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"
The Cameraman (Blu-ray) (1928)
8.1/10
Director: Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick
Starring: Buster Keaton
Hopelessly in love with a woman working at MGM Studios, a clumsy man attempts to become a motion picture cameraman to be close to the object of his de... Read more
Metropolis (Restored) (1927)
8.3/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Gustav Frohlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel
Perhaps the most famous and influential of all silent films, 'Metropolis' had for 75 years been seen only in shortened or truncated versions. Now, res... Read more
Blood and Sand (1922)
7.2/10
Director: Fred Niblo
Starring: Rudolph Valentino
The mesmerizing Rudolph Valentino stars as a peasant youth who grows to become Spain's most famous matador, but along the way is fatally seduced by a... Read more
The Lodger (Blu-ray) (1927)
7.6/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Marie Ault, Ivor Novello
2012 restoration. Aesthetically influenced by German Expressionism, and based on the story of Jack the Ripper, 'The Lodger' was the film in which Hitc... Read more
The Thief (aka Ladron) (1952)
6.8/10
Director: Russell Rouse
Starring: Ray Milland
A chance accident causes a nuclear physicist selling top secret material to the Russians to fall under FBI scrutiny and go on the run. This film is n... Read more
Mud And Sand (1922)
5.8/10
Director: Gilbert Pratt
Starring: Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel brilliantly lampoons Rudolf Valentino as Rhubarb Vaselino who lives in a small village, where he and his friend, Sapo, enter a bullfightin... Read more
The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)
6.3/10
Director: Charles Tait
In 1906, Australia produced what was arguably the first ever feature-length film. Shot just outside Melbourne, it recounts the exploits of legendary... Read more
The Eagle (1925)
7.4/10
Director: Clarence Brown
Starring: Gary Cooper, Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky
Based on a Pushkin novel, 'The Eagle' stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favourite of the formidable Catherine the Great... Read more
Buster Keaton: The Complete Short Films 1917-1923 (1917)
8.7/10
Starring: Buster Keaton, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
A succession of the most timeless, classic comedy shorts ever realised in a luxurious four-disc box set, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK SY... Read more
The Garden Of Eden (1928)
6.8/10
Director: Lewis Milestone
Starring: Lowell Sherman
Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually... Read more