Clarence Brown

Two childhood friends, Leo and Ulrich, return from military service and fall for the same alluring woman, Felicitas, with destructive consequences. Greta Garbo and John Gilbert's on-screen chemistry was matched by a real-life romance that began during filming, and the picture made them one of Hollywood's first great celebrity couples. Clarence Brown directs with a fluid, intimate camera that was advanced for its time, and the film's sensual love scenes pushed the boundaries of what censorship would allow. Based on Hermann Sudermann's novel The Undying Past, the film was a sensation at New York's Capitol Theatre, where it ran longer than any picture before it. It was selected for the National Film Registry in 2006. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Romance · Drama · Silent

Smouldering Fires is a silent drama directed by Clarence Brown for Universal Pictures. Pauline Frederick stars as Aurelie Kimball, a successful businesswoman whose much younger secretary (Laura La Plante) catches the eye of her husband, setting in motion a story of jealousy, desire, and self-discovery. The film explores the tensions between age, ambition, and romantic longing with a subtlety characteristic of Brown's direction. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A loose adaptation of Pushkin's novel Dubrovsky, with Valentino as a Cossack lieutenant who catches the eye of Catherine the Great, rejects her, and goes on the run. When a corrupt nobleman seizes his father's lands and kills the old man, Vladimir dons a black mask and becomes the Black Eagle, a Robin Hood figure, then infiltrates the nobleman's household as a French tutor and falls for his daughter. Clarence Brown directs with a light, fleet touch, and George Barnes's cinematography includes a celebrated extended tracking shot across a banquet table. Vilma Banky is the love interest and Louise Dresser a memorably imperious Czarina. Valentino, in his first United Artists picture, gets to swashbuckle in the Fairbanks mode and romance in his own, and the balance suits him. Published in 1925, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

James Fenimore Cooper's novel as a sweeping silent epic, shot in the California mountains standing in for 1757 upstate New York. Wallace Beery is the vengeful Huron Magua, Albert Roscoe the scout Hawkeye, and Barbara Bedford the kidnapped Cora, with Harry Lorraine as the Mohican Chingachgook. Maurice Tourneur began the picture but was injured when a car drove off a cliff, and his assistant Clarence Brown — later the director of Garbo's finest films — finished it, earning his first screen credit. Regularly ranked among the best silent adaptations of American literature, it was restored by the Library of Congress. Published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Silent