Max Reinhardt was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his radically innovative and avante garde stage productions, Reinhardt is regarded as one of the most prominent stage directors of the early 20th century.
The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra is a 1928 American silent experimental short film co-written and co-directed by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapić. Considered a landmark of American avant-garde cinema, it tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star; he fails and becomes dehumanized, with studio executives reducing him to the role of an extra and writing the number "9413" on his forehead.
Robert Florey was a French-American director, screenwriter, film journalist and actor.
The Folies Bergère is a cabaret music hall in Paris, France. Located at 32 Rue Richer in the 9th Arrondissement, the Folies Bergère was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with light entertainment including operettas, comic opera, popular songs, and gymnastics. It became the Folies Bergère on 13 September 1872, named after nearby Rue Bergère. The house was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s' Belle Époque through the 1920s.
Jules Auguste Muraire, whose stage name was Raimu, was a French actor. He is most famous for playing César in the 'Marseilles trilogy'.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Jack Pierce was a Hollywood make-up artist best remembered for creating the iconic makeup worn by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), along with various other classic monster make-ups for Universal Studios.
The Incoherents was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy (1857–1935) in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence, anticipated many of the art techniques and attitudes later associated with the avant-garde and anti-art movements such as Dada.
Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1932 American horror film directed by Robert Florey, based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The plot is about Doctor Mirakle, a carnival sideshow entertainer and scientist who kidnaps Parisian women to mix their blood with that of his gorilla, Erik. As his experiments fail because of the quality of his victims' blood, Mirakle meets with Camille L'Espanye, and has her kidnapped and her mother murdered, leading to suspicion falling on Camille's fiance, Pierre Dupin, a medical student who has already become interested in the earlier murders.
Charles Dekeukeleire was a Belgian film director. He pioneered modern Belgian film with Henri Storck. He was inspired by French avant-garde cinema, particularly the works of Germaine Dulac.
Slavoljub "Slavko" Vorkapić, known in English as Slavko Vorkapich, was a Serbian-born Hollywood montagist, an independent cinematic artist, chair of USC School of Cinematic Arts, chair of the Belgrade Film and Theatre Academy, painter, and illustrator. He was a prominent figure of modern cinematography and motion picture film art during the early and mid-20th century and was a cinema theorist and lecturer.
Clyde Wilfred Cook was an Australian-born vaudevillian who went on to perform in Hollywood and whose career spanned the silent film era, talkies and television.
Jerome Storm was an American film director, actor, and writer. He acted in 48 films between 1914 and 1941 and directed 47 films between 1918 and 1932. He was born in Denver, Colorado, and died in Desert Hot Springs, California.
Paul Wolfgang Panzerbeiter, known professionally as Paul Panzer, was a German-American silent film actor. He appeared in more than 330 films between 1905 and 1952.
The Treasures from American Film Archives series of DVDs is produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress in 1997. The NFPF publishes these DVD sets, with accompanying booklets and extensive commentary, to promote public access to the films preserved by the American archival community.
Folies Bergère de Paris is a 1935 American musical comedy film produced by Darryl Zanuck for 20th Century Films, directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Maurice Chevalier, Merle Oberon and Ann Southern. At the 8th Academy Awards, the “Straw Hat” number, choreographed by Dave Gould, won the short-lived Academy Award for Best Dance Direction, sharing the honor with “I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'” from Broadway Melody of 1936. The film, based on the 1934 play The Red Cat by Rudolph Lothar and Hans Adler, is a story of mistaken identity, with Maurice Chevalier playing both a music-hall star and a business tycoon who resembles him. This was Chevalier’s last film in Hollywood for twenty years, and reprised familiar themes such as the straw hat and a rendering of the French song "Valentine". This is also the last film to be distributed by Twentieth Century Pictures before it merged with Fox Film in 1935 to form 20th Century Fox.
An Adventurous Automobile Trip is a 1904 French silent comic trick film directed by Georges Méliès. The film, a spoof of the devil-may-care motoring exploits of King Leopold II of Belgium, features the King engaging in a manic, implausibly fast automobile ride from Paris to Monte Carlo. The singer-comedian Harry Fragson stars as the King, supported by a large cast of stage performers from the Folies Bergère cabaret and other venues, with two cameo appearances from Méliès himself.
Le pompier des Folies Bergères, also known as Un pompier qui prend feu and Les Hallucinations d'un pompier is a 1928 French silent film featuring Josephine Baker. The director is unknown. The film is about seven-and-a-half minutes long.
Danger Signal is a 1939 thriller novel by the British writer Phyllis Bottome. Typist Hilda Fenchurch broods over her failed love affair with medical student Ronnie Mason, and is disturbed when she discovers that he has now turning his attention towards her younger sister. Fearful of the exposure of her own affair, she resolves to murder him. It was originally published under the alternative title of Murder in the Bud.
