A Trip to the Moon: Limited Edition (Flicker Alley) features the home video debut of the painstakingly restored color version of the landmark George Méliès fantasy short, perhaps the most famous film made before “The Birth of a Nation” and (in the words of film historian and archivist Serge Bromberg) “the first international hit in motion picture history.”

Yes, as we know, there was no color filmmaking until the twenties, and even then it was something between an experiment and a stunt until the more reliable and realistic three-strip Technicolor arrived in the thirties. But many early films were released in premium hand-painted versions. A Trip to the Moon, a lavish epic spectacle in its day, was one such film, but no surviving color versions were known to exist. Until 1999, when Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange were offered one brittle, badly decomposed, but almost intact print in a Spanish archive. The preservation and restoration, which began with a frame-by-frame digital copy of the crumbling print, took more than ten years, some of that simply waiting for technology and support. This is surely the most expensive, extensive, and ambitious restoration of any work of early cinema and its timing couldn’t be better. Between the restoration debut at Cannes 2011 and the American Blu-ray/DVD release this week, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” was released, a love letter to the fantastical visions of George Méliès and the magic of silent cinema.

Historical importance aside, A Trip to the Moon is a delight, a work of pure, playful imagination, a picture-book fantasy brought to life with intricate, hand-painted sets and a whimsical portrait of science as wizardry by way of the industrial revolution, and the then-revolutionary film effects perfected in his “trick films” are here incorporated into the storytelling. Méliès was the filmmaker as magician and showman. A Trip to the Moon showcases the best of all these dimensions, and it does so with the pulsating hand-painted colors of the day. The French pop duo Air contributes an offbeat original score.

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On Sunday, October 20, 2001, on the final day of the 20th Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (the greatest, grandest silent film festival in the known universe), I boarded a vintage steam engine with a few hundred other silent movie-loving patrons, traveled from Sacile to Udine, filed into the Udine Opera House, took my nearly-front row seat (the Camerata Labacensis, Ljubljana, a 35-or-so-piece orchestra, was practically under my feet) and was, for the next 5 ½ hours (divided up by two intermissions and a dinner break), entranced by Kevin Brownlow’s 2000 restoration of Able Gance’s Napoleon. It was the most transporting, invigorating, exiting cinematic experience of my life to date. Mr. Brownlow did not lie when he stepped on to the stage and made his introduction: “If all you’ve seen is the cut American version, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

His introduction ironically but endearingly twists the words that heralded the sound film era and sounded the death knell of silent cinema. When the movies first learned to talk, the camera became a slave to the primitive sound technology. Abel Gance’s Napoleonpremiered in 1927, the year of The Jazz Singer, and is as fluid and adventuresome and cinematically thrilling as The Jazz Singer and hackneyed and mawkish and, in its sound scenes, static and stiff. The future was sound butNapoleon, the most expensive film made in France to that time, remains the glorious lifeblood of cinema. Like Birth Of A Nation before it and Citizen Kane to come,Napoleon uses practically every technique developed at the time of its production, refining and in some cases redefining them in the process, and creating a visionary work of film.

On Saturday, March 24, 2012, Kevin Brownlow’s full restoration of Able Gance’s Napoleon makes its long-awaited American premiere in Oakland at the Paramount Theatre, presented by Brownlow and accompanied by a full orchestra under the baton of Carl Davis, who conducts his score. There are only four shows of this all-day event: March 24, 25, 31, and April 1, and there are no further American screenings planned. If you love the cinema and have any opportunity to see one of these shows, by all means make every effort to do so. Yes, it is an event. It is also a transporting cinematic experience like no other.

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In advance of the American premiere of the fully restored edition of Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoleon in Oakland on March 24, Turner Classic Movies presents two of the auteur’s earlier films: J’Accuse (1919), which appropriates the cry leveled by Emile Zola during the Dreyfus affair to decry the horrors of World War I, and La Roue (1923). These films—the sole silent films from the director currently available to American audiences (both are also available on DVD from Flicker Alley)—make clear that there was no director like Abel Gance in the silent era. One of the great technical innovators and visual artists of his time, Gance was a master conductor of the cinematic form. He transformed dramatic stories into emotional symphonies, and these two films are among the most stirring of the era.

Abel Gance began shooting J’Accuse, his harrowing anti-war drama, while the trench warfare of World War I was still grinding up soldiers on both sides of the battle. Such sentiments were certainly not encouraged by a government straining to support the war effort, but the time was ripe when it finally came months after it ended. France was devastated and the film is appropriately devastating, all but announcing its intentions in the opening titles, spelled out in the fallen bodies of soldiers dropping the ground as if in death. The story itself begins as a love triangle melodrama of star-crossed lovers ripped apart by war and transforms into a veritable love story between two men, comrades in arms brought together by battle and the mutual love of the same woman, but this is no romanticized portrait of courage and comradeship forged under fire.

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Clara Bow took top billing in the 1927 Wings (Paramount), the film that won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture, but the real star of this World War I drama is the amazing aerial spectacle: the dogfights in the sky over the battlefields.

The rest of the film, co-starring Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen (both virtual unknowns at the time) as buddies and fellow pilots, is sturdy studio filmmaking with romance, bonding under fire and rousing “war is hell” action. There’s none of the seriousness or dramatic grace of King Vidor’s earlier “The Big Parade,” but director William Wellman, who was a World War I fighter pilot himself, invests us in the camaraderie of men in battle and especially the thrilling flight of the warriors. The magnificent dogfights, the sky swarming with planes, the downed ships spiraling down through the clouds with a tail of black smoke and yellow flame (color added like hand-tints of the time) were all staged and shot for real and the budget soared to $2 million, making it one of the most expensive films of its era. Wellman makes sure it’s all there on the screen. It’s a romanticized look at war, but it’s also what Hollywood does best.

Paramount releases the film on DVD and Blu-ray (adding one more silent offering to the Blu-ray format) in a beautifully restored and newly remastered edition that preserves the texture of the photography, and offers a choice of two scores.

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For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for January 24

John Barrymore’s 1922 Sherlock Holmes was not the first screen incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, the most well-known fictional character in English literature, and certainly not the definitive. This production, directed by Albert Parker as a mix of dime novel adventure and pulp crime thriller, is ostensibly based on Doyle’s stories but more directly on the play by William Gillette, a stage actor who made a career playing Holmes. It offers an origin story to the detective and his battle with criminal mastermind Moriarty (Gustav von Seyffertitz) that begins at college, where Holmes’ friend and fellow student Watson (Roland Young) introduces him to a mystery that leads Holmes into the criminal empire of Moriarty. Jump ahead a few years and Holmes is now the brilliant (and publicly modest) detective of 221 Baker Street, dedicated to dismantling Moriarty’s underworld web and still carrying a torch for a beautiful young woman (Carol Dempster) he met once in his college days.

John Barrymore's Holmes versus Gustav von Seyffertitz's Prof. Moriarty

That young woman is Alice Faulkner and her plight — she’s held prisoner by Moriarty, who is after letters in her possession that he can use to blackmail a Crown Prince — brings Holmes’ battle with Moriarty to a head. That’s the simplified version of the story, which is overly convoluted and tangled and, for a Holmes mystery, often quite sloppy. Or is simply that Holmes is so smitten with Alice that he’s not thinking clearly when he leaves her in the clutches of her captors, convinced she’ll be safe for the time being? Not the most logical of deductions, to this untrained mind.

The confused motivations and complications are simply discarded when the film shifts from mystery to elaborate battle of wits between Moriarty, determined to finally kill the meddling detective, and Holmes, who plots to end Moriarty’s reign of terror. It’s also one of the wordiest silent films I’ve ever seen, filled with pages of intertitles explicating the overly convoluted plot and providing Holmes’ commentary of clues, deductions and schemes.

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The title of Flicker Alley’s box set Landmarks of Early Soviet Film: A Four-Disc DVD Collection Of 8 Groundbreaking Films may sound like dry lesson plan in film history on the surface. There are a lot of viewers, even lovers of movie classics, who consider watching any silent film not by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton as the film history equivalent of eating your vegetables — good for you but hardly fun — and place the often stridently propagandistic features of early Soviet cinema high on that list. Perhaps the most valuable revelation of this collection is the diversity of filmmaking, from dynamic dramas to witty comedies to striking documentaries, even among those committed to the aesthetic of montage. The concept that meaning comes not simply from the shot but in the way shots are juxtaposed was more than a guiding for many of the filmmakers, it was the filmmaking equivalent of revolutionary credentials, but the application and purpose was different for each filmmaker.

The set features work by the three most famous Soviet proponents of montage: Sergei Eisenstein, who essays on principles of editing were reflected in such films as Battleship Potemkin and October; Dziga Vertov, who apprenticed in political newsreels before graduating to features and soaring to Man With a Movie Camera; and Lev Kuleshov, who coined the term ‘montage’ and first explored the possibilities in experiments and early films his student workshop. These three directors popularized primacy of editing in both practice and theory. Just as illuminating, however, is the inclusion of filmmakers with different ideas and approaches to montage and to filmmaking in general. Montage is not just one thing, as these films illustrate. It encompasses ideas and arguments, emotions and excitement, suspense and tension, dramatic effect, revelation and humor: the perfect cut as punchline delivery. It was also a short-lived aesthetic in Soviet cinema. “Formalism” was condemned as a bourgeois concept and montage directors fell out of favor. This collection celebrates a brief period of cinematic experimentation.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), the debut feature from Lev Kuleshov, is a political cartoon of a Soviet satire that knowingly spoofs American stereotypes of “Bolshevik revolutionaries” through the comically surreal odyssey of the gullible Mr. West (Porfiri Podobed, dressed to evoke a middle-aged Harold Lloyd), an American politician on a fact-finding mission to the Soviet Union. Arriving with star-spangled socks and a head full of the most sinister stereotypes of the barbarous state of the communist peoples, he’s kidnapped by a gang of con artists who deliver his worst Bolshevik nightmare, complete with a staged “trial” the plays out likes a piece of anti-Bolshevik theater by way of a German Expressionist horror, as a preamble to prying him from his money. While Kuleshov and crew (including future filmmaker V.I. Pudovkin, who collaborated on the script) present the communist caricatures with a knowing wink to its Soviet audience, its equally absurd American clichés — such as West’s cowboy sidekick (played by future director Boris Barnet) arriving in Moscow in chaps and cowboy hat, shooting up the streets like a drunken cowhand and lassoing a car like it was a runaway horse — are played for culture clash comedy: the crazy hayseed in the big city. By the end, of course, our wide-eyed Mr. West is introduced to the true face of communism and the glories of the Soviet ideal, but along the way Kuleshov creates a breakneck mix of chase film, cliffhanger adventure and slapstick comedy with cartoonish twists. It’s American popular entertainment refracted through a Soviet lens. It’s also very funny, highly inventive and quite knowing in its appropriation of cinema clichés.

More on By the Law, The House on Trubnaya Square, Old and New, Salt for Svanetia and others at Turner Classic Movies.

The Merry Widow (Warner Archive)

Erich von Stroheim was the auteur of unapologetic decadence in the silent era and he fills this old world fantasy, an adaptation of a popular operetta, with fairy-tale European kingdoms, arrogant royals and aristocrats and lives of uninhibited attitudes of entitlement that allow—nay, encourage—the most wanton behavior in its princes. That includes the devil-may-care Prince Danilo Petrovich (John Gilbert), “the world champion of indoor sports,” in words of his cousin the Crown Prince (Roy D’Arcy), a nasty, weaselly Prussian twit with a perpetual grin held in place so long it has settled into a rictus grimace of sadistic delight.

These competitive cousins vie for the affections, or at least the physical pleasures, of gorgeous American showgirl Sally O’Hara (Mae Murray) who arrives in their kingdom with The Manhattan Follies, a travelling show apparently doing the provincial circuit of Old Heidelberg and points beyond. Murray, a silent movie superstar long forgotten to an era represented by only a few icons to even most film buffs, is a spicy dash of American spunk in this world of high manner and base impulses, a mix of urban worldliness, romantic innocence and American practicality, with a snap of sass reminiscent of Ginger Rogers. When she notices the ravenous attentions of the wolfish European officers whooping it up as she adjusts her stocking (if this film is anything to go by,  the tease of ankles and calves are the most arousing zone of female anatomy for this crowd), her response is wonderful: a flash of embarrassment quickly replaced by exasperation and resignation to the nature of man-boys the world over.

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Laila (Flicker Alley)

The films made at end of the silent era are a reminder of what was lost in the transition to sound. On the one hand is a mode of visual storytelling that elevated even the most generic films and, at its best, was grace incarnate, directed with stylistic invention and dramatic ingenuity, filled with communication by suggestion and gesture and metaphor. On the other is a production mode that allowed tremendous scope in location shooting and dramatic action. Simply put, you could take the camera anywhere you could haul the actors and equipment.

Admittedly, there isn’t much stylistic invention or cinematic elegance to Laila (1929), last great Norwegian epic of the silent era, but there is an elemental power from the film’s location shooting in the mountains of Norway. This is a film that could not be made in the sound era for a number of years due to the technical demands of the recording and synchronized sound equipment.

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More Buster on Blu-ray

Our Hospitality (Kino Lorber)

Buster Keaton’s second feature film as a director is also his first genuine masterpiece. While it opens in the darkness of widowed mother fleeing her rural shack to save her infant from a Hatfields and McCoys-like feud, the comic sun comes out when we return years later to find that infant grown into the gentle Keaton, a New York City slicker traveling south (on a deliriously surreal train engineered by Keaton’s father Joe) to receive his inheritance. He falls in love with a pretty fellow passenger (Natalie Talmadge) who happens to be the daughter of the rival clan and the generations-old grudge heats up all over again, but Southern hospitality forbids the feuding family from harming him as long as he’s a guest in their home. Buster spins hilarious gags from his desperate attempts to prolong his stay (and to sneak out unobserved) and builds to a thrilling climax and an impressive stunt involving mighty waterfall, a damsel in distress and a fearless rescue.

The film arrives in a new DVD “Ultimate Edition” and debuts on Blu-ray. Both feature newly remastered version of the film with two musical scores (an original orchestral score composed and conducted by the great Carl Davis and a compilation score by Donald Hunsberger) and supplements. There’s a new 26-minute documentary on the making of the film, a 1926 short Fatty Arbuckle comedy “The Iron Mule” (featuring the same train from “Our Hospitality”) and most curiously an alternate 49-minute cut of the film (titled simply “Hospitality”). This version is pretty beat up and included largely for historical value (explained in the introduction to the film). Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV offers his take on the film, the restoration and the supplements at DVD Talk.

More on Scary Movie 4 and a pair of budget B-movie double features at MSN Videodrone

Yasujiro Ozu’s I Was Born, But… is the director’s most well-known silent feature and one of his most beloved films. The wry comedy plays on Sunday, January 9 on Turner Classic Movies as part of its Sunday Night Silents series. I wrote an essay for the screening.

I Was Born, But...

Japan had a vibrant national cinema and busy film industry during the silent era but sadly only a very small percentage of those films survive. Of the films that are available, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 I Was Born, But… is among the most famous and beloved and remains the best known of Ozu’s silent movies. This “picture book for grown-ups” (as the opening titles read) is a hilarious comedy of wills between the two wily young sons of salaryman Yoshi (Tatsuo Saito) as they move to a Tokyo suburb for the father’s new job and prepare to enter a new school. But underneath the comedy is a bittersweet family comedy that offers social satire through its view of the adult social order through the eyes of children.

Read the complete feature here. Also available on DVD as part of a box set from Criterion’s Eclipse imprint.

The films are Yasujiro Ozu are being featured this month for Silent Movie Sundays on Turner Classic Movies. Tokyo Chorus played last week (the night I got back from my much-needed vacation off the grid) and I didn’t get around to posting a link my feature article on TCM then, but better late than never.

Counting the bonus in "Tokyo Chorus"

For all the deft sight gags and comic situations–and there are plenty (including a comic symphony around the shenanigans of salarymen trying to count their bonus money away from prying eyes)–there is also an undercurrent of anxiety running through the film as Shinji struggles to find work in Japan’s depressed economy. The shadow of Japan’s hard times falls over Tokyo Chorus and the characters and Ozu isn’t shy about putting the depressed conditions on screen. Yet Ozu meets it with hope and humor and fills the film with tender and delicate moments in such seemingly simple scenes as a round-robin of patty-cake with the kids or group sing-song at the teacher’s banquet. And in contrast to the adults, the children remain impulsive, obstinate and at times destructive when they don’t get their way, especially Shinji’s young son, who defiantly pokes holes through the paper walls and methodically eats the scraps in a show of indignation. The father is forced to grow up but his son remains blissfully free of such responsibilities and Ozu celebrates his stubborn willfulness and bad behavior as a last moment of innocence as well as opportunities for comedy (his hilariously ingenious ploy for stealing a pill from his younger sister is worthy of Chaplin).

Read the complete feature here. And remember, you can get this film on DVD via a superb Criterion box set.

The Complete Metropolis (Kino)

Fritz Lang’s 1927 epic is revered as a landmark science fiction filmmaking, a masterpiece of silent film and a visionary work of cinema, and its reputation has been based on an incomplete version of his original film. Less than six months after its premiere, the film was edited down by Ufa Studio by over half an hour, and cut even further as it made its way around the world.

Maria! I just met a girl named Maria!

With the miraculous discover of a damaged and worn 16mm print in Argentina, the Murnau Institute (which created a gorgeous, though far from complete, restoration from available materials less than a decade about) has been able to finally restore the film to its almost complete form (it is still missing a couple of minutes of footage). Lang’s visionary visual creation remains impressive almost 80 years later, from the densely imagined cityscape to the massive sets that dwarf the actors and the swarms of extras and give the film a monumental scale, and its socio-political themes are just as soft-headed and simplistic.

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