These Standout Silent Movies Defined Cinema’s Earliest Years

With Taylor Swift singing songs about Clara Bow, audiences have turned their attention to the first days of cinema. But even the most hardened Swiftie might find themselves confused by a strange version of a familiar genre.

Those beleaguered viewers should take heart, because most of those off-putting elements stay on the surface level. Silent movies tend to measure the length in terms of reels (with about 10 minutes per reel) and use intertitles rather than synchronized dialogue to express words, but otherwise, they function just like modern movies.

They feature actors bringing characters to life through gestures and actions. They come from directors who compose striking scenes through blocking and set design. And they tell narratives by working off of screenplays, often called “scenarios.” In fact, most silent movies do have some sort of a score, even if it’s music that an organist played in a theater or a later distributor added to a home video release.

Once today’s film fans know how to make sense of the generic elements of silent cinema, they can appreciate the form on its own as a precursor to the hits of today. And to do that, future silent film aficionados need to know where to begin.

1. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

No genre suits itself to silent cinema better than slapstick comedy, and no one did slapstick comedy better than the brilliant Buster Keaton. Named for his uncanny ability to suffer all sorts of abuse in the stage act he did as a child with his parents, Buster Keaton brought fearlessness and creativity to movies. With his pork-pie hat askew and his stone face unmoving, Keaton’s characters suffered all manner of indignities, scoring laughs in the process.

While many Keaton fans point to the Civil War farce The General as his masterpiece, modern viewers might start with Steamboat Bill Jr., the source of his most jaw-dropping stunt, in which a house falls around him. Co-directed with Charles Reisner, Steamboat Bill, Jr. stars Keaton as the dandy son of respected Captain Steamboat Bill (Ernest Torrence). When Bill Jr. falls for Kitty (Marion Byron), the daughter of his father’s rival John James King (Tom McGuire), the two old enemies come together to break up the courtship. The shenanigans put Keaton in danger again and again, much to the delight of the viewers.

2. Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914)

Before Keaton, the Keystone Film Company ruled slapstick comedy. The studio launched the careers of some of the most important figures of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and the Keystone Cops. Keystone produced almost one and two-reel shorts, but they did put out one feature film, the wonderful Tillie’s Punctured Romance.

Tillie’s Punctured Romance stars Marie Dressler as the large and naïve Tillie, who falls for the romantic overtures of a city-dwelling stranger (Chaplin). The stranger woos Tillie for the sake of her family's money, much to the chagrin of his ex-girlfriend (Normand). What follows is a series of outrageous vignettes that involve Tillie getting kicked in her behind and the arrival of the Keystone Cops. Individual Keystone shorts may be stronger on the whole, but Tillie’s Punctured Romance offers a nice sampler of the studio’s aesthetic.

3. A Reckless Rover (1918)

About 75% of silent films have been lost to time, due to a variety of issues, including the fact that many were shot on unstable nitrate film. To the surprise of no one, the most difficult to find include films made by marginalized communities, including Black directors.

However, some do remain, including the riotous one-reel short “A Reckless Rover,” from the all-Black Ebony Film Corporation. The sole print still in existence has numerous flaws, making the first quarter difficult to watch, but it’s worth sticking through to see a delightful project from an underrepresented group.

Directed by C.N. David from a scenario by Robert J. Horner, “A Reckless Rover” stars Sam Robinson as the troublemaking Rastus Jones. A classic trickster character, Rastus causes trouble for everyone he meets, including a Chinese laundryman (a Black actor in racial makeup) and a beleaguered policeman. “A Reckless Rover” has a lot in common with Keystone Cop shorts of the day, but is worth checking out to see pioneering Black filmmakers at work.

4. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

In addition to comedy, horror worked well in the silent era, even if standards and special effects prevented directors from using the explicit violence that today’s viewers expect. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the perfect example, for its pioneering use of what would be called German Expressionism. Directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari uses canted or Dutch angles and off-kilter designs to create texture in the picture and unease in the audience.

This visual approach underscores the terror of the film, in which a mad hypnotist (Werner Krauss) uses a mind-controlled somnambulist (Conrad Viedt) to do his terrible work, including kidnapping a maiden (Lil Dagover). Between the lack of dialogue and the bizarre setting, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari creates a real nightmare, a level of horror matched by very few films of the century that followed.

5. Underworld (1927)

Movie historians often mark Underworld as the first American gangster picture, a film that launched a genre that would become dominant over the next two decades. Underworld comes from Josef von Sternberg, one of the most respected filmmakers of the silent and studio eras. Thanks to Sternberg’s influence on the beginning days of cinema, elements of his style continue in films today, making Underworld feel modern.

Clive Brook plays a lawyer called Wensel, whose alcoholism has brought him low. When the gregarious gangster “Bull” Weed (George Bancroft) takes pity on him, Wensel reinvents himself as the dashing Rolls Royce. But he also falls for Weed’s girlfriend Feathers (Evelyn Brent), creating tension between the police and a rival gangster (Fred Kohler). Between Sternberg’s impressive direction and the amoral story, Underworld has a level of complexity still rare among crime movies today.

6. Safety Last! (1923)

Harold Lloyd lacks the pathos of Keaton or the satirical edge of Charlie Chaplin, but there’s an athleticism to his stunts, as seen in the iconic Safety Last! from 1923. The image of Lloyd holding on for dear life from the hands of a clock tower remains among the most memorable shots in cinema history, one paid homage to in films such as Back to the Future.

But Safety Last! has much more to offer than just one powerful picture. Lloyd plays a poor clerk who hopes to win the heart of a coworker (Mildred Davis) by posing as a wealthy person. The romantic longing between Lloyd and Davis, and the ridiculous situations he creates for himself have a certain innocence that remains palpable today.

7. It (1927)

Clara Bow wasn’t the first actor to play a flapper in the movies, but she might be the most famous. No film secured her claim on the title of most famous flapper like It, the comic sensation of 1927. It has a strange history, as it adapts not a novel, but a concept from a novel. In the book The Man and the Moment, writer Elinor Glyn describes the magnetic appeal that some possess as “IT.”

That doesn’t sound like much on which to base a feature-length movie, but It somehow works every time that Bow comes on screen. Despite her modest means, Bow’s character Betty Lou wins over the man of her dreams through nothing but her inexplicable qualities, that very thing that Glyn, who appears in the film as herself, as IT. No wonder that Bow gained a reputation as “the It Girl.”

8. Robin Hood (1922)

Some modern viewers might dismiss the Douglas Fairbanks vehicle Robin Hood as everything boring about old movies. It’s based on dusty English folklore and has nothing that people expect from today’s action films. Robin Hood has no shootouts or car chases, none of the thrilling CG spectacle that audiences get from the latest MCU entry.

But once those viewers understand the context in which Fairbanks and director Allan Dwan made the movie, Robin Hood becomes one of the most thrilling movies of all time. Fairbanks himself does all of Robin’s elaborate sword-fighting, and the actors do real joisting, all without the benefit of the special effects common today. Even if its two-hour-plus runtime might turn off some viewers, Robin Hood has an immediacy not often seen in movies today.

9. Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Even people who haven’t seen Battleship Potemkin have seen Battleship Potemkin. No, not because people love Soviet naval epics, nor even that the average viewer knows the name of Battleship Potemkin’s director, the influential filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Rather, it’s because it features one of the most referenced sequences ever filmed. In the Odessa Steps sequence, the Tsar’s soldiers stomp down a vast outdoor set of steps firing on citizens, creating chaos, including a baby carriage tumbling away. Everything from Star Wars: Episode III and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune to The Untouchables boasts its own version of the sequence.

Even outside of the Odessa Steps sequence, Battleship Potemkin packs a punch. A depiction of a mutiny on the titular boat, Battleship Potemkin has an efficiency and sense of spectacle that few films can match. Right from the beginning, Eisenstein knew the power of cinema, and Battleship Potemkin proved that.

10. The Birth of a Nation (1915)

The Birth of a Nation lands on this list as a cautionary tale. The technical achievements of director D.W. Griffith are often overstated, with historians crediting him with concepts such as close-ups or intercutting, despite these techniques existing long before he came on the scene.

But no one can deny the effect The Birth of a Nation had on history. The three-hour-long Civil War epic was a national phenomenon, one that enjoyed massive popularity. In addition to being the first film screened inside the White House (others had been screened outside on the lawn), the popularity of The Birth of a Nation allowed Griffith to demand nicer, more expensive venues for his film, raising the respectability of cinema as an art form and paving the way for the movie house and, eventually, the cineplex.

And yet, The Birth of a Nation is a very racist film. Adapting the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Griffith fills his film with hateful tropes. It blames anti-segregationists for causing the Civil War and almost destroying the country and suggests that white supremacy, enforced by the Ku Klux Klan, brings peace. In fact, the movie inspired some viewers to revive the then-dormant KKK, making The Birth of a Nation much more than a film. It was a phenomenon that has resulted in decades of terrorist violence.

11. Modern Times (1936)

Some readers might argue that silent cinema newcomers should check out Modern Times much sooner, as many regard it not just the best Chaplin movie but one of the greatest films of all time. But Modern Times cannot be appreciated as it deserves unless one has respect for silent film as a medium, which the preceding ten entries supply.

With that education in place, viewers can understand why Chaplin continued to make silent movies long after most of Hollywood switched to Talkies in 1927. Silent cinema best captures Chaplin’s working-class masterpiece, in which his Tramp character wrestles against the system that keeps people down. Its depiction of police forces and factories remains relevant even today, provided audiences can understand Chaplin’s aesthetics.

12. The Big Parade (1925)

Today’s movie fans still know the names Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and D.W. Griffith. But in his time, the director King Vidor rivaled them all. Vidor enjoyed a career that stretched into the sound era, where he directed Westerns such as Northwest Passage and Duel in the Sun. Of his silent movies, nothing outdid The Big Parade.

The Big Parade stars John Gilbert as rich kid Jim Apperson, whose life of comfort and leisure cannot keep him from enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War I. Between the friendships he forms with working-class comrades and the horrors that he experiences, Apperson returns to the front a changed man. The melodramatic elements of the movie, including Gilbert’s sometimes outsized acting, might not work for some viewers, but everyone can appreciate Vidor’s masterful depiction of the war.

13. A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Like Modern Times, A Trip to the Moon often falls toward the start of silent cinema beginner’s guides. After all, it features some of the most memorable scenes in any film of any era, including that of a rocket ship slamming into the eye of the Man on the Moon.

However, silent cinema neophytes should wait to dig into A Trip to the Moon because it represents the height of an early stage in the art form, one that gets abandoned soon thereafter. A Trip to the Moon comes from Georges Méliès, a French magician who saw cinema as another way to dazzle audiences, but nothing more. His projects often feature amazing special effects, but never move beyond spectacle. For as much as Méliès pushed the young medium forward, he also didn’t see its possibility as a narrative art form. Nevertheless, the aesthetic of the film continues to thrive in pop culture today, with allusions in everything from music videos to Hugo to Futurama.

14. Silent Movie (1976)

Like its fellow later homage, The Artist, Silent Movie is not completely silent as it contains one line of synchronized dialogue. Unlike The Artist, Silent Movie is good, because it comes from Mel Brooks. In addition to possessing a fathomless sense of humor, Mel Brooks also had a great respect for the silent form, which allowed him to use the medium to its full potential, even in 1976.

Silent Movie has an almost metatextual feel, as Brooks plays a down-on-his-luck director called Mel Funn, who hopes to revitalize his career by making the first silent movie in several decades. That plot leads to a lot of fun twists from Brooks’s regular collaborators Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman, along with fun cameos by James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, and more. Oh, and that one line of spoken dialogue? It comes from Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime.

15. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror (1922)

Nosferatu: A Sympathy of Terror is one of the first filmed adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, albeit an unauthorized version. German director F. W. Murnau and his screenwriter Henrik Galeen follow the same basic plot as Stoker’s book, in which a real estate agent encounters a vampiric Count, who makes his way to England via a boat. Murnau and Galeen change the names, making Count Dracula into Count Orlok and Jonathan Harker into Thomas Hutter, but they all serve the same role.

This creates a problem because Dracula tends to drag on the screen. For all of his revisions, Galeen doesn’t make up for the problems in Stoker’s plot. However, Murnau almost overcomes them with his striking visuals, including chilling scenes of the uncanny Max Schreck as Orlock. Those who watch Nosferatu too soon in their silent journey might assume that all films of the era struggle to tell exciting stories. A viewer with a few flicks under their belt, however, can pinpoint the problem with Stoker’s novel and enjoy Murnau’s exciting vision.

16. The Great Train Robbery (1903)

As a short, single-reel film that puts more emphasis on spectacle than character, The Great Train Robbery has much in common with A Trip to the Moon and other examples of what film historians call “the cinema of attractions.” Director Edwin S. Porter, who worked for Thomas Edison’s film company, served his boss’s goal to sell cameras, making his movies more of a commercial enterprise than an artistic pursuit.

And yet, The Great Train Robbery is thrilling stuff. Often cited as the first crime movie, The Great Train Robbery tells a simple story about ruffians robbing a train. However, Porter uses the cinematic tricks of the time to ratchet up the tension in the tale. No one comes away from the film learning anything about human nature, but they do get a rollicking good time, which is more than many modern films can say.

17. Suspense (1913)

Women had far more influence in the silent era than at any other point in cinema history, with people like Mabel Normand, Alice Guy-Blaché, and Dorothy Arzner directing at the time. Suspense comes from one of the most celebrated female filmmakers of the 1910s, Lois Weber, who also stars.

Suspense has much in common with the cinema of attractions, with its short thriller plot and its use of visual effects. However, Weber pays close attention to the people in her story, grounding the tension and the spectacle in human emotions. When she uses a split-screen effect to follow three solitary characters, Weber dazzles viewers and heightens the themes of Suspense.

18. Wings (1927)

Most film fans know Wings as a piece of trivia, as it won the first-ever Oscar for Best Picture (or Outstanding Picture, as it was called at the time) and featured people in undress, a rarity in the days before ratings or morality codes. Furthermore, Wings has stars such as Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers, both sensations in their time. All of that said, Wings doesn’t live up to its prestigious reputation.

That doesn’t mean that Wings is a bad movie. The central plot, about a rivalry between two World War I pilots, functions well and sustains the viewers’ attention. Furthermore, the movie’s technical achievements and air combat scenes still impress, even after much more complicated portrayals today. However, Wings works best for those familiar with the medium, not something enjoyed by trivia hounds.

19. Within Our Gates (1920)

Because The Birth of a Nation and D.W. Griffith draw so much attention, it’s easy to assume that the silent era catered just to white creators. However, many Black filmmakers worked in the 1910s and 20s, none more famous than Oscar Micheaux. Micheaux’s work falls in line with the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of Black art and creativity.

Within Our Gates captures the tensions of the era. The movie follows Black Southerner Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer), who comes to the North to raise money for a school. Along the way, she encounters figures with different ideas about the future of African Americans, including the humanist Dr. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas) and the self-hating preacher Old Ned (actor unknown). Micheaux’s reliance on intertitles sometimes slows down the action but the complex character motivations give Within Our Gates an immediacy that still packs a punch.

20. Metropolis (1927)

With its class warfare and anti-capitalist themes, Metropolis stands out as one of the most modern films on this list. Furthermore, Metropolis inspired some of the most iconic images in cinema history. The humanoid automaton dubbed the Maschinenmensch or the Machine Man is a forerunner of many movie robots, including C3PO from Star Wars.

In fact, Metropolis is so modern that it is best appreciated by a viewer who understands the structure of silent cinema, and therefore won’t put too much weight on elements familiar from other media. Based on a novel by Lang’s then-wife Thea von Harbou, Metropolis presents a divided society in which the rich enjoy leisure while the workers toil all day in factories. After getting a vision of a worker being devoured by the pagan god Moloch, rich youth Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) goes into the depths to see the horror of inequality, leading to a revolution.

Metropolis has a powerful and enduring story, one best enjoyed by those familiar with the genre.