Cinematic Era: 1916 Vintage

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the worst characteristics of the upper class. Her father spends all of his time at the club, her mother cultivates snobbishness, and her sister thinks only of marrying into royalty. To shake them out of their aristocratic poses, Bessie decides to reflect all of their faults, becoming as lazy as her father and as status conscious as her mother. She even rejects her own sweetheart, Allan Shelby, to lure Count d'Orr away from her sister. Finally, the members of the family confront Bessie, and she angrily tells them that she was only mirroring their behavior. Bessie then runs away, but Allan, with whom she quickly reconciles, brings her back, just as her family acknowledges its recent burlesque of the upper crust.

A great stage performer falls ill and loses her voice and beauty, and she and her admirer's lives crumble because of it.

Firefighter Charlie Chaplin is tricked into letting a house burn by an owner who wants to collect on the insurance.

After amusements working in a restaurant, a waiter uses his lunch break to go roller skating.

In an English mining town during the 1870's, Joan Lowrie falls in love with Fergus Derrick, the new chief engineer who vows to improve working conditions. Joan's father Don, however, runs the mine and likes conditions just as they are. As a result, he quickly learns to detest the crusading Fergus, even to the point of trying to murder him.

Charlie is released from prison and immediately swindled by a fake parson. A fellow ex-convict convinces Charlie to help burglarize a house.

A tramp tries to earn money by playing the violin, but he’s soon facing off against the jealous competition.

In this film, the people of a Tyrolean town climb up into the nearby mountains, searching for a place where they can hold a picnic and a spring festival: ideally, a place where they can eventually erect dwellings and cultivate crops. Led by the local nobleman (Arthur Ehrens), they find an appropriate spot, and the festivities begin. Some children briefly perform a charming folk dance. Suddenly the Rübezahl arrives and threatens to kill all the townsfolk if they don't leave immediately.

A drifter enters town to establish himself. Working as a cowhand, he meets the boss's daughter, who's eager to absorb some local color.

A tailor's apprentice burns Count Broko's clothes while ironing them and the tailor fires him. Later, the tailor discovers a note explaining that the count cannot attend a dance party, so he dresses as such to take his place; but the apprentice has also gone to the mansion where the party is celebrated and bumps into the tailor in disguise…

In 1916 the Santiago society shuddered with the crime of a wealthy businessman. Corina Rojas, his young wife, was the first woman sentenced to death in Chile and her story inspired the first national feature film.

Colorado lawyer Bill Brent, falsely accused and imprisoned for a murder committed by his partner, escapes to Canada with his cellmate where they become wealthy in the trapping business. When out of a trapping expedition the pair rescue Nita, the only survivor of a boating accident. In time Bill and she fall in love and marry then Bill makes the unwise decision to try to return to see his elderly mother.

When Reverend Robert Henley and his sister Faith arrive in the town of Hell's Hinges, saloon owner Silk Miller and his cohorts sense danger to their evil ways. They hire gunman Blaze Tracy to run the minister out of town. But Blaze finds something in Faith Henley that turns him around, and soon Silk Miller and his compadres have Blaze to deal with.

A prince, aiming to avoid an unwanted marriage, hires an American as a double to evade his pursuing father.

A drunken homeowner has a difficult time getting about in his home after arriving home late at night.

During the troubled shooting of several movies, David, the prop man's assistant, meets an aspiring actress who tries to find work in the studio. Things get messy when the stagehands decide to go on strike.

A pawnbroker's assistant deals with his grumpy boss, his annoying co-worker and some eccentric customers as he flirts with the pawnbroker's daughter, until a perfidious crook with bad intentions arrives at the pawnshop.

The beginning of the film you find Harold Lloyd playing his "Lonesome Luke" character. Out of the blue, Lloyd decides he's going to join the navy and you really wonder if part of the film leading to it is missing. After all, the decision seemed to come from no where and why Snub Pollard would also join is unclear. And, oddly, they seem to skip all training and are stationed on a navy ship. Soon Pollard's wife comes to the boat looking for him and she's put off the boat as the movie ends very, very anticlimactically.

At the age of 50, the surgeon Privy Councillor Professor Imhoff marries the young, beautiful but poor orphan Annie von Arenberg. On the wedding day, the professor's students put on a ceremonial procession. Annie falls in love with the student speaker Baron Bernfeld. After a few months, she leaves her husband for him. Although the professor can hardly bear the defeat, he does not take revenge, but saves her new young lover's life during a complicated surgical operation.

The true story of the famed British actor David Garrick and his love for Ada Ingot.

Bruce Larnigan, in connection with Jack Stevens, is editing the "Independent," the newspaper which Ben Travers had bought to assist the fight against the trusts. 10th episode in the Graft serial.

a silent movie by Robert Wiene

Peasant girl Vania is assaulted by a duke who murders her lover and sends her away to London.

When an unscrupulous banker ruins his family, a young man swears to bring him to justice, so he adopts a new identity, the mysterious Judex, and ominously disguised and sunk into the muddy path of vengeance, punishes the crooks and protects the innocents. (Originally a twelve-part epic serial.)

Successful author Dane Ashley learns he has inherited an estate in a small village. Traveling to see his property Dane sees a crowd of children tormenting a young girl. He rescues the girl, but she vanishes through the door in the separating wall between his house and the next. Intrigued he investigates and learns that she is a Miss Virginia Carlton and rumored to be crazy. Disbelieving the rumors as to Virginia's insanity, Dane contrives a meeting and in time they fall in love. Virginia confides that it is her twin sister Helen who has had a mental breakdown after a traumatic incident and the loss of her beloved. In time all is made aright.

Captain Nemo has built a fantastic submarine for his mission of revenge. He has traveled over 20,000 leagues in search of Charles Denver - a man who caused the death of Princess Daaker. Seeing what he had done, Denver took the daughter to his yacht and sailed away.

The heroine, Peggy Cameron, is a high-society debutante with a mind of her own. After making a public spectacle of herself once too often, Peggy is bundled off to Scotland, where she is to be looked after by her no-nonsense uncle Andrew Cameron (William H. Thompson). If Peggy's family had hoped that she would straighten up and behave herself in Scotland, they were sorely mistaken. Restored in 2018 by the Academy Film Archive with restoration funding provided by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation.

When a couple of scammers hold young Alice Faulkner against her will to discover the whereabouts of letters whose dissemination could cause a scandal affecting the royal family, Sherlock Holmes decides to take over the case. (Considered lost, a copy was found in 2014, in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française.)

Wealthy capitalist, Clinton Reynolds, and his wife, Laura, have lost their son, Arthur, kidnapped and possibly dead. Attempting to write a wrong in his factory, he adopts the daughter of one of his workers who is killed on site. The girl, Rose, grows up resentful of her adoptive father and as she grows older, seduces him in order to break up his marriage. Long lost Arthur returns and, finding his parents' married life in disarray, becomes romantically involved with Rose in order to end the relationship she has forged with his father. Reynolds comes to his senses and makes amends with Laura, at which point Arthur leaves Rose.

Hulda, a plucky Dutch girl, brings her three little brothers from Holland to America to live with their rich Uncle Peter. Hulda finds love with a poor artist.

Albert Jordan, publishing house manager, lavishes his salary on his adored wife, Rita, and little daughter Edna. She is a churchgoing woman, while his home and his family is his religion. While returning home one day, Jordan sees his little daughter in the path of an auto. He runs to snatch her from instant death. He saves her but is seriously injured himself.

Silent version of the 1884 Helen Hunt Jackson novel originally ran 3 hours but all but 50 minutes of that are now lost.

Louise (Pickford) is a sewing-machine girl in a sweatshop in New York City. She lives together with her sisters Amy (Loretta Blake) and Jane (Dorothy West) and are all deprived by bad conditions at work and sickness. Louise tries for the three of them to survive and regards herself as the keeper of her sisters. Meanwhile, she stands up to her bosses and complains about the dreadful circumstances they work in. When Amy is seduced by the son of the shop-owner, Louise butts in and stops the romance. He eventually abandons Amy and becomes seriously injured in a cave-in. Louise has a secret crush on the son herself and tries to rescue him, hoping he will admit he loves her. The film is inspired by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which took place in 1911. The only version of the film is a nitrate print in the Cinematheque Francaise, but only the first half remains.

An impecunious customer creates chaos in a department store while the manager and his assistant plot to steal the money kept in the establishment's safe.

A newly adopted girl is doted on by her adopted father but faces indifference from her adopted mother.

A sci-fi/espionage film in which world powers vie for control of a death ray during World War I as an undercover countess infiltrates enemy ranks to prevent them from getting their hands on the weapon.

Aerial dancer La Syrena, whose jealous husband kills her while she performs in midair. Her daughter, Jennie Raeburn, soon orphaned, grows up unaware of her mother's occupation, but nonetheless feels the urge to dance.

Ranch foreman Tom Snow is being hounded by sheriff Luke Fisher and his deputy, Brad Foster. The pair are really cattle rustlers, and they're trying to pin the blame on Snow. Snow escapes from them and leads them on a death-defying escape over a chasm.

After a man's wife leaves him for a sculptor, his only comfort is a statue of his wife.

Bruce Edmunds takes a place in the revenue service to help rout the moonshiners in the hills of North Carolina and to avenge the murder of his brother, George Edmunds. George, who was a landscape painter, had selected the picturesque locale in the south for his work, and while there became infatuated with Jill Jamison, a mountain girl, and daughter of Jimmy Jamison, owner of the Bat Cave Hotel. The friendship between the girl and George aroused the enmity of Squid Archer, boss of the moonshining gang.

Hearts and Sparks is a 1916 American silent comedy film directed by Charles Parrott (Charley Chase) and starring Gloria Swanson. When Mack Sennett first saw Gloria Swanson, he felt that she would be right as a romantic lead for Bobby Vernon because they were both small in stature. This was their first film together and they proved to be a big hit with the public.

A story of violence, deceit, deception and malfeasance among the rich set and the hoodlums with whom they unknowingly become involved.

In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks starred in THE HALF-BREED (1916), a Western melodrama written by Anita Loos and directed with flair by Allan Dwan. Fairbanks stars as Lo Dorman, who has been ostracized from society because of this mixed ethnicity - his Native American mother was abandoned by his white father. When Lo catches the eye of the rich white debutante Nellie (Jewel Carmen), he becomes a target for the racist Sheriff Dunn (Sam De Grasse), who wants to break them up and take Nelli for his own. This love triangle becomes a quadrangle with the arrival of Teresa (Alma Rubens), who is on the run from the law. Through fire and fury Lo must decide who and what he truly loves.

"Waffles," the waitress at "Coffee Dan's" hash-house, is selected by Bert Gallagher and Clara Johnstone, a pair of crooks, to be represented as a missing heiress whose story they have read about in the papers. "Waffles" herself believes the story, as she was orphaned early and remembers little of her childhood, and by adroit coaching is able to convince the estate's none too bright lawyers of the validity of her claim. With this unlimited money, poor little "Waffles" nevertheless has only three desires: to buy the little restaurant for her old benefactor, Shorty Olson, to publish the music written by her lover, Carl Miller, a young, eccentric, absent-minded musical genius, and to adopt the baby that a Mrs. O'Shaughnessy is too poor to care for.

Curtis Jaffray's mother, an Italian peasant, must steal to support herself, but genetic tendencies as well as economic necessity contribute to her penchant for robbery, as it is inherited by her son. After John, his British nobleman father, catches him stealing, Curtis runs away, but rather than try to change his nature, he decides to put his mother's legacy to good use. As a result, after he has risen to a prominent position in the United States, he starts stealing from those who belong to his own wealthy social set and then distributing the money among the poor.

Nora is nursemaid to a wealthy family and in love with their chauffeur Nolan. When she hides her mistress' lover in her room, jealous Nolan shoots him and Nora, who refuses to tell about her mistress affair, is dismissed.

Based on the Novel by Robert W. Chambers of New York City life among the upper-crust, Valerie West , artist/model and philosopher, undergoes much sorrow and joy, many trials and tribulations, and final triumph on her journey to become the living personification of sweet and noble womanhood.

Roscoe writes of his love and announces that he will call on Irene with the ring and ask her parents' consent to their marriage. Father and mother are willing, but decide to give Roscoe a scare before accepting him for a son-in-law. Father assumes a gruff attitude but melts at the right time and Roscoe departs in high glee to prepare for a masked ball at which the engagement is to be announced. Irene jokes him about his size but he warns her that he will fool her by the mystery of his disguise. On the way home in his automobile Roscoe drives over a cliff and is taken to a hospital. There he is, out of his mind, as the guests begin to assemble at the ball.

A silent drama film directed by James Young

Stephen Brice, a young lawyer in Civil War-era St. Louis, falls in love with Virginia Carvel, the daughter of his benefactor. But she is loyal to the South and Brice is committed to Lincoln's cause. In the course of the war, their convictions separate them, and Virginia becomes engaged to her cousin Clarence Colfax, a Confederate officer. Brice becomes an officer under General Sherman, and eventually finds himself faced with the captured Colfax, facing execution for spying. Brice must decide whether or not to intercede in his rival's behalf.

When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.

Because Ernst feels oppressed by his wife and her mother, he fakes his suicide and hires in his own household disguised as a servant.

After building a financial empire, Frederick Mallery feels chained to his wife Winnie, who stood by him during the years of poverty. As a result, he offers Warren Woods, a down-and-out former playboy, $50,000 to seduce Winnie, so that he will have an excuse for a divorce.

The Youngloves have a cozy little apartment and a jewel of a cook, Bridget, and are happy until the landlord raises the rent. A slick agent convinces them to take a lease on "the modern Paradise” in Arcadia. A long, frightful journey takes them to "Eros Villa” a tumbledown old shack with a scrubby hedge running around it. After a veritable nightmare of a night trying to sleep on hastily-made-up hard beds and being scared nearly to death by huge rats scampering through the rooms the Youngloves rush to the agent's office, where he agrees to tear up the lease for two months' rent! The Youngloves, return to their old flat, sadder and wiser, but happy.

Athletic star William Russell puts on his boxing gloves for this waterfront drama.

A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.

Two playboys stumble drunkenly home, where the owner falls asleep and the other attacks the maid. The butler intervenes and a fight results in the death of the assailant. A French girl, escaping from a pimp who kidnapped her, witnesses the crime. The butler convinces his master he is the killer, and must flee. He joins the girl but is caught. She helps police expose the real killer by going undercover as another maid.

A lovable scoundrel is busted for gambling and thrown into jail, where he dreams of playing poker - but even in his dreams, he loses.