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Silent Drama
see all genres ›Shorn of the dialogue that drove stage drama, silent movies had to express romance, tension and conflict via nuance and visual invention, achieving such artistic heights that many lamented the comparative crudity of communication the medium was reduced to in the early sound era.
Discover Silent Drama Films
Genres / Silent / Silent Drama
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The Actor's Children
The first Thanhouser release about the disappearance of an actor's children, their thrilling adventure and how they return to their parents. Remarkably for a movie studio’s first release, THE ACTOR'S CHILDREN is well up to the state of the art for early 1910. Intertitles announce, in a few words, what will...Start your free trial to watch
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The Adventures of Dollie
D.W. Griffith's cinematic debut was already laced with dramatic irony, dynamic staging and deft parallel editing. The film opens with mother and daughter enjoying a summer day by the water. A gypsy merchant disrupts their idyll, first offering items for sale and then trying to make off with the woman's...Start your free trial to watch
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After Six Days
Touted at the time as a "$3,000,000 Entertainment for the Hundred Millions," this Old Testament spectacle delivered what it promised, "from the creation of Adam and Eve to the parting of the Red Sea." The advertising claimed it was filmed over a period of five years at the "Exact Locations of Biblical History." Little is...Start your free trial to watch
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The Agony of Byzance
An unusual period-piece from legendary French director Louis Feuillade, set near the end of the Byzantine Empire, THE AGONY OF BYZANCE chronicles the assault on (and the subsequent fall of) the city of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. Costume drama at its finest!Start your free trial to watch
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The Ambassador's Daughter
An innocent attaché in love with the ambassador's daughter is framed for espionage. But the girl successfully exposes the real spy. Although the New York Dramatic Mirror criticized the picture for its "visibly forced or overdrawn situations," it was felt to have strong appeal, "for it has been well...Start your free trial to watch
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Anna Boleyn
The tragic story of the second wife of England’s Henry VIII is given a first-class treatment by Lubitsch, complete with opulent sets and some beautifully-shot exterior sequences. Henny Porten (KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTER, BACKSTAIRS) gives a memorable performance as Boleyn, but the film really belongs to Emil Jannings (THE LAST...Start your free trial to watch
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Battleship Potemkin
For eight decades, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece has remained one of the most influential silent films of all time. Yet each successive generation has seen BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN subjected to censorship and recutting, its unforgettable power diluted in unauthorized public domain editions from dubious...Start your free trial to watch
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Between Calais and Dover
Having just completed a series of films imagining events from the 1897 Greco-Turkish War, including THE SURRENDER OF TOURNAVOS, MASSACRE IN CRETE and SEA FIGHTING IN GREECE, Georges Méliès reapplies the rocking-ship technique from the last of these to a pure amusement. Passengers crossing the English...Start your free trial to watch
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The Big Road
Six friends decide to head "north" and become involved in the construction of a highway crucial for the Chinese army. A hymn to the solidarity necessary for China to move ahead (and defeat the enemy), THE BIG ROAD shows its young protagonists only discovering who they are when they become part of a collective action. The...Start your free trial to watch
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The Birth of a Nation
More than 75 years after its initial release, THE BIRTH OF A NATION remains one of the most controversial films ever made and a landmark achievement in film history that continues to fascinate and enrage audiences. It is the epic story of two families, one northern and one southern, during and after the...Start your free trial to watch
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The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ
Over the course of a little more than thirty-three-and-a-half minutes (or essentially a minute for each year of what is conventionally assumed to be the entirety of his life), the full story of Jesus Christ is conveyed by French director Alice Guy. The nativity, the parables, the disciples, the miracles,...Start your free trial to watch
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The Black Pirate
In the first grand-scale epic shot entirely in Technicolor, the sole survivor of a ship pillaged by buccaneers poses as the mysterious Black Pirate and infiltrates the nest of bandits. Michel (Fairbanks) mounts an elaborate ploy to recover the brigands' treasure, reclaim the ship and rescue the divine...Start your free trial to watch
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Blood and Sand
An immortal icon of brooding sexuality, Rudolph Valentino became one of silent cinema's most enigmatic and entrancing performers. In BLOOD AND SAND he stars as Juan Gallardo, a young Spaniard who achieves his boyhood ambition to become a celebrated toreador. But with fame comes temptation and treachery and the triumphant Juan...Start your free trial to watch
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Broken Blossoms
Richard Barthelmess gives a sensitive portrayal of a Chinese man who travels to England to spread the pacifist teachings of the Orient. But it is Lillian Gish who illuminates the screen! In this, the most heart-rending performance of her career, she plays a fifteen-year-old street urchin who longs to escape her miserable...Start your free trial to watch
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Burlesque Suicide
Facial expression films continued to be popular in the early 1900s. In one, a man contemplates suicide but takes a drink instead. In a second version, presented here, BURLESQUE SUICIDE NO.2, the same man threatens suicide and then points his finger at the camera (and the audience) and laughs.Start your free trial to watch
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The Burning Stable
In the fall of 1896, the Edison Company was busy making their own versions of other company's hits. Since Biograph films were shot on a different (68mm) format, their pictures could not be shown on regular 35mm projectors, providing Edison with an attractive commercial opportunity. THE BURNING STABLE...Start your free trial to watch