Top Ten Silent Films in the World

1/ City Lights(1931)

The film opens with “Peace and Prosperity” to define and introduce the Tramp character and satirically mock the proceedings of a public presentation – a clever in-joke against ‘talking’ films. In the big city, an ugly monument to Peace and Prosperity is dramatically unveiled before an assembled, dignified civic group. A boring speech is being presented at a microphone by a stereotypical, pompous Establishment figure.Starring once more the classic character the tramp this Chaplin film was equally as charming as it was funny. As a comedy it certainly compares to other comedies out there –and certainly outlives many of the newest ones around-. City Lights is easily one of the greatest silent films and all because of Chaplin’s marvellous writing, acting and of course, directing.

2/ Un chien Andalou(1929)

“Un Chien Andalou remains a startling artifact suggesting ways in which film can express the subconscious. The result of Luis Bunuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dali, the 17-minute, 1929 film was designed expressly to shock and provoke.The film has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial “once upon a time” to “eight years later” without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes.

3/The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is as truly mythic as any film ever shot, its artistic achievement rivaled by its turbulent history. The focal point of controversy when released in 1928, the original film was lost for a half-century until an intact copy of Dreyer’s original version was recovered in the early ’80s.Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc convinced the world that movies could be art. Renée Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981—in a Norwegian mental institution. Criterion is proud to present this milestone of silent cinema in a new special edition featuring composer Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, an original opera/oratorio inspired by the film.

4/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans(1927)

The first film from director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau to be finished in the States. The film has the tangible elements of German expressionism. Murnau received a big budget from Fox and the ability to make all the filmmaking decisions. The film has been called the greatest silent film of all time.It appeared at the very end of the silent era and came only a few days before the opening of Warner Bros.’ famous ‘first talkie’ The Jazz Singer (1927). The sensational opening of Warners’ film overshadowed the release of Fox’s most expensive silent film to date, and it failed at the box-office due to its high cost.

5/Metropolis

Metropolis, a nearly three-hour film in its original form, has been carved up, mixed up and rebuilt as much as any of them. It lets the characters breathe a bit, too, especially Freder Fredersen (Gustav Fröhlich), the young son of Joh Fredersen, Master of Metropolis. Gone, somewhat, is the spastic, naïve, impulsive boy; in his place, a cagier version. The restoration matures him. Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage.

6/The Battleship Potemkin(1925)

The film opens with the title describing the pre-1905 revolution unrest in Russia, which is followed by several shots of waves breaking; this hackneyed symbol is rendered even more ineffective by uninspired camera-angles and haphazard shot-lengths. A title introducing the Potemkin is followed by a shot of two sailors on board, then a really beautiful long shot of the ship in silhouette, with its reflection in the dancing waters filling the foreground  a vaguely sinister effect leading up to the title: “Dark and foreboding was the sleep of those off duty ” a sonorous hectometer. It should be remarked that the London Film Society was concerned in the preparation of the English titles (their mark appears behind the main titles) with admirable results.

7/The Gold Rush(1925)

The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite. The film has been seen more frequently than any other Chaplin feature, especially between 1952 and 1972, the two decades of Chaplin’s disenchantment with America, when he withdrew all his other feature films from public circulation. Inspired by stories of the Donner Party, trapped in a desert of ice, and perhaps by the icy landscapes of Robert Flaherty’s popular documentary feature, Nanook of the North , Chaplin took his Tramp character to the frozen gold fields where human beings endure great hardships so that they might strike it rich.

8/The Phantom of the Opera

The film was announced as early as 1989, but production only started in 2002 due to Webber’s divorce and Schumacher’s busy career. It was entirely shot at Pinewood Studios, with scenarios also being depicted with the help of miniatures and computer graphics.Christine (Emmy Rossum) is a beautiful and gifted young woman who longs to join the company of the Paris Opera House. During rehearsals for one of the opera’s grand productions, a backdrop falls and crashes to the floor, nearly crushing leading lady Carlotta (Minnie Driver). When several members of the company suggest this could be the work of the “Phantom of the Opera,” a spectral presence said to haunt the building, Carlotta drops out of the show, and the fates permit Christine to step in as her replacement. The Phantom of the Opera grossed approximately $154 million worldwide, and received mixed to negative reviews, praising the visuals but criticizing the writing and directing.

9/Intolerance(1916)

The film was the most expensive film of its time, costing about two million dollars (a third of which was used for the Babylonian segments), but it was commercially unsuccessful in the US, partially due to the financial burden of having full orchestration accompany the film. Its complex, sometimes baffling, unwieldy construction and its pacifist themes may have contributed to its unpopular reception just prior to the US entrance into World War I. The action in the film’s final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as “the only film fugue,” Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 — and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV.

10/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is on that short list of movies every film student is supposed to have seen, yet very few ever have. Heralded as the flick that gave birth to the German Expressionist movement in cinema, it’s referred to in just about every film history book. The film opens in the German town of Holstenwall, seen in a drawing as houses like shrieks climbing a steep hill. After a prologue, a story is told: A sideshow operator named Caligari (Werner Krauss) arrives at the fair to exhibit the Somnambulist, a man he claims has been sleeping since his birth 23 years ago. This figure, named Cesare (Conrad Veidt), sleeps in a coffin and is hand-fed by the crazed-looking doctor, who claims he can answer any question.