Aud Egede Nissen

Norwegian film actress Aud Egede Nissen (1893-1974) was a star of the German silent cinema. During the 1910s, she produced dozens of her own films. In the 1930s she returned to Norway, where she appeared in some films but acted mainly on stage.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 476/1, 1919-1924. Photo: A. Eberth, Berlin.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/2. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Georg Alexander in the German silent film Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1919).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 472/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Union Film. Aud Egede Nissen as Jane Seymour in Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 642/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Union Film. Jenny Hasselqvist and Aud Egede Nissen Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920). Collection: Didier Hanson.


German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no. 103, group 43. Photo: Stern-Film. Eugen Klöpfer and Aud Egede Nissen in  Die Strasse/The Street (Karl Grune, 1923).


Vintage postcard. Photo: Mon. Cawa-Film. Aud Egede Nissen and Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).

The first female detective

Aud Egede Nissen, aka Aud Richter, was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1893. She was the daughter of Norwegian politician Adam Egede-Nissen. Her four younger sisters, including Gerd en Ada, and two younger brothers would become actors as well.

She started her film career in the Danish film Scenens børn/Children of the Stage; or, When Love Speaks (Bjørn Bjørnson, 1913). This film is now believed to be lost. After four films in Denmark, mostly shorts, she moved to Germany in 1914 and debuted there with the Dania-Film production Um ein Weib/Because of a Woman (Carl Schönfeld, 1914).

During the First World War, Nissen had an enormously productive career, changing from one company to another: from Nation Film and the direction of Alfred Halm to Literaria Film with Georg Jacoby directing, from Luna Film with Fred Sauer (who also directed her for Salden Film) to Greenbaum Film with Max Mack. She played a.o. in the serial Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916) with Theodor Loos.

In 1916/1917 she founded her own production company where her husband Georg Alexander directed her in films with herself in the lead. She appeared in more than one film per month (!), including Ich heirate meine Puppe/I Married My Doll (1917), and Das Geheimnis der Briefmarke/The Secret of the Stamp (1917). Very popular was the Ada-van-Ehlers serial. Ada van Ehlers impersonated the first female detective.

Slowly, Egede Nissen became more producer than an actress in 1917-1918, though she also continued to act in her own films as well. Nissen’s last own production within this constant and long production line probably was 100.000 Dollars (1919), as always directed by Georg Alexander, though still in 1921 the film Die Idee des Dr. Pax was released, which was a Nissen production as well.


With Georg Alexander. German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 5074. Photo: Atelier B.J.G.


German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 2245. Photo: Egede Nissen-Film. Georg Alexander and Aud Egede Nissen in the German silent melodrama Der Rosenkranz/The Rosary (Georg Alexander, 1918).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/2. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Max Ruhbeck in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1919).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/6. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1919).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/5, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Aud Egede Nissen and Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/1. Photo: Ufa. Aud Egede Nissen and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/5, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Aud Egede Nissen and Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).

Lubitsch, Lang and Murnau

Around 1920. Aud Egede Nissen shifted to performing in major productions. She was Sumurun’s (Pola Negri) servant Haidee in Ernst Lubitsch’s murderous exotic tale Sumurun (1920), the daughter of a merchant freed from Chinese bandits by a reporter in Schiffen und Menschen/Ships and People (Carl Boese, 1920), a female artist in the third sequel to Die Lieblingsfrau der Maharadscha/The Favorite Wife of the Maharadja (Max Mack, 1920), Jane Seymour in Lubitsch’ epic Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920), and the dancer Cara Carozza, accomplice to evil hypnotist Mabuse, in Fritz Lang’s thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1921/1922).

In 1922 Nissen was Melanie Lubota, the sister of the main character (Alfred Abel) in F.W. Murnau's Phantom/The Phantom. In 1923 she was the prostitute in the expressionist drama Die Strasse/The Street (Karl Grune, 1923). The story is about a man, who leaves his wife and humdrum life to seek the excitement of a Parisian street. He spends most of the story chasing after a prostitute thief, which eventually leads him to prison and despair. He then returns to his previous life. In Carlos un Elisabeth (Richard Oswald, 1923), Nissen played Princess Eboli opposite Conrad Veidt.

Later she had the female leads in three realist films by Gerhard Lamprecht: Menschen untereinander (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925), Die Verrufenen (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925), and Schwester Veronika (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1925). Other films were the Dutch-German coproduction Droomkoninkje/Die vom Schicksal verfolgten/Little Dream King (Henk Kleinman, 1926), and Die Villa im Tiergarten/The Villa in the Zoo (Franz Osten, 1926).

In such films as Pietro, der Korsar/Pietro the Cossack (Artur Robison, 1925), and Der König der Mittelsturmer/King Of The Centre-forward (1927) she appeared opposite her second husband, Paul Richter. The latter can be considered the first real German soccer feature.

In her last silent film, Die Frau im Talar/The Woman in the Robe (Adolf Trotz, 1929), clearly designed for her, Aud Egede Nissen played a female prosecutor in a Norwegian (!) harbour town, who must judge the man she loves (Paul Richter) for a fraud committed by her own father out of despair.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 206/1. Photo: Becker & Maas / Egede-Nissen-Film (ENF).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 206/2. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin / ENF.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 206/3. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin / ENF.


German postcard by NPG, no. 436. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 173. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no K. 216. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Back to Norway

Aud Egede Nissen played roles in the German sound film Zwischen Nacht und Morgen/Between Night and Dawn (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1931) opposite Oscar Homolka, and the Danish film Eskimo (Georg Schnéevoigt, 1930), starring Mona Mårtenson. She broke up with Richter and went back to Norway in 1931.

In Norway, her experience was appreciated and she became the production manager for two films: En glad gutt/A Happy Boy (John W. Brunius, 1932) and Syndere i sommersol/Sinners in summer sun (Einar Sissener, 1934). She also played small parts in two films during the war years, Hansen og Hansen/Hansen and Hansen (Alfred Maurstad, 1941) and the romantic drama Trysil-Knut (Rasmus Breistein, 1942), starring Alfred Maurstad.

During the 1930s Nissen debuted on the Norwegian stage and played a large number of roles in 1934-1935, including Hermione in 'The Winter's Tale' (1934) and Gertrud in 'Hamlet' (1935). In 1939 she debuted as a theatre director with the play 'Ansikt til ansikt' (Face to Face). In particular, between 1955 and 1962 she directed many plays.

Aud Egede Nissen died in Oslo, Norway, in 1974. From 1915 to 1924, she was married to actor-director Georg Alexander. She then married actor Paul Richter whom she divorced in 1931. Her son by Georg Alexander, named after his stepfather Georg Richter, also became an actor and producer. Since 1940 she was married to Dag Havrevold.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 830. Photo: National Film / Distr. Mondial A.G. Aud Egede Nissen in Schwester Veronica/Sister Veronica (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1927).


German postcard by Verl. Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 5336. Photo: Becker & Maas, Berlin-W.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 335/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Curt Meyer, Berlin / Adler-Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 385/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Curt Mayer, Wilmendorf / Adler-Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1144/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3534/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1660. Photo: Ernst Schneider.


Aud Egede Nissen in the silent Norwegian-German crime film Bergenstoget plyndret inatt/Schneeschuhbanditen (Uwe Jenns Krafft, 1928) with Paul Richter. Source: Norskfilminstitutt (YouTube).

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Next week on EFSP a post dedicated to Aud's lesser-known sisters, Gerd Egede-Nissen and Ada Nissen a.k.a. Ada van Ehlers.

Die lachende Seele (1918)

Norwegian film actress Aud Egede Nissen and her husband, German actor Georg Alexander were the stars of the German silent film Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (1918). The film was directed by Alexander and produced by his wife's company, ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Rotophot published a series of six postcards for the film in its popular series 'Film Sterne' (Film Stars).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 553/1. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Georg Alexander (in the middle) in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1918).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 553/2. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Georg Alexander in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1918).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 553/3. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Georg Alexander in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1918).

A husband between two women

During the 1910s and 1920s, Aud Egede-Nissen and her sisters Gerd and Ada made a name for themselves in the Nordic and German film industries as actors, producers, and directors. In 1916, Aud met actor and director Georg Alexander. Alexander directed her in Wer wirft den ersten Stein auf Sie? in 1916, and in the same year they married.

Gunnar Iversen writes at Women Film Pioneers Project: "Together with her husband and sisters, Aud Egede-Nissen established a production company in Berlin. Egede-Nissen-Film Company GmbH produced ten features in 1917, the first of which was the comedy Ich heirate meine Puppe (Georg Alexander, 1917) starring Aud in a comic role.

Most of the thirty feature films the company produced were divided into three series, each with one of the three sisters as leading actor and star. The Egede-Nissen series, built around Aud, came in two waves, the first in 1917–1918 and the second in 1918–1919, with a total of eleven features. Some of these were dramatic tragedies, like Die Geburt der Venus (Georg Alexander 1917); others were detective films."

Aud Egede-Nissen was the producer for all thirty features. Sadly, all but two of the films are lost, and the only existing Egede-Nissen-Film Company title with a users’ copy available for screening is Erblich belastet (Georg Alexander, 1919), a film rediscovered in the Desmet Collection of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul was scripted by Rudolf Baron and Else Cressin, while Georg Alexander both directed and played the male lead as a husband, Reimar Gellert, who vacillates between two women, his wife and Ingeborg Jensen (Aud Egede Nissen).

While exteriors for Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul seem to have been shot in the Alps, interiors were shot at the Fern-Andra-Film studios in Berlin. IMDb and The German Early Cinema Database both date the film as of 1919, but The German Early Cinema Database also mentions the first screening that took place in November 1918 at the Passagetheater in Berlin. So we date the film as of 1918.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/4. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Georg Alexander in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1918).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/5. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen and Max Ruhbeck in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1918).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 553/6. Photo: ENF (Egede-Nissen-Film). Aud Egede Nissen in Die lachende Seele/The Laughing Soul (Georg Alexander, 1919).

Sources: Gunnar Iversen (Women Film Pioneers Project), The German Early Cinema Database, and IMDb.

Pietro der Kosar (1925)

Pietro, der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925), also known in English as The Sea Wolves or The Love Pirate, is a German silent historical adventure film starring Paul Richter, Aud Egede-Nissen, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. The film was based on a novel by German author Wilhelm Hegeler, 'Pietro der Korsar und die Jüdin Cheirinca' (Pietro the Corsair and the Jewess Cheirinca).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


French postcard. Photo: Mon. Cawa-Film. Aud Egede Nissen and Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 992/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).

The strict rules of the Corsairs

In Pietro, der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925), Paul Richter plays Pietro, the son of an oil trader (Fritz Richard) on the Italian coast. Pietro would like to be a corsair, and he constantly observes their fort on an offshore island.

When the corsair Salvatore (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) raids his father's house, Pietro overwhelms him. The corsair can flee. From then on, Pietro and his family fear the corsairs' revenge.

However, Salvatore, who owes his life to Pietro, takes him in with the corsairs. With these pirates, he must submit to their strict rules. Meanwhile, Salvatore rises to their leader.

Salvatore is seriously injured while capturing a merchant ship. He is taken to a doctor's house. There he falls in love with the daughter Juana (Aud Egede Nissen). He takes her to his fort.

After a short time, Juana discovers that Salvatore is a weakling. Her only interest is Pietro, and hatred and distrust arise between Salvatore and Pietro. A knife fight should decide. However, Salvatore is shot dead by an invading mercenary and Juana stands between the gun and Pietro to atone for her guilt.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/1. Photo: Ufa. Aud Egede Nissen and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/4. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/5, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Aud Egede Nissen and Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 26/10, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).

A school of acting dating back to the Spanish Armada

Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925) was produced by Erich Pommer for the Ufa (Universum-Film AG) in Berlin. Director p of photography was Fritz Arno Wagner, and Albin Grau was responsible for the buildings and the costumes.

The shooting took place from August to October 1924 on the coast near Rome and in the open-air site of the Ufa studios in Neubabelsberg. Decla-Bioscop-Verleih GmbH in Berlin distributed the film. The world premiere took place on 19 February 1925 at U.T. Alexanderplatz Berlin. The post-censorship issued a youth ban.

The international critics found only a few kind words for the film. In the New York Times, Mordaunt Hall wrote on 7 January 1927: “Sandwiched in between Chaplin's famous comedy, Easy Street, and three other ancient American films, there is at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse a tedious Ufa picture, known as Peter the Pirate.

It is a story of sea robbers of the dim past, and the aggregation of players appears to be emulating a school of acting dating back to the Spanish Armada. Even Paul Richter, who gave such a distinguished performance in the film version of Siegfried, seems to have found his colleagues' art contagious. Mr. Richter is a pale-faced fighter with gymnastic shoes and a shirt always open at the collar.

As Peter he longs for adventure and, of course, it comes his way. So he becomes associated with a band of ruddy villains, who try and make you think that they would just as soon cut a throat as gulp down a glass of wine. Actually, these followers of the skull and crossbones look as if they had been shanghaied from a modern costume dance. This weak link in the chain of Ufa productions was directed by Arthur Robison, producer of the film version of Manon Lescaut."


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter and Aud Egede Nissen in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/4, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter and Aud Egede Nissen in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1024/5, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Paul Richter and Aud Egede Nissen in Pietro der Korsar/Peter the Pirate (Arthur Robison, 1925).

Sources: Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

Homunculus (1916)

The third film special in our new weekly series is about Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916). This silent super-serial was part of the German artificial-creature film genre, including Der Golem (1914 and 1920), Alraune (1918, 1928, 1930) and Metropolis (1926). Danish star Olaf Fönss played the perfect creature, manufactured in a laboratory. During World War I, Homunculus was the most popular and influential serial in Germany. It even influenced the fashion in Berlin.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 9667/1. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 1. Teil/Homunculus (1916).


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 9668. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 1. Teil/Homunculus (1916).

Little human

After having played in Danish films in the early and mid-1910s, Olaf Fönss tried his luck in Germany in 1915.

He immediately became the protagonist of the serial Homunculus, written by Robert Reinert, directed by Otto Rippert and released in 1916.

The script was written by Fritz Lang, and the film foreshadows various elements of his film Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1929), which will be the subject of EFSP's film special next Sunday.

Homunculus is an artificial creature, test tube bred in a lab by Dr. Hansen (Theodoor Loos) and his assistant Edgar Rodin (Friedrich Kühne). They call their created baby 'Homunculus', Latin for 'little human.

Homunculus is brought up thinking he is a normal man. After learning of his true identity, the adult Homunculus understands he has no soul and is incapable of love. He hates Hansen for making him. Hansen's daughter loves Homunculus, but he is unable to feel much beyond hate.

Homunculus leaves, haunted by the incapability to feel human emotions. During his travels, he adopts a stray dog, feeling pity - if not love. He instigates revolutions and becomes a monstrous but beautiful tyrant, relentlessly pursued by his creator-father who seeks to rectify his mistake.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, no. 9184. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft).


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 9185. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 1. Teil. Der künstliche Mensch/Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916) with Olaf Fönss as Homunculus and Aud Egede Nissen.


German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 9186. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 2. Teil. Das geheimnisvolle Buch/Homunculus. The mysterious book (Otto Rippert, 1916).


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin, no. 9664. Sent by mail in 1917. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus 3. Die Liebeskomödie des Homunculus/The tragic love story of the Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916). The girl could be Ilse Lersen (Luise) or Erna Thiele (Anna). Before he wants to destroy the world, Homunculus wants to explore love.


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin, no. 9183. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Die Liebeskomödie des Homunculus/The tragic love story of the Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916).


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin, no. 9182. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 5. Teil. Die Vernichtung der Menschheit/Homunculus. The Destruction of Mankind (Otto Rippert, 1916).

Wonderful photography

Homunculus was set up as a super-serial, composed of six feature-length episodes. It was meant to play not only as a serial, but as a series.

Bob Lipton notes at IMDb that the film "has some wonderful photography [by Carl Hoffmann] (notice the strong use of framing not by irising, as was still very common at this time, but by using structure and set decoration to change the effective frame size) and toning (a process in which the black silver nitrate is replaced by other compounds with colors, resulting in white whites, black blacks but colors instead of grays)".

The story asks the question: is the soul born with the body, or the gift of god?

After making Homunculus, Olaf Fönss did not stay in Berlin. He was called back to play in Danish films after Danish star Valdemar Psilander had committed suicide.

But his German film serial was a huge success during the dark years of World War I, and Homunculus would inspire many later artificial human films, including James Whale's horror classic Frankenstein (1931) featuring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster.

Prints of Homunculus exist in the George Eastman House film archive (only a 1920 coloured re-release version of about 75 min. with Italian language intertitles, preserved in 2002); in the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv (one black & white episode); in the Národní Filmovy Archiv (one black & white episode); and in the Cinémathèque Suisse film archive (250 metres).


German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin, no. 5017.


German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 9151. Photo: DBG (Deutsche Bioscop-Gesellschaft). Publicity still for Homunculus, 1. Teil/Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916).

Sources: Bob Lipton (IMDb), Stephen Prince (The Horror Film), Silent Era, Wikipedia, and IMDb.