Cinematic Era: 1923 Vintage

Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa

Farmer Alfalfa encounters a disingenuous salesman.

Glory Quayle and John Storm, sweethearts since childhood on the Isle of Man, go to London, Glory to become a nurse and John to enter a monastery. Instead, Glory becomes a theater star, and John renounces his vows because he cannot forget his love for her. Lord Robert Ure, who has already betrayed Glory's friend, Polly Love, incites the London populace against John....

Ruth, the owner of Haunted Valley, borrows a million dollars in order to finish a dam. The terms of the loan specify that if she doesn't pay it back in three months she will lose both Lost River Dam and Haunted Valley.

An Aesop’s Film Fables cartoon.

The industrialist's daughter has been kidnapped by the mad inventor Ravello, but Harry Peel stays hot on their trail with the help of his dog Greif. Behind a waterfall, he discovers the hidden gate to Ravello's castle, where the fiercest of battles now break out between the two and Harry finds himself confronted with a staircase that has been electrified and, once again, with the deadly robot.

When sleuth Nayland Smith steals evil Dr Fu-Manchu's 'Sacred Order', the Devil Doctor himself faces death at the hands of the Si-Fan organisation.

A German Shepherd puppy is "adopted" by a wolf pack in the snowy and frozen Great North and raised by them as one of their own. A few years later he comes upon a fur trapper and saves the man from certain death, and begins to feel a kinship with him that is stronger than the one he has with his adopted pack.

During a hectic taxi ride, a rich engineer loses his gold-plated lucky cane in the middle of Abel’s postal route. The taxi driver later looks for the cane and finds it in Abel’s hands. The two men enter into a shady agreement to split the finder’s fee. However, the prospect of great wealth proves too tempting for Abel... (Stumfilm.dk)

A melodrama about a virtuous wife unjustly abandoned by her husband, who get him back with the help of a Hindu mystic.

Based on Sax Rohmer’s third Fu-Manchu novel, The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917), this sensational episode sees Fu-Manchu partly paralysed by a bullet wound. The Devil Doctor snatches eminent surgeon Sir Baldwin Frazer to carry out the delicate operation he needs. Dr Petrie, abducted by Fu-Manchu’s scheming assistant, Zarmi, must assist – and choose a playing card to determine whether he lives or dies...

Patriotic melodrama. Marquise Berthe de Brabant got married to a French nobleman just before the beginning of World War I. Her husband gets severely injured in an attack against the Germans and hands over the bouquet of Berthe to a German officer, before dying without revealing his name. In turn, the German soldier gets injured and is sent to a military hospital, where Berthe is taking care of war victims. Unexpectedly he tells her everything. Will Berthe take revenge, or will she fulfill her duty as a nurse?

In an attempt to try and tame young city girl Charlotte Rowland, Bill Coryell, a young rancher, plans a fake kidnapping party from which he is to rescue her. However, a bully interferes and incites her against Bill, but Charlotte discovers the ruse in time to save herself and Coryell.

An Aesop’s Film Fables cartoon.

This northwoods comedy-drama, by way of a circus drama, was directed by John Griffith Wray for Thomas H. Ince, and stars Madge Bellamy.

A short film made by Walt Disney in 1923.

An adaptation of the first part of Balzac's History of the Thirteen, centered on the secret society of the Thirteen and helmed by René Navarre in the titular role of the former convict who became a sublime father.

Morris Brown, a New York gambler acquainted more with his checkbook than his prayer book, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. But Mollie, whose exuberant antics fill the film, unexpectedly meets her match--an engaging young yeshiva scholar who forsake tradition and joins the secular world to win her heart.

In his film version, Curt Goetz shifts the focus away from the poetic output towards the young Friedrich Schiller himself: on the misery of his soul whilst a pupil of the ducal military academy, his opposition to the strict physical drill and the narrow intellectual confines of the "Karlsschule", his juvenile passion for the works of Shakespeare, Klopstock and Lessing, his anger at unjust authorities, his devotion to women, and finally his inability to cope with financial matters

Lay Zee works on a farm and has won the heart of the farmer's daughter. There is oil on the farmland, and some swindlers are determined to get their hands on the property, by force if necessary. Lay Zee, who knows that oil has been found on nearby farms, convinces the farmer not to sell, and the swindlers enlist the help of another farmhand, who is jealous of Lay Zee's relationship with the girl.

SHOOT STRAIGHT - starring Paul Parrott, with Jobyna Ralston, Eddie Baker and George Rowe. A rarely-seen comedy short. Parrott is a hapless hunter in this predecessor to Tex Avery toons of the 1940s, and in a series of inventive gag sequences fails to capture squirrel, rabbit, chinchilla, bobcat, duck, and bear all in one reel.

A poor man is sent by his wife to buy fish. On the way to the fish market, he gets drunk, using the money he was supposed to buy the fish with. The man does not dare go home without fish, and he steals a small boat with fishing gear to try his luck. He does not catch any fish, and he drinks the rest of the alcohol he has left before he falls asleep in the boat. As he sleeps, he dreams that he is engaged in a coastal raid at Kavringen, where he experiences many marvelous things. When he wakes up his wife appears, and the mysteries he experienced in his sleep are resolved by his wife with striking arguments.

An outlaw named Duane ( Tom Mix ), captured by the Texas Rangers, is promised a pardon if he rounds up a gang of cattle thieves. The man he suspects as the leader is revealed to be the father of Duane's sweetheart, Helen ( Billie Dove ). Duane captures the gang, gets a pardon for Helen's father, and marries Helen.

The family of a Jewish Russian manufacturer suffer ruin and murder as victims of a pogrom during the Russian Revolution.

Orphan Enid White becomes the ward of a cruel man. She gets close to her guardian's wife and also to his son, who secretly comes to visit when his father is not around. One evening Enid is whipped by the patriarch, and hours later he is found dead. An investigation follows.

An Aesop’s Film Fables short.

Collars and Cuffs is a 1923 silent comedy film starring Stan Laurel.

A film by Charles Urban

South African Film

Variety star Kaja falls in love with fisherman Peter. But he in a unfortunate situation kills a man and is sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Kaja promises to wait for him, but things go badly for her.

When Mona Frentiss dies, she has her confidante "Doctor Bobs" watch over her family, especially her youngest daughter Patricia. The family has been raised in a most unconventional manner, with Mona having a much younger lover and the father Ralph keeping his own lover on the side. As Patricia grows older, she attracts the attention of her mother's former lover, the much older (than Patricia, who in the book is in her early to mid teens) Carey Scott. Patricia tempts fate with her wild ways, nearly loses her virtue to a musician aboard an ocean-going boat, and is saved in time by Carey. Realizing that he is the man for her, she settles down into an experimental marriage.

An Aesop’s Film Fables short.

Set in the oil-soaked country of “Chilitina”—shot on location in San Diego’s Balboa Park—Oils Well! follows the travails of Monty, an everyman office clerk, who thinks only of his boss’s daughter. When Herbert Hester, an oilman “so crooked he cheats when counting his pulse,” schemes to cover up the company’s new gusher so he can claim it himself and get the girl, Monty swings into action. He eludes the hapless Chilitinan army, sidesteps the General’s amorous wife, thwarts Herbert, and saves the day.

Hal Roach short is a spoof of the 1923 Western COVERED WAGON, which was a huge hit for Paramount. In this film a group of people are heading out West to Hollywood so they pack up their "wagons" and head out where they must battle various elements including crossing a dangerous river and battling Indians. The "wagons" are actually cars with a cover on them and the Indians even ride in on bicycles so you can tell the type of humor that Roach is going for.

A doctor researched the duplication of personality , and found in the person of René de Varennes, who had attempted suicide, a subject of study.

Reel 1, an oil field is located, drilled, brought in, and pumped. Shows the Garber Field in Oklahoma. Reel 2 shows how pipe is laid and cleaned. One section crosses the Red River. Includes views of an oil camp and of a casinghead gasoline extraction plant. Reel 3, oil is distilled at a refinery. Reel 4, wax is removed from oil, processed, and prepared for distribution. Oil products are carried in tank cars, trucks, barges, and ships.

A wealthy New York City stockbroker who sets out to prove that women are corrupted by wealth.

Three men, Lucky Bill ( Tom Mix ), Landry ( J. Gordon Russell ), and Morgan ( Jim Mason ) are in love with the same girl, pretty Molly ( Betty Jewel ). Lucky Bill finally wins her with his skillful horsemanship and dogged determination.

Dora Perkins is a country girl who runs away to New York City. She gets work as a nurse and marries Dr. Howard Fleming, a famed brain surgeon. Supposedly she dies in a fire, and some time later Fleming takes a vacation in the country, where by some odd coincidence he winds up meeting Dolly, Dora's sister. Without realizing her relationship to Dora, he marries her. Soon Dolly is expecting, and not long after, Dora pops up -- she survived the fire, but has been left hopelessly insane.

"The Tales of Hoffmann" - The story of the poet Hoffmann, who falls in love with a mechanical doll, loses his mirror image in Venice and finally liberates his lover from the clutches of a sinister doctor.

Nayland Smith restores a `dead' man to life.

A department store clerk decides to marry a withdrawing colleague with tuberculosis, over another dashing, ambitious suitor, leads to a life of hardship and struggle. Though The Nth Commandment survives incomplete, enough exists of director Frank Borzage’s last film while under contract with William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures for scholar Hervé Dumont to declare “it the first truly Borzagian work.”

An Aesop’s Film Fables cartoon.

Duke Travis returns from the war suffering from shell shock and an inordinate fear of guns. His father, a ranch owner, refuses to accept Duke's disability and considers him a coward.

Jane Maynard opens a mission in memory of philanthropist Bland Hendricks. John Anstell, son of a powerful and selfish millionaire, Michael Anstell, falls in love with Jane, to the old man's disapproval. Anstell tries to undermine Jane's work by hiring reporter Tom Barnett to write an unfavorable story about the mission.

Two lively and famous Petersens, namely Robert Storm and Hans W., play prominent roles in this little comedy about a morally vigilant pharmacist, his somewhat more cheerful son, his crush on the pharmacy’s new cashier, Miss Hansen, and the equally enthusiastic two Petersens. Joy of life and free spirit clash with virtue and double standards in Copenhagen's nightlife, and the film’s programme is inscribed with the proclamation: ’The morality you display is not always the best!’ (Stumfilm.dk).

In Happy-Go-Luckies a pair of ukulele-strumming railroad hoboes fake their way into a dog show and make off with the prize loot. “Two heads are better than one” is the moral. To modern eyes, our trickster duo may look like two dogs—in the show they pretend to be one long dog—but audiences of the ’20s would have recognized a dog-and-cat team. The black body, white face, and sharp ears would have been most familiar from the greatest jazz-era trickster cat, Felix. Dogs and cats—much easier to animate than humans—were everywhere in silent cartoons. Terry, like most early film animators, had begun as a newspaper cartoonist, and his first strip, working with his brother as a teenager for the San Francisco Call, was about the adventures of a dog named Alonzo.

An Aesop’s Film Fables short.

A prosecutor instructs the audience of a courtroom to observe the tearful and slightly hysterical wife (Helen Gilmore) who is sitting in the witness box, and claims she is this way due to her husband, who shows up very infrequently. For the defence (James Finlayson), he never did anything to be proud of - and was proud of it. He sits there smirking and sipping a glass of water before being momentarily distracted. He goes to take another sip of his drink but instead picks up a different glass containing something very different.

Kid Roberts, the champion, thoroughly beats a tough Westerner (from Chickasha, OK) who follows him from city to city, determined to get even. The man taunts the Kid, by insisting that he is afraid to fight without gloves. Finally his wife appears and begs the Kid to refuse to fight her husband because he is neglecting his ranch and family. The Kid's sweetheart and the ranchman's wife do some scheming and succeed in ending the fights, but not until the Kid has beaten his opponent with his bare hands. Ninth episode in the first 'Leather Pushers' series of two-reel boxing shorts.