so what if 'Aryan' meant 'Anglo/Saxon' - you still have the 'birthright' part of the title, which means the film is claiming whites were divinely ordained to rule. Woodrow Wilson said that exactly in his history of the reconstruction, it was a common idea in 1915, as was keeping the races separate, ...

Many people DO feel that Gone With the Wind is a racist film. However it makes a better case for the 'necessity' so to speak of the Klan (even if it doesn't name them) than BoaN does - in GWtW we're shown open lawlessness, a (serially) direct threat to life and limb in this shanty town, while in Boa...

I would say that, not only do people need to see BoaN for themselves, but they also need to know actual Civil War/reconstruction history to see where BoaN is inaccurate or lapses into pure melodrama. I myself don't like the question being phrased as 'was Griffith a racist' since people do change ove...

I just finished watching Ken Burns' documentary 'Unforgivable Blackness' about the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. When Johnson won the title white America was outraged to learn that he preferred the company of white women, and not any single one but an entourage. I...

...Alloy...

I sure hope they have a choice of scores, if it's Alloy only I'll stay content with my VHS versions.

I have 14 Thames/Photoplay restorations on laserdisc: Ben-Hur (now on DVD) The Big Parade Broken Blossoms The Crowd The Eagle Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse The General Our Hospitality Show People The Strongman The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg The Thief of Bagdad The Wind A Woman of Affairs I j...

I really don't know about the donkey; I know many horses were routinely killed in stampede scenes, or in the chariot pile-up in Ben-Hur. Animal life was cheap in early Hollywood, but on the other hand some horses can be taught go down on command to make it look like they were killed so it could be t...

Grapevine once released The Pony Express with George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez, Ernest Torrence, and Wallace Beery. What a cast...slightly better-than-average for Grapevine qualitywise.

I didn't know The Salvation Hunters was available to be seen - it's been one of my 'most wanted' silents for a very long time.

I hope he will so honor us again at some point in the future - now that the week's over several questions have come to me...

Well I would like to have all of the Brownlow/Gill, and later Brownlow, documentaries out on DVD; if Griffith, Harold Lloyd, the deMille documentary, could be part of a Hollywood box I'd take it, or if they could maybe be a separate documentary box of their own that would be excellent.

On the off chance that Mr. Brownlow might be checking back on these comments, I would like to suggest that, if audio interviews still exist with silent screen actors/directors/technicians who were interviewed for The Parade's Gone By but who had passed on before the Hollywood series was filmed, exce...

Actually the Silas Lynch character is pure fiction, as no African-American held any executive position at that time in South Carolina (or, I believe, anywhere else) so that all elements of the plot concerning that character are contrivances for the sake of Griffith's purposes. That Stoneman is 'patt...

I've never sensed that the Coppola restoration of Napoleon is moving too fast; I'd lot rather have a silent move too fast than too slow (see 'Limite') I also think the Coppola score is fantastic, but would still be interested in hearing Carl Davis' score. April 27th for La Roue - didn't realize it w...

I enjoyed this film immensely, though I'm not certain yet how I really feel about it. There were some fleeting elements of melodrama and I didn't necessarily like how it ended up, but my first thought was 'so the whole Wal-Mart phenomenon isn't new.' The print is gorgeous and the camerawork endlessl...