Silent War
see all genres ›The spectacle and brutality of war was one thing the movies could reproduce more effectively than any medium before it and the unprecedented destruction of World War I made audiences' curiosity more urgent than ever before.
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Genres / Silent / Silent War
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Verdun
In order to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the end of World War I, Léon Poirier recreated the battle of Verdun and inscribed in history the lives of symbolic characters from both sides of the front. VERDUN was edited in three distinct parts (Might, Hell and Fate) and is an epic film of great...Watch Movie
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J'accuse
Abel Gance's extraordinary breakthrough work is a WWI drama considered to be one of the most technically advanced films of the era and the first major pacifist film. It was referred to by Gance as "a human cry against the bellicose din of armies." It stars Marise Dauvray as Edith, a woman who is...Watch Movie
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Montmartre's Kids
MONTMARTRE'S KIDS, from 1916, was filmed on the Parisian hill, which with its height, light, and cheap rents, was home to such artists as Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Braque and Picasso. Another figure of the period, Francis Poulbot, created the archetypal street urchin in his...Watch Movie
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The Surrender of Tournavos
We tend to think of August and Louis Lumiere as the fathers of the documentary and Georges Méliès as the father of the fiction film (or at least the fantasy film). Yet, while the Lumieres and their cameramen were fanning out to record slices of life from across the globe, they...Watch Movie
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Sea Fighting in Greece
It's often said that Georges Méliès never thought to move his camera. Whether he thought to or not, he never really needed to, not with the vast experience he had mounting ambitious stage productions for audiences in stationary seats. Faced with the challenge of simulating the...Watch Movie
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The Little American
Karl, a German living in America, returns to Germany at the outbreak of World War I to fight for his country, leaving his American sweetheart, Angela, behind. A rival for Angela's affections, Jules, returns to his native France to fight. When Angela goes to France to care for...Watch Movie
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On the Barricade
Taking a page from Victor Hugo’s LES MISÉRABLES, Alice Guy-Blanché’s historical drama imagines a boy unwittingly caught up in an insurrection. Her surprisingly frank picture of military executions tempers the film’s sentimental ending. ON THE BARRICADE was one of the last...Watch Movie
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The Battle
Unlike many of D.W. Griffith’s early Civil War melodramas, THE BATTLE focuses on actual combat. A Union soldier panics during his first fight and flees to his girlfriend's house. She bullies him back into harm's way as the balance of war begins to shift. Dynamic battle scenes jammed with...Watch Movie
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Shooting Captured Insurgents
This staged scene of Spanish soldiers executing Cuban prisoners was designed to underscore Spanish brutality and support American intervention in the war. According to one catalog description, "The Spanish officer, resplendent in gold lace and buttons, raises his sword. One...Watch Movie
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In the Hands of the Enemy
A story of a woman spy, her son and a firing squad draws its analogies from the world war; full of intense situations and graphic action. Just 15 months after the outbreak of war in Europe, it was still very early for an American film to be produced on the subject for release...Watch Movie
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The House with Closed Shutters
D.W. Griffith throws an exciting wrench in this otherwise conventional Civil War melodrama when a proud daughter of the confederacy takes her coward brother’s place on the battlefield. She’s killed in heroic fashion and her mother shutters the house to protect the secret of...Watch Movie
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The Unbeliever
This was perhaps the last Thomas Edison film ever to be released and features Erich von Stroheim as a German army officer who enjoys killing old women and children. He would reprise and modify this role in Jean Renoir's GRAND ILLUSION. Besides the wartime propagandistic clichés, the film offers a...Watch Movie
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Flying Cadets
Produced by the U.S. Army Air Corps as a recruitment tool, this charming late silent short uses Hollywood-style narrative to portray a boot camp for aspiring pilots. When his old jalopy breaks down en route to Brooks Field in San Antonio, recruit Jack gets a lift from fellow newbie Archibald,...Watch Movie
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In the Border States
A little girl for the Union shelters a Confederate soldier, thereby initiating a chain of events that symbolically repairs the damages wrought by the Civil War. D.W. Griffith takes advantage of pictorial landscapes to stage his battle scenes and his famous parallel editing...Watch Movie
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Surprise Attack on a House at Daybreak
As the title of this Alice Guy war-themed short describes, there is a surprise attack on (or near) a house. The time of day is impossible to verify. Daybreak, evidently. With no particular set-up for the action, it is up to the viewer to decide why these men are here and why...Watch Movie
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Capture of Boer Battery by the British
The Edison Manufacturing Company had already staged war scenes of the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurgency. By the outbreak of the Boer War, shooting battle re-enactments had become routine. In this one, the Gordon Highlanders prove victorious as they charge a Boer...Watch Movie
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Swords and Hearts
D.W. Griffith packs an epic feature's worth of marauding, heartbreak and syrupy nostalgia into this short Civil War romance. Hugh Frazier (Wilfred Lucas) is the son of a wealthy tobacco farmer who leaves the plantation to fight for the Confederacy. He loves a well-heeled belle...Watch Movie
