Gold and Glitter (1912)

The Birth of a Nation

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

City Lights

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

Pandora's Box

The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.

The Gold Rush

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

The Way of the Strong

A gangster falls for a blind violinist, only for his mobster rivals to kidnap her.

People on Sunday

A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

Bear

Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

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.

Battleship Potemkin

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

October (Ten Days that Shook the World)

Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

Castle of Wind and Clouds

A samurai returns to his homeland after a three year absence and finds his fiance is now one of the prince's concubines.

Underground

A working-class love story set in and around the London Underground of the 1920s. Two men – gentle Bill and brash Bert – meet and are attracted to the same woman on the same day at the same Underground station. But the lady chooses Bill, and Bert isn't the type to take rejection lightly...

Too Many Kisses

Wanting his son to get away from his many girlfriends and buckle down to work, the New York industrialist father of a playboy sends him to an obscure village in Spain to find samples of a rare mineral. When the son gets to Spain, he runs afoul of the local police chief - who has a secret that he tries to keep the young man from discovering.

Greed

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

A Daughter Of Destiny

Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel Alraune has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his "mad doctor" roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions -- least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself. Alraune was remade in 1930, with Brigitte Helm repeating her role, and again in 1951, with Hildegarde Knef as the "heroine" and Erich von Stroheim as her misguided mentor.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A doctor's research into the roots of evil turns him into a hideous depraved fiend.

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.

The Big Parade

The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.

The Crowd

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

Modern Times

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..

Aelita: Queen of Mars

A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

Woman in the Moon

A scientist discovers that there's gold on the moon. He builds a rocket to fly there, but there's too much rivalry among the crew to have a successful expedition.

Cabiria

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

L'Âge d'or

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

The Last Laugh

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

Fifth Avenue

When her cotton crop is burned, Barbara Pelham, a beautiful southern girl, comes to New York to find work as a fashion designer, staying with Mrs. Kemp, a woman she meets on the northbound train. In Mrs. Kemp's house, Barbara encounters Peter Heffner, a wealthy stockbroker, and discovers from him that she has taken up residence in a whorehouse. There is a police raid, but Barbara escapes arrest and returns home. Heffner's son, Neil, goes south to inspect some family property and there meets Barbara, with whom he falls in love. They decide to be married, and she accompanies him to New York, where she meets the elder Heffner for a second time. He denounces her as a whore, but Barbara goes to Mrs. Kemp, who explains the misunderstanding to everyone's satisfaction.

Vanity Fair

In early 19th century England, ambitious and ruthless orphan Rebecca Sharp advances from the position of governess to the heights of British society.

The Eternal City

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

Three Weeks

A young aristocrat strikes up an affair with a mysterious woman for three weeks.

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.

The Sheik

Sheik Ahmed desperately desires feisty British socialite Diana, so he abducts her and carries her off to his luxurious tent-palace in the desert. The free-spirited Diana recoils from his passionate embraces and yearns to be released. Later, allowed to go into the desert, she escapes and makes her way across the sands...

Robin Hood

Robin Hood and his followers aid the poor and oppressed from their hideout in Sherwood Forest, pursued by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Faust

God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.

The Wind

When Letty Mason relocates to West Texas, she finds herself unsettled by the ever-present wind and sand. Arriving at her new home at the ranch of her cousin, Beverly, she receives a surprisingly cold welcome from his wife, Cora. Soon tensions in the family and unwanted attention from a trio of suitors leave Letty increasingly disturbed.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Set in the years before and during World War I, this epic tale tells the story of a rich Argentine family, one of its two descending branches being half of French heritage, the other being half German. Following the death of the family patriarch, the man's two daughters and their families resettle to France and Germany, respectively. In time the Great War breaks out, putting members of the family on opposing sides.

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried

Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.

Way Down East

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Erstwhile childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala meet again as adults, this time with Roman officer Messala as conqueror and Judah as a wealthy, though conquered, Israelite. A slip of a brick during a Roman parade causes Judah to be sent off as a galley slave, his property confiscated and his mother and sister imprisoned. Years later, as a result of his determination to stay alive and his willingness to aid his Roman master, Judah returns to his homeland an exalted and wealthy Roman athlete. Unable to find his mother and sister, and believing them dead, he can think of nothing else than revenge against Messala.

Lucha de corazones

Paco, a jealous and bitter man who is in love with Rosario, conspires in the shadows to bring about the downfall of Manuel, her husband.

The Kiss

An unhappily married woman is caught up in scandal and murder when her affection toward a young man is misinterpreted.

He Who Gets Slapped

After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.

The Wolf Man

Gerald Stanley (John Gilbert) is an English gentleman who is engaged to Beatrice Joyce (Alma Frances). But Stanley's personality changes whenever he drinks, and his brother (who also loves Beatrice) uses this to his advantage.

The Student of Prague

Prague, Bohemia, 1820. Balduin, a penniless student, falls in love with Countess Margit, a wealthy noblewoman whom he has saved from drowning.

Destiny

As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.

Broken Barriers

This 1919 silent is the first American film based on the same Sholem Aleichem stories as Fiddler on the Roof, but produced 50 years before the blockbuster musical. Unlike most adaptations of Aleichem’s work, Broken Barriers (Khavah) focuses not on Tevye the milkman, but on his daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka and must navigate the reverberations from this with both her community and her family.

Enoch Arden

Moving Picture World described the film: "There is a small need to describe this subject as the poem of Lord Tennyson is so well known, so suffice it to say that this Biograph subject is an unusually faithful portrayal of that beautiful romance of Enoch Arden, Annie Lee and Philip Ray, taken in scenes of rare beauty".

The Aerial

An entire city has lost its voice. Mr. TV, the owner of the city's only television channel, is carrying out a sinister plan to control all of the city's inhabitants.

Muurmanin pakolaiset

In northern Finland in the fall of 1916, Saima Niva rescues a man drifting in the river, who turns out to be a German lieutenant Braun. Braun and his six comrades have managed to escape the prisoner of war at the Muurmann railway station, but the lieutenant has had to get rid of the lost group. While Braun is recovering, under the good care of Saima, Niva's neighbor and henchman of the gendarmes, the greedy policeman Simpura, gets a tip about the refugees camped in the desert.

Vaihdokas

When the general manager of the factory, Lumiala returns from his travels, he learns that his wife Anna has hired a young man named Oras as an office assistant. Anna, who feels Oras is the fruit of his youthful sin, is ready to defend the boy despite his family's petitions and Ora's crimes. Ora's girlfriend Pansy also tries to keep him on the right track.

Ramona

Based on the Helen Hunt Jackson novel of 1884 about a young woman of partial Native American descent, who experiences love and loss in 1800s California.

The Sealed Room

The Count sets out to make a private room for him and his Countess, built in such a way no one can see, hear, and most importantly, disturb them. But unbeknownst to the Count, his wife has set her eyes on the court minstrel. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” and Honoré de Balzac's “La Grande Breteche”.