Silent Movies: The 89 most important

From the earliest experiments with moving images to the emergence of synchronized sound, silent cinema was the first era of film.



Although it is often overshadowed by its sound counterpart, silent cinema represents a period of experimentation, innovation, and pure art.



This era produced timeless masterpieces that continue to influence contemporary cinema. From epic dramas to hilarious comedies and unsettling thrillers, silent films span an impressive range of genres and styles.



In this article, we invite you on a journey through nearly 100 breathtaking silent films, each with a brief synopsis to give you a taste of what awaits you:

1. A Trip to the Moon (1902): A milestone of silent and science fiction cinema from 1902 where a group of astronomers travels to the moon in a rocket, encounters aliens, and faces surreal adventures before successfully returning to Earth.
2. The Great Dictator (1940): A satire written, directed, and starred by Charlie Chaplin, where he plays a Jewish barber and a fictitious tyrant named Adenoid Hynkel, parodying Hitler and Nazism, and making a call for peace and humanity.
3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920): A hypnotist uses a sleepwalker to commit murders.
4. Nosferatu (1922): Based on Dracula, it’s the story of a vampire terrorizing the city of Bremen.
5. Battleship Potemkin (1925): Based on real events, it focuses on a revolt on the battleship Potemkin.
6. The Kid (1921): In this Charlie Chaplin film, “The Tramp” adopts an abandoned child.
7. City Lights (1931): Chaplin plays a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl.
8. Metropolis (1927): A visionary science fiction tale about a future city and class struggle.
9. Sunrise (1927): A farmer falls into the temptation of a city woman who wants him to kill his wife.
10. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928): Portrays the trial of Joan of Arc based on the actual trial records.
11. The Gold Rush (1925): Charlie Chaplin plays a lone gold prospector in Alaska.
12. The Last Laugh (1927): An older doorman is stripped of his job, triggering an identity crisis.
13. The Man Who Laughs (1928): A man with a permanent smile seeks love and acceptance in a frivolous society.
14. Pandora’s Box (1929): The story of a liberated woman and her impact on society.
15. The Big Parade A circus affair turns into tragedy.
16. The Phantom Carriage (1921): The last sinner of each year must take on the mantle of Death.
17. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928): A man and his wife are tormented by a family curse.
18. Our Hospitality (1923): A comedy that parodies old family feuds in the Southern United States.
19. The Wheel (1923): A train engineer adopts a girl after her father died in a train accident.
20. The Phantom of the Opera (1925): A disfigured “phantom” haunts the Paris Opera.
21. Häxan (1922): A study of how superstition and the misinterpretation of diseases and mental distress led to witch hysteria.
22. A Woman of Paris (1923): A woman moves to Paris after being abandoned by her lover.
23. The Three Lights (1921): A woman has visions of her beloved in danger and runs to save him.
24. The Mother (1926): A mother’s struggle for her son in the Russian Revolution.
25. The Wind (1928): A young woman from Virginia moves west and faces loneliness and harsh weather conditions.
26. The Wedding March (1928): A prince falls in love with a commoner in Vienna just before World War I.
27. Safety Last! (1923): (1923): A country boy tries to make it in the city and win his girlfriend’s heart in this classic physical comedy.
28. Wings (1927): Two young aviators are rivals in love and in the air during World War I.
29. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923): Lon Chaney stars in this story of a disfigured hunchback who falls in love with a gypsy in medieval Paris.
30. Seven Chances (1925): A man tries to commit suicide several times after the death of his beloved but fails.
31. The General (1926): During the American Civil War, an engineer goes after Union spies who have stolen his locomotive.
32. The Caravan of Death (1924): An old man recalls his life and his obsession with death and loss.
33. Cabiria (1914): An Italian epic that tells the story of an innocent girl and her misadventures during the Second Punic War.
34. The Last Man (1924): A world where all men have died except one, and all women fight for his love.
35. The Grapes of Wrath (1920): A single mother struggles to support her family during the Great Depression.
36. Sparrows (1926): A group of orphans tries to escape from a work farm in the swamp.
37. Orlacs Hände (1924): A pianist receives the hands of a murderer after an accident and starts to acquire violent behaviors.
38. La bohème (1926): Based on the novel by Henri Murger, it follows a group of bohemians in Paris.
39. The Black Pirate (1926): A nobleman disguises himself as a pirate to avenge his father’s death.
40. The Enemy of Blondes (1927): A London serial killer targets blonde actresses.
41. Faust (1926): Based on the German legend, a man makes a pact with the devil in an attempt to save his city.
42. The Avenger (1920): A psychotic criminal with a hand deformity becomes a problem for a small town.
43. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) A decent man becomes a monster after drinking a potion he has created.
44. Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925): Adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play about misunderstandings in high society.
45. Nanook of the North (1922): Documentary about the difficulties of life in the Arctic.
46. The Last Order (1928): A Russian army general is betrayed and must live in exile.
47. The Big Parade (1925): Follows a young American soldier in World War I.
48. Flesh and the Devil (1926): Two friends fall in love with the same woman, leading to a deadly duel.
49. The Wind (1928): A journey west becomes deadly when a woman faces isolation and harsh weather.
50. Robin Hood (1922):Douglas Fairbanks stars in this silent version of the famous outlaw of Sherwood Forest.
51. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921): An Argentine youth goes to France before World War I to find himself in the midst of horror.
52. The Prisoner of Zenda (1922): An English tourist poses as a captured king in this swashbuckling adventure.
53. The Thief of Bagdad (1924): A thief falls in love with the Caliph’s daughter.
54. The Iron Mask (1929): D’Artagnan must protect King Louis XIV of France from his evil brother.
55. Intolerance (1916): This ambitious film by D.W. Griffith weaves together four stories of injustice and bigotry.
56. The Jazz Singer (1927): Although known for being the first “sound film,” much of the film is silent. It follows a young man who wants to be a jazz singer rather than following the family tradition of being a cantor.
57. Greed (1924): Greed and obsession lead a man to ruin in this drama based on Frank Norris’ novel “McTeague”.
58. The Scarlet Letter (1926): Adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic about a woman in a puritan colony who commits adultery.
59. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925): An epic story of friendship and rivalry at the time of Christ.
60. The Unknown (1927): A criminal hides in a circus, pretending to be an armless man.
61. La Roue (1923): A four-hour drama about the life of a railway engineer.
62. Underworld (1927): Considered the first gangster film, it follows the life of a criminal in Chicago.
63. The Kid Brother (1927): Harold Lloyd plays a young man who has to prove his worth.
64. The Cameraman (1928): Buster Keaton plays a man who falls in love with a secretary and becomes a cameraman to impress her.
65. The Last Laugh (1924): A hotel doorman is demoted to bathroom attendant and has to deal with the loss of status
66. Broken Blossoms (1919): An early interracial romantic drama about a Chinese immigrant who falls in love with a battered English girl.
67. Foolish Wives (1922): A Russian con artist seduces wealthy women to get their money.
68. The Gold Rush (1925): A prospector goes to Alaska in search of gold, but finds something more valuable.
69. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920): A doctor hypnotizes a sleepwalker to commit murders in this classic of German expressionist horror cinema.
70. Way Down East (1920): A woman is tricked into a “mock wedding,” and then is shunned by society.
71. Strike (1925): This Soviet film by Sergei Eisenstein shows a workers’ strike and its repression.
72. The Sheik (1921): A handsome sheik falls in love with a British adventurer in this classic romance.
73. The Phantom Carriage (1921): This Swedish classic follows a bitter and evil man who becomes the driver of the death carriage.
74. October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928): This film by Sergei Eisenstein is a dramatization of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
75. Man with a Movie Camera (1929): An innovative Soviet documentary showing urban life in the Soviet Union.
76. Judex (1916): A masked vigilante confronts Paris’s corrupt bankers in this French serial.
77. The Birth of a Nation (1915): Although controversial for its racist portrayal, this film by D.W. Griffith is an important milestone in cinema history.
78. The Circus (1928): In this film by Charlie Chaplin, a tramp accidentally becomes a circus star.
79. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926): This German film is one of the earliest full-length animations and uses cut-out silhouettes to tell an adventure story.
80. Diary of a Lost Girl (1929): A young woman from an upper-class family is sent to a reformatory after giving birth to a child out of wedlock.
81. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927): A farmer falls in love with a city woman who tries to convince him to kill his wife.
82. Beggars of Life (1928): A young woman dresses as a boy and runs away with a hobo after killing her abusive stepfather.
83. The Man Who Laughs (1928): Disfigured as a child to have a permanent smile, Gwynplaine struggles to find his place in the world.
84. Un Chien Andalou (1929): A surrealist work by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí that defies any conventional interpretation.
85. The Crowd (1928): A common man struggles to make his way in the big city.
86. Destiny (1921): A young woman negotiates with Death in an attempt to save her beloved’s life.
87. The Docks of New York (1928): A ship’s stoker saves a woman from suicide and they find themselves entwined in a turbulent romance.
88. Sherlock Jr. (1924): (1924): A cinema projectionist imagines himself as the detective in the film he is projecting.
89. The General (1926): In this Buster Keaton comedy, a southern train engineer chases his stolen train during the American Civil War.

Conclusion about the most relevant silent films:

Although cinema has evolved beyond the era of silent movies, these 89 standout films offer a fascinating look into the origins of an art form we love today.



Through them, we can appreciate the beauty of cinema in its most primitive form, where expressions, emotions, and body language played a crucial role in storytelling.



Each of these silent films treasures a unique magic, an eternal beauty that makes them an unforgettable classic.



By exploring these gems, these silent movie films, we delve into an essential chapter in film history, one that continues to resonate in the movies we watch today.