"The Love Parade" is a great movie musical. It has a sophistication and technique that is ahead of its time, plus the magic of Jeanette McDonald and Maurice Chevalier. A Best Picture Oscar nominee.

This film has never been on VHS or DVD. It was on laserdisc. It was one of the several studio reviews put out in 1929 whose purpose was to show MGM's stable of stars in talking roles. The only problem is, within 4 years practically everyone here is out of work. Nominated for Best Picture Oscar.

George Arliss is wonderful and engaging as Benjamin Disraeli during one particular instance in his public life - the purchase of the Suez Canal. The camera is static, but Arliss keeps you so interested you don't notice. He won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

This film might seem racist now, but in 1929 it was a breath of fresh air. It treated African Americans as individuals with hopes, dreams, family ties, & human weaknesses & regrets rather than stereotyped props. Director King Vidor committed to film his memories of black culture as he had experienced it in Texas growing up.

Hitchcock's first sound film has great suspense, although there is no whodunnit in this film. There are only public domain copies of this one, and one is basically the same as the other.

The classic representations of good & evil through black & white are used extensively & effectively in this prototype sound western film. Cooper always wears white, the villain(Huston) always wears black. However, the most morally ambiguous character, Steve, always wears a mixture of the colors. DVD available at vintagefilmbuff.com.

Contains "The Great Gabbo" & "Glorifying the American Girl", which are two 1929 musicals now in the public domain. Neither did well when they were released, but today they are so odd you have to love them.

This romantic comedy starts as a traditional silent film, complete with its original synchronized music score. About half-way through, the characters start talking. This is one of those "goat gland" movies that works very well.

Contains "St. Louis Blues" (1929, with Bessie Smith) and "Black and Tan Fantasy" (1929, with Duke Ellington, Fredi Washington, Arthur Whetsol), among many others. It gives you a chance to see as well as hear some of the jazz greats of the era.

This is a pretty mediocre musical starring Rudy Valee. The highlights are a Busby Berkeley-like musical number and a show-stealing performance by Marie Dressler. The early sound technology is obvious as you clearly hear bracelets clanging and shoes clopping along. I don't know who thought Valee's wooden performance could ever carry a film, but it can't.

This 1940's version is just a placeholder for the far superior 1929 Technicolor musical starring John Boles & Bebe Daniels, and introducing that now forgotten comedy team Wheeler & Woolsey. Not on DVD or VHS, if WHV restores the Abbott & Costello version without this one, I'll explode.

In his first talkie, Harold Lloyd is Harold Bledsoe, a botany student who goes home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief, to help investigate a crime wave in Chinatown. Harold, usually the likeable eager beaver, plays one of the most obnoxious characters in film history. Not on DVD or VHS.

Carole Lombard in an early talkie that really doesn't show off her abilities. Here she's a bankrupt socialite involved with gangsters and a love triangle that turns tragic.

Norma Talmadge was one of America's biggest silent stars, but her career flagged after sound came in. There's plenty wrong with this film, but Norma's acting & speech aren't among them. She had a pretty strong Brooklyn accent, and Lena Lamont of Singin in the Rain is supposedly patterned after her. DVD available at vintagefilmbuff.com.

MGM was one of the last studios to go purely to sound. Joan Crawford became a star in 1928's "Our Dancing Daughters", and this silent film with sound effects is basically a sequel to that film.

The last silent film MGM made starring Greta Garbo and Conrad Nigel in a story of forbidden love. Nigel had such a good voice in talkies his career almost died due to overexposure. Garbo made the transition successfully maybe because of rather than in spite of her accent - it seemed to suit her.

Buster's last silent film was 1929's "Spite Marriage". It was also the first in which MGM's tinkering could be seen to noticeably effect Buster's artful comedy. It marks a downhill slide for Buster in movies, and that makes it sad to watch even though the film is pretty good.

Douglas Fairbanks' excellent swan song in the silent swashbuckler. Both his and Mary Pickford's inability to adapt to talking roles helped destabilize their marriage. Thank goodness Pickford never went through with her idea of destroying all of her films because she thought they made her look silly!

Surrealist geniuses Dali and Bunuel combined their powers and produced this short collection of shocking scenes. This is the film that first showed that art is not there only to please the audience but also to annoy and depict our darkest thoughts and dreams.

Who would have thought that one of the best of the late silent films would come out of the Soviet Union?