BFI's 360 Classic Feature Films Project

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, ...

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.

A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.

Les Vampires is a 10-part silent film serial. It was written and directed by Louis Feuillade and stars Musidora as "Irma Vep" a femme fatale whose name is a suspicious anagram of "vampire." The serial is set in Paris, France and follows the exploits of a gang of master criminals who call themselves "Les Vampires."

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

When an unscrupulous banker ruins his family, a young man swears to bring him to justice, so he adopts a new identity, the mysterious Judex, and ominously disguised and sunk into the muddy path of vengeance, punishes the crooks and protects the innocents. (Originally a twelve-part epic serial.)

The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.

Jacques d'Athys, a French adventurer, returns to his home in Nice after an expedition to Indochina where he has picked up a Eurasian fiancée and a book that, unbeknownst to him, contains a coded message revealing the whereabouts of both secret treasures and sensitive government intelligence. This makes him the target of foreign spies, including ...

Karin Daughter of Ingmar is a 1920 Swedish silent drama film directed by Victor Sjöström. It is the second part in Sjöström's large-scale adaption of Selma Lagerlöf's novel Jerusalem, following Sons of Ingmar from the year before, and depicting chapter three and four from the novel. The critical reception was however unenthusiastic and Sjöström ...

Susie secretly loves her neighbor, William Jenkins, but neither, it seems, can confess their feelings for each other.

A pampered American oyster tycoon decides to buy a husband for his daughter, but things don’t go quite as planned. Along the way there are mishaps, misunderstandings and a foxtrot sequence that must be seen to be believed.

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.

Sisif, a railwayman, and his son Elie fall in love with the beautiful Norma (whom Sisif rescued from a train crash when a baby and raised as his daughter), with tragic results. Originally running over nine hours, its recent editions have been cut to about four hours.

"Count" Karanzim, a Don Juan is with his cousins in Monte Carlo, living from faked money and the money he gets from rich ladies, who are atracted by his charmes and his title or his militaric aristocratic behaviour. He tries to have sucess by Mrs Hughes, the wige of the new US ambassador, but he has bad luck.

Gunnar Hede, a young Swedish man, wants to become a professional musician, but when his father suddenly dies he is pressured by his family to take over the family business of raising and selling reindeer.

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 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.

Two spoiled rich people find themselves trapped on an empty passenger ship.

Claire Lescot is a famous first lady. All men want to be loved by her and among them is the young scientist Einar Norsen. When she mocks at him, he leaves her house with the declared intention to kill himself.

An ignorant and prejudiced American’s visit of Soviet Russia goes off the rails after his luggage is stolen and he is separated from his bodyguard.

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

Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.

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.

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

A young boy living in the Swiss Alps struggles to come to terms with his mother's death and his father's remarriage which brings a new mother and step-sister into his family.

Three sideshow performers form a conspiracy known as "The Unholy Three" - a ventriloquist, midget, and strongman working together to commit a series of robberies.

The murderer “Boss” Huller – after having spent ten years in prison – breaks his silence to tell the warden his story.

William S. Hart stars in this 1925 silent film as a cowboy intent on claiming land during the 1889 land rush in the Oklahoma Territory. Though hardened from years of taming the new frontier, he falls in love with a beautiful woman. Before he settles down, however, he must contend with men who wish to bring him harm. In the prologue of the 1939 A...

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.

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.

A story about a family torn apart by a worker's strike. At first, the mother wants to protect her family from the troublemakers, but eventually she realizes that her son is right and the workers should strike.

After a man kills two members of his Yukon gold prospecting team, the other two surviving members struggle to keep him subdued for the next several months until they can turn him over to the law.

Jack, a southern spy during the Civil War, must try to capture a shipment of gold. His task is complicated by the two sisters, Native Americans, and a firing squad.

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

London. A mysterious serial killer brutally murders young blond women by stalking them in the night fog. One foggy, sinister night, a young man who claims his name is Jonathan Drew arrives at the guest house run by the Bunting family and rents a room.

A meek Belgian soldier, fighting in World War I, receives a letter and a photo from "Mary Brown", an American girl he has never met. After the war, he travels to America searching for her.

Scientist Martin Fellmann is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares, he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.

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

A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.

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 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.

On the day of Fadinard's wedding, his horse eats a lady's hat on a bush at the roadside, while the lady is hidden behind the bush with her lover Lieutenant Tavernier. Because she is married, she cannot return home hatless without being compromised, and Tavernier orders Fadinard to replace the hat with one exactly like it - or else he will wreck ...

Berlin is Walter Ruttmanns black and white documentary of Berlin in 1927. The big city symphony shows a day in the life of metropolitan Berlin. Showing the industrial uprising as well as the lives and working circumstances of the time.

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.

In Imperial Russia, Anna Karenina falls in love with the dashing military officer Count Vronsky and abandons her husband and child to become his mistress.

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.

When a proud noble refuses to kiss the hand of the despotic King James in 1690, he is cruelly executed and his son surgically disfigured.

The Docks of New York was one of the last successful silent films before cinemas turned towards sound. The film received excellent reviews and is today known as a classic conversation from the silent film era.

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