Tag Archives: silent film

Blog, Screening, The Curse of Queen Kelly

Cinema Rediscovered: Queen Kelly in Bristol this July

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Royals like to take international tours, don’t they? Now Queen Kelly has played Venice, Lyon, Sao Paulo and many, many cities in the US, the royal entourage is finally en route to the UK. Where better for the British premiere of Milestone’s stunning new restoration of Erich von Stroheim famously unfinished, notoriously excessive, beautiful and sleazy melodrama to play than the UK’s best archive film festival, Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol?

And what is better than one screening of Queen Kelly? Two screenings of Queen Kelly.

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Blog, Book, The Curse of Queen Kelly

Publication day: The Curse of Queen Kelly

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“Tonight I want to welcome you to a showing of a naughty little number I made with my own money – $800,000 of it.”
– Gloria Swanson introducing Queen Kelly in 1967

Silent cinema icon Gloria Swanson was born on this day in 1899. Today, 127 years later, is the publication day for my new book The Curse of Queen Kelly. The title of the book is taken from a phrase Swanson herself used for the disastrous production of her film Queen Kelly, directed, until she fired him, by the great Erich von Stroheim.

My book, published today by Sticking Place Books, tells the full story of how Swanson and Stroheim – and Joseph P. Kennedy became tangled up together in the attempt to make an impossible film. And it tells exactly what happened next, to this brilliant, transgressive and enduring unfinished film.

There are a number of ways you could choose to celebrate this auspicious date:

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Blog, Book, Instant expert, The Curse of Queen Kelly

Instant Expert: Queen Kelly

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Name: Queen Kelly

Age: Somewhere from 92 to 96 years old. Or brand new, maybe?

Appearance: Decadent visions of dissipated European royalty in palatial grandeur, and seedy expat iniquity in East Africa. Erich von Stroheim directed this film, so every frame bursts with expensive vices, exposed flesh, outlandish costumes, drifts of spring blossom or swags of velvet and the occasional splash of bodily fluids. Not to mention more candles than Barry Lyndon, more or less. Gloria Swanson is the star…

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Blog, Screening

Experience the last days of Pompeii

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A short note from friend of Silent London, Maria Wyke, professor of Latin at University College London.

A one-off screening of the rarely seen silent epic film Jone o Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (Jone or The Last Days of Pompeii, 1913, dir. Giovanni Enrico Vidali) will be held in the 500-seat Bloomsbury Theatre from 6 to 8.30 pm on Saturday 9 May 2026. Immerse yourself in the romance and menace of Pompeii’s last days, ending with the terror of its citizens as the volcano Vesuvius erupts and destroys their city in spectacular fashion. The screening will be accompanied by live piano and percussion performed by the professional silent film musicians John Sweeney and Jeff Davenport.

Tickets cost £12 and you can book HERE. This event is part of the activities of the Greek & Latin research project Museum of Dreamworlds as well as the bicentennial celebrations of UCL.

Blog, Book, The Curse of Queen Kelly

Book news: The Curse of Queen Kelly

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People, I have been busy. Book news, and a cat picture, below…

But first… has anyone here seen Queen Kelly? This is the legendary collaboration between Erich von Stroheim, Gloria Swanson and Joseph P. Kennedy: an epic film set in two continents, an illicit romance, a story of innocence and experience. Notoriously, the film was never completed. The cameras began turning in 1928, Stroheim was fired in 1929, and the project was eventually dropped in 1930…

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Poll

The Silent London Poll of 2025 – the winners!

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Would love to say that any delay in posting these results was merely a tactic to increase anticipation… but that would be a fib. Thanks so much to everyone who voted and congratulations to the winners of this year’s vote

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2025

Your winner:  Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone, 1923), with a score composed and conducted by Andrej Goričar, performed by the Orchestra of the Imaginary, Lubiana, at Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

Our Hospitality (1923)
Our Hospitality (1923)

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2025

Your winner: With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (Erik Bergström, 1926, accompanied by Hildá Länsman, Tuomas Norvio, Lávre Johan Eira and Svante Henryson, at Hippfest. This event was curated by and presented in partnership with Tromsø Silent Filmdays and Tromsø International Film Festival.

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Blog, Festival

Hippfest’s Sweet 16: Check out the lineup

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Great news from the north, as Hippfest today launches the lineup for its 16th festival, taking place next month: five days of silent film, live music, workshops, talks and a chance to do the Charleston. All in the vintage splendour of the beautiful Bo’ness Hippodrome.

You can read and explore the full lineup here, but here are a few of my highlights. Hope to see you there!

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Blog

Looking back…

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A belated Happy New Year to all Silent Londoners!

This is just a short post to remind you to indulge in a little nostalgia. As is now more or less traditional, I have written my annual piece for the BFI looking back to the cinema of a century ago, choosing 10 great films from 1926 – I hope you enjoy my selection of centenarians.

And in case you didn’t know, Tristan Ettleman’s comprehensive year-by-year podcast, The Best 5 Films of Every Year Ever, continues to make its way through the early cinema period. We are now up to 1909, apparently, and contributors include many of your favourite silent-era scholars and academics. I think I popped up in 1901, but who knows, that was a long time ago…

If that distance makes you dizzy, then just cast your minds back to last year. You still have two weeks to vote in The Silent London Poll, and every ballot really counts. PJ may be able to jog your memory.

Cheers!

Blog

Season’s greetings 2025!

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Just a little note to wish all the readers of Silent London happy holidays and great things for 2026. That’s from me and from Bebe Daniels, pictured emerging out of a chimney while playing Santa’s little helper during Christmas 1923.

I expect to have some really fun things to announce soon, but they can wait until the new year. In the mean time, I wish you peace, love and full stockings for the holiday season!

Have yourselves some fabulous festivities and don’t forget to vote in the Silent London Poll of 2025.

xx

Blog, Poll

The Silent London Poll of 2025: vote for your winners now

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Happy holiday Silent Londoners! They say that if you remember 2025, then you weren’t watching enough silent movies. How much do you recall?

For myself I sure watched a lot of silent films, clocking up several festivals and individual screenings. Pordenone and Bologna, Zurich, Hippfest, Slapstick, Cinema Rediscovered, Women and the Silent Screen in Belgium, plus The Gold Rush centenary, Anna May Wong, Gosta Berlings Saga, Stella Dallas, Lillian Gish, Lois Weber, Film on Film and more at the Southbank. Did you catch Bonn, San Franciscso, the non-stop action at the Kennington Bioscope, or any of the many, many silent screenings all around the world? How about Sherlock Holmes?

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Blog, DVD

Focus on Louise Brooks: a Lulu of a Blu-ray from Flicker Alley and San Francisco Film Preserve

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Call me Hedda Hopper*, because I have been keeping this one under my hat for quite some time. Coming on 13 January and available to pre-order now, Focus on Louise Brooks (Flicker Alley) is the perfect way to start your 2026 with a bang, or a pair of bangs, as the case may be. It’s a mutlifaceted tribute to the most iconic silent star of all time!

This gorgeous multiregion Blu-ray contains “a treasure trove of early and rare Louise Brooks performances”, with all the extant material from her early Hollywood films together in one place, newly restored and presented in this very special edition. All this!

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Blog, Festival

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 8

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I awoke with good intentions but encountered even better conversations. And thus, my film viewing on this, the final day of the 44th Giornate del Cinema Muto, began at midday, with Koko the Clown. Which is a wonderful way to begin. This cartoon, Ko-Ko at the Circus (Dave Fleischer, 1926), with our inky friend squaring off against a giant, had me in stitches – which is how I ended the day too. Apt, perhaps to start with animation when today was really all about the kiddywinks.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 7

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I have been a little slow to start up some mornings. But one thing you can guarantee that I will get out of bed for is Victor Sjöström. Victor Sjöström’s 1912 debut film no less, banned outright in Sweden, but available for us lucky degenerates on the capacious Verdi screen, with a truly wonderful accompaniment by Stephen Horne. Variously known as The Cruelty of the World, The Gardener or The Broken Spring Rose, this is a really special film and I do think the first title is the best one.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 6

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Feature films? What a concept. They don’t always seem to be the dominant form here at Pordenone. But this afternoon was an exception to that rule, with a triple-bill of four-to-six-reelers back to back. Welcome to a world of truly immersive narrative entertainment, It’s the future.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 5

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It may seem that the Giornate is in its own bubble, a hundred years or more removed from the real world, wrapped up in the fashions and the fads of the past. But we’re still looking out at the world every day, and no matter how the text on screen tries to guide us, we bring our 21st-century interpretation to everything that passes in front of our eyes. Sometimes the challenge is to wind back the clock, to see the past as our ancestors did when they were living through it. Sometimes we have no choice but to view images of the world as it was while burdened with the knowledge of our shared history, and of our violent present.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 4

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Last night I dreamt I went to East Lynne again… Ellen Wood is directing my subconscious now. I love this mini melodrama strand and I really enjoyed today’s instalment, which was the lavish 1925 Fox adaptation, East Lynne (Emmett Flynn), scripted by Lenore Coffee and starring Edmund Lowe as Carlyle and Alma Rubens as Lady Isabel – a very handsome pair and just right for this ill-starred pair.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 3

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Monday finished with a zinger. I mean a Zingari. Italia Almirante Manzini wowed the Verdi as Wilejka, a heavy-lidded beauty with great hair, but in this case as a heavy-lidded beautiful Gypsy shepherdess with great hair. In Zingari (Mario Almirante, 1920) Wilejka falls in love with a man, Abaldo (Amleto Novelli, no less) that her father, the leader of the camp, forbids her to marry. There is many a consultation of the cards, a fireside dance, a storm, a threatening villain, a crushing pang of jealousy, an assassination and naturally, a barn on fire before this will all end happily ever after.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 2

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Is it still a pathetic fallacy even if the weather is true but the drama is not? As I set out to begin my day with some major melodrama, there was heavy weather in the skies above Pordenone also. We shook off the rain in the Verdi foyer, while we prepared to dampen our faces with tears during the first of this year’s adaptations of East Lynne.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 1

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The Giornate dawned with grey skies but good times, a respite from Storm Amy and all the rest of the week’s turbulence, a day of pretty views and outbreaks of mild escapism. Many of us were just grateful to be get here, let alone arrive on time, after the transport situation was especially complex this year. It was an especially mellow start to the festival for me. Blame it on the 3am alarm call, the cold medication or just the pleasurable daze of seeing so many familiar faces all at once. Will I sneeze or snooze my way through the first day of films? Who knows? And will my ears ever “unpop” from the plane? Join me now to find out.

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Blog, Documentary

Iris Barry on Radio 4

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Where would we be without Iris Barry? Where would all the films be, more to the point? Iris Barry was a pioneering film critic and film preservationist whose life is every bit as interesting as the plots of the movies that she championed and saved.

I am pleased to say that I have presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary on this wonderful woman, titled Iris Barry, First Lady of Film. The documentary will be broadcast on Tuesday 23 September at 4pm in the Artworks strand. Please do listen in to hear the story of the woman who wrote about cinema for the Spectator and the Daily Mail (who sacked her for dissing Elinor Glyn), co-founded the Film Society, and went on to start the world’s first film archive at MoMA in New York.

The documentary is the brainchild of producer James King and consultant Igor Toronyi-Lalic. It features contributions from Richard Brody, Bryony Dixon, Robert Sitton and Henry K Miller. Don’t miss it!