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Silent
see all genres ›The silent era stretches from cinema's beginnings in the late 1800s through the late-1920s in the U.S. (and into the mid-1930s in Japan) when sound became the industry standard. Silent films are often distinguished for their visual sophistication. Really, a silent film can be made in any era: a silent film is merely one made without synchronized dialogue. Several filmmakers continue to produce silent films to better focus attention on the visual components of cinema.
Discover Silent Films
Genres / Silent
SUB-GENRES · Silent Action/Adventure · Silent Comedy · Silent Crime · Silent Documentary · Silent Drama · Silent Fantasy · Silent Horror · Silent Science Fiction · Silent War · Silent Western
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A Busy Day
Charlie (Charles Chaplin) obstructs a camera crew dressed as a shrewish woman whom neither her husband (Mack Swain), the film director (Mack Sennett) nor the local cop can control. A BUSY DAY was filmed in Wilmington during a dedication ceremony and parade celebrating the Los Angeles harbor expansion.Start your free trial to watch
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By the Law
BY THE LAW breaks down into several stylistically different parts, only one of which resembles the grotesque extravaganza of MR. WEST. Gone is Kuleshov's insistence on the straight-forward, plot-advancing shot. Gone is the idea of montage as a step-by-step elaboration of some process. Rather, the opening sequence slowly...Start your free trial to watch
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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The most brilliant example of that dark and twisted film movement known as German expressionism, THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI is a plunge into the mind of insanity that severs all ties with the rational world. Director Robert Wiene and a team of designers crafted a nightmare realm in which light, shadow and...Start your free trial to watch
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Cabiria
Inspired by grand opera and Italy's imperialist victory in the Libyan War (1911-12), the Italian movie industry produced dozens of historical epics in the period just before WW I. The most influential and successful of these was CABIRIA, the visually spectacular film which set the standard for big-budget feature-length movies...Start your free trial to watch
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Caicedo with Pole
Juan Caicedo was billed as the "King of the Wire" and was a leading attraction at Koster & Bial's Music Hall for seventeen weeks during the spring and summer of 1894. The filmmakers moved their camera outside the Black Maria studio to photograph his performance. Admittedly, the end-credit ("composed by")...Start your free trial to watch
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The Call of Cthulhu
THE CALL OF CTHULHU is H.P. Lovecraft's most famous story. It is the only story to feature the celebrated monster Cthulhu and in many ways it encapsulates the ideas that went on to permeated Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos." The film follows the story's three-part narrative construction and it moves from the...Start your free trial to watch
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The Cameraman's Revenge
After filming several live-action documentaries for the Natural History Museum in Kono, Lithuania, Ladislas Starewicz started a film about fighting stag beetles but was frustrated when the insects refused to perform under lights. Starewicz decided to recreate the fight by articulating dead beetles in...Start your free trial to watch
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Campus Romeos
Hilliard "Fatty" Karr (appearing here as Fatty Carr), Frank "Fatty" Alexander and "Kewpie" Ross star in this "Ton of Fun" comedy. Advertised by the Film Booking Office as the "three fattest men on the screen," the three chunky thespians starred in 34 shorts, many with the adjective "heavy" in the title.Start your free trial to watch
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Captain Kidd's Kids
After a popular run making shorts as the Chaplin-esque “Lonesome Luke,” Harold Lloyd had just started making films in what he termed his “glasses” character, the bespectacled milquetoast we remember him for, when he starred in this early classic. His hero wakes up hungover from his first and last “big...Start your free trial to watch
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Capture of Boer Battery by the British
The Edison Manufacturing Company had already staged war scenes of the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurgency. By the outbreak of the Boer War, shooting battle re-enactments had become routine. In this one, the Gordon Highlanders prove victorious as they charge a Boer cannon and the camera....Start your free trial to watch
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Card Party
For many, cinema began on December 28, 1895, with the first public projection of short films like EXITING THE FACTORY, ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN and this film, CARD PARTY, by Louis and Auguste Lumiere. But these iconic films also existed in alternate versions, sometimes with each frame colored by hand (as it is in this instance).Start your free trial to watch
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Carmaux: Drawing Out the Coke
One of the finest examples of the Lumières’ dynamic staging of documentary action, CARMAUX: DRAWING OUT THE COKE employs contrasting angles and depths in picturing a factory’s routine. Workers in the foreground spray and rake a steaming brick of coke as it emerges for a smelter while men in the background...Start your free trial to watch
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Casey at the Bat
Things were different in the early days of baseball. Or were they? In this fragment from 1899, the titular Casey gets a bad call from the umpire and the batter decides that fisticuffs are necessary (or, put differently, the batsman decides to batter the umpire).Start your free trial to watch
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The Cat and the Canary
A decaying mansion and a stormy night are the archetypal setting for mystery and chaos when a pack of greedy relatives gather for the reading of a twenty-year-old will. But before the fortune of Cyrus West can be handed down, the family must endure a night in the cavernous manor, unnerved by the news that...Start your free trial to watch
