The Chicago Sun-Times has put thousands of Roger Ebert's film reviews and articles on-line. They can all be found in a searchable database at the Sun Timeswebsite. Ebert really loves "the movies," and he is an advocate for the greats of the silent film era, i.e., Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, Lillian Gish, and Louise Brooks, among others. (See "Star Ranking Really Rankles.")
Included among the Ebert archive is a long article from 1998 on Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box (which quietly alludes to the LBS - "she is the most popular dead actress on the Web.") Another interesting item is a question and answer exchange from "Movie Answer Man."
"Q. I've been attending a series of silent films by the German director G.W. Pabst. While watching Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), I recognized a camera shot that is most often attributed to Conrad Hall (that of a face next to a window during rain, making it appear as if the raindrops are tears). Hall's use of that shot in In Cold Blood is certainly amazing, but it seems that the origin of that shot should be credited to the cinematographers Sepp Allgeier and Fritz Arno Wagner. I was amazed to find such a shot in a German film from the '20s. --- Charles Modica Jr., Los Angeles
A. There are more amazing shots in German films from the 1920s than in most new releases. That film and Pandora's Box made Louise Brooks a movie immortal. Thanks for the insight; Bertolucci's new The Dreamers quotes the shot, and I credited Hall."
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