From · Passion and Desire

1926 · Directed by Clarence Brown

Clarence Brown, MGM, 1926, from Hermann Sudermann. John Gilbert and Greta Garbo meet at a railway; he is an officer, she is another man’s wife. The affair is public enough that a duel follows, then exile, then a return. William Daniels photographed the close-ups that made the pair a fan-magazine fact; they were involved off screen as well. It was Garbo’s first real American stardom after The Torrent. Brown keeps the lake and the smoke. The title is the studio’s. The film is about looking too long in a two-shot.

From · Women Pioneers of Silent Cinema

1927 · Directed by Olga Preobrazhenskaya

Olga Preobrazhenskaya, 1927, shot in a Ryazan village: two women, Anna and Vasilisa, under the same patriarchal roof, one broken by it, one walking out. War, a rape, a child, a Revolution that rearranges the furniture but not the grief. Co-directed with Ivan Pravov. It is the Soviet silent that treats the peasant household as a political unit, and Preobrazhenskaya as one of the few women who got to say so from behind the camera.

From · Spotlight: Anna May Wong

1919 · Directed by Albert Capellani

Albert Capellani, Metro, 1919, from Edith Wherry’s novel, scenario by June Mathis. Alla Nazimova plays both Mahlee, raised Chinese, and her white half-sister Blanche during the Boxer Rebellion. The mission will not have Mahlee; the rebels will. Noah Beery is Dr. Sam Wang. Anna May Wong, fourteen, appears uncredited as a lantern bearer in the night parade, her first screen work; Chinese extras were paid $7.50 a day, a dollar-fifty more than the rest. A print survives in Europe. Yellowface and a dual role, Metro’s idea of Peking.