It has been 95 years since Al Jolson first sang on the silver screen in The Jazz Singer, famously known as the first movie to add sound to the filmgoing experience. The innovation, now perhaps taken for granted, shattered new filmmaking ground and effectively ended the silent era.
Still, the origins of cinema are rooted in silent film, with artists such as Charlie Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein, and Fritz Lang writing the language that would soon become standard for all filmmaking to follow. Any burgeoning cinephile needs to study this era for complete film education, and these 10 films are an excellent place to start.
City Lights (1931)
After sync sound burst onto the scene in 1927, it quickly became clear that talkies were here to stay. However, the silent era’s biggest star refused to let his iconic Little Tramp say a word. And so, in 1931, Charlie Chaplin defied the convention of the time and used his creative and financial freedom to make his masterpiece.
Chaplin's Tramp was the wannabe gentleman in a cruel and heartless world ravaged by the Great Depression, a persona that spoke directly to the downtrodden around the world. This idea is made literal in City Lights, one of Charlie Chaplin's most accessible comedies, in which he impersonates a rich man to help a blind girl regain her sight. Chaplin perfected the pantomime melodrama just before it went extinct through one classic comedy sequence after another and one of the greatest endings of all time.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Made in 1920, when feature films were still a nascent concept, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was one of the first horror movies ever made and remains one of the best 100 years later. It was essentially the beginning of the German expressionist movement, a visual and tonal style that permeated German art throughout the decade.
Written by amateurs as an allegorical protest against authority after World War I, the film has a classic horror premise complete with a surprising twist at the conclusion, but it's director Robert Weine's visuals that truly stand the test of time. Every strange character and gothically slanted setting exudes timeless style and artistry that directly led to filmmakers like Orson Welles and Tim Burton.
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Made to commemorate the 1905 communist revolution, 27-year-old Sergei Eisenstein took this opportunity to revolutionize cinema forever. From the rebellion on the titular battleship to the massacre on the Odessa steps, Eisenstein and his collaborators tested the possibilities of montage on audiences by cutting together totally separate images to create new meaning for the viewer.
That idea may seem rudimentary in the modern age, but the sequencing still feels incredibly daring and engaging, especially the massacre at the Odessa steps when a baby's carriage hurtles down the stairs amdist violent chaos. While it remains an unmistakable work of Soviet propaganda, Eisenstein’s film is not only engrossing nearly one hundred years later but also an essential piece of film history.
The General (1926)
Charlie Chaplin may have been the biggest star of the silent era, but Buster Keaton’s legacy has only grown in appreciation over the decades. His plots are inconsequential and any character other than himself is often a non-entity, but Keaton’s level of precision is often mind-boggling and always endearing. He presents us with a level of performance that simply doesn’t exist anymore.
The General features Keaton at the height of his powers. Playing a train engineer desperate to the Confederate Army to impress his sweetheart, Keaton flings himself from one comic action set piece to another with stone-faced gusto. A clear influence on future superstars like Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise, Keaton's work in The General is as timeless as they come.
The Mark of Zorro (1920)
Douglas Fairbanks was in many ways the first action star, and The Mark of Zorro is the best of his swashbuckling adventures. Based on a short story written only one year prior, the Scarlet Pimpernel-infused tale of a rich heir who clandestinely rallies the Mexican revolution as a masked vigilante. The film made Zorro an instant icon that would come to influence many masked heroes going forward, most directly the creation of Batman nearly 20 years later.
Co-written and produced by Fairbanks himself, the film is an ideal showcase for the star's myriad skills. He convincingly plays both the athletic and charming Zorro and his meek and unassuming alter ego, Don Diego Vega. This performance essentially created the action hero persona as audiences understand them today.
The Lost World (1925)
Dinosaurs didn’t always need to be computer-generated. Adapted from a 1912 science fiction novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who cameos in the film), The Lost World's prehistoric monsters are a major cinematic innovation. This silent adventure is one of the first features to ever mix stop-motion animation with live-action actors, and certainly the most effective of the era.
The still wonderous effects came courtesy of special effects pioneer Willis H. O'Brien, who would go on to create King Kong eight years later. When Conan Doyle showed test footage to the Society of American Magicians, including Harry Houdini, they couldn't believe was they were seeing was fake. That won't be the case for the modern viewer, but the sheer ingenuity of the dinosaur battles are still fascinating to watch.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
The history of animated cinema is rather sparse until Walt Disney and his team starts making shorts in the 1930s, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t animation in the silent era. By far, though, the most successful of the early attempts at animated storytelling was The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger employed silhouette animation, similar to shadow puppets, to combine the stories of Prince Achmed and Aladdin from One Thousand and One Nights. She and her group of avant-garde collaborators needed three years to complete the project, but the results are as captivating today as they were back then.
The ion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Carl Theodore Dreyer’s harrowing take on the story of Joan of Arc is still one of the most visually striking films ever made, even 94 years later. If Battleship Potemkin exhibited the potential of montage, The ion of Joan of Arc showed the world the power of a close-up, especially the face of Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan.
Set almost entirely within the confines of a courtroom, her representation of the put-upon martyr remains one of the most celebrated screen performances ever. Through Dreyer's oppressive close ups and the relentless question/answer pacing, Falconetti commands the entire frame with her anguish. Though the Joan of Arc story has been told many times, this 1928 take is doubtlessly the finest.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed five decades as one of the greatest filmmakers in the world, and it all started with The Lodger. Loosely based on the story of Jack the Ripper, the film represents a few firsts in Hitchcock’s career: his first suspense film, his first cameo, and, above all, his first masterpiece.
It is unquestionably Hitchcock’s greatest silent film, not only setting the stage for some of the director’s favorite themes but also exhibiting a daring technique and style that is unique in both the era and his filmography. The opening sequences alone are a masterclass in montage and title usage, setting a tone that would carry through as the story focuses on Ivor Novello’s put-upon protagonist.
Metropolis (1927)
Standing as the first science fiction epic in movie history, every moment of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece is the pinnacle of early cinema. The dense narrative, set at some undetermined point in the future, marries melodrama, spirituality, and speculative science into an epic whose scale has to be seen to be believed.
Beyond the technical marvels, the story is as bold and intricate as anything that comes out today, with compelling characters moving through the grand drama with striking humanity. All in all, Metropolis established the possibilities of cinema and influenced countless artists for generations to come.
