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.
Watch Silent Drama Films
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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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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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
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My Grandmother
Forgotten for a half-century, Kote Mikaberidze's MY GRANDMOTHER is a delightful example of the Soviet Eccentric Cinema movement as well as a scathing satire of Soviet bureaucracy. Noted for its anarchic styles, stop-motion puppetry, exaggerated camera angles, animation and constructivist sets,...Watch Movie
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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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The Woman in White
In its last two years of production Thanhouser concentrated on multi-reel features of high quality. Lloyd Lonergan’s scenarios were the foundation for the attention to quality, whether with original stories or with adaptations like THE WOMAN IN WHITE. Stylistic and technical...Watch Movie
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The World and the Woman
THE WORLD AND THE WOMAN is historically important as the screen debut of legendary actress Jeanne Eagels. The role of a prostitute turned faith healer is suitably challenging for the star. Edwin Thanhouser began phasing down production at the studio in early 1917, so this is a...Watch Movie
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Joseph in the Land of Egypt
The second of “Thanhouser Big Productions,” a monthly schedule, Joseph in the Land of Egypt was a true “feature” film, a new class of film which came to dominate the market by the end of 1914. A feature was an hour or more, heavily advertised, with elaborate production...Watch Movie
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The Cry of the Children
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN is the most famous and best documented of all Thanhouser films. In its day it was recognized as one of the most important expressions of the pre-World War One reform movement, in particular child labor. Perhaps because the uncompromising content drew...Watch Movie
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Peer Gynt
This particular (and peculiar) version of PEER GYNT is the 1941 amateur 16mm film adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's famous play, featuring seventeen year old Charlton Heston in his film debut. A young David Bradley was the director of this extraordinary silent film, created for a Northwestern...Watch Movie
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Shep's Race with Death
If you thought Lassie had little to draw on in way of predecessors, there's a revelation in store in this silent 1914 melodrama and its titular star, a fun-loving collie who appeared in several Thanhouser films in 1914 and 1915 and who here proves fully capable of outwitting a...Watch Movie
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The Star of Bethlehem
Biblical tale about the birth of Christ told with a cast of 100's. Thanhouser's ambitious STAR OF BETHLEHEM was one of the first steps toward true feature-length films (more than two reels long). It appeared the year before the Italian epic QUO VADIS? was screened in the U....Watch Movie
