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"
Lotte Reiniger - The Fairy Tale Films (2009)
Director: Lotte Reiniger
Lotte Reiniger has the distinction of creating the very first feature animation, her enthralling The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), an epic silho... 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
The Lodger / Downhill (1927)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Marie Ault, Ivor Novello
Aesthetically influenced by German Expressionism, and based on the story of Jack the Ripper, 'The Lodger' was the film in which Hitchcock first demons... Read more
The Phantom Of The Opera (Chaney) (1925)
7.3/10
Director: Rupert Julian
Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry
Rupert Julian's 1925 silent masterpiece has Lon Chaney in the great role of his career as Erik, the vengeful composer who lives in the catacombs under... Read more
Broken Blossoms (1919)
7.6/10
Director: D W Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp
Silent melodrama set in London's Limehouse district where a young Chinese man falls in love with a street waif and is devastated when she is killed by... Read more
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920)
7/10
Director: John S Robertson
Starring: John Barrymore, Martha Mansfield, Sheldon Lewis
John Barrymore is riveting as humanitarian scientist Dr Henry Jekyll in this classic 1920 version of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale. Dr Jekyll,... Read more
Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas (1931)
7.6/10
Director: F W Murnau
Starring: Anna Chevalier, Matahi, Hitu, Kong Ah
A landmark collaboration of F W Murnau ('Nosferatu') and Robert Flaherty ('Nanook of the North') has been hailed as one of the most stunning films eve... Read more
Les Vampires (1915)
6.9/10
Director: Louis Feuillade
Starring: Musidora , Edouard Mathe
Ten-part silent serial from French pioneer Louis Feuillade. Made at a time when France was in the grip of fear and suspicion due to WWI, this hugely p... Read more
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
7.2/10
Director: Paul Leni
Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Tully Marshall
One of the great ghost stories and the prototype of all haunted house mysteries. Director Paul Leni's silent masterpiece is set in a creepy mansion wh... Read more
Die Nibelungen ( Siegfried / Kriemhild's Revenge ) (1924)
6.6/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Hanna Ralph, Margarete Schon, Paul Richter, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
One of the greatest artistic and technical achievements of the German silent cinema, Fritz Lang's monumental saga is a passionate retelling of Nordic... Read more