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.
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Genres / Silent
SUB-GENRES · Silent Action/Adventure · Silent Comedy · Silent Drama · Silent Horror · Silent Western · Silent Crime · Silent Fantasy · Silent War · Silent Documentary
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Love Moods
Reclining on her chaise lounge in a see-through robe, Lili St. Cyr decides she needs a wash. In a gilded tub fit for Marie Antoinette, she bares all that the law will allow. Then she squeezes into an evening gown and mink coat to paint the town red with you, dear viewer! Well, a guy can dream....Watch Movie
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Ghosts Before Breakfast
The Dadaists were closely attuned to cinema's native surrealism. And so it is fitting that Hans Richter's GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST should return to so many of the medium's first loves: trick shots, fisticuffs and slapstick are all thrown in the dada blender, unfettered from the...Watch Movie
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What's the World Coming To?
This zany Hal Roach production of WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO? takes place in a future "one hundred years from now, when men have become more like women and women more like men." The film opens with the "blushing groom" approaching the altar where his tuxedoed bride awaits to...Watch Movie
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Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
After garnering widespread acclaim with his mini-masterpiece THE HEART OF THE WORLD, Canadian cult auteur Guy Maddin concocted his most ravishingly stylized cinematic creation to date. Beautifully transposing the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic...Watch Movie
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Cowards Bend the Knee
"Cowardice!! The New Sexy!!!" squeals Guy Maddin about his shot-on-Super-8, expanded-to-35mm silent "autobiography" involving beauty salons, cowardice, femmes fatale, a father's severed hands (and the daughter who wants them sewn onto her lover's arms), orgies and the Soviet...Watch Movie
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Too Much Johnson
In 1938, three years before CITIZEN KANE, New York theater tyro Orson Welles filmed comedy sequences for his stage production of TOO MUCH JOHNSON, a rapid-fire farce of mistaken identities. The slapstick prologue features Joseph Cotten doing Harold Lloyd antics through the...Watch Movie
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A Trip Down Market Street
It is, as the title claims it to be, a journey by street car along Market Street in San Francisco photographed over one-hundred years ago. And a fascinating journey it is! Research by David Kiehn of the Silent Film Museum in Niles, California, determined that the Miles...Watch Movie
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Behind the Door
Writer Gouverneur Morris's bizarre tale unfolds in a series of disquieting flashbacks that serve to continually ratchet up suspense and foreboding. Producer Thomas H. Ince and director Irvin Willat showed daring and imagination in their adaptation of the sensational material. U-boat captain...Watch Movie
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A Dog's Love
The fantasy centers on a dog and a child, a universally appealing movie subject. The loyal dog's attachment to his little girl playmate is treated with pictorial beauty and simple, honest sentiment. Reviewers of the time praised the double-exposure passages for their dramatic effectiveness. Baby...Watch Movie
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Too Much Johnson [workprint]
In 1938, three years before CITIZEN KANE, New York theater tyro Orson Welles filmed comedy sequences for his stage production of TOO MUCH JOHNSON, a rapid-fire farce of mistaken identities. Long assumed lost, the reels were found in 2008 and preserved through an international...Watch Movie![Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor](//d3uc4wuqnt61m1.cloudfront.net/films/images/000/005/698/5698.D_210_118.jpg?1478223322 "Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor")
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Zudora Episode #2: The Mystery of the Sleeping House
A mysterious and exotic secret society conducts elaborate ceremonies in American suburbia with the kidnapped heroine Zudora who they want to marry off to their leader as a substitute for the real princess who was taken by a rival tribe back in India. The sets range from cheap...Watch Movie
![Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor](http://d3uc4wuqnt61m1.cloudfront.net/films/images/000/005/698/5698.D_210_118.jpg?1478223322 "Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor")
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The Coffin Ship
A love story filmed in Long Island Sound with a stowaway and a shipwreck. Because of 1911 production convention, a sprawling adventure is truncated to one-reel length. Good location work, a strength of Thanhouser pictures, creates a visually strong seagoing story. Long Island Sound locations were...Watch Movie
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The Hearts of Age
CITIZEN KANE is perhaps the most famous directorial debut in movie history but it wasn't actually Orson Welles' first film. He'd already made a handful of shorts, the earliest being this project created at Illinois' progressive Todd School for Boys with fellow graduate William...Watch Movie
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Mothers of Men
Made two years before the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, this melodrama depicts a future in which a woman holds high political office. Dorothy Davenport Reid plays an ardent suffragist who ascends from judge to governor and manages, despite the odds, to maintain her...Watch Movie
