A must for silent comedy fans. Milestone has released Cut to the Chase! The Charley Chase Collection, a 2-disc, 16-short gathering of silent comedian Charley Chase's work from the years 1924 to 1926, with several of the titles apparently new to DVD. A silent clown whom appreciative audiences considered an "A-lister" among the likes of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, Chase never received the whole auteur canonization those three masters were given back in the 1960s and 1970s (even though Chase was directly involved in the writing and direction of his shorts, too). However, after watching Cut to the Chase! The Charley Chase Collection, what's readily apparent is that almost one hundred years later, Chase can make you laugh just as long and hard as The Big Three do―and that's all that really counts in the end. No extras for these as-good-as-you-can-get black and white t...Read the entire review

THE FILMS:

Mary Pickford was both the most famous female Hollywood star of the silent era and, in some respects, an "auteur," though of a different stripe than the Chaplins and Keatons: She didn't direct or write her own pictures (at least not in any official, credited capacity), but she controlled her career in a way that remains rare and impressive for a film actor even today. Pickford cultivated a plucky, young, innocent persona that made her a hugely popular box-office draw, shrewdly handpicking her scenarists and directors to create films of artistic merit that would also showcase her distinctive appeal; sh...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Please Note: The stills used here are taken from the film's promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

Lionel Rogosin's 1957 film On the Bowery is a landmark of independent cinema and a key component in the expansion of the documentary genre. Shot over several months in New York's infamous skid row district, Rogosin adopts the ethos of the Italian Neorealists and applies it to the American experience. His movie, while not perfect, is an emotional document of a harsh reality, teeming with honest interest that goes far beyond mere voyeurism or common exploitation.

The son of a wealthy textile family, Rogosin turned to filmmaking as a response to WWII. He wanted to make sense of a world he though...Read the entire review

Araya (1959), a rarely shown French-Venezuelan ethnological documentary/tone poem about salt miners, is the kind of revelatory movie-watching experience passed from one enthusiastic viewer to another. After reviewing it for his column, DVD Savant noticed an extra screener in our DVD reviewer's pool and to me emailed the following: "Quick - ARAYA." Savant's recommendation was good enough for me, and I'm glad I scooped it up.

The Venezuelan-born, French-educated filmmaker who directed Araya, Margot Benacerraf (b. 1926), made just two movies; this, her second, was her only feature-length work. Though Araya shared, with Hiroshima mon amour, the International Critics Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, she struggled for years afterward to get financing for her next project. She finally gave up. The only explanation for this is that both Araya and her 1952 short R...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

The Araya peninsula, on the Venezuelan coast, was for hundreds of years home to salt-mining and fishing villages in which generation after generation of struggling but resilient residents lived and worked. In the late 1950s, industrialization finally reached these remote communities, instantaneously beginning to erode their way of life. Right on the cusp of the arrival of the machines that would soon replace most of the human hands needed for the available work on the peninsula, filmmaker Margot Benacerraf brought a crew to the coastal villages of Araya with the project of capturing something of the vitality, beauty, and severe difficulty of the villagers' lives and work. The result is Araya, a towering work of cinema that, while strictly sp...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

There are a couple of different ways Margot Benacerraf's 1959 film Araya could be referred to as a cinematic time capsule. For one, it preserves a way of life that, at the time, was quite possibly going to disappear, thanks to the ever-expanding reach of industrial technology. For another, despite winning accolades around the world, including a prize at Cannes, Araya fell off the map until a theatrical restoration and re-release in 2009. This rediscovery lead to a new appreciation of Araya, a compelling appropriation of the documentary format, turning real life into filmic poetry.

The Araya region was a peninsula in Venezuela known for its extensive salt marsh. The Spanish stumbled on it in 1500 A.D. and quickly began to exploit...Read the entire review

Lionel Rogosin's 1957 film On the Bowery is a landmark of independent cinema and a key component in the expansion of the documentary genre. Shot over several months in New York's infamous skid row district, Rogosin adopts the ethos of the Italian Neorealists and applies it to the American experience. His movie, while not perfect, is an emotional document of a harsh reality, teeming with honest interest that goes far beyond mere voyeurism or common exploitation.

The son of a wealthy textile family, Rogosin turned to filmmaking as a response to WWII. He wanted to make sense of a world he thought had gone crazy and to use his family's riches for something more important than just making more money. It took him a while to suss out just how to make a film, and to assemble his...Read the entire review

...Read the entire review