Silent Films
"Our invention can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever."
- Auguste Lumiere, early film maker who, with his brother Louis, organized the first public performance of motion pictures in December 1895.
A silent film is a film which has no accompanying soundtrack. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself, but before the late 1920s, most films were silent.
The years before sound came to the movies are known as the "silent era" among film scholars and historians. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity before silent films were replaced by "talking pictures" or "talkies", and a number of film buffs believe the quality of the cinema actually decreased for a few years, before the new medium of sound was adapted to the movies.
The glorious early days of cinema are represented here in this collection with many titles still acknowledged as classics of the cinema to this day.
"Slapstick Comedy" found as a subhead of "Comedy" may also be worth a browse...
Right: Scene from Fritz Lang's 1927 "Metropolis"
Foolish Wives (1922)
7.2/10
Director: Erich Von Stroheim
Starring: Erich Von Stroheim, Maud George, Mae Busch
Publicised as the first film to cost a million dollars, praised for it's extravagant visual design and condemned for it's portrayal of a rogue count's... Read more
Frau Im Mond ( Woman in the Moon ) (1929)
7.4/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Director Fritz Lang's final silent epic. A rocket on its way to explore the moon is commandeered by a group of spies intent on plundering the moon's n... Read more
Garbo Silents Collection: The Temptress (1926) / Flesh and the Devil (1926) / The Mysterious Lady (1928)
Director: Clarence Brown, Fred Niblo
Starring: Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno, Lionel Barrymore, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel
A collection of three Garbo films from the silent era. 'The Temptress' casts her, in her second American film, as the wife of Lionel Barrymore, she a... Read more
Go West (1925)
7.2/10
Director: Buster Keaton
Starring: Buster Keaton
With little luck at keeping a job in the city a New Yorker tries work in the country and eventually finds his way leading a herd of cattle to the West... Read more
Grass (1925)
7.9/10
Director: Ernest B Schoedsack, Merian C Cooper
"King Kong" creators Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack risked their lives to make this monumental documentary about the Bakhtiari people of we... Read more
Greed (1925)
7.9/10
Director: Erich Von Stroheim
Starring: Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt
One of the wonders of film, this miracle of filmmaking made against the most impossible of odds, stars Gibson Gowland as a dentist who marries the dau... Read more
Harold Lloyd - The Definitive Collection: Volume 1 ( inc. Safety Last ) (1923)
Starring: Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd was one of the greatest and most loved comedians of the early film era. More sympathetic than Keaton, more prolific than Chaplin, Harold... Read more
Harold Lloyd - The Definitive Collection: Volume 2 (1928)
Starring: Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd was one of the greatest and most loved comedians of the early film era. More sympathetic than Keaton, more prolific than Chaplin, Harold... Read more
Haxan - Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)
Director: Benjamin Christensen
Starring: Maren Pedersen, Emmy Schoenfield, Oscar Stribolt, Narrated by, William Burroughs
This semi-documentary opens with a series of medieval prints and follows with re-enactments of old legends concerning crones, evil-minded monks and th... Read more
Hitchcock Collection: Secret Agent / The Farmer's Wife / Rich and Strange / Juno and the Paycock / The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Barry Fitzgerald, Margaret...
A collection of 5 classic Hitchcock films. 'Secret Agent' (1935) - Hitchcock's realistic, darkly funny thriller stars John Gielgud as the British agen... Read more