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There were numerous superstars during the silent era from the clown princes of comedy Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd to such dramatic and action icons as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish. One was a good boy — the German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin. Not only is Rin Tin Tin, aka Rinty, credited with saving Warner Bros., but Hollywood lore also insists he, not Emil Jannings, was the first Best Actor Oscar winner.

With Warner Brothers celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and the Academy Awards just around the corner, it’s time to look at the Rinty phenomenon and its place in Hollywood history.

Rinty wasn’t the first canine star. Blair, the pet collie of British director Cecil Hepworth, headlined his 1905 thriller “Rescued by Rover.” The film was so popular it had to be shot twice because the...

Do you remember the last time you cried at a movie? I mean, had to stop the film for a few minutes just to recover kind of crying? I had that experience watching King Vidor’s World War I epic The Big Parade, now available on a beautiful Blu-Ray from Warner Brothers.

The Big Parade is one of those epic films that silent Hollywood was well known for: sweeping vistas, massive casts, melodramatic tales of love, war, and redemption. Some of these epics fall flat now, with our contemporary need for sound, kinetic camerawork, rousing speeches and booming scores. While the score is still there – and it is booming, to say the least – The Big Parade is an intimate story surrounded by an epic event, making it one of the most affecting wartime dramas ever made.

The film follows the fortunes of spoiled rich guy Jim Apperson (John Gilbert) and...

Lon Chaney fans can revel in Kino’s Blu-ray transfer of The Penalty, featuring one of the thousand faces that first catapulted the extremely talented performer into one of the most celebrated careers in film history. As a double amputee, Chaney is in top form, the motif of the disenfranchised, the butchered, the mutated, the unloved outstretched in full glory here, once again, to the detriment of his own health.

The film opens with a title card announcing that there’s been “A victim of the city traffic,” and we see a young boy has been seriously wounded. A young Dr. Ferris (Charles Clary), however, has mistakenly amputated the boy’s legs, a fact indiscreetly announced by the physician’s older colleague, Dr. Allen (Kenneth Harlan). The young boy overhears their discussion and Dr. Allen’s plan to lie to the boy’s parents by saying that the amputation saved the boy’s life.