"Douglas Fairbanks was 44 when he made The Gaucho, one of his most thoughtful and visually rich adventures. As the lusty, live-for-today leader of a South American outlaw band preying upon small villages, he drives out a corrupt garrison from a holy mountain village (which seems to literally hang off the edge of a cliff by the grace of God) and takes over the town like a benevolent dictator. When a plague victim infects a wound of his, t ..."
"Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem. A classic American horror film that combines elements of the traditional ghost story, Poe and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." "The Bells" (1926, 68 min.) follows an ambitious innkeeper (Lionel Barrymore) on a downward trajectory into insanity after murdering a wealthy traveler to settle his debts. Though he is not suspected of the crime, the innkeeper is haunted by a hypnotist in a traveling carnival ( ..."
"Mary Pickford is the cinema's true Peter Pan. She played spunky waifs and adolescent spitfires well into adulthood and remains best remembered as the crusading orphan raging against ruthless villains and natural disasters with pluck, courage, and hope. Sparrows is quintessential Pickford, the tale of a ragtag collection of orphans made virtual slaves by a gnarled, swamp-dwelling Simon Legree. As the big sister/mother hen of the grimy br ..."