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
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
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
Dr Mabuse, The Gambler (1922)
7.9/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Aud Egede Nissen
This expressionist classic is the tale of a master criminal (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) planning to rule the world and the State Attorney trying to entrap hi... 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
Nanook of the North (1922)
7.7/10
Director: Robert Flaherty
Standing the test of time, this groundbreaking silent film detailing the harsh existence of an Eskimo tribe living on the shores of Canada's Hudson Ba... Read more
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
7.8/10
Director: D W Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Creighton Hale, Monte Blue
DW Griffith's epic tale of two sisters caught up in the French Revolution, played by two sisters. Henriette (Lillian Gish) brings her blind sister (D... 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
The Golem (1920)
7.2/10
Director: Paul Wegener, Carl Boese
Starring: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrueck, Ernst Deutsch, Lyda Salmonova
Directed, produced by and starring Paul Wegener, "Der Golem" is a masterpiece of early cinema. The story centres on a Jewish community threatened with... Read more
Way Down East (1920)
7.9/10
Director: D W Griffith
Starring: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman
D.W. Griffith's Victorian pastoral stars Lillian Gish as an eager though exploited young woman abandoned by her obsessive, cavalier husband when he le... Read more