Most of you might think that I don’t have a lot of choices here, and that there wasn’t a whole wide range of moviemaking, just Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton doing something silly onscreen. However, there’s lots of OG stuff going on: like, advanced, really great storytelling stuff. If you’re a fan of cinema history, please seek out some of the choices below.
Probably the best use of dialogue I have seen in a silent movie. Documenting the interrogation of the famous war hero by church officials, this movie turns into a giant conversation about what a religious life really means. It also boasts a magnetic performance from Maria Falconetti as Joan, showing us all the horror and exhaustion the 14 year old must have been going through until her cruel early flame filled ascent into heaven/martyrdom.
FW Murnau’s masterpiece is one of the last great films of the silent era. George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor play a couple married living in the beautiful countryside. O’Brien becomes tempted by the city and beautiful women who reside there, testing his marriage and love of his wife. The movie looks amazing, and is put together just as amazingly, crafted with as much love as Gaynor and O’Brien give to each other in the movie.
Before the word “documentary” existed, Robert Flaherty was its first pioneer of that genre of filmmaking. This one, about Nanook, a Canadian Eskimo, is shot brilliantly in the northern tundra in winter, capturing a day in the life of these people living in one of the more desolate places on Earth.
Leave it to the Germans (Robert Weine) to craft the first horror movie in cinematic history. Caligari is a hypnotist traveling from circus to circus, using a strange act to generate interest, but also a bit of terror. The story is famous for incredible askew set design and throwing an early example of a plot twist. More importantly, Weine’s film unleashed the use of darkness and shadow, which film noirs of the 30s/40s would take and run with, making it the norm in great horror flicks of the future.
As exciting of a silent movie as I’ve seen. Buster Keaton’s most famous film sees the comedian as an engineer who uncovers a plot against the South in the Civil War while defending his gal. The train sequences here are some of the best in film history, with Keaton and the other actors hopping all over the moving engines as they try to catch one another.
One of Charlie Chaplin’s classics. This one finds his tramp in Alaska during the gold rush up there. Of course he gets into all sorts of great antics, in this case involving a bear every now and again. There’s also all sorts of commentary on the plight of the poor out in the West, and some beautiful sweet memorable imagery like Chaplin doing a dance with little shoes at a dining table.
Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet Propoganda film is now just a historical masterpiece of cinema history. It tells the tale of the revolt on the titular ship because of the cruelty of the generals, culminating in the Odessa steps sequence, so famous its oft imitated (the Untouchables most famously) because of its power in the heartbreak of Cossacks gunning down innocent people.
You can all definitely watch this one: it’s 8 minutes! Why is it so famous though? Walt Disney stumbled upon his new animatedface of his studio as he operates a steamboat down the Mississippi River, planting the idea to Disney that movies like this could work in longer form.
Fritz Lang’s science fiction masterpiece. Lots of the cliches of the genre start here: the haves and the have nots, gigantic buildings, messianic figures. The marvel of this film are the elaborate, revolutionary set design, still amazing today, and the special effects, like water infiltrating an underground city or (the best effect) a robot transforming into a human. For 1927, most of Lang’s efforts still hold up today, even if his final draft has not (the movie’s stitched together from lost footage).
This 12 minute charmer proved what movies could be capable of for the imagination. The OG, George Melies, a magician by trade, used a series of elaborate sets and paintings to create the “moving image” based on Jules Verne’s novel. The famous shot you’ll probably recognize, and like this whole little film, it’ll make you smile at the razzle dazzle.
