Imagine the handfuls of amazing movies that might have emerged if sound had waited just another year or two before conquering Hollywood. In the late 1920s, American cinema was reaching a glorious level of narrative fluidity and visual sophistication. With the coming of sound, however, movies (generally speaking) regressed several notches as directors tried to figure out where to hide microphones and how to incorporate giant sound systems into the filmmaking process. Early talkies therefore tend to look flat and static. It took several years for technology and innovation to help movies "catch up" to where they had once been.

But technology marches relentlessly on, and sound did indeed revolutionize Hollywood in 1928 and 1929. One of the foremost industry champions of sound on film was Hungarian-born William Fox, head of Fox Film Corporation. More then any other studio mogul of the time, Fox pushed for vast technological advances in sound and even widescreen, developing an early 70mm process that was years ahead of its time. Moreover, Fox believed strongly in elevating the expressive artistry of movies as much as possible, and to that end he hired and gave enormous creative freedoms to filmmakers like F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage. Like Fox, these were visionaries, fascinated with developing new ways of telling story and expressing emotion on screen.

Borzage (pronounced bor-ZAY-ghee) was not just a top director of the era, having helmed movies since 1913; he was the greatest maker of romantic films and has arguably never been surpassed in this regard. He was simply a master of conveying love and emotion in visual terms. Again and again in Borzage's pictures, a couple unites in love, bonding together in the face of terrible hardship or economic circumstance, and again and again, their love transcends all difficulty. This was Borzage's favorite theme, and he believed in it whole-heartedly. Moreover, his storytelling skills allowed him to make his audience feel it in film after film. Borzage didn't just show characters in love; he dwelled on the process of falling in love. Perhaps the reason his films' romanticism is so strong is because for Borzage, the "process" never stops; his characters seem to be still "falling" in love even after they've gotten there.

Take Street Angel (1928), one of his greatest achievements, now available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment in the magnificent new collection Murnau, Borzage, and Fox. In this story set in Italy, Angela (Janet Gaynor) desperately needs money and food for her ailing mother. She ventures out onto the streets of Naples to try her hand at streetwalking -- unsuccessfully. Then she steals some spaghetti from a street vendor. That doesn't go too well either -- she's caught in the act and arrested for both attempted crimes. She appears before a judge in a strikingly expressionistic set piece in which she is made to look very small in front of an imposing desk. After being sentenced to "a year in the workhouse," she escapes, finds her mother dead, and takes refuge in a traveling circus, eventually meeting an artist named Gino (Charles Farrell).

They fall in love and return to the city, where Angela's past catches up to her. (She's still wanted by the police.) She can't bring herself to tell Gino, however, for fear it would shatter his faith in her. Instead, Gino's life is shattered when he finds Angela simply gone, and after some time goes by, the possibility of their re-finding each other creates great suspense and romantic intrigue, leading to one of Borzage's most visually memorable conclusions.

It's Borzage's treatment of the lovers and their bond that makes Street Angel special. Look, for instance, at how the characters draw back from the world ever more greatly - and visually - as their love grows. Angela retreats from a reality of hardship and punishment first by joining the circus troupe and hiding in it as it moves out of the city and into the country. Next, she and Gino retreat into their own inner world one foggy night when they get on a boat and leave the circus world behind. Ironically, the boat is taking them back to Naples, but the effect is one of two people retreating into a private, etherealized place of their own, and Borzage treats this moment as such. The fog, shadow and soft-focus effects look like nothing we've yet seen in the film.

Later, in the film's most romantic sequence, Angela literally seals herself and Gino off from the outside. A policeman has finally found her, and while he is ready to haul her away to serve her time, she pleads with him for one last hour with Gino, who is waiting inside their apartment. The policeman relents, and Angela re-enters the apartment pretending to be happy and cheerful, and pulls the curtains closed. There may not be another scene in all of Borzage's work in which the idea of lovers isolating themselves from the harshness of the outside world has ever been so literally envisioned. In any event, Janet Gaynor truly shines in this sequence, at once feigning happiness, reveling in the hour she's been given, and dreading its conclusion.

In the end, Angela and Gino will reunite once again in a foggy, dark, shadowy setting, echoing their boat scene and again set off from the rest of the world - but whether their reunion will end happily or tragically is very much up in the air until one actually watches it all play out. One particularly interesting element here is the pace at which the actors move in the frame. Without the possibility of directing their vocal deliveries, since the film is silent, much of Borzage's direction to his actors was clearly about how they moved their bodies. Gino slowly raising his arms over Angela, for example, and Angela's freezing in place followed by a quick scampering out of the way, are all perfectly calibrated for maximum effect on the audience; the very movement itself creates an emotional result. It looks effortless but it must have required the eye of someone as experienced as Borzage to be pulled off so well.

When Street Angel was made, Borzage had the freedom to shoot on location if he so desired, but instead he opted to construct a massive city set at the studio. Experienced directors often prefer this as it allows them a high level of control over a film's look. For someone as visually oriented as Borzage, it was really a must. It allowed him to conceive and execute elaborate tracking shots and to design sets and camera setups that made expressive use of shadows. When Angela is chased through Naples after her escape from the police, for instance, we see far more shadows than people in the frame. By building his "world" in the studio, Borzage was able to literally create from scratch the private, romantic "world" of his characters. It's important to mention two of Borzage's collaborators: cinematographer Ernest Palmer and art director Harry Oliver. Palmer worked with Borzage on three films in this collection, and Oliver worked him on five. (Both also worked with F.W. Murnau on City Girl [1930], included here.) These were major collaborations because the work of these men, as guided by Borzage, had direct impact on the emotional effects of the films.

It's equally important to mention the cast. Farrell and Gaynor made 12 films together between 1927-1934 (including one in which they play themselves). They form one of the great romantic screen pairings, and they were probably never better than in their first three movies, 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel and Lucky Star (1929), all of which were directed by Borzage and are in this collection. Their chemistry is palpable, and it works with Borzage's visual techniques to create an ethereally beautiful and delicate result. Gaynor won an Oscar - the first ever for Best Actress - for her combined work in this film, 7th Heaven and Sunrise (1927), included here in two versions. (Harry Oliver and Ernest Palmer were also nominated for their art direction and cinematography.)

Street Angel was a major box office success and has aged extremely well. Most of Borzage's films have. This is a silent movie that is easy to "get into"; it's absorbing and compelling all the way through. Borzage was such a skilled silent filmmaker, in fact, that he just instinctively kept using the same techniques for the key moments of his talkies. His film noir Moonrise (1948), for example, could be watched with the sound turned off and it would still completely make sense. This has always been the case with the best filmmakers, then and now, and is arguably the main reason their films (including Street Angel) are so memorable and affecting.

Murnau, Borzage and Fox is comprised of 12 complete films (2 by Murnau, 10 by Borzage), and also includes a fascinating reconstruction of Borzage's partially lost film The River (1929), an imagining of Murnau's completely lost film 4 Devils (1928) using stills, titles, script and eyewitness accounts, as well as a new documentary, commentaries, outtakes, hundreds of stills (on the DVDs), and two coffee-table books. It's a mammoth collection that comes housed in a photo-album-style binder sheathed in a heavy, thick, attractive box.

The films comprise all the work of Murnau after he signed with Fox (except for his last film, Tabu [1931], which was produced for another company), and most of the work Borzage made between 1925 and 1932, including some pre-Code talkies. To see these movies in conjunction with John Cork's superb documentary entitled Murnau, Borzage and Fox is to learn a great deal about the profound influence these filmmakers had on one another (especially Murnau on Borzage), the prescient technological foresight of William Fox, and the overall transition from silents to talkies that happened through this time period. From Borzage we can watch late-silent masterworks, his first talkie (the Will Rogers-starring They Had to See Paris [1929]), and more deft sound films like Bad Girl (1931) and After Tomorrow (1932). Classic-movie lovers will find the chance to watch such a progression not only educational but fascinating and entertaining.

Cork's documentary (co-directed by Lisa van Eyssen and written by Steven Smith) uses comments by historians, archivists and others (including Borzage's widow) as well as historic letters and comments read by an actor, over copious images from the movies in question. Often Cork will give us snippets from several people in a row over one continuous film clip, only rarely showing us footage of the commentators. It's an unusual approach but it works because it lets the imagery do much of the talking, which after all was the approach used by Borzage and Murnau themselves!

The coffee table books by Janet Bergstrom are also first-rate. They are essentially photo books. The first is an overview of Murnau and Borzage's work, with many beautiful full-page stills and well-written, clear and authoritative text. The second is devoted entirely to reconstructing 4 Devils through photos and some text. This was Murnau's second film for Fox, and while it's lost, the images and descriptions are tantalizing enough to lend credence to the claim that it may have been the greatest silent film ever made.

Print quality is as good as these silent films will ever look. They're awfully old, after all, plus they utilize quite a bit of soft-focus, resulting in a somewhat gauzy effect. This in no way deteriorates from the experience of watching them. The happy exception here is Murnau's City Girl, which looks so razor-sharp and fine-grained that it must have been printed from an original negative. It is just spectacular to look at. Most of the soundtracks are original scores from the era, and several have sound effects built in, as they did back in the day. City Girl and Lucky Star, however, feature brand-new scores by Christopher Caliendo, and regretfully these are the one flaw in an otherwise great collection. These scores sound far too modern and fussy; faring better is Tim Curran's new score to Lazybones (1925). Overall, the entire box set represents a lavish, loving treatment of this period and is a must for serious film fans and collectors. It's classic DVD at its best.

For more information about Murnau,Borzage and Fox, visit Fox Home Entertainment. To order Murnau,Borzage and Fox, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold