PODCAST

All the Movies Podcast

Greg Gioia

I"m watching my way chronologically through the history of cinema. allthemovies.substack.com

tv & film film history

All Episodes

8:38

Children of Eve (Nov. 10, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/02/05

It’s easy to dismiss most of the directors not named D.W. Griffith who were making films in 1915, and for the most part it can be understandable if one does so, but there were a handful of directors doing more than churning out what today would be called “content” at that point in the history of film. Cecil B. DeMille is another big name who was finding his footing in 1915, along with Maurice Tourneur, Raoul Walsh, and Raymond West. Those are the Big Names whose films I came into this project

8:45

The Coward (Oct. 3, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/02/04

The film opens with the outbreak of the Civil War, with young men rushing to enlist while their girlfriends watch with pride. Only our protagonist, Frank Winslow, played by Charles Ray, seems uncertain, but with some encouragement from his sweetheart he heads into an enlistment center. He doesn’t sign up, however, as he gets cold feet and flees home instead. His girlfriend is heartbroken and humiliated, and has to watch other couples celebrate the dubious honor of their men rushing off to war.At

4:35

Pool Sharks (Sep. 19, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/30

This is most noteworthy as W.C. Fields’ first film. Though only 35 at the time, Fields had already enjoyed a long and successful career in Vaudeville before turning to film. He eventually went on to become one of Hollywood’s hugest stars, and one of only a handful of silent film stars who is still widely remembered today, and this is where that film career began.The story is simple, and really nothing more than an excuse for some gags. Fields and Bud Ross are at a picnic, competing for the attention

14:12

The Regeneration (Sep. 13, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/25

directed by Raoul WalshI only know Raoul Walsh from a few gangster pictures he made in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, so I was curious to see some of his earlier work. Quite a few films he’s directed are on my list— 17 I believe— and The Regeneration is the first one to show up in the chronology. Despite being made in 1915, it stands up to his later work, and honestly, is as good as any modern film. Sure, it’s dated in some ways, but that’s the nature of all art, right? Any work of art is a product

4:48

Rags (Aug. 2, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/23

She's more than a bundle of rags!It’s Mary Pickford again, this time as Rags, so-named because she’s so poor she wears ragged clothing. Pickford never disappoints, and she’s as fabulous in this as she has been in any film I’ve seen her in to this point.The film opens with Paul Ferguson, a bank cashier proposing to Alice McCloud, who is played by Mary Pickford. Alice is the ward of Paul’s employer, John Hardesty. The day after the engagement, Hardesty discovers that Paul has made an error at the

3:56

The Ruse (Jul. 14, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/17

William S. Hart stars in another ahead-of-its-time films, and one that I can easily see being remade today. In fact, I feel like it maybe has been remade, or at least homaged, a number of times. In this one, Hart is Bat Peters, a former master gunslinger who has retired from shooting, and taken up mining. He has found some ore, and heads to Chicago to meet with some mining investors to see if his mine is worth anything. It turns out it is quite valuable, and the investor he’s consulted agrees to buy

5:09

Fanchon, the Cricket (May 10, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/16

Mary Pickford was everything they said she was. I knew very little about her before embarking upon this project, but she has not disappointed me one bit so far. From her bit part in The Country Doctor, to starring roles in My Baby, Tess of the Storm Country and Cinderella, and now as Fanchon, the Cricket, she brings a personality and brightness to the screen every time she shows up. I’m not even a tiny bit surprised she became the famous star she did. I’ve read that she is to this day the most

4:08

The Tramp (Apr. 12, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/16

Charlie Chaplin was known as “the Tramp,” so this film is sort of like the title track of his filmography. I’m trying very hard to appreciate him, but I’m still having a lot of trouble getting into his films. I could barely make it through this one. Had this not been a Chaplin film, and especially had it not been called The Tramp, I’d likely have never watched it to begin with, and I may have stopped watching midway through if I had. I know Chaplin commands massive respect among film-lovers, and to

5:33

Another Quick Intermission

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/15

It’s time for another quick break from watching movies to handle some podcast business.As regular listeners know, I started this podcast as a tool to help me remember the plots and details of films I watch. I often find myself forgetting what happened in a movie I watched, or if I’ve even watched a particular film, so when I heard on another podcast that a way to fix this is to write about the film, and then record yourself speaking about it, I created this Substack. I didn’t think anyone else would

14:01

The Birth of a Nation (Feb. 8, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/13

This is the 40th film I’ve watched as a part of this podcast, and one of just a few that I was truly aware of before beginning. I’ve enjoyed silent films since I was in my 20s, but before starting this project I’d never actively sought them out for home viewing. If I had the chance to see one in a theater, I’d do so, but theaters seem only to show the most well-known silent films, most of which were made towards the end of the silent era. Since I am watching the films chronologically, I’ve so far

9:10

Young Romance (Jan. 21, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/07

I’ve watched a number of films for this podcast so far that I suppose could qualify as rom-coms, but this is the first that truly embodies that genre. This isn’t a romance that happens to have some funny moments, but rather a romantic comedy built around bringing two similar people, who imagine they aren’t similar at all, together through zany coincidences and situations. This is Roman Holiday, 1915 style. Except it feels more like it has been done in a 1919 style. None of the comedies I’ve watched

3:51

Alice in Wonderland (Jan. 19, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/04

As the name suggests, this is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was released on January 19th, 1915, and directed by W.W. Young. He never directed anything again, and the film itself came from a studio that barely existed. The Nonpareil Feature Film Corporation released this film, which was the second and final production they ever put out. Little, if any, information regarding Young, or the company, seems to exist, and if I had to guess, I’d say this was created

6:36

A Fool There Was (Jan. 12, 1915)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2023/01/02

No, she’s not that kind of vampire. In 1915, the word had a different meaning than it does today. Theda Bara was the original vamp!Before she became Theda Bara, she was Born Theodosia Goodman, and moved from Cincinnati to New York in 1905, hoping to become a stage actress. She spent several years chasing success on Broadway and in Yiddish theater, to no avail. Though initially opposed to working in films, she eventually decided to give the medium a try, and she became, against long odds, one of the

7:06

Cinderella (Dec. 28, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/12/20

This may be my favorite version of the classic fairy tale, though truth be told I think I’ve only ever seen the Disney version from 1950. In this version, Mary Pickford, America’s Sweetheart, shines as Cinderella, and the sequences of the story are perfectly paced. However, while watching I was struck with a melancholy sensation wholly unrelated to the film itself, or at least the film as it was originally made.The films I’ve watched so far have been between 108 and 123 years old, so on one hand,

13:32

The Bargain (Dec. 3, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/11/19

I had no real expectations when I started watching this film. I’d never heard of it, or its star, William S. Hart, before I embarked on my “watch all the movies” project, but I saw it mentioned in a book about silent films I’d read some years back, and added it to the list almost as an afterthought. It’s not exaggeration to say I was stunned by how great this movie is.I expected a primitive Western, given that this film was made barely a decade after the very first Western, The Great Train Robbery,

6:40

The Avenging Conscience: or 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'...

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/11/16

This is the first horror film I’ve watched, and one of the first feature-length horror films ever made. It’s loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but with some other Poe references tossed in for good measure. Though slow to start, once the horror story elements kicked in, this became a very enjoyable movie. Before that, however, it was feeling like a big of a slog, and about 30 minutes into its 81-minute runtime I was starting to count the minutes.The story concerns a

9:13

Cabiria (Apr. 18, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/11/04

The Italians were clearly at the forefront of the motion picture industry in its early days. Until I watched this film, nothing I’d seen so far had come close to Dante’s Inferno, also an Italian film, but Cabiria blows that film out of the water. Released on April 18th, 1914, Cabiria is the first true epic film, and it paved the way for directors like D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, both of whom almost immediately began creating epic films of their own. Griffith was working on a film when he

6:47

Tess of the Storm Country (Mar. 30, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/10/28

Fresh from watching Mary Pickford as Tessibel Skinner, heroine of Tess of the Storm Country, I’m left with mixed feelings. The film isn’t bad, although the story is more than a little heavy-handed and melodramatic, and Edwin S. Porter, as was his nature, simply refuses to move his camera. His tableau-like shots, and almost fundamental misunderstanding of the power of editing, reduce potentially dramatic shots to mundane ones, and limit the overall power of the film. Yet still, somehow, he manages to

7:45

Mabel's Strange Predicament (Feb. 9, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/10/20

This is the third film of Charlie Chaplin’s career, and it hit screens on February 9th, 1914. If you’ve been following along, you know that is exactly seven day after his film debut, on February 2nd. That’s right, he had three movies come out within the span of a week! That’s unimaginable today, but it was the norm in that era of filmmaking. Mabel’s Strange Predicament is the third of three Charlie Chaplin films I’ve watched in a row. It’s also the third Charlie Chaplin movie I’ve ever seen. That’s

5:37

Kid Auto Races at Venice (Feb. 7, 1914)

All the Movies Podcast ·

2022/10/12

The Keystone Film Company put out Charlie Chaplin’s earliest films, and his first three were released within 7 days of each other in February of 1914. Last time I watched Making a Living, which hit theaters on February 2nd. Five days later, on the 7th, his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice, came out. Just two days after that, he had a third film playing, called Mabel’s Strange Predicament, which I’ll watch next.The real news here is that Kid Auto Races at Venice is the onscreen debut of

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