Nosferatu (1922)
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu invented vampire cinema and still frightens a century later. The estate sued anyway and won, and a court ordered every copy destroyed.
Tag: Silent Film
Silent film solved storytelling with pure image, and its solutions still work. This tag collects reviews and essays on the silent era: visual grammar, performance without dialogue, and what modern writers can steal from it.
2000sShadow of the Vampire (2000)
What if the actor in Nosferatu was a real vampire? The conceit is irresistible.
1930sVampyr (1932)
Characters appear and vanish. Vampyr earns its 8 as the strangest, dreamiest, and most genuinely uncanny vampire film ever made, a 1932 work by the Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer that abandons plot and logic in favor of pure nightmare.
1920sBattleship Potemkin (1925)
Eisenstein's 1925 Soviet propaganda film. The Odessa Steps sequence remains the most-imitated montage in cinema.
1920sMetropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang's 1927 German silent SF epic. The film every dystopian city movie has copied.
Black and WhiteA Trip to the Moon (1902)
Méliès's 1902 14-minute fantasy short. The first proper science fiction film.
1920sMan with a Movie Camera (1929)
Vertov's 1929 Soviet city-symphony documentary. The film that invented half the techniques modern documentary takes for granted.
1920sThe Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Dreyer's 1928 silent French religious drama. Considered by many the greatest performance ever filmed.
Black and WhiteThe Lost Battalion (1919)
The Lost Battalion from 1919 is a silent docudrama made within months of the actual event it depicts. Major Charles Whittlesey appears as himself.
1920sWings (1927)
Wings is the first film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It is also the only silent film to win that award.
1920sThe General (1926)
Buster Keaton directed it with Clyde Bruckman. Keaton stars as Johnnie Gray, a Western and Atlantic.