alr

Isn't Life Wonderful

Live piano accompaniment by Yakov Gubanov
Screening on Film
Directed by D.W. Griffith.
With Carol Dempster, Neil Hamilton, Erville Alderson.
US, 1924, 35mm, black & white, silent, 115 min.

Filmed in post-Versailles Germany, this tough-times drama sees Griffith examining the hardships that prevail in war's aftermath, utilizing a gritty style that some have taken as a precursor to the Italian neo-realism that followed the second World War. Polish orphan Inga (Dempster) struggles to hold together the family that has taken her in while hoping to marry Paul (Hamilton), who returns from the front suffering from gas poisoning. The potato garden he secretly tends at his shipyard job serves as a poignant, if sentimental, symbol of the young couple's shared hopes for the future in this classic love-conquers-all tale.

Part of film series

Read more

In The Trenches: Filming World War I

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada