Vsevolod Pudovkin & Nikolai Shpikovsky - Chess Fever (1925)

"A tale of love, obsession ... and chess!" 

Chess Fever (original title: Шахматная горячка or Shakhmatnaya goryachka) is a 1925 short film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky. The film incorporates actual footage of the Moscow 1925 chess tournament and features cameos by many top chess masters of the time.

    José Raúl Capablanca – the World Champion

Vladimir Fogel – the boy

Anna Zemtsova – the girl

Natalya Glan

Zakhar Darevsky

Frank Marshall – himself (cameo)

Richard Réti – himself (cameo)

Carlos Torre Repetto – himself (cameo)

Frederick Yates – himself (cameo)

Ernst Grünfeld – himself (cameo)

Mikhail Zharov – house painter

Anatoli Ktorov – tram passenger

Yakov Protazanov – chemist

Yuli Raizman – chemist's assistant

Ivan Koval-Samborsky – policeman

Konstantin Eggert

Fyodor Otsep – game spectator (uncredited)

Sergei Komarov – grandfather (uncredited)

The hero's (Vladimir Fogel) preoccupation with chess leads to him missing his own wedding ceremony, but the marital peace is restored with the help of the World Chess Champion, José Raúl Capablanca.

Robert Siodmak & Edgar G. Ulmer - Menshen am Sonntag [People on Sunday] (1930)

Menschen am Sonntag (1930)
English Title: People on Sunday
German/Silent/B&W

1h 13min | 4 February 1930 

Directors: Robert Siodmak, 
Edgar G. Ulmer

Writers: Curt Siodmak, 
Billy Wilder

Cast:

Erwin Splettstößer - Himself (taxi driver)

Brigitte Borchert - Herself (record seller)

Wolfgang von Waltershausen - Himself (wine seller)

Christl Ehlers - Herself (an extra in films)

Annie Schreyer - Herself (model)

Kurt Gerron - Himself

Valeska Gert - Herself

Heinrich Gretler - Himself

Ernö Verebes - Himself

People on Sunday (1929) was the collaborative work of a formidable team of young German/Austrian film-makers, all of whom would end up making their careers in Hollywood. It was co-directed by Robert Siodmak, who went on to make several noir masterpieces of the 1940s, and Edgar Ulmer, king of the Poverty Row Z-movies. Siodmak and his brother Curt, who became a prolific Hollywood screenwriter, wrote the script in collaboration with Billy Wilder. Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, etc) was production assistant and the film was photographed by Eugen Schüfftan, special-effects wizard extraordinaire. For all the team except Schüfftan it was their first film--yet People on Sunday is like nothing any of them would ever make again.

The film is a beguiling blend of feature and documentary--a celebration of the everyday street life of late-1920s Berlin with, grafted on to it, a fictional story. As a story it's nothing startling--a commonplace affair of casual flirtations on a Sunday trip into the countryside--but it's handled with an honesty and sense of quietly ironic observation that's kept it fresh and engrossing for more than 70 years.

All the five principal players were amateurs who had never acted before, and who actually worked at the jobs their characters do in the film--taxi driver, music shop assistant, wine seller and so on. They all give natural and remarkably unselfconscious performances. People on Sunday was made at the very end of the silent era, the period that had seen the greatest flowering of German cinema. Yet there's nothing nostalgic about it. Light-hearted and clear-eyed, it's full of youthful vitality.

The negative of the film has long been lost. The present print, reconstructed by the Netherlands Film Museum, restores several passages missing from previous releases and is over 95 percent complete. 

Joseph DeGrasse - Bobbie of the Ballet (1916) [Lost Film]

Bobbie of the Ballet (1916)

USA/Silent/B&W

Directed by Joseph DeGrasse

Written by Grant Carpenter 

& Ida May Park

Cinemetography by George Kull

Cast (verified as complete):

Louise Lovely - Bobbie Brent

Lon Chaney - Hook Hoover

Jay Balasco - Jack Stimson

Jean Hathaway - Mrs. Stimson

Gretchen Lederer - Velma Vrooman

[no photo]

Gilmore Hammond - Henry Fox

Lule Warrenton - Mrs Hoover

Louise Emmons - Tennant dweller (uncredited)

John George - Tennant dweller (uncredited)

Bobbie of the Ballet was produced by Bluebird Photoplays, one of the three brands of motion pictures then being released by Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Released 12 June 1916. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.

Parentless ballet dancer Bobbie Brent must raise her young brother and sister. To keep the children, Bobbie pretends that they are her own, and that she herself is a widow. Jack Stimson, in love with Bobbie, considers this ruse deceitful and breaks off their relationship, but Velma Vrooman, Jack's old girlfriend, remains jealous of Bobbie. Pretending to get her a job, Velma arranges a meeting for Bobbie with a theatrical manager. The manager makes advances and Bobbie fights him off, but it takes Jack, who heard of the meeting and became suspicious, to rescue her. Finally, just as the court is about to take the children from Bobbie, Jack realises that he still loves her. They get married and so the court allows them to maintain custody of Bobbie's brother and sister. 

Bobbie of the Ballet is a lost film. 

Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy - Ballet Mécanique (1923-24)

Ballet Mécanique (1923–24)

Directors: Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy

Writer: Fernand Léger

Stars: Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, Katherine Murphy

Ballet Mécanique is a Dadaist post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy (with cinematographic input from Man Ray). It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil. However, the film premiered in a silent version on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna presented by Frederick Kiesler. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking.

In its original release, the film's French title was "Charlot présente le ballet mécanique" (as seen on the original print), referring to Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character as he was known in France. The image of a Cubist-style paper puppet of Charlot, by Leger, appears several times in the film. It is only the first of many visual puns in the film — a seeming display of the film's sheer visual modernity, as intended by its creators from the get-go.