Tag: bell lightbox

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The Unholy Three visits TIFF Bell Lightbox

Eric Veillette

An archival 35mm print of Tod Browning’s The Unholy Three (1925), an early mingling of the underworld with the macabre, visits TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday, June 25 at 8pm, with piano accompaniment by Laura Silberberg. The film, which stars Lon Chaney, premiered in Toronto on August 4, 1925, at Shea’s Hippodrome. It was preceded by a travelogue showing a “bevy of bathing beauties” at Coney Island and a short comedy starring Harry Langdon. Shea’s Hippodrome was the largest theatre the city had to offer when it opened in 1914, but was demolished in the late 1950s to make way … Continue reading The Unholy Three visits TIFF Bell Lightbox

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TIFF: Mary Pickford and the Invention of the Movie Star

Eric Veillette

In today’s Toronto Star, I preview TIFF’s latest exhibit, Mary Pickford and the Invention of the Movie Star, based on the collection of Rob Brooks. Over the course of three decades, Brooks, a Toronto native, amassed thousands of items including lobby cards, posters, correspondence and several personal items once owned by Toronto’s own Mary Pickford. In the article, I mention Pickford’s long-held ties to Toronto. In an early 1920s visit, Pickford was so enamoured by the patients and staff at the Christie St. Military Hospital that they received private screenings of all her forthcoming films. When Sparrows was released in … Continue reading TIFF: Mary Pickford and the Invention of the Movie Star

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The Birth of a Nation: How ugliness changed Toronto’s movie-going landscape

Eric Veillette

It’s no secret that D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is one of the most racist films ever made — a declaration not lost on Toronto audiences when it premiered at the  Royal Alexandra Theatre on September 20, 1915. The film, a revisionist account of the American Civil War, the Reconstruction period that followed and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan — all of which vilified the African-American population — played at Bell Lightbox earlier this week as part of their Essential Cinema programme. When presented in its proper context — the Lightbox screening was accompanied by DJ Spooky‘s … Continue reading The Birth of a Nation: How ugliness changed Toronto’s movie-going landscape

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Fritz Lang’s Metropolis at the Tivoli

Eric Veillette

“Imagine Toronto in 2927,” announced press agents when Fritz Lang’s Metropolis premiered at the Tivoli Theatre on September 12, 1927. “Erotic, exotic, erratic” are other words used to describe the futuristic and prophetic tale, but had Fritz Lang directed his masterpiece ten years earlier, Ontario movie-goers may have waited longer to see it. According to Eric Minton in the Canadian Film Society’s 1969 “Silent Screen Review,” a war-time ban on German films kept many classics of European cinema from hitting Ontario screens until the late 1920s, when the Ontario Censor Board finally showed some leniency. Good thing they did, because … Continue reading Fritz Lang’s Metropolis at the Tivoli