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"
Faust (1926)
8.1/10
Director: F W Murnau
Starring: Emil Jannings, Warner Fuetterer, Gosta Ekman
F.W. Murnau's last German film features astonishing photography, magnificent art direction, and special effects which retain the power to amaze. Freed... Read more
The Big Parade (Blu-ray) (1925)
7.9/10
Director: King Vidor
Starring: John Gilbert
The Big Parade is a 1925 American silent war drama film[2][3] directed by King Vidor, starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Tom O'Brie... 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
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
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
Master Of The House (1925)
7.2/10
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring: Johannes Meyer, Astrid Holm
Since the failure of his small business, Victor has become a household tyrant who constantly complains and criticises his long suffering family until... Read more
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
8/10
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Starring: Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky
This landmark film was planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Rus... Read more
The Lost World (1925)
7.1/10
Director: Harry Hoyt
Starring: Bessie Love, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone
The original silent film version of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic adventure story about a group of travellers who are transported to a world populated... 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
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