Silent Film Discussion

I was compiling a list of streaming options for some of the more popular and notable films of the silent era. I've seen some but not many. A lot of them are unavailable and half of them that are must be bought on DVD. The archives.org site has a number of silent films of varying quality. What are some of your favorite silent films?

Greed (1924)

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0015881/?...8_nm_0_q_greed

The unabridged version on Amazon for $2.99 is a sprawling 4 hours long!

While IMDb says its actually half that much:


I did find it on the archive.org site though, of questionable quality:
https://archive.org/details/Greed1924VHS
This version clocks in at 2:10:16
And here is a second one:
https://archive.org/details/Greed1924_201612

I definitely want to skip the double sized version and go with the shorter theatrical release. This movie is considered a classic, well, I will see for myself.

Shhhh! We're discussing silently.

Never seen one & never will.

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Some of my favourite silent films:

Safety Last! (1923)
City Lights (1931)
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Metropolis (1927)
Wings (1927)
The Wheel (1923)
Sunrise (1927)

Lots of favorites, but my top one is The Last Laugh (1924) from F.W. Murnau. Emotional story, striking visuals, impressive cinematography and direction.

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For what it's worth, I dedicated an episode of my podcast to silent films last year, and had a lot of fun with it. Me and my guest shared a bunch of favorites, so feel free to check it out.

The Movie Loot 53: The Silent Loot (with Brian Skutle of Sonic Cinema)

We had a great conversation about the birth of cinema, but just in case you're not interested in the discussion, here is my Top 5 at that moment...

1. The Last Laugh (1924)
2. The Kid (1921)
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
4. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
5. A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Other favorites...

Dante's Inferno (1911)
Suspense (1913)
One Week (1920)
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Häxan (1922)
Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
The Unknown (1927)
Wings (1927)

Shoes (1915)

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I found a site named Public Domain Movies that offers free silent films that you can even download in mp4.

The Plastic Age (1925)
starring Clara Bow


https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/the-plastic-age



Only one last copy of film is known to exist yet two versions of the poster survive.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Our Hospitality (1923)
Safety Last! (1923)
The Navigator (1924)
Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
Seven Chances (1925)
The General (1927)
Metropolis (1927)
The Unknown (1927)
The Crowd (1928)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
The Wind (1928)
Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Why so?

A couple that I have seen not mentioned here:

The Hands of Orlac
Orphans of the Storm
The Lost World (1925)
Shiraz

Since Intolerance was already mentioned, I will add The Birth of a Nation to the discussion.

As for German ones, my favorites is Murnau's Faust.

I wouldn't like to overlook The Phantom of the Opera (1925), with Lon Chaney's iconic and powerful portrayal and make up.

Also of note is Chaney's magnificent performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923).

I still need to watch the Burroughs narration of Häxan.

I haven't seen Hunchback yet, but I agree about The Phantom of the Opera. He's great, and is worth noting that he did the make-up himself with no prosthetics; just light, shadows, and camera angles.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis, 1927 - It was reconstructed and restored some years back and is amazing. I saw it at our local art house and it filled the theater.

Alraune (1928)
"A Daughter of Destiny" in English

https://letterboxd.com/film/a-daughter-of-destiny/

Found this on archives.org provided by Raidue, fitting.
https://archive.org/details/alraune.galeen.1927.avi_snapshot_00.07.41_2020.08.19_16.42.44
starring Brigitte Helm
who also starred in Metropolis (1927)

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0375609/?r...gette%2520helm
Alraune is considered a horror classic but very difficult to find.

This is the opposite of what you should want to do. The original movie was 8/9 hours long, depending on the FPS since back then the length of the film was measured by the number of reels. the producers cut it down to 2 hours, thus butchering the movie. Stroheim could never forgive the producers. He always had issues with them butchering his movies, very much like Welles. Later on, a 4-hour-long version was reconstructed. It includes stills in place of the footage that wasn't found. It's probably the closest to the auteur's original vision and the definite version you ought to watch.

Why?

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.