Your reviews are great, everyone. I appreciate this thread so much!
I went to a film festival in Stockholm about Women on the Silent Screen, and saw seven very rare films.
The first was a Mary Pickford movie which was long thought lost:
The Dawn of Tomorrow. This film from 1915 was recently rediscovered in the Swedish film archive, and restored. The print was worn, but there was no decomposition, and Matti Bye had written a music score for it.
The Dawn of Tomorrow is melodrama, which from what I have seen is typical of that period. It's based on the eternal lie, that poor people are happier than the rich, because only they can know true happiness. Still, it's a worthwhile film to watch, because of Mary Pickford, and also the other actors. There is barely any overacting here, I was astonished by the good performances all around. Mary shines, and gets to show what she goes for in a few luminous closeups. In 1915 she's already an expert, she's very natural and brings an earnestness to her role which could so easily be soppy and cliché.
I am so glad that this long lost movie was rediscovered! It only seemed awkward in a few places, as if there were scenes missing. I had trouble following the story during the murder sequence, I didn't get who killed who for a long time. This could either be my natural slowness in following plot developments, or it could be that the Swedish censors had cut some key bits there. I know they grew squirmish at the slightest hint of violence. Oh well. Thanks to restoration work and reconstruction of the original intertitles, most of the movie is intact today.
The next day I saw six more films:
Billy's Stratagem directed by D. W. Griffith
This short film isn't one of his more remarkable biographs. I love most of the Biograph short films I have seen, but this one mostly stands out in my mind for its hilariously horrible depiction of the Native Americans, who attack a settlement simply because they're drunk. The brave Billy of the title is played by a girl, hence, I think, why it was shown at this festival.
The Couragous Coward directed by William Worthington, and starring Sessue Hayakawa.
After having seen The Dragon Painter, I enjoyed watching this film fragment with some tender scenes between Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki. The story is about a man who is shamed by accusations of cowardice, but he can't prove that the accusations are unfounded, because then he will betray a friend. Sadly, the story is confusing because only the final scenes of the film survive today. But, like I said, they were worth seeing, and Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki had a lovely chemistry together. In the end, he asks her if she's going to abandon the fox trot and the twostep, and she laughingly says yes. I wonder if this was just a dig at the big city life?
Umanitá directed by Elvira Giallanella.
Umanitá was a movie made for children in Italy at the end of WWI, and I think it's the most interesting film on the programme. In fact, it is a unique anti-war movie, made just after the war had ended, when the trauma of it would have been fresh in the minds of even younger children. A boy has a dream about how he and his sister are the only humans to have survived an apocalypse brought on by a great war. They climb out of the rubble, and find themselves on a desolate battlefield. There are no corpses there, only helmets, weapons, bits of broken machinery and a whole army of empty boots lined up. All human life has been completely obliterated. Now it is the task of the boy and his sister to rebuild the world, with the help of God, who in the child's vision really is an old man in the sky. Still, the boy ends up making the same mistakes as his forefathers did.
At certain times, this movie is a bit amateurish and low budget, and towards the end it's rushed - which could be due to missing scenes. But, given that this was when movie makers had just started taking baby steps, I think it's a wonderful film. Elvira Gaillanella was on to something. The scenes in the beginning, when the children explore the battlefield, are particularly powerful in their horrifying, deadly stillness. The children are depicted with humour though, like when, since in the beginning she had climbed out of bed to steal marmelade, the boy discovers his sister in a huge jar of jam later on in his dream. The dream has an appropriate level of surrealness too. Sometimes it feels very genuine indeed.
Kaerlighed og Penge (Love or Money) This Danish movie from 1913 is very light and pleasant. It's about how a woman deals with her numerous admirers, who only love her for her money. Finally she puts the love of the man she cares for to a test, by pretending to have lost all her riches. All the while she's laughing behind her fan, almost as if she's playfully winking to the audience to join in her joke. It was very enjoyable to me, because it had no unnecessary drama.
Pas de Femmes! (No Women!)
A French farce from 1920, about an antifeminist who gets... not quite his just deserts, more like he finds redemption in the love of a good woman. Which is also satisfying. This anti-suffragist is a charicature of a misogynist, he can't stand being near women and lectures his hapless son about the virtues of celibacy. The son immediately goes on to fall in love, and tells the girl: "I have long swum in the waters of errancy. Please, don't let me drown in them." The girl doesn't. This movie doesn't have much to do with reality, since it's so exaggerated, but it's a lovely comedy.
Wanda's Trick
Wanda, who works in a cigarette factory, charms her boss, discovers she has won the lottery and uses that to further cigarette sales by saying that the one who buys a packet with her picture in it gets to marry her. Rather like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this causes cigarette sales to soar, as everyone hopes to win the golden ticket to her lottery money.
The humour in Wanda's Trick is very gentle, and on the whole the movie moves a bit slowly. Sometimes it's very funny, like in the restaurant scene where Wanda has to deal with her future husband, who not the kind of man she would have wished for. Satisfingly, Wanda ends up a partner in the cigarette company, and stays that way! The happy ending doesn't in any way mean she has to leave her job. I liked that, although the number of cigattes smoked in the film made me edgy.
The festival gave me an invaluable glimpse of another world. It was a good experience.
The lighting on her face as she prepares to open the door is staggering! Really a great film! 
