Classic
see all genres ›A classic film has stood the test of time. How much time? Well, that’s a matter of opinion! But informal consensus takes us back forty years or so, from the end of the silent era to the last "golden age of cinema," the exhilarating mid-1970s.
Discover Classic Films
Genres / Classic
SUB-GENRES · Classic Action/Adventure · Classic Comedy · Classic Crime · Classic Documentary · Classic Drama · Classic Horror · Classic Science Fiction · Classic War · Classic Western · Pre-Code
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Abraham Lincoln
Returning to the historic era of his greatest success, D.W. Griffith paid homage to the sixteenth President in this moving drama (his first talking picture) starring Walter Huston. Focusing on Abraham Lincoln’s personal tragedies as well as his great accomplishments, Griffith’s film depicts the American icon with a...Start your free trial to watch -
Actors and Sin
Some of legendary writer Ben Hecht's best work comes to the screen in a two-in-one show business-themed comedy-drama that reveals what goes on when the greasepaint comes off. In ACTOR'S BLOOD, washed-up stage star Edward G. Robinson assembles all the suspects in the murder of his actress-daughter (Marsha Hunt). In WOMAN OF...Start your free trial to watch -
L'age d'or
In 1930, following their short film triumph UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí created an hour-long avant-garde tour de force that's both an aesthetic avalanche of boldness and a withering attack on a society that elevates pious morality over sexual freedom. As scorpions battle, partisans (led by famed surrealist...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice Chops the Suey
A highly unusual Alice Comedy, featuring devices familiar from other cartoon series. The opening and closing are similar to those in the OUT OF THE INKWELL cartoons which the Fleischer Studio was producing at the same time, with the main characters emerging from, and disappearing back into, an ink bottle....Start your free trial to watch -
Alice Rattled by Rats
Several of the Alice Comedies, including this one, featured crowds of nondescript mice or rats. These rats bear scant resemblance to the later Mickey Mouse, but this particular short was loosely remade in 1929 as a Mickey Mouse cartoon, WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY. Here it's Alice who goes away, leaving Julius in...Start your free trial to watch -
Alice Solves the Puzzle
Little Margie Gay, who would go on to play Alice in more than half of the Alice Comedies, made her first appearance in ALICE SOLVES THE PUZZLE (The title introducing her was lettered by Ub Iwerks, who was not only the studio's lead animator but also its lettering specialist). And this short also marked the...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice the Jail Bird
In this offbeat entry, Alice and her friends steal a pie from a windowsill and wind up on the wrong side of the law. The sight of a Disney character in prison stripes may seem incongruous today, but in fact this film anticipates a Mickey Mouse short, THE CHAIN GANG, produced five years later. Note that...Start your free trial to watch -
Alice the Whaler
This entry in the Alice Comedies was released near the end of the series. In it we can see the fourth and last of the girls who played Alice, the relatively little-known child actress Lois Hardwick. Notice that Ub Iwerks' drawing style has matured by 1927, and now looks very different from that in the 1925...Start your free trial to watch -
Alice's Balloon Race
Reflecting the mid-1920s obsession with air travel, stunts and competition, this short pits Julius against Pete as more or less friendly rivals. By late 1925 Julius had as more or less friendly rivals. By late 1925 Julius had effectively replaced Alice as the main protagonist in these films. Here Alice,...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice's Egg Plant
A child actress known as Dawn O'Day made her first and only appearance as Alice in this delightful short. In later years she would change her name and become much better known in the 1930s and 40s as Anne Shirley. Here she's the owner of an "Egg Plant," a factory in which hens lay eggs until incited by an...Start your free trial to watch -
Alice's Orphan
The title is a misnomer: Alice can be glimpsed here, but it's really Julius who finds, adopts and attempts to raise the orphan. The basic situation, and even some of the individual gags, are borrowed from Chaplin's feature-length comedy THE KID, released four years earlier. But Julius' unconventional parenting techniques are...Start your free trial to watch -
Alice's Tin Pony
The title of this short is a takeoff on John Ford's THE IRON HORSE (1924), an epic Western about the building of the railroads. The short itself is a spoof on Westerns and, in particular, railroad films. Walt Disney indulges his well-known affinity for railroad trains here, with extended train gags and a...Start your free trial to watch
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Allez Oop
The most obvious parallel to ALLEZ OOP is COLLEGE, where Buster Keaton's attempts at various athletic events are a disaster until his girl is threatened. Then, in a total reversal, he performs the same feats brilliantly while trying to effect a rescue. The girl here is Dorothy Sebastian, his leading lady five years earlier in...Start your free trial to watch -
Along the Sungari River
In Manchuria, a village inn by a river is a regular stop for carters, so it's not surprising that the daughter of the innkeeper has a carter for a sweetheart. But all sweetness and tranquility is shattered by the invasion of the brutal Japanese in 1931. Quinnian and Sunnu end up as slaves in a coal mine,...Start your free trial to watch -
An Orphan on the Streets
Three Hairs was the name of a popular comic character, a street urchin with a bald head save for three thin stalks sticking straight up towards the sky. After a night on the streets, Three Hairs looks for work wherever he can get it; he polishes shoes, picks garbage and even sells newspapers, but finally...Start your free trial to watch
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And Then There Were None
Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a lavish estate on an island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his "guests" of murder and proceeds to exact ''justice." The tension mounts as, one by one, the number of people are reduced through the ingenious plotting of the...Start your free trial to watch -
The Angry Brigade
This documentary, produced by Gordon Carr for the BBC (and first broadcast in January 1973, shortly after the trial), covers the roots of the "Angry Brigade" in the revolutionary ferment of the 1960s and follows their campaign and the police investigation to its culmination in the "Stoke Newington 8"...Start your free trial to watch -
Apache Rifles
Captain Jeff Preston (Audie Murphy), commander of an Arizona cavalry outpost, hates the Apaches and battles them fiercely until his attitude is softened by romance with part-Indian missionary Dawn Gillis (Linda Lawson). But the presence of gold on Indian land and the depredations of greedy whites stirs the already boiling pot...Start your free trial to watch




