Joan the Woman
Keeping silent cinema alive, by offering audiences a chance to rediscover films from the era with the accompaniment of talented pianists, is an essential component of the Cinémathèque's programming. As digital technology continues to invent new ways of creating images, it is more relevant than ever to remember how eloquent the images from the so-called silent era of film history truly were. It's fascinating to see how much these works and filmmakers contributed to modern cinema – not to mention that it is always a pleasure to return, for a few hours, to the era of images that speak for themselves.
Accompanied on the piano by Chantale Morin
Restored version by the George Eastman Museum
Using the backdrop of World War I as a framing story, an English soldier, played by matinee idol Wallace Reid, in a trench uncovers a buried sword that once belonged to Joan of Arc. From there the film flashes back to 15th Century France. (George Eastman Museum)
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille was an American director and producer. Initially an actor in the 1900s, he co-founded a film production company with Jesse L. Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn (the precursor to Paramount) and directed the first feature film shot in Hollywood, The Squaw Man (1914). Through numerous vaudeville comedies starring Gloria Swanson, he became one of the most important directors of silent films in the 1920s. He then specialized in adventure and historical films, such as The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Northwest Mounted Police (1940, his first Technicolor film), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), Unconquered (1947), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956). A pioneer of his art and an independent producer, Cecil B. DeMille was one of the few directors to enjoy complete artistic freedom throughout his career and one of the first to envision cinema as entertainment for the general public. A great director of crowd scenes, he managed to impose his own distinctive and recognizable style. While his name remains associated with extravagance and grandeur in cinema, Cecil B. DeMille is nonetheless one of the most important directors of the Golden Age of American cinema. Like David W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin, his career was decisive, and his influence was significant on his contemporaries and subsequent generations of filmmakers.
