Welcome, bette! I agree with the Buster Keaton stuff, especially The General.
The 1928 version of The Cat and the Canary. If it isn’t the first Old Dark House mystery movie, it’s an entertaining early example.
A Cottage on Dartmoor. A British silent film, and an early work by Anthony Asquith. It’s about a manicurist who is stalked by a barber whom she works with, and who doesn’t take her engagement to a regular customer at all well. Worth seeing for the sequence where these characters in a silent film go to see a talky, and for the achingly suspenseful scene where the manicurist obliviously flirts with her fiance while he’s sitting in the barber’s chair and the jealous barber is shaving him with a straight razor.
For sheer feel-good comedy, I heartily recommend Jaques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. It includes background noise, but no dialogue, so I guess it depends on how strict your definition is as to whether it’s silent or not.
Gold Rush, City Lights and Modern Times from Charlie Chaplin. He also did The Circus, but it seems to land on fewer lists of favorites than the others. Netflix doesn’t have any of those, but does have a collection of his better-known comedy shorts.
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., was good for any film where they’d let him go shirtless and fling himself off a third-floor balcony. The Three Musketeers, Thief of Bagdad and his version of Robin Hood are his best-known.
John Barrymore did a version of Sherlock Holmes in 1922 which was long thought lost, but has recently been restored to its full length. Opinions are divided over whether it’s any good, but Barrymore plays Holmes as a sort of a deadpan snarker, or as close as you can get in intertitles, and I found it enjoyable. Particularly notable for being a Holmes film that was made while the stories will still coming out – Doyle didn’t put out the last volume until a few years afterward.
This is indeed a good time for this thread to be resurrected, because TCM is playing some dandies tonight and tomorrow:
3:45 a.m. (Eastern): The Thief of Baghdad (1924), Douglas Fairbanks
6:15 a.m.: The Sheik (1921), Rudolf Valentino. Seminal.
7:45 a.m.: Our Modern Maidens (1929), Joan Crawford, rushed into production to capitalize on her marriage to costar Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Also set your DVR for July 22 at 12:30 a.m. (actually July 23 a.m.) for 1928’s The Mating Call, in which a WWI vet takes on the Klan.
The General with Buster Keaton is a great film. It’s very funny, but it also has brilliant (not to mention gutsy) action sequences. It’s a silent film that shows how effective silents could be to those of us used to sound film. It’s engaging enough that sound would be superfluous.
Broken Blossoms directed by DW Griffith and starring Lilian Gish. This movie (as all of DW Griffith’s films) features old fashioned acting styles and direction. But if you can adjust to that, it’s a gripping film with a terrific performance by Gish.
I strongly recommend M, from 1931. Peter Lorre is incredible as a child-murdering, pedophiliac creep.
Clara Bow is my favorite actress of all time, silent or talkie. Like others here, I recommend It, and frankly anything you can find with her in it. She made poor material worth watching. Call Her Savage has an outrageous scene where she wrestles with a Great Dane in a sheer shirt, through which you can clearly see her nipples. I think this was spoofing some malicious newspaper gossip which said she was such a nymphomaniac that when no-one else was available, she would turn to her Great Dane instead. Tabloids today are pretty shocking, but I’ve yet to see anything top that.
Porn, on Mute.
Always good choices.
An excellent choice. Did you know there is an exact shot for shot modern duplicate of it? I ran into it on netflix instant watch once.
One of our favorites, usually shown with Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible 1 and 2.
Nice spelling =) but good movie.
Probably my absolute favorite movie of all times, but not silent…
Fritz Lang made a number of movies with a shared cast, M,Dr Mabuse the Gambler which was silent, and the Testiment of Dr Mabuse which wasn’t silent.
Let me also suggest [SIZE=1]Häxan[/SIZE] as an interesting silent.
Criterion Collection is one of my go to places for great movies. No connection to them other than being a satisfied customer!
It’s a masterpiece, but not silent. You may have seen it with subtitles.
I feel very stupid right now. I filed ‘M’ under ‘silent’ for reasons which only my lizard brain understands. Forgive me!
But seriously, SEE THIS FILM.
I definitely agree =) I keep recommending it to people all the time. Seriously, I rewatch it all the time as sort of the film version of comfort food.
Re: M
The first time I saw it, I had some friends I was going to recommend it to. Then it occurred to me that they had just had a baby. I’m not sure anybody needs that movie at that time in their lives.
Hm, perhaps it would make them more aware of how a kid can vanish. Keeping in mind I think ‘stranger danger’ is blown way out of proportion, but it does point out that you do need to keep track of your kids.
Though what I like is the way it shows that the crooks are just as concerned about catching the murderer as the law abiding citizens are.
How about Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie?
Sorry to re-re-animate this 2006 zombie, but TCM is playing a dozen Lillian Gish movies today: You’ve already missed Broken Blossoms (1919), Orphans of the Storm (1921), and The Scarlet Letter (1926), but you can catch Intolerance (1912) at 8 p.m., followed at 11:30 by The Wind (1928). If you don’t DVR The Wind, there’s no hope for ya. I say, no hope.
Seconded. The latter is one of the most magnificent movies, period.
I came in to recommend anything by Buster Keaton but particularly The General (based on a true story no less, from a book written by the actual protagonist) and my personal favorite Seven Chances. These have been mentioned, but really, do yourself a favor and see them.
Trivia: The destruction of the train in The General was the most expensive film stunt up to that time.