Today is Silent Movie Day !

The Louise Brooks Society is pleased to join in the celebration for Silent Movie Day, an annual day dedicated to celebrating and preserving silent movies!

According to their must-visit website at silentmovieday.org, "Silent Movie Day is an annual celebration of silent movies, a vastly misunderstood and neglected cinematic art form. We believe that silent motion pictures are a vital, beautiful, and often powerful part of film history, and we are united with others in the goal to advocate for their presentation and preservation.

This day provides an opportunity for academics, aficionados, programmers, archivists and enthusiasts to gather around their shared appreciation of this unique period in visual arts and culture. It is also a time to rally around silent film initiatives for preservation and access, as well as raise awareness of the small percentage of film that remains from this period of the motion picture industry." 

Bebe Daniels and Robert Frazer in Miss Bluebeard (1925);
 Image courtesy of Bruce Calvert.

On their must-visit website at silentmovieday.org, you'll find links to dozens of screenings and other events all around the world which celebrate silent film as part of this international effort. Among them is a screening of the Louise Brooks classic, Pandora's Box, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

There is also additional information about Silent Movie Day, links to related resources, some merchandise, and more. Check it out.

Gloria Swanson in The Affairs of Anatol (1921);
Image courtesy of Bruce Calvert, Silent Film Still Archive.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2025. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.   

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, screens in Philadelphia on Sept 29 ( Silent Movie Day )

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, will be shown at Film Society East in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 4 pm and 7 pm on September 29th. This special screening, sponsored by the Philadelphia Film Society, is part of the international Silent Movie Day celebration. More information about the two screenings can be found HERE.

The event description reads:

G. W. PABST | GERMANY | 1929 | 141 MIN | NR | SILENT W/ INTERTITLES 

In honor of Silent Movie Day, PFS presents one of the greatest achievements of the silent film era from renowned German cinema master G. W. Pabst. The surprisingly modern epic follows the exploits of an alluring young woman and her intoxicating beauty that draws a string of lovers into her orbit, leading to a tragic chain of betrayal, obsessions, and self-destruction.

Cast: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz

More information about Silent Movie Day, an international events with dozens of screenings around the world, can be found on its website at silentmovieday.org/

More information about the celebrated G. W. Pabst film can be found on the acclaimed and recently expanded Pandora's Box (filmography page) on the Louise Brooks Society website. 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2025. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, to screen on Silent Movie Day

This year, the annual Silent Movie Day will take place on September 29. Celebrations -- in the form of screenings -- are taking place all over the United States, as well as in Europe. Click on their Facebook page to see if a theater near you will be screening a film -- and if they are, GO! From what I saw, there are Buster Keaton, Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks and other silent films being screened in theaters..... even Joan of Arc and The Phantom of the Opera.

To mark the occasion, the Little Theater in Rochester, New York will screen the most recent restoration of Pandora's Box. The Little Theater opened in 1929, the same year Pandora's Box was released. Over the years, it has become the area's leading venue for classic films. In the 1960s and 1970s, while Louise Brooks was living in Rochester, she would sometimes go to the Little Theater to watch movies.*

The Little Theater (240 East Ave. in Rochester) will screen Pandora's Box twice on September 29th, at 10:30 in the morning and 7:00 in the evening. More information, as well as ticket availability, can be found HERE. According to the Little Theater website: 

"One of the masters of early German cinema, G. W. Pabst had an innate talent for discovering actresses (including Greta Garbo). And perhaps none of his female stars shone brighter than Kansas native and onetime Ziegfeld girl Louise Brooks, whose legendary persona was defined by Pabst’s lurid, controversial melodrama Pandora’s Box.

Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu, whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with. Daring and stylish, Pandora’s Box is one of silent cinema’s great masterworks and a testament to Brooks’s dazzling individuality.

Restored from the best surviving 35mm elements at Haghefilm Conservation under the supervision of the Deutsche Kinemathek with the cooperation of George Eastman Museum, the Cinémathèque Française, Cineteca di Bologna, Národní filmový archiv, and Gosfilmofond."

* For instance: In March of 1966, Brooks went to the Little Theater to see Lord Love a Duck starring Roddy McDowell. And in late August of 1969, she went to see The Loves of Isadora, a film Brooks thinks highly of.

More about Pandora's Box can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its Pandora's Box (filmography page).

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.