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What classifies as a lost film? On one side, there are silent films that Hollywood studios dumped in the Pacific Ocean once talkies took over. On another, there is Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, which he suppressed for personal moral reasons, and there are also movies like Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, which was caught in legal trouble for years before it was finally edited and debuted in 2018.

Bill Morrison expands on these ideas of lost cinema with The Village Detective: a song cycle, a project about a recovered print of The Village Detective (1969) starring populist Soviet actor Mikhail Žarov—who acted in roles criticizing the bourgeoisie and socialism—and how the film is well known to Russians of a certain age but lost to many in post-Soviet Union Russia. By comparison, it’s like if network television stopped showing It’s A Wonderful Life...

German director Uli Edel (“The Baader Meinhof Complex”) is set to direct “Heisenberg,” an adaptation of Richard von Schirach’s historical book “The Night of the Physicists: Operation Epsilon: Heisenberg, Hahn, Weizsäcker and the German Bomb,” about the team of German physicists who tried to develop the atom bomb for Germany during World War II.

Munich-based companies Kj Entertainment and Fireworks Entertainment are teaming up with Film Manufacturers Inc. (Fmi) in New York to co-produce “Heisenberg” from a script by Marco Wiersch (“Der Fall Barschel”).

Published in Germany in 2012, von Schirach’s book traces the efforts of Germany’s top physicists to develop an atomic bomb for the Nazi government during the war. Arrested by the Allies in the spring of 1945, the scientists first hear of the U.S. attack on Hiroshima while detained in a country house near Cambridge.

“The Night of the Physicists” is described as “the story...

Michael Caine celebrates his 87th birthday on March 14, 2020. The two-time Oscar winner shows no signs of slowing down, amassing dozens of credits in the span of over 50 years. But how many of those titles are classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 20 of Caine’s greatest films, ranked worst to best.

The English-born thespian first came to the attention of movie audiences with a prominent role in the historical epic “Zulu” (1964). He earned his first Oscar nomination as Best Actor just two years later for “Alfie” (1966), playing a devil-may-care ladies man who starts to face the consequences of his actions. The role made Caine an international star, providing him with leading roles both in the UK and the Us.

He won his first Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for playing a man desperately in love with his wife’s sister in “Hannah and Her Sisters...

Jim Knipfel Sep 18, 2017

One of the earliest scary clown movies, The Man Who Laughs was also an influence on the creation of Batman villain, The Joker...

Clowns, both creepy and, well, slightly less creepy, were lurking about in the shadows for thousands of years before Stephen King’s evil clown Pennywise shambled along with those sinister red balloons of his. The Egyptians had them, the Greeks had them, the Romans had them. But in the 17th and 18th centuries, an interesting and telling thing happened.

See related The Croods 2 has been cancelled

During the Middle Ages, the clown and the performing freak were essentially one and the same. The jesters and fools who entertained in the royal courts of Europe were usually attired in flamboyant and garish costumes and makeup, and were often physically deformed in some way. After that, however, the two began to tear themselves apart, with the...

Even casual horror fans are familiar with the silent Universal classics The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which starred the legendary “Man of a Thousand Faces” Lon Chaney, Sr. in his two most iconic screen roles. The box-office success of those two films led the studio in 1928 to adapt The Man Who Laughs, a story by Hunchback author Victor Hugo, into one of their first sound productions, with music and sound effects (but no recorded dialog). While Chaney did not return for this one (he was under contract to MGM by that time), the lead role was taken on by another screen legend, Conrad Veidt – best remembered by horror fans as the creepy sleepwalker Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Just as in Hunchback, the title character here is not technically a “monster,” but a sympathetic figure who happens to be horribly disfigured... but like the grotesque Quasimodo,...

Unheimliche Geschichten (Uncanny Tales) is a remake... except it isn't. And it's an anthology film... except it isn't. Richard Oswald, Austrian movie master, made a film of that title in 1919, a horror film which blended stories by Poe, Stevenson and others into a single overarching narrative with Conrad Veidt as central character.

In 1932, four years before the Jewish Oswald was forced to flee the country, he made another Unheimliche Geschichten, a comic compendium that used some of the same source stories, including Poe's The Black Cat and Stevenson's The Suicide Club, but added a new one and used a different overall story to tie it all together. The film was intended as a parody of the whole German expressionist horror school, and if it lacks somewhat in the laughter department, it is nonetheless a fascinating summation of German silent cinema in the early sound era.

Oswald alternated between comedy and sometimes horror-tinged melodrama,...

By Colleen Wanglund, MoreHorror.com

Based on Maurice Renard’s 1920 novel Les Mains d’Orlac this earliest film version directed by Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari {1920}), though technically Austrian is a superb example of German Expressionism in the silent era of film.

Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) is a young and gifted pianist. Returning home from a concert, Orlac is badly injured in a train wreck. Orlac’s devoted wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) begs Dr. Serral (Hans Homma) to save the pianist’s hands. Serral removes the hands from the corpse of a recently executed robber/murderer and replaces Orlac’s hands, which were damaged beyond repair. Serral does not tell Orlac of the transplant surgery, but he finds out anyway.

Orlac returns home but his demeanor has changed. He is in despair over the state of his hands and is afraid to touch his own wife. Over the...

Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon Melancholia, A Separation Screenplay, Runner-Up Jeannie Berlin: National Society of Film Critics' Surprises Two interesting omissions from the Nsfc roster: critics' fave Michelle Williams (for portraying Marilyn Monroe in Simon Curtis' My Week with Marilyn) and George Clooney (for his stressed out father in Alexander Payne's The Descendants) weren't among the critics' top three actresses/actors. Dunst and Yun were followed by New York Film Critics winner Meryl Streep for her Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady; Brad Pitt was followed by Gary Oldman in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Jean Dujardin in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist. Dujardin, in fact, was The Artist's sole representative in the Nsfc 2011 roster. For the record the other runners-up were Christopher Plummer (Mike Mills' Beginners) and Patton Oswalt (Jason Reitman's Young Adult...