Silken Shackles

Silent romantic comedy set on a train.

An old spinster receives an unexpected Valentine's letter.

Produced and directed by George Albert Smith, the film shows a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel. The Kiss in the Tunnel is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. It is in fact, two films in one, hence the 2 min length. Firstly, the G.A. Smith film here for the central cheeky scene in the carriage. The train view footage however is Cecil Hepworth's work, entitled 'View From An Engine Front - Shilla Mill Tunnel', edited into two halves in order to provide a visual narrative of the train entering the tunnel before the kiss and then leaving afterwards. More information about the filming of the phantom train ride can be found searching for the Hepworth film separately.

Silent comedy, based on a 1913 stage play of the same title.

A skeleton dances joyously, often collapsing into a heap of bones and quickly putting itself back together.

Many different people go swimming at a pool at Coney Island.

Ambrose likes his mother's assistant, but when she inherits a fortune, the obstacles to their relationship keep mounting.

A woman has moved to a small town boarding house to seek peace and quiet. All too soon she finds herself in a Keystone movie, where there's everything but.

Pathé film number 380, also known as "What Happened to the Inquisitive Janitor" (US) and "Peeping Tom" (UK). It should not be confused with its remake from 1905 also titled What is Seen Through a Keyhole, a film now considered lost. As a janitor is cleaning a hotel, he decides to peek through the keyholes to observe some of the guests in their rooms. In room 8, a woman is busy making herself look more attractive, and the janitor enjoys watching her. There are also some interesting things going on in the other rooms on the floor.

When Charley asks a young woman whom he is in love with to marry him, she tells him that he needs to get her father's consent. But when Charley then goes to see her father, who owns a restaurant, he ends up getting hired as a dishwasher instead. The rest of the kitchen staff soon find out that Charley is not a member of their union, and they go on strike. Charley is left by himself, leading to a series of upheavals in the restaurant, and a great invention.

Charley invents a machine that turns ordinary, breakable eggs into rubbery, unbreakable ones for transport. He builds a Rube Goldberg contraption of parts stolen from his neighbors. Rival egg companies want his invention, one of them stooping to sabotage to get it.

Habitually mistreated at the deceptively named Happyland Home Orphanage, the Our Gang kids find a loyal and kindhearted friend in the form of a black grownup named Uncle Tom. Alas, Tom's own children -- including real-life siblings Allen "Farina" Hoskins and Jannie "Mango" Hoskins -- are carted off to Happyland by the cold-hearted county officials. Farina, Mango, and the other kids escape the cruel orphanage in the dead of night, while Uncle Tom, preparing for their return, "borrows" food, clothes, and furnishings from various merchants.

One of a handful of currently unavailable Hal Roach/MGM “Our Gang” silent films, School Begins was a series of gags built around the unenviable ritual of returning to school during the first week of September. School begins and some gang members are forging notes from their mother wanting out. Then too-young Wheezer parades by the school with escaped circus seals following him, causing a disturbance.

The ring master is plotting to get the circus owner done away with in a lion cage so he can take over.

A policeman spots a dog stealing a piece of meat from a butcher's shop, and gives chase. Soon several more policemen have joined the pursuit. But the chase does not turn out as the policemen expect.

"Max quarrels so with his wife that the lady leaves him. Our hero then attempts to do his own cooking, etc. He buys a fowl, but it proves to be still alive, and after he has chased it with a revolver, partly plucked it, shaved and finally half-roasted it, the bird is still alive and wings its way off. Max next turns his attention to blacking his boots, upsets the liquid blacking, spoons it up, and a minute later is using the same spoon to stir the broth. He writes for his wife to return home, but soon after sending the letter hears he is heir to a large fortune, and lives in the seventh heaven of delight - until his wife returns." (The Bioscope, Feb. 15, 1912)

A 1921 American silent short film directed by Fred Hibbard for Century Film Company and starring Baby Peggy and Brownie the dog. It was rediscovered in Switzerland in 2010.

Two boys, twins, leave the old homestead to seek their fortune in the world. They go divergent roads, and are soon widely separated one from the other, but they grow lonesome and try to find each other's whereabouts, without success. We lose sight of Bill and Dick is seen up against it good and hard. For him the future looks like a chalk ring on a blackboard, until he happens to saunter along the Bowery, where the manager of a dime museum offers him a job to play the gorilla. It looks good so he accepts. It is pretty sort until the astute impresario decides to pull off an innovation: that is, a gorilla and lion in the same cage. Of course Dick objects most strenuously to this arrangement, but his objections are quailed with a treacherous looking run, so he is forced to share the same menagerie hallroom with the lion.

A pair of young ladies cause trouble at the cinema with their lavish hats.

Charley is obsessed with learning the Charleston, so he can enter and win a local contest, which promises a large prize and the hand in marriage of a beautiful woman.