An Interactive History of the Edison Company and the Invention of the Motion Picture. An unprecedented collection from Kino International and the Film/Media Department of The Museum of Modern Art together with the Library of Congress. Featuring 140 complete Edison Compnany films 1891-1918 restored and newly mastered with all new musical scores

Tol'able David is a magnificent film, carefully transferred from the best available elements, and starring the great Richard Barthelmess (Broken Blossoms) in the title role. This rural adaptation of the David and Goliath tale chronicles the hero's passage into adulthood as he confronts three crooks looking for trouble. When the story opens, David Kinemon, the youngest son of tenant farmers living in small-town West Virginia, yearns to be seen as an adult. His youthful antics, however, prevent his family from seeing him as such. As his mother often tells him, You're not quite a man yet - you're only tol'able. Over the course of this coming-of-age tale, the young David overcomes grief, poverty, heartache, and danger to prove he is no longer merely tol'able, but a man. Gladys Hulette is charming as Esther Hatburn, the pretty girl next door, and Ernest Torrence gives a tremendous performance as the malicious Luke Hatburn. Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel) adapted Joseph Hergesheimer's short story for the screen. Shot on location in Virginia, director Henry King (Carousel) delivers a delightful gem from film?s early years. This edition has been mastered from a compilation of the best surviving footage in two 35mm prints and a 35mm duplicate negative and is presented at the visually correct speed. The musical score is compiled and conducted by Robert Israel, with a small orchestra of piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, drums, banjo and harmonica such as might have been heard when this film was performed theatrically in the 1920's. In 2007, Tol'able David was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Contains a rare, bonus interview with director Henry King talking about his life, his films, and specifically his work on Tol'able David.

Charles Chaplin came to Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios late in 1913 as a little-known British vaudevillian, and after a year, had not only established his Tramp character, learned to write and direct his own films, and also achieved public recognition as a star comedian. Although Keystone did not publicize its performers by name, standees of Chaplin's likeness outside theatres sufficed to attract audiences. Some of the films, especially Tillie's Punctured Romance, remained in theatrical distribution for decades. The fact that all but one of the Chaplin Keystones exist is due, of course, to the star's enormous subsequent popularity. Most of the original Keystone negatives, however, were simply printed away and the survival of all but a few of these films depends upon a very few original prints, a larger number of reissue prints, and some duped prints from later years. With the support of Association Chaplin (Paris), 35mm full aperture, early-generation materials were gathered over an eight year search on almost all the films from archives and collectors around the world, and were painstakingly pieced together and restored by the British Film Institute National Archive, the Cineteca Bologna and its laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata in Italy, and Lobster Films in Paris. Most are now clear, sharp and rock-steady, although some reveal that their source prints are well-used and a handful survives only in 16mm. One can now understand Chaplin's meteoric rise, for it is possible for the first time in generations to see clearly what clever and imaginative films he made at Keystone. These editions feature all-new musical settings by outstanding practitioners of silent film accompaniment Eric Beheim, Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Frederick Hodges, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, Rodney Sauer and The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Ethan Uslan, and Ken Winokur's band Tillie's Nightmare with the UCLA Film and Television Archive restoration of Tillie's Punctured Romance.