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.
Watch Silent Films
Genres / Silent
SUB-GENRES · Silent Action/Adventure · Silent Comedy · Silent Drama · Silent Horror · Silent Western · Silent Crime · Silent Science Fiction · Silent Fantasy · Silent War · Silent Documentary
-
Cops
One of Buster Keaton's greatest and most famous comedies, COPS is universally enjoyed for the inventive comedy and amazing chase sequences. However, its darker aspects (Keaton's use of an anarchists bomb risked painful reminders of the horse and wagon, similar to the one Buster drives, that...Watch Movie
-
Fantômas in the Shadow of the Guillotine
Based on the phenomenally popular French pulp novellas, Louis Feuillade's outrageous, ambitious FANTOMAS series became the gold standard of espionage serials in pre-WWI Europe and laid the foundation for such immortal works as Feuillade's own LES VAMPIRES and Fritz Lang's DR....Watch Movie
-
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
-
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...Watch Movie
-
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
-
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
-
The Railrodder
In one of the last films of the comedian's long career, Buster Keaton stars as a "railrodder" crossing Canada from east to west on a railway track speeder. As might be expected, the film is full of sight gags as Keaton putt-putts his way to British Columbia. Not a word is spoken throughout and...Watch Movie
-
How a Mosquito Operates
The first example of "personality" animation, in which an animated character appears to think and exhibits individualism through his actions. The beginnings of a type of animation that reached its apex in Walt Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS twenty five years later.Watch Movie
-
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
When THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED premiered in Germany on September 23, 1926 it was hailed as the first full-length animated film. More than seventy-five years later, Lotte Reiniger's enchanting film (made in collaboration with Carl Koch, Reiniger's husband) still stands as...Watch Movie
-
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
-
New York of Today
During the nickelodeon era, various film companies made short films showing tourist scenes of New York City. When a French company released SEEING NEW YORK in 1908, Variety found it "rather odd" that such pictures were not made by the "many native manufacturers eager for new...Watch Movie
-
The Man from Beyond
Two scientists on an Arctic expedition uncover a frozen man who’s been preserved in ice for a century. The "man from beyond" is none other than Harry Houdini, who punches up a gothic melodrama with escape acts and a dashing rescue above Niagara Falls. His character encounters...Watch Movie
-
The Non-Stop Kid
Harold Lloyd's "glasses" character bests the town's eligible bachelors for his sweetheart's affections but the girl's father has designs on Professor Noodle for a husband. Lloyd tricks the family into thinking he's the scholarly sort (at least until the real Noodle walks...Watch Movie
-
Tannhäuser
Though different in spelling and pronunciation, Thanhouser’s adaptation of "Tannhäuser" was probably inevitable. The opera, with original libretto and music by Wagner, based on traditional legends, was the first Wagner opera seen in the United States and enjoyed great popularity throughout the...Watch Movie
