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The Man Who Laughs (1928 Film)
''The Man Who Laughs'' is a 1928 American synchronized sound film, sound Romance film, romantic Drama (film and television), drama film directed by the German expressionist cinema, German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both sound-on-disc and sound-on-film processes. The film is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1869 The Man Who Laughs, novel of the same name, and stars Mary Philbin as the blind Dea and Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine. The film is known for the grotesque grin on the character Gwynplaine's face, which often leads it to be classified as a horror film. Film critic Roger Ebert stated "''The Man Who Laughs'' is a melodrama, at times even a Swashbuckler film, swashbuckler, but so steeped in expressionist gloom that it plays like a horror film." ''The Man Who Laughs'' is a romantic melodrama similar to films such as ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film), The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Leni
Paul Leni (born Paul Josef Levi, 8 July 1885 – 2 September 1929) was a German filmmaker and a key figure in German Expressionism (cinema), German Expressionism, making ''Hintertreppe'' (1921) and ''Waxworks (film), Waxworks'' (1924) in Germany, and ''The Cat and the Canary (1927 film), The Cat and the Canary'' (1927), ''The Chinese Parrot (film), The Chinese Parrot'' (1927), ''The Man Who Laughs (1928 film), The Man Who Laughs'' (1928), and ''The Last Warning (1928 film), The Last Warning'' (1928) in the United States. Life and career Paul Josef Levi was born to a Jewish family in Stuttgart. He became an avant-garde painter at the age of 15, he studied at Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts, and subsequently worked as a theatrical set designer, working for a number of theatres in Berlin (but not with Max Reinhardt (theatre director), Max Reinhardt). In 1913, he started working in the German film industry designing film sets and/or costumes for directors such as Joe May, Ernst Lub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Pictures
Universal City Studios LLC, doing business as Universal Pictures (also known as Universal Studios or simply Universal), is an American filmmaking, film production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered at the 10 Universal City Plaza, Universal Studios complex in Universal City, California, and is the flagship studio of Universal Studios, Inc., Universal Studios, the film studio arm of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers (producer), Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane and Jules Brulatour, Universal is the oldest surviving film studio in the United States and the fifth oldest globally after Gaumont Film Company, Gaumont, Pathé, Titanus and Nordisk Film, and is one of the Major film studios, "Big Five" film studios. Universal's most commercially successful film franchises include ''Fast & Furious, Jurassic Park'', and ''Despicable Me''. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards. The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist, theater organist—or even, in larger cities, an orchestra—would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music, or improvisation. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923 Film)
''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' is a 1923 American Drama (film and television), drama film starring Lon Chaney, directed by Wallace Worsley, and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. The supporting cast includes Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, and Brandon Hurst. Distributed by Universal Pictures, the film was the studio's "Super Jewel" of 1923 and was their most successful silent film, grossing $3.5 million. The film premiered on September 2, 1923, at the Astor Theatre (New York City), Astor Theatre in New York, New York, then went into release on September 6. The screenplay was written by Perley Poore Sheehan and Edward T. Lowe Jr., based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, 1831 novel, and is notable for the grand sets that recall 15th century Paris as well as for Chaney's performance and make-up as the tortured hunchback bellringer Quasimodo. This was the seventh film adaptation of the novel. The film elevated Chaney, who was already a well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swashbuckler Film
A swashbuckler film is characterised by swordfighting and adventurous heroic characters, known as swashbucklers. While morality is typically clear-cut, heroes and villains alike often, but not always, follow a code of honor. Some swashbuckler films have romantic elements, most frequently a damsel in distress. Both real and fictional historical events often feature prominently in the plot. History Right from the advent of cinema, the silent era was packed with swashbucklers. The most famous of those were the films of Douglas Fairbanks, such as '' The Mark of Zorro'' (1920), which defined the genre. The stories came from romantic costume novels, particularly those of Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini. Stirring music was also an important part of the formula. The three great cycles of swashbuckler films were the Douglas Fairbanks period from 1920 to 1929; the Errol Flynn period from 1935 to 1941; and a period in the 1950s heralded by films such as ''Ivanhoe'' (1952) and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melodrama
A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or extremely sentimentality, sentimental, rather than on action. Characters are often Character (arts)#Round vs. flat, flat and written to fulfill established character archetypes. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, focusing on morality, family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", a scoundrel, or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, film, or television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers further cues to the audience of the dramatic beats being presented. In scholarly and historical musical contexts, melodramas are Victorian era, Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing style and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analytical ideas more accessible to non-specialist audiences. Ebert endorsed foreign and independent films he believed would be appreciated by mainstream viewers, championing filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and Spike Lee, as well as Martin Scorsese, whose first published review he wrote. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horror Film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with Transgressive art, transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements of the genre include Monster movie, monsters, Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, apocalyptic events, and Religion, religious or Folk horror, folk beliefs. Horror films have existed History of horror films, since the early 20th century. Early Inspirations predating film include folklore; the religious beliefs and superstitions of different cultures; and the Gothic fiction, Gothic and Horror fiction, horror literature of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. From its origins in silent films and German expressionist cinema, German Expressionism, horror became a codified genre only after the release of Dracula (1931 English-language film), ''Dracula'' (1931). Many sub-genres emerged in subsequent decades, including body horror, comed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound-on-film
Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an Analog signal, analog sound track or Digital data, digital sound track, and may record the signal either optical sound, optically or magnetism, magnetically. Earlier technologies were sound-on-disc, meaning the film's soundtrack would be on a separate phonograph record. History Sound on film can be dated back to the early 1880s, when Charles E. Fritts filed a patent claiming the idea. In 1923 a patent was filed by E. E. Ries, for a variable density soundtrack recording, which was submitted to the SMPE (now Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, SMPTE), which used the mercury vapor lamp as a modulating device to create a variable-density soundtrack. Later, Theodore Case, Case Laboratories and Lee De Forest#Phonofilm sound-on-film pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound-on-disc
Sound-on-disc is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Early sound-on-disc systems used a mechanical interlock with the movie projector, while more recent systems use timecodes. Examples of sound-on-disc processes France * The Chronophone ( Léon Gaumont) "Filmparlants" and phonoscènes 1902–1910 (experimental), 1910–1917 (industrial)Thomas Louis Jacques Schmitt, « The genealogy of clip culture » in Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (dir.) ''Rewind, Play, Fast Forward'', transcript, United States * Vitaphone introduced by Warner Bros. in 1926 * Photokinema, short-lived system, invented by Orlando Kellum in 1921 (used by D. W. Griffith for '' Dream Street'') * Digital Theater Systems United Kingdom * British Phototone, short-lived UK system using 12-inch discs, introduced in 1928-29 ('' Clue of the New Pin'') Other * Systems with the film projector linked to a phonograph or cylinde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Expressionist Cinema
German expressionist cinema () was a part of several related creative movements in Germany in the early 20th century that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in Northwestern European culture in fields such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture and cinema. Characteristics German Expressionism was an artistic movement in the early 20th century that emphasized the artist's inner emotions rather than attempting to replicate reality. German Expressionist films rejected cinematic realism and used visual distortions and hyper-expressive performances to reflect inner conflicts. History The German Expressionist movement was initially confined to Germany due to the country's isolation during World War I. In 1916, the government banned foreign films, creating a sharp increase in the demand for domestic film production, from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918. With inflation also on the rise, Germans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drama (film And Television)
In film and television show, television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or docudrama, semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humour, humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police procedural, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, Drama (film and television)#Teen drama, teen drama, and comedy drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular Setting (narrative), setting or subject matter, or they combine a drama's otherwise serious tone with elements that encourage a broader range of Mood (literature), moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of Conflict (process), conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline. All forms of Film industry, cinema or television that involve Fiction, fiction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
