His Back Against the Wall(1922)

The Desert Man(en)

William S. Hart directs and stars in a film that is a typical Western of the era. He plays Jim, a prospector who lands in the town of Broken Hope, and the name pretty much describes its inhabitants. Jim meets and falls in love with Jennie (Margery Wilson), whose father (Walt Whitman) is gravely ill. Jim rounds up a reluctant doctor from another town to tend to the old man, but he dies anyway. The doctor, however, gains Jennie's trust and she runs off with him. Only then does he tell her he's already married. She leaves immediately, but is too proud to go home so she finds work as a dance hall girl at Tacoma Jake's saloon. Jim, meanwhile, finds gold near Broken Hope, which raises its inhabitants' attitudes considerably. But the bad element is still there, and Jim is chasing after a group of kidnappers when he enters Tacoma Jake's saloon and sees Jennie. Jim not only overcomes the bad guys, he gets the girl, too.

The Kid(en)

A tramp cares for a boy after he's abandoned as a newborn by his mother. Later the mother has a change of heart and aches to be reunited with her son.

Looking for Trouble(en)

Jack Pepper accidentally fires his gun while forcing a newspaper editor to retract his statement regarding Miss Tulip Hellier, and the sheriff goes after Jack. While hiding out, Jack finds a liquor cache on the Hellier ranch and knows it was placed there as a ruse to distract the sheriff while an outlaw gang runs dope across the border.

Too Many Kisses(en)

Wanting his son to get away from his many girlfriends and buckle down to work, the New York industrialist father of a playboy sends him to an obscure village in Spain to find samples of a rare mineral. When the son gets to Spain, he runs afoul of the local police chief - who has a secret that he tries to keep the young man from discovering.

The Impossible Voyage(fr)

Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.

The Great Train Robbery(en)

After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.

L'Âge d'or(fr)

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Le mogli e le arance(it)

Le mogli e le arance is characterized by a wonderful sereneness. It is the kind of quietude which many of us connect immediately with the south. Everything seems to be in its perfect place, and time is just passing. In the setting of a sanatorium a nobleman is practicing idleness and slow-motion mind games. Does it sound boring? Yes, it does. But it is not, the uneventfulness is definitively enthralling. The film director tries to narrate time, time itself, as such, for its own sake: a rare experiment.

The Triplets of Belleville(fr)

When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.

The Gun Woman(en)

A saloon owner loans her lover the money to buy a house, which he has led her to believe they will live in after they're married. Instead, he takes the money and buys a saloon in another town.

Broken Ways(en)

In this story the young wife concerned is called upon to solve a rather momentous question. After separating from her husband, whom she has discovered to be a brute and a criminal, she is about to give herself to another man, believing her husband dead, when he appears before her fleeing from justice. Shall she deliver him to the law or surrender to his claims? She yields in one instance, but not in the other. Then justice intervenes.

Calamity Anne's Ward(en)

During the raid on an emigrant train the girl and her brother, the only survivors, are attacked by the villain who kidnaps the girl and takes her to the camp of Calamity Anne, who takes a liking to the girl and becomes her guardian angel. The girl's brother is killed and a ranger takes the locket containing the girl's picture from his neck and recognizes the girl in Calamity Anne's camp. Later, Calamity Anne holds the villain and his band at bay and the girl and the ranger make their escape. The girl and the ranger come to the spot where the girl's brother is buried and here she asks the ranger if he is going to leave her there alone. His answer is to take her into his arms.

Modern Times(en)

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..

The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon(en)

The opening shows a colored nursemaid in the park with baby carriage, and seated on a bench receives the attention of several smart colored men who admire her greatly and endeavor to make her acquaintance. But the dusky belle is coy and declines to make the acquaintance of any of them, until one more fortunate than the rest is invited to a seat on the bench with her, and a most pronounced flirtation takes place between the lady and her beau. (Selig catalog)

Boxing Fever(en)

Fairground boxing booth where visitors try to knock out the champion and win five pounds, the first contestants is knocked out but the very eager (and possibly drunk) third man knocks out the champion and overcome with "boxing fever" rushes out punching at everybody and everything he meets. (britishpathe.com)

Mrs. Pussy Loves Animals(fr)

Each time Mrs Babylas sees an animal, she just can't help herself bring it back home.

Zapata's Gang(de)

Comedy about a film crew shooting a movie about guns and robbers, when real robbers turn up. Having to go home in robbers costume, they are mistakingly accused. In the end the real robbers are brought to justice. One of the earliest films portraying bisexual characters.

Evening Clothes(en)

Attracted by his wealth, avaricious Germaine marries D'Artois, then leaves him for a more sophisticated man. D'Artois retaliates by moving to the city and learning the proper social graces. His new life style proves to be too expensive for him, and at the end he is left with nothing but one suit of evening clothes and his now contrite wife.

The Balancing Act(fr)

Photographic Expressions(fr)

The main phases in the lives of a young couple, from when they meet and fall in love, until they have seven children, intimately linked to photographic art.