Silent Era's The Top 300 Silent Era Films

The General is an American silent film comedy from Buster Keaton from 1927. The film was in its time a flop yet now days is regarded as the height of silent film comedy. The film is based on events from America’s civil war.

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

The first film from director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau to be finished in the States. The film has the tangible elements of German expressionism. Murnau received a big budget from Fox and the ability to make all the filmmaking decisions. The film has been called the greatest silent film of all time.

City Lights is the first silent film that Charlie Chaplin directed after he established himself with sound accompanied films. The film is about a penniless man who falls in love with a flower girl. The film was a great success and today is deemed a cult classic.

Although the critics in 1922 didn’t find the film to be anything special, a few years after it’s release it was called innovative and a landmark in cinema history. German director Murnau’s vampire film holds claim to one of the most, if not the most important German expressionist film and a foundation for horror films.

A lone prospector ventures into Alaska looking for gold. He gets mixed up with some burly characters and falls in love with the beautiful Georgia. He tries to win her heart with his singular charm.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is the masterpiece from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer that depicts the story of French martyr Joan from Orleans seven years after her canonization from the catholic church.

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

Battleship Potemkin is the classic masterpiece silent film from director Sergej Eisenstein from 1925. The film is based on the true events of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and was a masterful example of montage editing.

The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved.

Die Büchse der Pandora, meaning Pandora’s Box, is a classic German silent film from director Pabst. This is the third film about the Lulu-Stoffes character from Frank Wedekind and is deemed a masterpiece.

The film centers on ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker John who meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

When Letty Mason relocates to West Texas, she finds herself unsettled by the ever-present wind and sand. Arriving at her new home at the ranch of her cousin, Beverly, she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife, Cora. Soon tensions in the family and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors leave Letty increasingly disturbed.

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.

The Birth of A Nation is a silent film from 1915 and the highest grossing film in film history. The film tells a romance story during the American civil war.

Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.

Sherlock Jr. is an American silent film comedy starring and directed by Buster Keaton from 1924. The film is about a film demonstrator who must fight for his life.

The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.

When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.

The Phantom of the Opera is a silent film by Rupert Julian from 1925 that is based on a novel from French writer Gaston Leroux.

Broken Blossoms is an American silent film from director D. W. Griffith. This melodrama tells the love story of an abused English woman and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

The Tramp cares for an abandoned child, but events put that relationship in jeopardy.

The effete son of a cantankerous riverboat captain comes to join his father's crew.

Ben-Hur is a wealthy Jew and boyhood friend of the powerful Roman Tribune, Messala. When an accident leads to Ben-Hur's arrest, Messala, who has become corrupt and arrogant, makes sure Ben-Hur and his family are jailed and separated.

A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.

Childhood friends are torn apart when one of them marries the woman the other fiercely loves.

Our Hospitality is a silent film from 1923, starring Buster Keaton. The film is about a family feud that begins a young mans journey…

Two young men fall in love for the same same girl. After US enters WWi, both join the Air Corps and become ace. They remain friends, but the realtion to the girl threatens their friendship

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Nanook Of The North is Robert J. Flaherty’s beautiful film about an Inuit man named Nanook and his family. Filmed during one year of their life in the icy desolation of Northern Canada. The film was an enormous success and is the founder of the documentary film genre.

God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

Haxan is a study about how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films.

Thymiane Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father's pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a harsh, cruel world.

Lon Chaney is carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless and Joan Crawford is the scantily clad carnival girl he hopes to marry.

A photographer takes up newsreel shooting to impress a secretary.

Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.

Colonel Pepper brings his daughter, Peggy, to Hollywood from Georgia to be an actress.

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

Arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse sets out to make a fortune and run Berlin. Detective Wenk sets out to stop him.

Set immediately before World War I, it deals with a rich Argentine family, one branch recently arrived from France, the other from Germany.

Sheik Ahmed desperately desires feisty British socialite Diana, so he abducts her and carries her off to his luxurious tent-palace in the desert. The free-spirited Diana recoils from his passionate embraces and yearns to be released. Later, allowed to go into the desert, she escapes and makes her way across the sands...

Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.

After Siegfried's dead, Kriemhild marries Etzel, the King of the Huns. She gives birth to a child, and invites her brothers for a party. She tries to persuade Etzel and the other Huns, that they kill Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, but he is protected by her brothers. A fierce battle begins to force her brothers to give Hagen to her.

An unathletic college freshman ridiculed by his peers for his mannerisms strives to become popular by making the football team.

The adventures of the masked hero continues.

Young David Kinemon is a good-natured, easy-going lad in a mountain village. Circumstances force him to take his brother's place as mailman for the community, and this brings him into deadly contact with the vicious Hatburn brothers.

Story of an inventor who, suffering betrayal in life, makes a career of it by becoming a clown whose act consists of getting slapped by all the other clowns. He falls in love with another circus performer, and those who betrayed him enter his life yet again.