the man with all his frailties and great achievements. The movie opens with a performance of the Andante Festivo conducted by the composer late in life - that performance sets the tone for the entire film - inspired, troubled, nostalgic and deeply felt. The musical performances by the likes of Vladimir Ashkenazy are superb. All in all, a moving and revealing experience. For those interested in such movie-making, try also "Roots" on the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Both are highly recommended.

Average customer rating:

Awesome insight into the early years of the band
Very disapointed
Not a single lick of van halen music ???
Dont pay attention to the hype by these other so called fans...
WB, what are you waiting for?????

The Van Halen Story: The Early Years
Starring: David Lee Roth , and J.J. Jackson
Manufacturer: PASSPORT VIDEO
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Rock | Styles | Music

General | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

General | Music Video & Concerts | Genres | DVD | Video

Biography | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B0000DJYPW
Release Date: 2003-12-09

Description

"The VAN HALEN Story: The Early Years", chronicles the rise of four young musicians from their formative years to their transformation into a worldwide phenomenon.

Hear the group's gripping tale told by the people who were there when it all began childhood friends, fellow musicians, roadies, bodyguards, producers, and the band themselves. Rare footage and never-before-seen photos help to further document their remarkable story.

Customer Reviews:

Awesome insight into the early years of the band.......2007-07-26

This DVD is full of great interviews with people who knew the band in the late seventies and early eighties. Roadies, friends, bodyguards, producers, people from other bands that they played with, people who went to high school with them; all of these people share their own experiences with the band. As a huge fan of VH and a musician myself, I found the details on how they made it invaluable.

If you're looking for VH music, it's not here. If you're looking for a VH documentary on before they were famous and the first seven years after they were famous, this DVD is PERFECT.

Very disapointed.......2007-07-06

I wanted to see David Lee Roths videos ot the songs with Van Halen. His performing was the greatest. I've tried to get a DVD with his videos and can't find them. They were great. Tins

Not a single lick of van halen music ???.......2007-06-12

What kind of "early years" band documentary doesn't even have a lick of music from the band its covering ? A bad documentary you say ? Correct. This reminds me of something you would see in 1985 high school science class...projector and all. The narration is horrible, clearly from some old guy who had never heard of Van Halen prior to excepting the minimum wage job of "narrarator" for this C class documentary.

The box is way misleading. There are no interviews with anyone from the band. They play a few public recordings of Alex or Eddie saying something that you have heard before on VH1. And thats what this is, a bad VH1 documentary. The bulk of the interviews are from people like "Childhood friend of Alex" or "childhood friend of David Lee Roth".. also they interveiw some guys in totally unrelated bands that were influenced by Van Halen.

Do yourself a favor and don't spend $$$ on this. If they show it on Vh1 (bound to happen eventually), then you MIGHT want to watch parts of it...but if you spend money on this, you'll probably regret it like I do.

Dont pay attention to the hype by these other so called fans..........2007-05-17

I must say that this video is worth the cash. Totally!! If you don't want to purchase it then make a copy. Don't listen to any of these other so called fans. This video covers the inception of VH to the Roth departure. It even starts off with when the band members were born & traces their roots until they form Mammoth and then go from there. All of the people in this video are relevant to VH's history & have great things to say. Christ, Mark Stone is on the DVD as well as roadies, Zloz, Jim Dandy, band members from Snake and other music industry contributors that are associated with the band. If anyone like myself has any VH boots ( I have 20, from 1973-1984) and knows anything about this website: [...] you will be able to enjoy this video. Anyone who doesn't know about the boots is not a fan in my opinion. Just buy the video and you will be satisfied. There are plenty of rare still photos ranging from 1973-1978 for the club days. Lots of memorabilia shown on the video as well. Interviews with Dave Roth/EVH/Owner of Whiskey and voice recordings of Mikey & Alex as well as Gene S. Again this video will give you a nice perspective of how the band came about and what they went through to get to be "The Mighty VH!!!!!!" In a nutshell, JUST BUY IT for your VH collection, you cant go wrong. EVH-I hope your recovery is going well and we all hope to see you and Dave, Alex & Wolfie tour next summer of 2008!!! Long Live VH!!!

WB, what are you waiting for?????.......2007-04-12

OK, I get it now after all these years. WB (Warner Bro's) decided to hold all the early Van Halen footage in a vault hidden somewhere until the next life killing asteroid blasts the earth. Then evolution will recreate man and the new explorers will dig up the vault and find the vintage footage, watch it, and say, wow, what a cool band, lets sell this stuff on the black market. Thats about the time your gonna have to wait until you actually see a good DLR erra DVD, so, back to my 5th generation copied VHS to DVD US Festival from "83"........

History of Advertising - Early TV Commercials Vol. I (2-DVD Set)

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Buy The Bundle Pack
Worth Watching

History of Advertising - Early TV Commercials Vol. I (2-DVD Set)

Manufacturer: A2ZCDS.com
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video

Documentary | Independently Distributed | Stores | DVD | Video

Special Interests | Independently Distributed | Stores | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B000BNMX3S
Release Date: 2005-10-03

Description

This 2-DVD set is a tribute to the early advertisers who made their entry into TV commercials. It is also a boon to all those interested in advertising and marketing since the beginning of 20th century. Though a bit lengthy by present day standards, these advertising shorts are simple and direct. The message and the products are not lost in gimmicks, and direct hard sell and product demos are aimed at audience satisfaction. Be it selling the dishwasher by Mullins Manufacturing Company, or American Beer by Pabst Brewing Company, or Chevrolets by General Motors, or Cigarettes by Montclair Cigarettes or even Insurance by Prudential Insurance, each clip has been thoughtfully conceived and executed, which speaks volumes for the advertising prowess of the agencies from the 1930s to the 1960s.Some of the producers, who paved the way for modern day TV ads, featured on these DVDs are Marquee Motion Pictures, Castle Films and of course the Jam Handy Organization. Some of the very classy ads (producers are not known) like "Montclair Cigarettes," "Beechnut Baby Food," and "Folgers Coffee" are no different from the ads of today. Oh yes, TV Commercials were coming of age.

Many of the earliest television shows were sponsored by single companies, who inserted their names and products into the shows as much as possible as in the case with the Youngtown Kitchen Dishwasher, or Prudential Insurance Company. But, as we move on over a period of time we notice a change of content and pace of these TV commercials, which denote that time, and money constraints were beginning to affect the ads. The message became short and to the point with the visuals concentrating on the product. They had learnt to say it all within a minute and the modern TV commercial was born.

Customer Reviews:

Buy The Bundle Pack.......2007-02-08

I got this DVD as part of the bundle pack. I wish I had just bought all the advertising DVDs that way. I have purchased most seperately. The content is great.

Worth Watching.......2006-04-25

Boy, has television advertising changed over the years.

If you are used to the gloss, color CGI ads that dominate the tube today you'll be shocked at what ads were like when television was first starting out.

What they lack in techiclal details these ads more than make up for in how creative they were. They clearly didn't know what would work and what wouldn't so they tried every different type of approach they could think of.

The quality of the footage is surprisingly good considering how old the clips are.

At the Jazz Band Ball - Early Hot Jazz, Song and Dance

Average customer rating:

Bix may have been playing
Mixed Bag; For The True Devotee
Good Compliation-look for more
The Heart of Jazz
EXPERIENCE EXCELLENCE

At the Jazz Band Ball - Early Hot Jazz, Song and Dance
Starring: Various Artists
Manufacturer: YAZOO
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Swing General | Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

Classic Big Band | Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

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ASIN: 6305831343
Release Date: 2000-04-11

Amazon.com

At the Jazz Band Ball features rare, archival film clips from 1925 to 1933 that showcase a wonderful potpourri of musicians, bandleaders, singers, dancers, and entertainers that characterized the best of the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age. The range of this collection represents early 20th-century Americana, from the hometown charm of the Boswell sisters performing the jazz-scat classic "Heebie Jeebies" to the Al Jolson-like antics of Charly Wellman's take on "Alabamy Snow." Of course, jazz is the heartbeat of this pre-World War II time and it's manifested in many ways. There's the classical sophistication of Paul Whiteman's orchestra rendition of "My Ohio Home" with the young trumpet pioneer Bix Beiderbecke, and the elegant and enduring Duke Ellington swinging like mad on "Old Man Blues" with baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, and an imaginative medley consisting of "The Duke Speaks Out," the evocative "Black Beauty," and Cotton Club Stomp" in which the lovely dancer Fredi Washington--and the innovative mirror shots--steal the show.

There's also the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith, with her sorrow-song version of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." But Louis Armstrong, the first major jazz improviser and vocalist, is the prince of this era, as evidenced by his down-home trumpet solos, stage charisma, and gravel-like vocals on "I Cover the Waterfront," the fast and furious "Dinah" (as seen on Ken Burns's Jazz), and "Tiger Rag." Add the dapper Dorsey Bros. Band, the tap-dance wizardry of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Ben Burnie's burning big band treatment of the Harlem Globetrotters' theme "Sweet Georgia Brown" and you know the exuberance and artistry of this brilliant chapter in American history. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Customer Reviews:

Bix may have been playing.......2005-10-31

In the Whiteman clip, it still is possible that Bix wasn't faking it. He was a self-taught trumpet player, and all of his fingerings are completely different from anyone else's. As for the different cut off, I'm not sure. But I don't think anyone should discredit the Bix clip entirely. He had his own style of playing.

Mixed Bag; For The True Devotee.......2004-03-05

A nice selection of rare material is undercut by the presentation here. Many films have been poorly framed so that people's heads are cropped - God, it's annoying, did no one look at this before it was released? Audio is generally as good as source material permits. As for the Bix clip - yep, there he (barely) is, in the brass section, FAKING his way through "My Ohio Home" (watch his fingering, it doesn't match the arrangement, and he stops playing before the rest of the section). So this is not the "only sound film document" of Bix playing - he ain't playing. There is no tray insert with any background info or even a track list, and nothing onscreen to indicate what you're watching, so you'll need to have the box handy. Nobody went out of their way to upgrade this for DVD, that's for sure. If you have the VHS, you don't need this. Four stars for material, docked one star for presentation.

Good Compliation-look for more.......2003-05-20

This is an excellent compilation of rare material, and it a must have for the great Boswell Sisters material, the shot of Bix in Whiteman's trumpet section (not soloing as the box says), the "dance contest" with Chick Webb's 1929 band (which released only 1 78), closeups of Duke's 1929 band-Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer, young Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges (soloing on soprano), Freddy Jenkins, Artie Whetsol, Cootie Williams...
Collectors should be warned that the version of St. Louis Blues with Bessie Smith is an edited, truncated version. So is the 1929 Duke Ellington material featuring Fredi Washington, great as all this stuff is. So for more, seek out the whole items, available on other collections.

The Heart of Jazz.......2002-06-20

What would you rather watch to get a taste of German cabaret in the early '30s, Cabaret (1972) or The Blue Angel (1931)? If you answer the latter you may especially enjoy this interesting compilation that is less polished than many others, especially the big studio productions of later years.

I am especially charmed by two productions that might be at the bottom of others' lists--the dance hall performances by Tessie Maize and Ruby Darby. By modern standards, many of the dancers were too heavy and too unpolished to even point a camera at, but they let us see what an ordinary audience of their times could see, not only the numbers, but the unaffected intimacy of the piece, and their cheer and enengy.

This DVD is like discovering a treasure in a collector's attic. A must have.

EXPERIENCE EXCELLENCE.......2000-01-07

You will watch this video over and over again and cry for more! Excellent!

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
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