Cinematic Era: 1920 Vintage

Clyde gets in hot water with his Amazon wife and her tough sailor brother, culminating in a wrestling match and escape by airplane. (MoMA)

In Iceland, the pride and honour of one’s family mean everything. Ørlygur á Borg is the most powerful man in the parish, and his son Ormarr is a man of action with a firm sense of justice, predestined to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, Ormarr has other plans for his life, and when one day he sets out for Copenhagen to study, his tyrannical brother takes advantage of the situation, seizing the farm and the role of ruler in the parish. (Stumfilm.dk)

A 1920 Eddie Barry comedy. Eddie and Earle get a job at a seaside carnival tent and fool some people by dressing as Fatima the belly dancer.

Director Henry Kolker's silent romantic melodrama starred Vera Gordon, who was billed as "The 'Mother' of 'Humoresque'", Bertram Marburgh, Yvonne Shelton, Hugh Huntley, and William H. Tooker

Aleck Kazam (Milburn Moranti), brews beer during prohibition.

A 'Snub' Pollard & Marie Mosquini slapstick comedy.

The daughter of a railroad magnat has to take charge when her father unexpectedly dies. She uses her outdoor survival skills to kidnap a business rival to save the company from a stock market struggle.

Member of a socially prominent but impoverished family, Mary Ware, is in love with the equally poor Ronald Cliffe, but Mary's mother convinces her to save the family from debt by marrying the wealthy Grey Sands. Ronald is sent to work in the oil fields out West, and Mary, married to a man she doesn't love, is cold to her husband, who then vows revenge.

Winning a Home is a 1920 film

The mother of a large family is abandoned by her children and faces consignment to the poorhouse. But one of her offspring, the one no one had faith in, returns to rescue her.

When Marie Callender is left a fortune by a wealthy old admirer on the condition that she marry the man she loves, Marie targets Ernest Lismore but is too shy to ask him to marry her. Instead, Marie disguises herself as an elderly woman of considerable wealth and offers to bail Ernest out of his impending bankruptcy in exchange for marriage, with the understanding that if Ernest ever falls in love with another woman she will grant him a divorce. Then Marie disguises herself as June Dayne in order to make her husband fall in love with her. She succeeds, and when Ernest confesses his love for another woman, Marie discards her disguise and Ernest discovers that the woman with whom he is in love is his own wife.

In retaliation for an attack upon his wife Isobel, Scottie Dean, a passenger on a whaling ship, throws Captain Jim Blake overboard and, believing that he is responsible for the captain's death, flees to the Northwoods for safety.

A Goodwin-Bray Pictograph with Bud and Susie as the main characters and animated by Frank Moser.

A young rancher rides away on a half-broken broncho. He is suspected of horse stealing and pursued, but retrieves his good name by saving a kidnapped girl and recovering stolen express funds.

Silent Hank Mann comedy set in a haunted house.

15 chapter adventure serial: 1. The Evil Spell 2. The Murder Mood 3. Plucked from Peril 4. The Fatal Choice 5. Hands of Horror 6. Springing the Trap 7. Hindoo Hate 8. Hemmed In 9. An Inch from Doom 10. A Fanatic's Revenge 11. The Tank's Secret 12. Human Bait 13. A Woman's Grit 14. The Fatal Escape 15. The Lifting Fog.

Her education in a French convent school completed, plain Justine Spencer returns to New York. There she is shocked to discover that her mother Dodo is a flamboyant musical comedy actress with many male admirers.

The film is a family drama set against the backdrop of the First World War and Latvia's freedom struggle.

Simplicia has a reputation for healing through prayer and laying on of hands. Knight Rochus sets out "to see how long it takes to turn a saint into a sinner!" He sneaks into the monastery and forces Simplicia under his will.

When Mr. Givney says business at the railroad station is "too slow" to let him take vacation time, Jerry has an idea to increase ticket sales.

Pegeen O'Neill must fend for herself when her father Dan becomes mentally unbalanced after his wife Mary's death. Dan spends his days searching for his wife, setting fires in the belief that the flames will illuminate his Mary. The townspeople, enraged at the arson that is slowly destroying their village, track down Dan and trap him in a burning cabin. Pegeen rushes to comfort her dying father, who consoles himself at death with the hallucination that his wife has returned in the figure of his daughter. Pegeen is then rescued from the raging fire by Jimmie, who proposes to the waif as he delivers her from the flames.

Sylvia Lee, a young American in Spain, is torn between her attraction to dashing revolutionary Pedro Pezet and her American boyfriend, Reginald.

The Closed Chain (German: Die geschlossene Kette) is a 1920 German silent film directed by Paul L. Stein and starring Pola Negri, Aud Egede-Nissen, and Carl Ebert.

Dud imagines the glory to be derived from killing a lot of animals.

A middle-class man falls in love with a woman from a more ordinary background, and they end up working in a variety act where they sink into alcoholism. He then kills another man whom he mistakenly believes is a rival.

Silent film screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020

John Harland is a former boxer turned reverend posted to the town of Kangaroo. He falls in love with Muriel, an orphaned heiress, and discovers that her guardian Martin Giles is embezzling her inheritance. Harland earns the ire of parishioners by teaching young boys to box, and Giles manipulates local opinion to have the bishop remove him. Harland rescues a gentleman from a mugging in Sydney who suggests that he go to Kalmaroo where a criminal gang has driven the church out of the area. Harland preaches, and unexpectedly sees Muriel in the congregation; her property is near Kalmaroo. But her overseer is Red Jack Braggan who leads the gang which violently breaks up Harland's mission - much to the distress of Muriel who regards Harland as too timid - and is in cahoots with Giles.

The plot of the lost film is divided into two acts. Ossi Oswalda and Victor Janson play two apartment seekers, while Marga Köhler is a landlady. The housing shortage is treated in sketch form and "in a joking manner [...] the real housing calamity", whereby "humorous aspects" are wrested from the "tragedy." Lubitsch and Kräly used a sketch in the film that they had written especially for Ossi Oswalda.

A woman struggles to overcome a cabal of blackmailers, but learns that the boss of the blackmailers is none other than her own father. A lost film.

Prince Romano seduces Vicenta, a waitress in a shabby inn. She escapes to join him in Paris.

Rev. Robert Martin is an ex-minister who has lost his faith because of his wife's faithlessness, and taken up a life of crime as head of a band of pickpockets masquerading as religious workers who ply their trade in the wake of a traveling carnival company. He tries to keep the true nature of his work secret from his daughter Julie, but she learns the truth while traveling with his band for a week.

When Mamie Lee's father, Sam Corwin, is sentenced to jail for forgery, the sheriff, Ed Cass, offers to cover the debt in return for Mamie Lee's hand in marriage. The distraught daughter agrees, and Cass robs the saloon to obtain the money, placing the blame on Jim Kane, his rival for Mamie's affections. Jim is sent to jail an embittered man.

The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Jerry Wendover, disfigured since childhood after his act of heroism in saving a little girl from a fire scarred his face, secludes himself in an old house in the Backwater district of Florida. One night he finds Barbara Seaforth, a young blind girl, lost in the swamps and takes her home. The two unfortunates fall in love, marry, and have a child. One day, a visiting doctor tells Jerry that Barbara's sight can be restored. The operation is performed successfully, but the doctor warns his patient to shield her eyes from the light or risk reversal of the surgery. Barbara, realizing her husband's dread of exposing his disfigurement to her, looks at her child and then permanently blinds herself by staring into the light, thus sacrificing her sight for the love of her husband.

A simpleton finds love but can't get past a pesky dog and some no-good kids.

Lefranc is vain selfish man. The only person he loves is his eldest son Bernard, a ship-of-the-line lieutenant. Richard, the youngest son, is a common fisherman. Bernard gets married to a rich heiress, Hélène d'Argel and Richard gets married on the same day with Louise Kermarech, daughter of a fisherman. Years later, Bernard looses his wife and disappears at sea. His daughter Germaine ignores her cousin Gaud and Yvonnic Lefranc. Richard also dies at sea. Germaine will bring grand-father Lefranc closer to his grand-children.

A short documentary about various insects.

Kurt Brenkendorf investigates as detective Joe Jenkins, with a keen sense of criminal psychology and astonishing deception tactics.

In a sleazy cigar and newspaper store in Rome, an old newsagent nicknamed "Papa Re" sells his wares, warmed only by an earthenware heater that his granddaughter brings him each evening. One day, the stove falls from his hand and breaks into a thousand pieces. The same evening, when he opens the kiosk, he finds inside a woman, huddled up, with her little daughter in her arms: it is Rosalba Vignas, a singer-songwriter who has been chased away by her lover, Cesare le Milanese, who fell in love with his younger colleague.

Laura, a blind girl, has been cared for since infancy by Mike, Whitey, and Sal, three crooks who have kept her ignorant of her true surroundings. After an operation restores her sight, Laura is disillusioned and embittered by the sordidness of her environment. She falls under the evil influence of the gang's leader, Dennis Sullivan, who teaches her the art of safecracking. Just as Laura is about to perform her first job, her three benefactors are released from jail because of insufficient evidence and rush to the scene of the robbery to prevent Laura's corruption. The owner of the safe gives the four a ranch in reward for thwarting the robbery, and they all start a new life in the West.

A doctor who cannot figure out what is wrong with his patient refers him to a detective, whom he hopes will be able to discern the cause of his mysterious illness.

The "Black Hound" band of desperadoes abduct a candidate for governor and demand a heavy ransom for him, but the hero and the girl lead a successful rescue party.

Martin co-owns a farm and its lighthouse on the rocky coast. Banker Josiah induces him to speculate in oil where he loses everything but the banker is willing to forget Martin’s debt in exchange for the latter’s daughter in marriage.

A serial of short instructional films using footage of Babe Ruth to explain the fundamentals of playing baseball.

By Caravan through East Africa.

When Pinto reaches her eighteenth birthday, the five wealthy Arizonans who adopted her upon the death of her parents decide that ranch life will never make a lady of her. Their old friend Pop Audry, formerly of Arizona and now a member of New York society, agrees to provide Pinto with the necessary education. Accordingly, Pinto and her cowboy nursemaid Looey are dispatched to New York where they lose Audry's address. ...

Young Victor Jones of America is discovered to be an exact lookalike for England's Earl of Rochester, a circumstance which results in Jones deciding to replace the Earl after an unfortunate accident.

Shot on location in Paris, Monte Carlo and the Riviera with both American and French actors. When Matthew Versigny discovers that the jewels his diamond company has been buying are fake, he travels to Europe to track down the counterfeiter. With him are his sister, Marguerite and her sweetheart, Paul Bernac, who is an agent in the French Secret Service.