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Everybody's favorite movie decade: Which ones are the best movies released in the 20th century's second decade? Best Film (Pictured above) Broken Blossoms: Barthelmess and Gish star as ill-fated lovers in D.W. Griffith’s romantic melodrama featuring interethnic love. Check These Out (Pictured below) Cabiria: is considered one of the major landmarks in motion picture history, having inspired the scope and visual grandeur of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Also of note, Pastrone's epic of ancient Rome introduced Maciste, a bulky hero who would be featured in countless movies in the ensuing decades. Best Actor (Pictured below) In the tragic The Italian, George Beban plays an Italian immigrant recently arrived in the United States (Click below for film review). Unfortunately, his American dream quickly becomes a horrendous nightmare of poverty and despair. Best Actress (Pictured below) The movies' super-vamp Theda Bara in A Fool There Was: A little...

The Barker (1928) Direction: George Fitzmaurice Cast: Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Betty Compson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sylvia Ashton, George Cooper Screenplay: Benjamin Glazer; dialogue by Joseph Jackson; titles by Herman J. Mankiewicz, from Kenyon Nicholson's 1927 play Oscar Movies, Pre-Code Movies Dorothy Mackaill, Milton Sills, The Barker Directed by George Fitzmaurice, by then already a film veteran, The Barker is one of those strange hybrids made at the dawn of the sound era: some sequences feature dialogue, others have intertitles and musical accompaniment. The Barker, in fact, is perhaps stranger than most for the dialogue isn't restricted to one specific reel or two. Characters start talking unexpectedly, only to go silent again a few scenes later. Besides its historical importance as one of those transitional curiosities, this B-movie melodrama produced with a mostly A-class talent has enough intriguing elements to keep viewers at least moderately entertained. The basic plot, from Kenyon Nicholson...

Greed (1924) Direction: Erich von Stroheim Screenplay: Erich von Stroheim, June Mathis; from Frank Norris' novel McTeague Cast: Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton Gibson Gowland, Jean Hersholt in Erich von Stroheim's Greed Erich von Stroheim's masterpiece and one of the best silent films ever made, Greed remains a powerful indictment against the deadly sin of the title. Based on Frank Norris' novel McTeague, Greed revolves around the misdeeds of a California dentist (Gibson Gowland), his miserly wife (comedienne ZaSu Pitts magisterially cast against type), and her former lover (Jean Hersholt), all of whom sacrifice everything — and I mean everything — to the almighty god of dollar bills. Stroheim's initial cut had 47 reels, which the director wanted to release as two films. Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg's Metro-Goldwyn (and its parent company, Loews, Inc.), which inherited the out-of-control project from...