Lobby card for Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927)

“I found myself becoming bored with the stationary camera, and I wanted to be completely free. The cameramen never refused to do what I asked of them, but they were not particularly pleased at the idea of having to hold the camera. At that time there were no lightweight cameras, and hand-holding was very tiring. Eventually, we invented a sort of cuirasse which, strapped to the chest, supported the camera.”

– Abel Gance, interviewed by Kevin Brownlow for his book The Parade’s Gone By (1968)

Image from Queen Christina (1933)

“Garbo asked me, ‘What do I play in this scene?’ Remember she is standing there for 150 feet of film — 90 feet of them in close-up. I said, ‘Have you heard of tabula rasa? I want your face to be a blank sheet of paper. I want the writing to be done by every member of the audience. I’d like it if you could avoid even blinking your eyes, so that you’re nothing but a beautiful mask.’ So in fact there is nothing on her face: but everyone who has seen the film will tell you what she is thinking and feeling. And always it’s something different. Each one writes his own ending to the film; and it’s interesting that this is the scene everyone remembers most clearly. . . .”

– Rouben Mamoulian, speaking about the final shot in Queen Christina, interviewed for Sight & Sound (Summer 1961)

Publicity photo for Woman of the Year (1942)

During the casting of the 1942 film Woman of the Year, Katharine Hepburn was selected to play opposite screen veteran Spencer Tracy, thus beginning a professional and personal relationship that would last for twenty-five years (they did eight additional films together and had a legendary — and technically illicit — romantic relationship). When the regal Hepburn met the short and stocky Tracy for the first time, she said in her distinctive patrician manner, ‘I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy.’ A commanding figure, Hepburn did not often meet men who could stand up to her, so her respect for Tracy shot up when he replied, ‘Not to worry, Miss Hepburn, I’ll soon cut you down to size.’”

– Source: Viva la Repartee by Dr. Mardy Grothe

Poster for The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, the new Preston Sturges film, seems to me funnier, more adventurous, more abundant, more intelligent, and more encouraging than anything that has been made in Hollywood for years… The essential story is hardly what you would expect to see on an American scene. . . . The girl’s name, Trudy Kockenlocker, of itself relegates her to a comic-strip world in which nothing need be regarded as real; the characters themselves are extremely stylized. . . . Thanks to these devices the Hays office has either been hypnotized into a liberality for which it should be thanked, or has been raped in its sleep.”

– James Agee, from his review in The Nation (January 1944)

Frame from a Pepe Le Pew cartoon

“Were some of the Warners characters based on yourself?

I didn’t have to leave home to find the mistakes the Coyote would make. I mean, give me any tool and I’m in trouble. I have yet to learn the mysteries of a screwdriver. My wife and daughter would go hide when I’d start to hang a painting.

Now, the other side of the picture for me was Pepe Le Pew, the amorous French skunk. There’s the guy I always wanted to be. Every man wants to be so sure of himself with women that he could never even dream he’d offended her.”

– Chuck Jones, interviewed in 1971 by Peter Bogdanovich for his book Who the Devil Made It

Poster for The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

“Moral influence can’t be measured. The artist does contribute to the moral climate of his time. . . . Did a film like The Grapes of Wrath play any part in arousing a social conscience in America? Or was it the result of the social awareness arising out of New Deal politics? Which is the cause and which is the effect? We are a part of history and we also make history.”

– Lindsay Anderson, as quoted in The Film Director as Superstar (1970)

Promotional painting for Robin Hood (1922)

“Were you concerned with historical accuracy on Robin Hood?

Well, we were accurate as far as the period of the story is concerned, the costuming and so on. We had experts come in and work on that. And the story of Prince John’s perfidy was true — the Sheriff of Nottingham was in cahoots with him. And there may have been a Robin Hood — nobody knows. If there was, he was probably ‘a flat-footed Englishman walking through the woods’ as Doug said. Certainly there was no band — we took complete liberties with the spirit of Robin Hood and his crowd, and naturally the love-story was more or less invented. But Doug was always insistent on historical accuracy, though I doubt there was ever a castle as big as ours.”

– Allan Dwan, interviewed in 1968-1969 by Peter Bogdanovich for his book Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer

Poster for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

“I did insist on having Peter Lorre. He had just done M with Fritz Lang and this was his first British role. He had a very sharp sense of humor. They called him ‘the walking overcoat’ because he went around in a long coat that came down to his feet.”

– Alfred Hitchcock, interviewed in 1962 by Françoise Truffaut

Here’s a link to download the classic silent comedy: Sherlock Jr. (1924). Unfortunately, Internet Archive doesn’t give you the option to stream this movie, and the download file is a whopping 700MB.

That said, this is one of Buster Keaton’s best films. At 44 minutes, its length is somewhere between a short and a feature, though the intricacy of the gags and surreal jabs at cinematic conventions (a sleeping Keaton walks into a movie screen and joins a parallel story) make this one of the finest comedies ever made — silent or sound.

Poster for The Lost World (1925)

You may have read that King King (1933) was the first movie to use stop motion animation to create its creatures. That isn’t correct. The first one was the silent feature The Lost World (1925).

“While filming one of the stop-motion scenes, the cameraman spotted a pair of pliers in the picture. So as not to draw attention to them by having them suddenly disappear, he moved them a little at a time until they were out of the shot.”

–Source: Internet Movie Database