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.
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Genres / Silent / Silent Drama
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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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From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen
A pretty young woman steps behind a dressing screen to prepare for the stage in this teasing short from the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (a competitor of Thomas Edison in the already competitive distribution and exhibition market). - Robert AvilaWatch Movie
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A Morning Bath
A remake of rival Biograph's popular A HARD WASH, this film's "joke" plays with racist clichés as well as theatrical conventions where blacks, whether impersonated by white actors or played by African Americans, performed using burnt cork as "masks." No matter how vigorous the bath, the baby's...Watch Movie
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His Trust
HIS TRUST, subtitled "the faithful devotion and self- sacrifice of an old negro servant," is something of a race-relations precursor to D.W. Griffith's better-known BIRTH OF A NATION. The aforementioned servant is played in blackface, unfortunately, but the character's portrayal might surprise...Watch Movie
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His Trust Fulfilled
D. W. Griffith's loose sequel to HIS TRUST features George the "negro servant" who, after looking after the widow and daughter of his slain Confederate master in the first film, is now called upon to look after the girl when her mother dies. George's sacrifices to place the...Watch Movie
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Piccadilly
E.A. Dupont's PICCADILLY, the 1929 silent masterpiece brilliantly restored by the British Film Institute, stars the sultry Anna May Wong in her greatest role. After many years of supporting roles in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe in search of better work. And did she find it! Her electric,...Watch Movie
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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...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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Eternal Love
The final silent film by Ernst Lubitsch, several years after he departed his homeland Germany for Hollywood in 1922, ETERNAL LOVE is a powerful story of love, war and tragedy on a Swiss mountaintop. Marcus (John Barrymore), a hunter and a hero of the village, refuses to hand in his gun during the...Watch Movie
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The Wandering Shadow
Rich in symbolic imagery and striking location photography, THE WANDERING SHADOW was the first collaboration of Lang and Thea von Harbou. It follows a woman who, in the wake of a scandal, seeks solitude in the Bavarian Alps. There, she is continually haunted by her past, but...Watch Movie
