photoplay

The movie’s recent restoration—courtesy of Photoplay Productions, using materials largely held by the Danish Film Institute—is a revelation thanks to its primary source: amber-toned nitrate prints struck from original camera negatives.

After a “Eureka!” moment, Tateh reinvents himself as a filmmaker, now styled as Baron Ashkenazy, who will later befriend Mother—they made a passing acquaintance earlier—with Mr. Uranowitz’s lively performance of one of the musical’s lighter diversions, “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.,” providing respite from the increasingly dark narrative.

The popularity Dr Kildare earnt Chamberlaine meant that, for three consecutive years between 1963 and 1965, he was named the most popular male star by Photoplay magazine.

Styled as a retro, black-and-white photoplay with intertitles, sound effects, cranked-up speeds and jaunty music, “Hundreds of Beavers” ostensibly tells a story, but only insofar as a magician does, to simply contextualize your enjoyment of the tricks.

In 1918, an essay in the film fan magazine Photoplay criticized the older arts as elitist, but noted that when the moving picture arrived “democracy clasped it to its heart” — this was, the writer proclaimed, “the first art-child of democracy.”