MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

No dialogue was spoken but the messages rang out loud and clear in each of these silent film classics! This silence-is-golden set includes Nosferatu (1929), Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde (1920), Metropolis (1927), Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914), His Majesty, the Scarecrow (1914), Magic Cloak of Oz (1914), The Wizard of Oz (1914), Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Pollyanna (1920) and Little Annie Rooney (1925).

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: All
• Number of Discs: 3
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Screen: Black and White
• Features:
  • Disc 1:
  • Silent classics poster gallery
  • Disc 2:
  • Wizard of Oz gallery
  • Disc 3:
  • Mary Pickford Poster Gallery

AWARDS

• Berlin International Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2010

• Library of Congress

•     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1990

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2001
•     Film Presented - 2000

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  F.W. Murnau, John S. Robertson, Fritz Lang, John Farrell MacDonald, L. Frank Baum, Larry Semon, Maurice Tourneur, Adolph Zukor, Paul Powell, William Beaudine, Marshall Neilan

• Producer:

  Albin Grau, Enrico Dieckmann, Erich Pommer, L. Frank Baum, Adolph Zukor, Mary Pickford

• Screenwriter:

  Henrik Galeen

• Book Author:

  Bram Stoker

• Screenwriter:

  Clara S. Beranger

• Book Author:

  Robert Louis Stevenson

• Screenwriter:

  Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, L. Frank Baum, Leon Lee

• Book Author:

  L. Frank Baum

• Screenwriter:

  Larry Semon, Frances Marion, Ralph Spence, Hope Loring, Louis D. Lighton

• Book Author:

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

• Cinematographer:

  Gunther Krampf, Fritz Arno Wagner, Roy Overbaugh, Karl W. Freund, Günther Rittau, Frank B. Good, H.F. Koenekamp, Leonard Smith, Lucien Andriot, Charles Rosher Sr., Hal Mohr, Walter Stradling

• Composer (Music Score):

  Hans Erdmann, Gottfried Huppertz, Louis F. Gottschalk, Gaylord Carter

• Editor:

  Sam S. Zimbalist

• Production Designer:

  Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht, Max Parker

• Art Director:

  Albin Grau, Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht, Robert Stevens, Harry Oliver, Jack Schulze, Paul Youngblood

• Costume Designer:

  Anne Willkom

• Special Effects:

  Eugen Schüfftan

• Intertitle Writer:

  Leon Lee, Tom McNamara

• Short Story Author:

  Katherine Hennessey

REVIEWS:

• Mary Pickford once again made a very convincing 12-year-old in this sentimental melodrama, a huge success for the star after a couple of misfires. In the opening scenes, it is almost as if "America's Sweetheart" has joined the "Our Gang" kids. Playing Annie Rooney, the daughter of a Lower Eastside cop (Walter James), Pickford hurls bricks and bottles at her tenement enemies, crawls through a lead-pipe, punches poor Joe Butterworth in the nose and attacks the opposing kids (real kids, at that) in a chariot made from a run-down baby carriage. She is totally believable throughout, no mean feat for an actress already on the wrong side of 30. Little Annie Rooney, however, is no farce but a tried-and-true tearjerker, in which Annie's father, a goodhearted Irish cop (Walter James, is killed in a gangland dispute. Although credited to one Katherine Hennessy, who was in reality Mary's grandmother, the story was wholly conjured up by Pickford herself in response to a deluge of letters from moviegoers demanding the return of her now patented spirited tomboy. And, being her own producer, Pickford made sure that the trappings were first class, from cameraman Charles Rosher's magnificent compositions to recreating an entire Lower Eastside tenement block on the back lot of United Artists in West Hollywood. The results of her hard work proved one of Pickford's most successful pictures and one which can be enjoyed by young and old to this very day. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
• John Barrymore always looked just a little bit maniacal even when playing it straight and that trait actually adds to his portrayal of the oh-so-saintly Dr. Jekyll. Barrymore's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Mr. Hyde has become justly famous and if the ham is sliced a bit thick, well, all the better. The great actor was playing Richard III on Broadway at the time and a bit of Shakespearean comportment seems to have crept into Barrymore's Hyde, who scurries through the fog-bound back-lot London in an almost simian fashion. Surprisingly, the often maligned Nita Naldi adds an almost modern sexuality as the ill-fated cabaret dancer, an contrivance not in Stevenson's original but copied in the two most famous sound remakes. The contrasting Martha Mansfield, as good girl Millicent Carew, is the standard ingénue but she, too, is allowed a couple of nice moments in what essentially is a Barrymore tour de force. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
• Despite the seeming limitations of silent film, this may be the truest and the most watchable version of Kate Douglas Wiggin's novel, with brisk pacing, vividly drawn characters, and a totally beguiling performance at its core from Mary Pickford, who is able to pull off the impersonation of a plucky 13-year-old with amazing success (for this role, it is as they say also about Shakespeare's Juliet, that it takes an adult actress to find the range, sincerity, and passion needed, at least so adults can resonate to the piece). Pickford's eyes are so magnificently expressive that she does with them more than Shirley Temple, in the most familiar sound version, can do with her whole body, her voice, and a locked in musical accompaniment. The supporting performances are excellent as well, and just as carefully drawn and nuanced; indeed, there's a lot to be drawn from Marshall Neilan's direction, even 90 years later -- one suspects that Michael Landon, in planning the Little House on the Prairie TV series, took some cues from it either directly or indirectly, and more than one filmmaker aiming for family fare in the 21st century could still learn something from the light touch and deceptively delicate textures employed here. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• Though she may have hated to admit it, there's rarely been a better match between star and part than Mary Pickford in the title role of Pollyanna. Yes, it was a safe and conventional choice for the actress to make, and it may not have challenged her one bit, but that doesn't change the fact that Pickford is perfect in the part. Granted, that fact still doesn't mean that Pollyanna will be everyone's cup of tea. There's no denying the excessive sugariness that permeates the entire film from first frame to last, and many viewers -- especially teenagers -- will find Pollyanna's incessant optimism too hard to take. But for those who can get into the spirit of the piece, and can sit back and admire Pickford's effortless artistry, it can be a richly rewarding experience. Overloaded with charm, blessed with an undeniable appeal, and able to pull off the seemingly out-of-character "send the fly to heaven" sequence, Pickford is a treasure in this film. There's good support from the likes of Katherine Griffith as sour Aunt Polly and a personable Howard Ralston, as well as appropriate direction from Paul Powell, but they're only buttressing the main event here -- Pickford. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi
• Set around the apocalyptic year of 2000, Metropolis has had a seminal influence on science fiction and futuristic movies as diverse as The Bride of Frankenstein, Blade Runner, and Dark City. Featuring literally a cast of thousands, Metropolis creates a reality so complex and artistically unified the viewer gets swept away to this future world. Director Fritz Lang's surreal and occasionally incomprehensible storyline is overwhelmed by a visually spectacular exercise in German expressionism. Master cinematographer Karl Freund fills the screen with an array of stylized shadows, oblique camera angles, geometric images, and nightmarish labyrinths. The film's dialectical theme may seem dated in these post-Marxist times, and its message that the head and the hand can do no good without the heart may seem a little romantic to more cynical ages, but the warnings about techno-demagoguery continue to have modern relevance. The actors give typical silent-film performances, full of exaggerated expressions and broad gestures, but they express their characters' fragile humanity despite these mannerisms. Rudolf Klein-Rogge's unforgettable work as the evil genius Rotwang became the template for all subsequent mad-scientist performances. Despite being a critical and popular disappointment on its initial release, the film eventually gained cult status and was rediscovered by critics and audiences alike. When it was re-released in the 1980s, some missing footage was restored and a synthesizer-heavy soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder was added, to much gnashing of critical teeth. ~ Dan Jardine, Rovi
• The film that brought one of German cinema's masters to international attention, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) is also one of the best screen versions of Dracula, even if the Bram Stoker source received no credit. Eschewing the elaborately artificial studio-bound sets that gave most German Expressionist films their luridly somber mood, Murnau used actual central European locations for his vampire tale, and he created a foreboding atmosphere through such cinematic techniques as negative exposures and stop-motion photography. Shot by Fritz Arno Wagner, the dramatic shadows and low angles that made Max Schreck's Dracula-esque vampire tower over his environs intensified the already frightening presence of Schreck's deathly vampire makeup. The effect of the low angles was not lost on Orson Welles and Gregg Toland when they made Citizen Kane (1941). Though some critics have noted that the stop-motion effects have not aged particularly well, Nosferatu's air of almost apocalyptic doom remains timeless, and Murnau's combination of real locations and a superhuman monster is a key precursor to, among others, Alfred Hitchcock's horror of the everyday and familiar. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi