The Little Orphan (1917)

The Miracle Man

A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang. Lost film, only the most famous scene has survived.

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

A Star Is Born

A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.

Metropolis

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Greed

A lottery win of $5,000 forever changes the lives of a miner turned dentist and his wife.

True As Steel

Successful middle-aged manufacturer Frank Parry takes a business trip to New York, where he becomes infatuated with Eva Boutelle, manager of the Swansea Cotton Mills. For a time, their affair develops, but Eva remains true to her husband ...

Manhattan Cocktail

Nancy Carroll stars in Manhattan Cocktail as Babs, a college coed who dreams of becoming a famous actress. Joining up with her campus chums Fred (Richard Arlen) and Bob (Danny O'Shea), likewise aspiring thespians, Babes heads to Broadway with stars in her eyes. The winsome threesome are quickly disillusioned by the heartless machinations of nasty producer Renov (Paul Lukas) and his harridan wife (Lilyan Tashman). Before the plot proper gets under way, the audience is regaled with a cute "mythological" prologue, featuring the same three leading actors. Manhattan Cocktail was a silent picture, except for two brief musical numbers showcasing Nancy Carroll.

The Eternal City

War drama - Fitzmaurice was able to film King Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini reviewing Italian troops.

Dead Man's Curve

A grease monkey discovers a defect in an auto engine being turned out by his employer. But since our hero discovers this only after losing an important race, his boss chalks up the loss to Fairbanks' supposed cowardice.

The Story of the Kelly Gang

Just as Galeen and Wegener's Der Golem (1915) can be seen as a testament to early German film artistry, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) symbolizes both the birth of the Australian film industry and the emergence of an Australian cinema identity. Even more significantly, it heralds the emergence of the feature film format. However, only fragments of the original production of more than one hour are known to exist, preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra; Efforts at reconstruction have made the film available to modern audiences.

The Law Decides

Mere years could not kill the overwhelming love which lay dormant in Lorenz's heart, though Florence was now the wife of another.

Jaws of Steel

Our doggy hero is abandoned in the desert while in pup-hood. Upon reaching maturity, Tin Tin has undeservedly earned the reputation as a killer canine. Thus, the human characters spend most of their time hunting down the dog in hopes of collecting a huge bounty.

Sir Arne's Treasure

Three Scottish officers, including Sir Archi, murder Sir Arne and his household for a coffin filled with gold. The only survivor is Elsalill, who moves to relatives in Marstrand. There she meets a charming young officer- Sir Archi- and she soon understands that he was one of the murderers.

Cleopatra

The story of Cleopatra, the fabulous queen of Egypt, and the epic romances between her and the greatest men of Rome, Julius Caesar and Antony. Only a small fragment of this film survives.

The Perils of Pauline

The Perils of Pauline is a motion picture serial shown in weekly installments featuring the actress Pearl White playing the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel-in-distress, although viewers will find her character more resourceful and less helpless than the classic 'damsel' stereotype. Nine episodes (from a condensed 1916 re-release) survive to this day.

Sanshiro Sugata

A hotheaded youth in 1880s Meiji Japan apprentices to judo master Shōgorō Yano, trading brute jujutsu bravado for discipline and humility. As Sanshirō matures, he proves judo’s spirit against old-guard challengers—including a deadly duel—while falling for his vanquished opponent’s daughter. Based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita, son of Tomita Tsunejirō, the earliest disciple of judo.

Beyond the Rainbow

Marion Taylor is secretary to Edward Mallory, a wealth Wall Street businessman. She supports her invalid brother Tommy, who has been told by his doctors that he has to go to the mountains for his health. Marion doesn't have the money for that, but Mallory, who has made no secret of his intentions towards her, does. She resigns herself to submitting to his advances in order to get the money in order to keep her brother alive. However, circumstances arise in which she may possibly get the money without having to debase herself with her boss.

Different from the Others

Conrad Veidt plays a famous musician who is blackmailed for being gay. Eventually he stands trial and is convicted. At the end the film pleads for the abolition of §175 (the law that punishes homosexuality).

Ménilmontant

A pair of sisters leave the country for the city after their parents are slaughtered in a mysterious axe murder.

Bread

Bread is a socially engaged drama which follows the fate of a woman struggling to pull herself out of poverty as she’s ruthlessly exploited by a string of men.

The Great Moment

Sir Edward Pelham, married to a Romani Russian, fears that his daughter will follow in her mother's footsteps and arranges a marriage with her cousin, whom she does not love. During a trip to Nevada with her father, she meets engineer Bayard Delavel, who saves her life when she is bitten by a snake; when her father finds her with Bayard in his cabin, he forces them to marry. Believing that Nadine does not love him, Delavel leaves her and prepares to sue for divorce. A lost film.

Camille: The Fate of a Coquette

A home movie version of the Dumas play. A young woman becomes a courtesan and tragedy befalls her. Appearances are made by many socialites of 1920s Paris and New York.

The Silver Girl

Jefferson Hunter (Frank Keenan) is a Western mining man. Anne Kepple (Catherine Adams) has inherited the mine next to his, but a loan shark steals it from her. Hunter helps her get it back, and out of gratitude Anne marries him, even though she is half his age.

The Neglected Wife

A 1917 movie serial

Abie's Irish Rose

When a Catholic and a Jew wed they find themselves disowned by both of their families.

Behind Masks

Jeanne, an orphaned young heiress, is about to be married off to an elderly man by her scheming aunt, who stands to make money on the marriage, a fact of which Jeanne is unaware. Jeanne is also unaware that her aunt heads a ring that runs crooked card games, and one night Jeanne attends a fixed bridge game at which her aunt hopes to cheat a wealthy young man out of his money...

Better Times

Ezra Scroggs is a shiftless gambler who has let his hotel, the Lakeview, fall on hard times. Finally his daughter Nancy gets fed up seeing all the business go to his rival, Si Whittaker at the Majestic, and she decides to do something about it.

Sadie Thompson

A young, beautiful prostitute named Sadie Thompson arrives on the South Pacific island of Pago Pago looking for honest work and falls for Timothy O'Hara, an American sailor who is unfazed by her unsavory past. However, Mr. Davidson, a missionary who arrived on the island at the same time, aims to "save" Sadie from her sinful life and petitions to have her separated from her beau and deported back to San Francisco.

The Gentle Intruder

Mary Miles Minter is Sylvia, the niece of a man who leaves her a fortune. The money is in the hands of his lawyer, Baxter, who uses it to support his ambitious wife and daughter. Sylvia comes to Baxter's home and it's obvious she's not wanted there. Arnold, Baxter's son, is wasting his life away with drinking and nightclubbing, but Sylvia sweetly influences him to straighten up.

The Stronger Love

Nell, a beautiful mountain girl, is a member of the Serviss family, rivals of the neighboring Rutherford family. Nell is engaged to Jim Serviss, who is the head of their clan, but when, by accident, she meets a stranger who has come to stay with the Rutherfords, they become infatuated.

Through the Dark

During a rebellion of prisoners at the San Quentin State Prison, Boston Blackie makes a lightning escape aided by Mary McGinn while chased prison guards. Mary is a school girl, unaware that her brothers are crooks. She is expelled from school. Blackie rejoins his gang and takes refuge in Mother McGinn's house, where he again meets Mary. She devotes herself to making Blackie go straight and wins her point.

The Risky Road

Ida May Park started in the film business as a scriptwriter, but in 1917 Universal announced that Park would direct films with actress and producer Dorothy Phillips for the company’s Bluebird brand. Park’s films often had a strong female perspective and The Risky Road is no exception. The story of a country girl who comes to the city to work, but falls for a rich man and undeservedly gets a bad reputation, the film was marketed as “the drama every woman should see”. The surviving fragment, showing the despair of Phillips’s character, is a real cinematic gem that leaves one yearning for more material of the film to be discovered. In 2008, a tinted nitrate fragment, with Swedish intertitles at the opening of the second reel, was deposited at the Archival Film Collections of the Svenska Filminstitutet. From the fragment, a 35mm B&W duplicate negative was made, from which this print was struck using the tinting of the nitrate as color reference.

The Way of All Flesh

The story takes place in Milwaukee during the early 1900s with a bank clerk named August Schiller who is happy with both his job and his family. He is tasked with transporting $1,000 in securities to Chicago. On the train he meets a blond seductress who convinces him to buy her a bottle of champagne, and takes him to a saloon. The next morning he awakes alone in a dilapidated bedroom and without the securities.

The Courageous Coward

Sessue Hayakawa was making the transition from Asian villain to sympathetic hero in this picture. The plot is a combination of racial stereotypes that were common in the U.S. during the silent era and real-life situations experienced by Asians living Stateside. Hayakawa plays Suki Iota, a student who, while born and bred in America, wants a wife with traditional Japanese values. She appears in the form of Rei (Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa's real-life wife), a singer who becomes known as the Japanese Nightingale.

The Patriot

In 18th-Century Russia, the Czar, Paul, is surrounded by murderous plots and trusts only Count Pahlen. Pahlen wishes to protect his friend, the mad king, but because of the horror of the king's acts, he feels that he must remove him from the throne.