There have been innumerable movies in the silent era, but since that time period has been so long in the past, we tend to forget about them. Making movies in the silent era seems so difficult now; you did not have much in the way of the technology that keeps on advancing in leaps and bounds now; further, without getting the characters to speak, the emotions shown by the actors has to be only read through their facial actions.
The Crowd (released in 1928), was a acclaimed movie, and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The movie was made as an advocate of demonstrating the dangers of urbanization and the modern life in today’s cities. The movie was directed by King Vidor, who would normally not pick up stars, and for this movie, the leading pair had the same distinction, with James Murray being an extra in the studio, and the leading lady, Eleanor Boardman, being Vidor’s wife.

King Vidor had a style of his own, and he imparted the same to this movie, combining a mixture of poignant family scenes, along with some striking visual styles. Since he was successful, he was able to get the studio to agree to his thoughts and style.
The movie is essentially the story of Johnny, from birth and captures his life, as well as all the experiences and twists and turns. Johnny’s father wants him to rise high inspite of his modest beginnings, but as Johnny grows up, he is just a part of ‘The Crowd’. He does not make the best decisions, and ends up in messes, even though he has the loyal support of his girlfriend.
The movie is a must watch.

Martin Scorsese is a very famous director, famous for his style of making movies. His movie style was a combination of bloody violence, a lot of macho stuff, guilt and redemption (inspired by the Catholic background of his subjects) and locales based primarily in New York. However, Scorsese also shot a number of other movies, such as this movie – “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”. Released in 1974, it is one of his earlier movies, given that he shot his first full length movie in 1967 (I Call First). In 1972, Scorsese released “Boxcar Bertha” and then released “Mean Streets” soon after, and started getting noticed. He was then selected to make the next movie for the actress Ellen Burstyn, and he came up with this story of a central female character. In fact, Scorsese was selected on the basis of Francis Coppola’s recommendation, to whom Ellen had gone to find a young director.
The collaboration went well, with Ellen liking the experience, calling it one of her best experiences in Hollywood. The movie recent overall positive critical acclaim, although some critics found that the story had various shortcomings. The movie did win an award at the Academy Awards:
Academy Award for Best Actress – Ellen Burstyn (won)
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Diane Ladd (nominated)
Academy Award For Best Original Screenplay – Robert Getchell (nominated)

The movie is the story of the adventures of a widow in her thirties, along with that of her pre-teen son as they move from her married town in New Mexico to her hometown of Monterey, California. Life changes for housewife Alice Hyatt when her trucker husband Donald dies in an accident, and she decides to try and resume the singing career she gave up when she married. She decides to leave, has a garage sale, and heads off towards Monterey. However, she has to temporarily halt in Phoenix Arizona and take up a job as a lounge singer since she is out of money. She has an affair with a younger man named Ben, when she sees the violent nature of Ben; Ben beats up his wife when the wife confronts Alice. Alice quickly departs along with her son Tommy.
She is still out of money, so accepts a job as a waitress in Tuscon to earn more money for their trip. She starts warming to the diners where she is a waitress, and also meets the divorced rancher David, who soon realizes that getting to be with Alice means that he should try to get close to Tommy first. Does this relationship succeed ? What about her wishes for her singing career ?

The Old Curiosity Shop was a novel released in serial form between 1840, and 1841, in Dickens’s weekly serial called “Master Humphrey’s Clock”. In this serial, Dickens had also published another novel, called “Barnaby Rudge”, and in addition to these 2 novels, there were short stories also published in the serial. This compilation was however something that was later abandoned by Dickens and now the novels and stories are also published separately. The serial was constructed such that Master Humphrey was describing the stories to a group of friends; however, this did not really work and was abandoned after only a couple of versions of the serial.
Out of the various stories by Dickens, the plot of this story was said to be weaker than the plot of his other stories, however, the level of feelings that the reader had for the main character (the girl called Nell in the story was unprecedented) and people felt really bad when the ending was disclosed.

The story is essentially that of Nell, a 14 year old girl, very good, but who meets all sorts of good and bad people in life, and the way her life changes as a result of meeting these people. She stays with her grandfather, who runs a small shop, a curiosity shop. Her grandfather wants to make sure that he is going to leave something behind for Nell in terms of an inheritance, and hence goes off for gambling every night; but as you would expect, he loses money, and eventually has to hand his shop over to an evil deformed hunchback, Daniel Quilp. Daniel finally takes possession of the shop and evicts Nell and her grandfather. This delivers a severe shock to Nell’s grandfather, and Nell takes her grandfather away from it all to the Midlands of England, to live as poor people, as beggars.
However, her brother refuses to believe that their grandfather has not kept an inheritance for Nell, and wants to locate them, and for this purpose, he takes the help of his friend, the simple but good Dick Swiveller, and also the help of Quilp (who gets involved just to do more evil). Nell, in the meantime has suffered badly in terms of health but managed to get her grandfather away. By the time the good people (Kit, a friend of Nell, along with a couple of others) manage to find Nell and her grandfather, Nell has dies as a result of the bad health she was suffering from.

The Doors was a rock band that existed for a short period, but was incredibly famous, primarily due to its lead singer and lyricist Jim Morrison. The Doors existed between 1965, and went into a major problem in 1971 after the death of Jim Morrison, and was finally disbanded in 1973, but remain famous to this day. The Doors was formed by vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger. Jim Morrison, or if you know him by his full name, James Douglas “Jim” Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971), had a very short life, all of 28 years, but in this short life, he became popular enough with his vocals, his persona, and his charisma to be counted at # 47 among the 100 greatest singers of all time (as enumerated by Rolling Stones magazine).
Why the name “The Doors” ? Well, it was adopted from a famous author, Aldous Huxley’s book, “The Doors of Perception”, and fittingly, refers to the use of psychedelic drugs getting doors open.

The movie about an iconic man was in turn directed by an iconic director, Oliver Stone. The movie starred in the lead, Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson (Morrison’s companion). The further roles of the other band members were played by, Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as John Densmore and Kathleen Quinlan as Patricia Kennealy. This however happened after only a decade of casting for the leading man with many being considered (such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, etc). Travolta was rejected by the band members, they wanted somebody with a wilder look. Kilmer in fact got the part by making a video of him singing, and then getting Stone to watch it.
The movie takes the viewer through Morrison’s life, from his young self onto his arrival in California, his studying at UCLA, and the formation of the group. The group in turn starts growing in popularity; and it is this popularity that leads to Morrison going down the path of alcoholism and drug abuse, something that starts to affect the band. He starts going downhill, and eventually dies of “heart failure” in Paris in 1971.