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"
Blancanieves (2012)
Director: Pablo Berger
Starring: Angela Molina, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Maribel Verdu, Pere Ponce, Jose Maria Pou,...
Once upon a time there was a girl named Carmen, who never knew her mother. She learned the art of her father, a famous bullfighter, but was hated by h... 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
Buster Keaton: 3 Hours of Shorts (1923)
8.9/10
Director: Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline
Starring: Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton's acting trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stoneface". His... Read more
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
6.7/10
Director: D W Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B Walthall
An epic tale of the Civil War which many consider to be the single most important film in the development of cinema as an art. It is a stunning summar... 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
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
Metropolis (Reconstructed & Restored) ( Blu-ray ) (1927)
8.3/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gustav Frohlich
Fritz Lang's masterwork, set in a towering city of the future whose populace is divided between the idle ruling class and the dehumanized workers who... Read more
Strike (1924)
7.6/10
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Starring: Maxim Shtraukh, Grigori Alexandrov, Mikhail Gomorov
In 1922, Lenin also had said that, "...of all of the arts, for us the cinema was the most important." In 1924, the Proletkult offered Eisenstein, then... Read more
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
7.3/10
Director: Edwin S Porter
Starring: Tom Mix, William S Heart, Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh
The first motion picture to be shot with a coherent narrative celebrates a century with this release featuring the original silent print as well as a... Read more
Edison: The Invention of the Movies (2005)
8.1/10
Truly an event to be celebrated by cinephiles, "Edison: The Invention of the Movies" is an unprecedented survey of one of cinema's most influential fi... Read more