The Signal Tower
A railroad worker accepts a colleague's offer to stay in his home, but when his friend is called out one night to stop a runaway train, he makes a play for the man's wife.
A BFI collection of 7 short films from the USA, England and Italy scored for Piano, Guitar and String Quartet.
A railroad worker accepts a colleague's offer to stay in his home, but when his friend is called out one night to stop a runaway train, he makes a play for the man's wife.
The daughter of a wealthy man secretly marries a man below her station— one whom her father violently disapproves of. The father, in an excess of parental concern, separates the lovers by sending his daughter away so that she might forget her lover, unaware of their married state. During this time, she gives birth to a daughter. After some months, the young mother returns to her family manor and presents her father with his new granddaughter, which causes a most unfortunate scene. Unbeknownst to the young woman, her enraged father falsely accuses his son-in-law of theft and has him incarcerated in order to separate the lovers in an irrational attempt to force his daughter to forget this "unworthy" young man.
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.
Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden. They discover that flowers can bring both joy and solace.
A gin bottle is personified with a spirit. As the gin bottle changes hands the spirit of the bottle tempts the various possessors to take a drink. A pro-prohibition movie, the story exemplifies the tragedies of drinking.
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.
Lulu is a young woman so beautiful and alluring that few can resist her siren charms. The men drawn into her web include respectable newspaper publisher Dr. Ludwig Schön, his musical producer son Alwa, circus performer Rodrigo Quast, and seedy old Schigolch. When Lulu's charms inevitably lead to tragedy, the downward spiral encompasses them all.
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.
The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.
As the only survivor of a battle, a cavalryman heroically defends his flag.
Women getting onto a rickshaw.
A very graceful dance with voluminous draperies, by Annabelle Moore, well-known on the metropolitan stage.