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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Gypsy Blood
A Spanish cavalryman falls in love with Carmen, a gypsy dancer, which leads to his demise. He gives up everything for her (including his girlfriend and his honor) but she tosses him aside and goes after a matador. Admittedly, not the most remarkable print of this film in existence but the best...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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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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The Painted Lady
Sometimes, women fall in with a bad sort of man. This is one of those times. The protagonist of this short moral tale meets a fellow who seems to take a liking to her. However, he's less interested in her than she suspects. His interests are elsewhere in this D.W. Griffith short.Watch Movie
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Friends
In the era of the gold rush, Dora (Mary Pickford) likes one fellow but he decides to prospect elsewhere and leaves her behind. Before long, another fellow (Lionel Barrymore) decides to make a play for the lonely young woman, too. A remarkably talented cast distances the relatively simple...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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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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Chang
Before they dreamed up that oversized ape, King Kong's creators filmed this magical story of a Thai family's struggle to survive the forces of nature. Shot entirely in Siam, the film tells the story of a farmer and his family who have settled on a small patch of land on the edge of the jungle....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
