12 Silent Films (You Can Watch) That Still Hold Up

Surprised this didn't make the list:

"Birth of a Nation"

I’ve only watched a handful of silent movies but this list seems exceptionally crappy. No Chaplin or Keaton, Murnau’s Sunrise?

I find Harold Lloyd's The Freshman delightful

Buster Keaton

The General

OP seems to rely on autodidact luck in her development of a love for early film.

("Silent" can trigger today's youthful, boneless auteurs.)

Norma Shearer in A Lady of Chance, a 1928 silent comedy with sound effects added.

[quote]I’ve only watched a handful of silent movies but this list seems exceptionally crappy. No Chaplin or Keaton, Murnau’s Sunrise?

Some of the choices do seem odd. Not so much for their positives, but some of the writer's negative comments which are presumably for modern generations. ("This film gives a bad representation of mental asylums which were prominent at the time" or whatever. WTF?) But I agree that movies like Sunrise still holds up very well, despite it's old fashioned, countrified charm.

Battleship Potemkin. It even held my high school students' attention.

Wow! Hella surprised they mentioned Murnau's Faust (I just watched the BluRay out from Kino a couple days ago), but surprised they didn't mention Haxan, especially since it's so popular with hipsters. Great old Danish film all about witchcraft which directly inspired the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Disney's Fantasia. There are a LOT of public domain versions floating around - including a truncated version from the 1960s with an added jazz score and narration by William S. Burroughs (!) of all people...

R5 This movie is #18 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, yet so few people know it. Genius.

How did this not make the list?

PANDORA'S BOX (29): Louise Brooks gave the first "modern" acting performance on screen.

Hitchcock's BLACKMAIL (29): the sound version is flawed. Watch the silent version.

The one thing I hate about silent films (which isn't their fault in 2020) is that sometimes the new scores are just AWFUL.

I watched The Winning of Barbara Worth last year and I had to mute it because the score was so awful. The film itself was quite compelling!!

R8 To be generous to the list compiler, I think that in many ways the films of Keaton and Chaplin have stood the test of time very well -- better than 99.9% of other silent films. Their work doesn't need to be be on a top 10 list. What more can be said about them?

I'd add the 1925 Ben Hur with Francis X. Bushman and Ramon Novarro. Tons of full-frontal nudity and naughtiness, a violent/deadly chariot race, and all wrapped up in good Christian themes so it's never inappropriate. ;)

The correct music is crucial. There's a video of Metropolis that uses the original score that was written for it at the time. Very effective. Also, there's a version of Ben-Hur that uses a terrific score by Carl Davis.

R16 I prefer "Been Her," the first film about transgenderism.

Body And Soul isn't really good. Very clunky narrative in spite of Robeson. The tacked on ending the director was forced to add is totally confusing.

Speaking of religious films, the original King of Kings was better than I expected.

The author is more interested in diversity quotas rather than pick ing 10 of the greatest.

If you're a fan of silent movies, be sure to check out the NitrateVille.com website!

"Greed" and "Intolerance" are wild.

City Lights, The Goldrush.

That cracked.com site must be staffed with people on crack if they haven't included "The Passion of Joan of Arc", which contains one of the best performances in the entire history of film.

R13 - I didn't know there was a silent version of Blackmail.

BTW a really good silent Hitchcock film to check out is The Lodger.

Can't believe they didn't mention "Wings." Saw it on TCM for the first time last year and was blown away. The aviation sequences were incredible, especially considering the movie was made 94 years ago. The cinematography is brilliant, and there's a great single-take shot where the camera pans through rows of tables in a restaurant. One of the couples at a table is a lesbian couple.

And the scene where the guy kisses his dying buddy on the lips - wow.

R26 Can anyone watch that scene without shedding a tear? Gets me every time.

Wings is wonderful! It’s interesting to compare it to the next year’s Best Movie winner, Broadway Melody. Wings has astonishing camera work. For Broadway Melody, an early sound movie, the camera never moves, due to the microphones. It’s like movie making suddenly went backwards.

R28 Agreed. "Wings" was a masterpiece.

Here’s a quote that I love: Walter Kerr said that silent movies were the only art form that had a beginning, middle, and an end.

Helen Lawson, she played mothers so well, even then.

I don't see Queen Kelly on this list.

It took almost 3 years for the sound camera to recover the mobility of the late silent period. By 1931, movies were "back on track."

Tillie's Punctured Romance with Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler is still so very very funny more than 100 years later

J'adore 'Beggars of Life' with Louise Brooks and the hunky Richard Arlen. Other than the hideously distracting baby-like bonnet Brooks wears in the last 20 minutes everything about the film is pretty much perfect.

Another underrated silent treasure is Dreyer's 'The Parson's Widow', a bizarre and very amusing black comedy.

How could they not include the grandeur that was Theda Bara?

I was going to say Wings, too. But there are plenty of silent movies that "hold up." The link at OP seems to presuppose ignorantly that almost everything was garbage before Al Jolson opened his trap.

[italic]Tillie's Punctured Romance[/italic] (1914), referenced by R34

Oh my god, Lillian Gish in The Wind. It’s a masterpiece. A woman who marries a Kansas farmer is left in their house on the dust flats while he goes in search of work and she slowly goes mad. Fucking wonderful, and the score is just as good.

A couple of years ago, I saw Lang's "Metropolis" and Hitchcock's "The Lodger" in a cinematheque with contemporary accompanying soundtracks and enjoyed them both immensely.

Another great one is [italic]The Phantom Carriage[italic]. Brilliant.

Yeah, they always have to include "ethnic" films and women directors these days in their lists, even if no one has heard of them, or they're not very good. Same when the archives release their collections on DVD - always something about Native Americans, various unknown women directors, other boring stuff no one wants to see. After the release of one of these sets, someone said, "What, no North Dakota Podiatrist's Convention of 1925?" My favorite comment ever.

No mention of Nosferatu or Lon Cheney’s Phantom of the Opera?

Nosferatu may be the BEST Dracula movie ever made.

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks. The Crowd, and The Big Parade, directed by King Vidor. The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, directed by Erst Lubitsch, starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. Any number of Lon Chaney movies. DeMille did some great silents.

*Ernst

No Sunrise?

The tracking shot from Wings referred to by R26, panning past affectionate lesbians and ending with the adorable Buddy Rogers.

R47 Incredible shot, even by today's standards. And the fact that the scene would show two lesbians in 1927 was groundbreaking.

I went on silent movie kick when I was a student. Since I lived in LA I was fortunate to have a lot of silent reference points. We even had a Silent Movie theater. I visted Pickfair, and Falcons Lair before they were torn down. I was so excited when they discovered a intact print of Beyond The Rocks (1922), This was the long lost legendary pairing of Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. Swanson wrote about the film in her auto bio saying her dress cost $5000 , she danced the tango with Rudy. Their kiss was soo long it was edited because it was considered censurable. Got my ticket to the premiere at AMPAS. First time seen by an audience in 57 years. As the lights dimmed I held my breath in anticipation. When the lights came up my friend turned to me and said " Some things should remain lost." BTY: I missed the premiere of Brokeback Mountain to see it.

[quote]No Chaplin or Keaton, Murnau’s Sunrise?

These are exactly what I was going to say.

BODY AND SOUL is Oscar Micheaux's most competent film, and just about passes muster because of Robeson's participation. Every other one I've seen (a lot of them are on the Criterion Channel) are of Ed Wood, Jr.-level ineptitude--from the acting to the editing to the dialogue.

As an outsider, he faced challenges, yes, but he never improved. And claims for his importance are exaggerated.

I watched Häxan only a couple of weeks ago for the first time and I thought it was great and definitely still held up, and had some interesting things to say.

Get Hur.

The whole thing is so condescending. A dozen films from three decades of movie making “holding up”?

The Flesh and the Devil with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Watched the whole movie a couple of years ago on YT when you can watch silent movies for free. This was the movie where they said Garbo and Gilbert fell in love, well maybe he fell in love, not her.

R50 Sunrise was an amazing film, and George O'Brien was beautiful to look at.

I have the blu ray of this restoration and it’s great!

I watch a lot of silent movies. Clara Bow and Charles Farrell both have a modern "look" that is very appealing. Mid-1920s stars tend to look a lot better than those from earlier films, with the change from orthochromatic to panchromatic film/makeup. You can't love film without appreciating the silents.