Our annual season of films from cinema’s earliest era continues on most Tuesdays in March and April. From Sweden arrives The Phantom Chariot (screening March 2), a haunting and influential fable by Victor Sjöström. One of the very few Japanese actors to make a successful transition to Hollywood features was Sessue Hayakawa, who will be featured in O Mimi San and The Devil’s Claim (both screening on March 16). On March 23, we’ll offer a cavalcade of comedy shorts from the legendary producer Hal Roach, starring his most popular performers: Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, and Our Gang. Marlene Dietrich, in one of her few silent film appearances, stars in the German classic, I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (March 30). W.C. Fields’s considerable gift for pantomime is on display in So’s Your Old Man (April 6). The early days of an enduring genre will be examined in a short film selection entitled Broncho Billy and Beyond: Early Westerns (April 13). Rochester’s own Louise Brooks stars alongside Richard Arlen and the burly Wallace Beery in William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (April 20). Each of these programs will feature live piano accompaniment from Philip C. Carli. The series concludes April 27 with a screening of the recently restored, once-lost foreign version of Lewis Milestone’s remarkable anti-war epic, All Quiet on the Western Front, preserved by the Library of Congress. This dialogue-free version, featuring a music score on the soundtrack, is often thought to be superior to the talkie version we know best today. See it for yourself to decide!

In addition, on March 19 the Dryden will present a special screening of Mary Pickford in The Poor Little Rich Girl, accompanied by a new score composed by Philip Carli and performed by the Flour City Orchestra. This special event is sponsored by the Humanities Project of the University of Rochester’s College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, in collaboration with George Eastman House and the Eastman School of Music. Special ticket prices: $15, $10 members and students. No Take-10 tickets or passes.