| rdfs:comment | - For a second year, the festival recognized the historic heritage of the Empire Theatre by starting off the screenings with a film that had played there during its first year of operation. Hawthorne of the USA was made in 1919, the year the building was constructed, and actually played there in mid-February of 1920, three months after the theatre opened. Wallace Reid starred as a wealthy American tourist visiting a sleepy, impoverished eastern European kingdom plagued with terrorists, revolutionaries, and a corrupt military. When he falls in love with the princess, he decides the only way to solve everyone's problems is to turn the country into a democracy and use it as an economic investment opportunity for himself and a visiting U.S. Senator--which he does, almost single-handedly. The rom
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| abstract | - For a second year, the festival recognized the historic heritage of the Empire Theatre by starting off the screenings with a film that had played there during its first year of operation. Hawthorne of the USA was made in 1919, the year the building was constructed, and actually played there in mid-February of 1920, three months after the theatre opened. Wallace Reid starred as a wealthy American tourist visiting a sleepy, impoverished eastern European kingdom plagued with terrorists, revolutionaries, and a corrupt military. When he falls in love with the princess, he decides the only way to solve everyone's problems is to turn the country into a democracy and use it as an economic investment opportunity for himself and a visiting U.S. Senator--which he does, almost single-handedly. The romantic comedy and political satire was based on a 1912 stage play written while world affairs were gradually seething into World War I, and the Russian revolution had just taken place when the movie was made. Despite being 86 years old, the film retained a timeliness that was not lost on the festival audience.
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