Silent film

A silent film is a film with no accompanying, synchronized recorded spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, most films were silent before the late 1920s.

Some Notable Silent Films

With director and year of release:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Before 1915

• 'La Fée au Choux', Alice Guy Blaché, 1896
• Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), George Méliès, 1902
• The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S. Porter, 1903
• La Presa di Roma, Filoteo Alberini, 1905
• The Night Before Christmas, 1905
• Ben-Hur, Sidney Olcott, 1907
• From the Manger To the Cross, Sidney Olcott, 1912
• Oliver Twist, 1912 (First American feature film made)
• Richard III, 1912 (Second American feature film made and oldest surviving complete feature film)
• A Message from Mars, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1913
• Cabiria, Giovanne Pastrone, 1914
• The Perils of Pauline, Louis J. Gasnier & Donald MacKenzie 1914

1915 - 1919

• Honeymoon for Three, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1915
• The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915
• The Awakening, William Desmond Taylor, 1915
• Les Vampires, Louis Feuillade, 1915-16
• Intolerance, D.W. Griffith, 1916
• Cleopatra, J. Gordon Edwards, 1917
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Marshall Neilan, 1917
• Father Sergius, Yakov Protazanov, 1918
• Masks and Faces, with cameo from Sir Charles Hawtrey, George Bernard Shaw and J. M. Barrie, 1918
• Broken Blossoms, D. W. Griffith, 1918
• Anne of Green Gables, William Desmond Taylor, 1919
• Within Our Gates, Oscar Micheaux, 1919

1920 - 1925

• Way Down East, D. W. Griffith, 1920
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920
• Huckleberry Finn, William Desmond Taylor, 1920
• The Mark of Zorro, Fred Niblo, 1920
• Destiny, Fritz Lang, 1921
• The Kid, Charlie Chaplin, 1921
• Orphans of the Storm, D. W. Griffith, 1921
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Rex Ingram, 1921
• The Sheik, George Melford, 1921
• Blood and Sand, Fred Niblo, 1922
• Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, 1922
• The Golem, Paul Wegener, 1922
• Beyond the Rocks, Sam Wood, 1922
• Häxan, Benjamin Christensen, 1922
• Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty, 1922
• The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. deMille, 1923
• The Thief of Bagdad, Douglas Fairbanks, 1923
• Aelita, Yakov Protazanov, 1924
• Sherlock, Jr., Buster Keaton, 1924
• Strike, Sergei Eisenstein, 1924
• The Iron Horse, John Ford, 1924
• Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
• Ben-Hur, Charles Brabin, J.J. Cohn, and Fred Niblo, 1925
• The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin, 1925
• Safety Last, Harold Lloyd, 1925
• Greed, Erich von Stroheim, 1925
• The Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney, Sr., 1925
• The Big Parade, King Vidor, 1925
• The Last Laugh, F.W. Murnau, 1925
• The Joyless Street, G.W. Pabst, 1925
• The Street of Forgotten Men, Herbert Brenon, 1925

1926 - 1930

• Our Hospitality, Buster Keaton, 1926
• The Lodger, Alfred Hitchcock, 1926
• Mother, Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Karl Koch, Lotte Reiniger, 1926
• The Man in the Iron Mask
• Faust, F.W. Murnau, 1926
• Brown of Harvard (Jack Conway), 1926
• The Son of the Sheik, George Fitzmaurice, 1926
• Napoléon, Abel Gance, 1927
• The General, Buster Keaton, 1927
• Sunrise, F.W. Murnau, 1927
• Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927
• ', Sergei Eisenstein, 1927
• Berlin, Die Symphonie Einer Grosstaldt, Walther Ruttman, 1927
• Wings, William Wellman, 1927
• The Cat And The Canary, Paul Leni, 1927
• Flesh and the Devil, Clarence Brown, 1927
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy, Alexander Korda, 1927
• Seventh Heaven, Frank Borzage, 1927
• Underworld, Josef von Sternberg, 1927
• The Unknown, Tod Browning, 1927
• Steamboat Bill, Jr, Buster Keaton, 1928
• The Last Command, Josef von Sternberg, 1928
• L'Argent, Marcel L'Herbier, 1928
• The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928
• The Crowd, King Vidor, 1928
• The Wind, Victor Sjöström, 1928
• Beggars of Life, William Wellman, 1928
• Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1928
• The Docks of New York, Josef von Sternberg, 1929
• Diary of a Lost Girl, GW Pabst, 1929
• Pandora's Box, GW Pabst, 1929
• Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929
• Earth, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930

1931 and later

• City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, 1931
• Tabu, F. W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, 1931
• I Was Born, But..., Ozu Yasujiro, 1932
• Passing Fancy, Ozu Yasujiro, 1933
• A Story of Floating Weeds, Ozu Yasujiro, 1934
• The Goddess, Wu Yonggang, 1934
• Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, 1936