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At last, an expressionist silent classic that takes full advantage of cinematic principles. The legendary E.A. Dupont goes in for subjective-emotional effects of which Hitchcock would approve, and cameraman Karl Freund and effects wizard Eugen Schüfftan pull off spectacular visuals and special effects. No wonder this was a huge hit in America, it’s way ahead of its time (and ours, in some ways).

Varieté

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1925 / Color tinted / 1:33 Silent Ap / 95 min. / Street Date August 22, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Lya De Putti, Warwick Ward, Alice Hechy, Georg John, Kurt Gerron.

Cinematography: Karl Freund, Karl Hoffman

Art Director: Alfred Junge, Oscar Friedrich Werndorff

Visual Effects: Eugen Schüfftan

Original Music: Erno Rapee

From the book Der Eid des Stephan Huller by Felix Hollaender

Produced by Erich Pommer

Written and Directed by E. A. Dupont

We carefully studied this show in film school, in a mangled...

Banished by Josef Goebbels and threatened by the Reich, the creative core of the German film industry found itself in sunny Los Angeles, many not speaking English but determined to carry on as writers, directors and actors. More than simply surviving, they made a profound impact on Hollywood moviemaking. Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2009 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / Street Date April 12, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Cinematography Joan Churchill, Emil Fischhaber Film Editor Anny Lowery Meza Original Music Peter Melnick Written, Produced and Directed by Karen Thomas

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood is the perfect docu to introduce people to the way film and world history are intertwined... and also to generate interest in older movies and classic cinema. Instead of a story about the making of movies, it's about a fascinating group of filmmakers forced to abandon...

It's the final Hollywood film by the legendary Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller, and it's also a terrific talkie feature debut for W.C. Fields -- with one of his dazzling juggling bits. But the real star is director William Dieterle, whose moving camera and creative edits rescue the talkie musical from dreary operetta staging. Her Majesty, Love DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 75 min. / Street Date January 19, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Marilyn Miller, Ben Lyon, W.C. Fields, Leon Errol, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Clarence Wilson, Ruth Hall, Virginia Sale, Oscar Apfel. Cinematography Robert Kurrie Film Editor Ralph Dawson Songs Walter Jurmann, Al Dubin Written by Robert Lord, Arthur Caesar from story by Rudolph Bernauer, Rudolf Österreicher Directed by William Dieterle

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive Collection has been kind to fans of early talkies. We've been able to discover dramatic actresses like Jeanne Eagels...

G.W. Pabst's silent German classic is intact, restored and looking great. Louise Brooks is the virginal innocent betrayed on every level of the sexual double standard. Brooks is nothing less than amazing, with a performance that doesn't date, and Pabst only has to show how things are to make a statement about societal hypocrisy. German cinema doesn't get better. Diary of a Lost Girl Blu-ray Kino Lorber Classics 1929 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 112 min. / Tagebuch einer Verlorenen / Street Date October 20, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Franziska Kinz, Edith Meinhard, Andrews Engelmann, Kurt Gerron, Siegfried Arno, Sybille Schmitz, André Roanne. Cinematography Sepp Allgeier, Fritz Arno Wagner Art Directors Erno Metzner and Emil Hasler Original Music Javier Perez de Azpeitia (Piano) Written by Rudolf Leonhardt from the novel by Margarethe Böhme Produced by Directed by G.W. Pabst  

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The universally revered Louise Brooks...

Luise Rainer dies at age 104: Rainer was first consecutive Oscar winner, first two-time winner in acting categories and oldest surviving winner (photo: MGM star Luise Rainer in the mid-'30s.) The first consecutive Academy Award winner, the first two-time winner in the acting categories, and, at age 104, the oldest surviving Oscar winner as well, Luise Rainer (Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld, 1936, and The Good Earth, 1937) died at her London apartment on December 30 -- nearly two weeks before her 105th birthday. Below is an article originally posted in January 2014, at the time Rainer turned 104. I'll be sharing more Luise Rainer news later on Tuesday. January 17, 2014: Inevitably, the Transformers movies' director Michael Bay (who recently had an on-camera "meltdown" after a teleprompter stopped working at the Consumer Electronics Show) and the Transformers movies' star Shia Labeouf (who was recently accused of plagiarism) were mentioned -- or rather, blasted, in...

Come Oscar season, all cinephiles are ready to campaign for their favorite film. Are you Team Gravity or Team 12 Years a Slave? Jennifer Lawrence or Lupita Nyong’o? While movie fans have likely seen all the big nominees by this point, there are smaller categories where even some film enthusiasts may not be as well-versed. Leading up to the Oscars, EW will tell you all about one often-overlooked category: Best Documentary Short. Come back each day this week for a look at one of the nominees, and impress your Oscar party with your knowledge when the category appears on Sunday’s broadcast.

Stupéfiants (1932) is interesting in itself, to a moderate degree. It's even more interesting for the lives around it, but more of that later.

Yes, the title literally means "stupefiers," and it's a drug drama, a French-German co-production delivering German thriller entertainment with a Gallic lightness of touch. The hero, Jean Murat, is the kind of energetic superman beloved of the German cinema of the era, with some of the agility that distinguished Roland Toutain in L'Herbier's crime romances of the period—one moment where he swings from a crane adds a welcome dash of Doug Fairbanks excitement to the proceedings: one watches keenly for the rest of the movie in case he repeats it, but sadly he doesn't.

Murat's sister has become addicted to drugs, and Murat embarks on his adventures first to save her, then to avenge her. Along the way, the movie delivers some surprisingly accurate behavior from the addict,...

Marlene Dietrich on TCM Pt.2: A Foreign Affair, The Blue Angel Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Monte Carlo Story (1957) Two compulsive gamblers fall in love on the French Riviera. Dir: Samuel A. Taylor. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Vittorio De Sica, Arthur O'Connell. C-101 mins, Letterbox Format. 7:45 Am Knight Without Armour (1937) A British spy tries to get a countess out of the new Soviet Union. Dir: Jacques Feyder. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Robert Donat, Irene Van Brugh. Bw-107 mins. 9:45 Am The Lady Is Willing (1942) A Broadway star has to find a husband so she can adopt an abandoned child. Dir: Mitchell Leisen. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Fred MacMurray, Aline MacMahon. Bw-91 mins. 11:30 Am Kismet (1944) In the classic Arabian Nights tale king of the beggars enters high society to help his daughter marry a handsome prince. Dir: William Dieterle. Cast: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig.

NEW YORK -- A fascinating documentary that would seem a prime candidate for dramatic treatment, last year's Oscar-nominated "Prisoner of Paradise" tells the tragic story of Kurt Gerron, a rotund German-Jewish cabaret and film star who met his untimely end at the Auschwitz concentration camp. What distinguishes Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender's film from the many similarly themed efforts that have preceded it is that it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era.

Gerron was a leading entertainment figure in Berlin during the 1920s and early '30s, his credits including introducing the song "Mack the Knife" in the first production of "Threepenny Opera" and a supporting role in Josef von Sternberg's classic film "The Blue Angel". When the Nazis came to power, Gerron was too immersed in his career to take much notice, and despite entreaties from such colleagues as von Sternberg and Peter Lorre to leave Germany, he remained, even turning down a plane ticket sent by Warner Bros. because his seat wasn't in first class.

Although he moved to such cities as Paris and Amsterdam to continue his career, he was eventually captured by the Germans and sent to the Thereseinstadt concentration camp outside of Prague. Located in a former garrison town, the camp was used by the Nazis as a propaganda tool designed to demonstrate that the Jews weren't really being treated badly. To that end, they recruited Gerron to make the film "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews," a sanitized portrait that is now on constant display in the town's museum. Despite his cooperation, Gerron was shortly thereafter sent to Auschwitz, where he and his wife were immediately murdered.

Utilizing a mixture of fascinating archival footage -- Gerron's less-than-Aryan looks were used to typify the Jewish menace in the incendiary propaganda film "The Eternal Jew" -- and talking-head interviews with many of those who worked with Gerron or knew him in the camp, "Prisoner of Paradise", narrated compellingly by Ian Holm, tells this resonant tale in clear and dramatic fashion. While its subject remains a rather elusive figure, he is nonetheless a haunting one, and the images of him directing Thereseinstadt's children for his film, a look of dark desolation in his eyes, is not likely to leave you for a very long time.

Prisoner of Paradise

Menemsha Films

Credits:

Directors: Malcolm Clarke, Stuart Sender

Screenwriter: Malcolm Clarke

Producers: Malcolm Clarke, Karl-Eberhard Schaefer

Executive producers: Jake Eberts, Stuart Sender

Director of photography: Michael Hammon

Editors: Glenn Berman, Susan Shanks

Composer: Luc St. Pierre

Narrator: Ian Holm

Running time -- 96 minutes

No MPAA rating...

NEW YORK -- A fascinating documentary that would seem a prime candidate for dramatic treatment, last year's Oscar-nominated "Prisoner of Paradise" tells the tragic story of Kurt Gerron, a rotund German-Jewish cabaret and film star who met his untimely end at the Auschwitz concentration camp. What distinguishes Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender's film from the many similarly themed efforts that have preceded it is that it tells a morality tale of a man whose hubris partially led to his downfall and whose willingness to work for his Nazi overseers resulted in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the era.

Gerron was a leading entertainment figure in Berlin during the 1920s and early '30s, his credits including introducing the song "Mack the Knife" in the first production of "Threepenny Opera" and a supporting role in Josef von Sternberg's classic film "The Blue Angel". When the Nazis came to power, Gerron was too immersed in his career to take much notice, and despite entreaties from such colleagues as von Sternberg and Peter Lorre to leave Germany, he remained, even turning down a plane ticket sent by Warner Bros. because his seat wasn't in first class.

Although he moved to such cities as Paris and Amsterdam to continue his career, he was eventually captured by the Germans and sent to the Thereseinstadt concentration camp outside of Prague. Located in a former garrison town, the camp was used by the Nazis as a propaganda tool designed to demonstrate that the Jews weren't really being treated badly. To that end, they recruited Gerron to make the film "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews," a sanitized portrait that is now on constant display in the town's museum. Despite his cooperation, Gerron was shortly thereafter sent to Auschwitz, where he and his wife were immediately murdered.

Utilizing a mixture of fascinating archival footage -- Gerron's less-than-Aryan looks were used to typify the Jewish menace in the incendiary propaganda film "The Eternal Jew" -- and talking-head interviews with many of those who worked with Gerron or knew him in the camp, "Prisoner of Paradise", narrated compellingly by Ian Holm, tells this resonant tale in clear and dramatic fashion. While its subject remains a rather elusive figure, he is nonetheless a haunting one, and the images of him directing Thereseinstadt's children for his film, a look of dark desolation in his eyes, is not likely to leave you for a very long time.

Prisoner of Paradise

Menemsha Films

Credits:

Directors: Malcolm Clarke, Stuart Sender

Screenwriter: Malcolm Clarke

Producers: Malcolm Clarke, Karl-Eberhard Schaefer

Executive producers: Jake Eberts, Stuart Sender

Director of photography: Michael Hammon

Editors: Glenn Berman, Susan Shanks

Composer: Luc St. Pierre

Narrator: Ian Holm

Running time -- 96 minutes

No MPAA rating...