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2. Sunrise (1927). Directed by F.W. Murnau. After the success of Murnau’s silent German classics Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), and Faust (1926), William Fox, the head of Fox Film Corp., invited Murnau to come to America, offering him carte blanche to create any kind of film he wanted. Murnau accepted, providing he would have no studio interference, and planned Sunrise as a purely artistic production. The result is, quite simply, an undisputed masterpiece, and that rarest of films that achieves absolute perfection in every area; in fact, it won a special Academy Award at the first Oscar ceremony for "Unique and Artistic Production." Sunrise has rarely been equalled, and never surpassed, in its sheer physical beauty, its romantic intensity, its emotional poignancy, and its extraordinarily creative use of the cinematic medium.
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. One of the towering achievements of world cinema, Dreyer’s silent classic is a stunningly filmed, harrowing account of the 15th century trial and execution of the French martyr. This is one of the all-time masterpieces of pure cinema, not only for its unparalleled use of camera movement, composition, and editing, but for its transcendent spirituality and intense emotional impact.
4. The General (1926). Directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton. Poorly received on its initial release, this is now widely considered to be Keaton’s greatest film. It survives gloriously today as probably the only film that would qualify for all-time ten-best lists in the categories of both comedy and adventure. Three years before his death in 1966, Keaton said, "I was more proud of that picture than any I ever made."
5. The Gold Rush (1925). Directed by Charlie Chaplin. There’s a reason why this is the most familiar of all Chaplin’s films. Because it was his personal favorite, he deliberately allowed it to lapse out of the haven of copyright and into the public domain so that successive generations of moviegoers would always be able to see it. Complete with a thoroughly happy ending — a Chaplin rarity — this is a delight from beginning to end, boasting several of its maker’s most memorable gags and Chaplinesque interludes.
6. Intolerance (1916). Directed by D.W. Griffith. This film’s sets, costumes, compositions, and mass deployment of bodies in motion are impressive, especially in the battle of Babylon sequence. The parallel editing in the final two reels is undeniably exciting, Constance Talmadge’s spirited performance as the Babylon mountain girl is extremely winning. And while I have discovered that many film authorities consider Intolerance one of the greatest movies ever made, I have also discovered that pratically no one particularly likes this movie. In cinema’s critical circles, points have always been awarded for high ambition, extraordinary effort, and honorable intentions. Perhaps that is the secret of Intolerance’s reputation.
7. Greed (1924). Directed by Erich von Stroheim. If one can define screen realism as the antithesis of escapism, then Greed fully lives up to its reputation as a classic work of realism. But one should not look to Greed for any form of organic, documentarian realism, beyond the film’s indigenous sets. Von Stroheim might have thought of himself as a pioneer in the objective depiction of undiluted authenticity, but he was actually a moralist, determinist, and social satirist. Despite its unhappy postproduction history (the film was cut from its original nine-hour length to under two hours), Greed remains a powerful and affecting film. To those with no cognizance of that history, the movie will seem complete, if not the masterpiece it is reputed to have once been.
8. Metropolis (1926). Directed by Fritz Lang. Moralistic science fiction at its maddest, Lang’s ambitious silent classic still has the power to impress with its inspired art direction and its expressionistic vision. What ultimately saves the film from both silliness and ponderousness is not its simplistic social message, not its now-stale theme, nor its disappointing characterizations, but rather the dazzling cinematic (and theatrical) bag of tricks which Lang and company employed to keep things moving: dizzying industrial montages, lively editing, interesting camera setups by the car-full, exciting special effects which anticipate the Frankenstein films, and eccentrically beautiful art direction informed by Futurism and other contemporary art movements. All this (plus the robot-Maria’s semi-nude, semi-lewd hotcha dance) keeps Metropolis high on the list of cinema’s most eye-opening entertainments.
9. The Man With a Movie Camera (1929). Directed by Dziga Vertov. A startlingly avant-garde cross-examination of modern life, as well as a lesson in the power of filmmaking and an autopsy of its methods. The technical innovation that went into its filming and the audacious self-reflexivity Marked The Man with a Movie Camera as unique, and conceptually decades ahead of anything else being done at the time.
10. Nosferatu (1922). Directed by F.W. Murnau. A stylish (albeit unauthorized) silent version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring the incomparably creepy Max Schreck as the Vampire. It’s a truly horrifying and scary film, but it’s also frequently poetic and beautiful, using real locations and a naturalistic style to create an overpowering atmosphere of evil. In the scores of vampire films that have followed Nosferatu in the subsequent decades, none have been able to match its physical beauty, its intensity of vision, or its grasp of true evil.
11. Napoleon (1927). Directed by Abel Gance. A dazzling display of cinematic virtuosity that tells the story of the French emperor from his boyhood to the French Revolution to his triumphant conquering of Italy. Its stunning power and impact is created through purely cinematic means of incredibly mobile camerawork (often hand-held or strapped to horses), rapid-fire editing employing superimpositions and multiple exposures, and the pioneering use of a widescreen triptych format called ""Polyvision" that was the obvious inspiration for Cinerama and CinemaScope.
12. Broken Blossoms (1919). Directed by D.W. Griffith. The most elemental and uncluttered of Griffith’s major melodramas, this is the tragic story of a Chinese man who falls in love with a Cockney waif. Within its 90 minutes, Griffith does more to atone for the racial intolerance he betrayed in The Birth of a Nation than he managed to do in his three-and-a-half-hour epic Intolerance. In a 1952 survey conducted by the British film magazine Sight and Sound, Broken Blossoms was cited as one of the 20 best films of all time. When the publication repeated the survey a decade later, the movie received not a single vote.
13. The Birth of a Nation (1915). Directed by D.W. Griffith. This undeniably racist melodrama is the first true screen epic and arguably the most important motion picture ever made. Virtually overnight, The Birth of a Nation compelled cultural gatekeepers to reckon with cinema, not as a mere arcade novelty, but as a uniquely vigorous, wholly credible art form. As the film unfolds, with a majestic assurance undiminished by time, the viewer can practically see Griffith inventing the narrative conventions, editing style, and production techniques that have dominated Hollywood cinema ever since.
14. Sherlock Jr. (1924). Directed by Buster Keaton. Keaton’s comic masterpiece is not only one of the funniest movies of all time, filled with staggering stunts, amazing sight gags, and mind-boggling cinematic tricks, but it’s also a brilliant meditation on the nature of the film medium itself, perhaps the best ever made. It is an extraordinary study of film and its intrinsic qualities of illusion and fantasy. When Buster walks into the screen and becomes a participant in the movie, the film transcends its genre and becomes a profound work of art. The actual effect of him walking into the screen is nothing less than astounding, seamlessly accomplished and impossible to detect. Even a frame-by-frame inspection of the scene doesn’t reveal how it was done.
15. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Directed by Robert Wiene. A seminal horror movie, this movie was hailed upon its initial release as the first film to elevate the cinema from the realm of popular entertainment to that of high art. But the film’s most important quality — an element many critics neglect to mention — is its power to scare the viewer. It was and remains a very frightening movie, from the aghast faces in the very first shot to the final chilling irony. Nothing is more horrifying than insanity, and virtually every major character in the film is insane at one time or another, in one way or another. Even those who aren’t certifiable, are downright weird.
16. Un Chien Andalou (1928). Directed by Luis Bunuel. Bunuel’s first film is impossible to describe in a traditional narrative sense. It is a succession of alternately beautiful and shocking images that are seemingly unrelated but have the internal logic of a nightmare.
17. The Last Laugh (1924). Directed by F.W. Murnau. This classic study of a hotel employee’s humiliation, is unusual on two counts: it is a silent movie without explanatory intertitles; and it’s a tragedy that ends on a totally unexpected, outrageously upbeat note of vindication.
18. The Crowd (1928). Directed by King Vidor. Three years after the immense popular success of his overrated The Big Parade, Vidor directed this film, another silent drama about an average man caught up in great social forces that he doesn’t fully understand. One of the few major Hollywood productions to deal realistically with the daily struggles and disappointments of ordinary people, it is even more ambitious than its predecessor.
19. Pandora’s Box (1928). Directed by G.W. Pabst. Some films are richly composed and mounted; others are acted and paced with refreshing energy and naturalistic zest. This is one of the few films to combine these two, usually disparate, virtues. Playing the role that later earned her a large cult of admirers, Louise Brooks is unforgettable. With her short, childlike hairdo, her dark, clear, and widely spaced eyes, her pale and youthful — but insidiously voluptuous — flesh, and her gift for expressing spontaneous emotion without histrionics or apparent effort, Brooks was a Lulu for the ages. More than a great performance, it was an incarnation.
20. Nanook of the North (1922). Directed by Robert J. Flaherty. The first feature-length documentary to achieve international popular success and critical acclaim. By virtue of its timeless setting and straightforward approach to its subject, this portrait of the daily lives of an Eskimo man and his family is probably the least dated of any silent film.
21. The Kid (1921). Directed by Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin’s first feature-length production, is one of his most sentimental and most satisfying films, a simple but very effective blend of pathos and laughs.
22. The Wind (1928). Directed by Victor Sjostrom. The story of a genteel young woman’s harrowing struggles with an alien environment and her own fears, this film was shot in California’s Mojave Desert under almost intolerable conditions. The final silent film of both Lillian Gish, who functioned as the picture’s unofficial producer as well as its leading lady, and the great Swedish director Sjostrom, it is perhaps the most powerful and accomplished silent drama ever to emerge from Hollywood.
23. The Cameraman (1928). Directed by Edward Sedgwick. Buster Keaton’s last great silent film, a hilarious and touching story about the misadventures of a would-be newsreel cameraman in Manhattan. As in Sherlock Jr., Keaton integrated his love of film and movies with his usual incredible sight gags and stunts, playing with double-exposures and other conventions of cinematic technique. In a way, the film can be viewed as a metaphor for his new relationship with the MGM factory, with Keaton symbolically rebelling against his employee status by displaying his creative eccentricity.
24. October (1927). Directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Near the end of the silent movie era, the Soviet Central Committee commissioned Eisenstein to make a film celebrating the 10th anniversary of the October 1917 revolution. Although the film baffled the masses, it excited the intelligentsia and quickly became an international critics’ classic.
25. Foolish Wives (1922). Directed by Erich von Stroheim. Stroheim, often called "The Man You Love to Hate," gave 1920s audiences even more reasons to hate him as a lecherous phony count in this film. The original Variety review called the film "Frankly salacious." That, it may be, but it’s also one of the few silent films that is as powerful and entertaining today as when it was first released.
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