The Princess Bride is a 1987 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed and co-produced by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, and Robin Wright. Adapted by William Goldman from his 1973 novel, it tells the story of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. The film preserves the novel's metafictional narrative style by presenting the story as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a 1954 American musical film, directed by Stanley Donen, with music by Gene de Paul, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and choreography by Michael Kidd. The screenplay, by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, and Dorothy Kingsley, is based on the short story "The Sobbin' Women", by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was based in turn on the ancient Roman legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which is set in Oregon in 1850, is particularly known for Kidd's unusual choreography, which makes dance numbers out of such mundane frontier pursuits as chopping wood and raising a barn. Film critic Stephanie Zacharek has called the barn-raising sequence in Seven Brides "one of the most rousing dance numbers ever put on screen." The film was photographed in Ansco Color in the CinemaScope format.
The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam train at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.
The following is an overview of the events of 1899 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Siegmund Lubin was an American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia.
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.
Arthur Lubin was an American film director and producer who directed several Abbott & Costello films, Phantom of the Opera (1943), the Francis the Talking Mule series and created the talking-horse TV series Mister Ed. A prominent director for Universal Pictures in the 1940s and 1950s, he is perhaps best known today as the man who gave Clint Eastwood his first contract in film.
Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les Géants, released in the United States as Gulliver's Travels Among the Lilliputians and the Giants and in the United Kingdom as Gulliver's Travels—In the land of the Lilliputians and the Giants, is a 1902 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès, based on Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels.
Ramona is a 1910 American short drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel Ramona. Through a love story, the early silent short explores racial injustice to Native Americans and stars Mary Pickford and Henry B. Walthall. A copy of the print survives in the Library of Congress film archive. The film was remade in 1928 with Dolores del Río and 1936 with Loretta Young.
Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès was a French magician, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the early days of cinema, primarily in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Méliès rose to prominence creating "trick films" and became well known for his innovative use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards in his work. His most important films include A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).
Maniac Chase is a 1904 American short silent comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter and produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a remake of The Escaped Lunatic, a film directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. released at the beginning of 1904. This was one of two Biograph Company hits remade by Edison's company in fall 1904, the other being Personal, which was copied as How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns.
Wallace McCutcheon Sr. was a pioneer cinematographer and director in the early American motion picture industry, working with the American Mutoscope & Biograph, Edison and American Star Film companies. McCutcheon's wealth of credits are often mixed up with the small handful of films directed by his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. (1884–1928).
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game is an American short silent comedy film produced in 1907 and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film follows a baseball fan named Mr. Brown who overdrinks before a baseball game and becomes so intoxicated that the game appears to him in reverse motion. During production, trick photography was used to achieve this effect. The film was released in November 1907. It received a positive review in a 1908 issue of The Courier-Journal that reported the film was successful and "truly funny". As of 2021, it is unclear whether the print of the film has survived. The identities of the film cast and production crew are unknown. Film historians have noted similarities between the plot of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game. It is a comedy film directed by Edwin S. Porter, having released a year before How Brown Saw the Baseball Game.
The Bold Bank Robbery is a 1904 short crime film produced and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The silent film depicts a group of burglars who plan and execute a successful bank heist. Company employee Jack Frawley was the film's director, also coming up with the story and serving as cinematographer; the cast's identities are unknown. The silent film was the first Lubin Manufacturing Company release to feature an original narrative.
Gilbert Saroni, also written Gilbert Sarony, was a cross-dressing actor in vaudeville as well as early Edison Manufacturing, American Mutoscope, and Siegmund Lubin films. In his obituary in Variety he was described as one of the first impersonators of the "old maid" type and was said to be "considered one of the funniest men in the show business."
El heredero de Casa Pruna(English: The Heir of the Pruna House, Catalan: L’hereu de Can Pruna) is a Spanish short silent film directed by Segundo de Chomón. It was shot in Barcelona in 1904 and released in Spain the same year, making it the first Spanish comedy film.
The Widow and the Only Man is a 1904 American short silent comedy film produced by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Sr.
On the morning of June 13, 1914, a disastrous fire and a series of related explosions occurred in the main film vault of the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several possible causes for the blaze were cited at the time, one being "spontaneous combustion" of highly flammable nitrate film, which was the motion picture industry's standard medium for cameras throughout the silent era and for the first two decades of "talking pictures". Millions of feet of film were consumed in the flames, including most of the master negatives and initial prints of Lubin's pre-1914 catalog, several of the company's recently completed theatrical prints ready for release and distribution, a considerable number of films produced by other studios, inventories of raw and stock footage, hundreds of reels documenting historic events that occurred between 1897 and early 1914, as well as other films related to notable political and military figures, innovations in medical science, and professional athletic contests from that period. While this fire was not a decisive factor in Lubin's decline and bankruptcy by September 1916, costs associated with the disaster only added to the corporation's mounting debts, which led to the closure or sale of its remaining operations the following year.
How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns is a 1904 silent comic film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film is a remake of the hit film Personal, produced by the Biograph Company earlier in the year. The film is a spoof of the "fashionable marriages" known to take place between cash-strapped European nobility and American heiresses.
