Best Ever Early Cinema (Pre-1930) [Cut-off]

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

*heads to the nickolodeons*

Hey BEA, due to popular consent, we'll now be wrapping up our decade lists with the films of early cinema. This includes any film released before 1930. There are some stellar ones, and plenty are available online. This will hopefully be an excuse for a lot of users to check out some films that they've never seen while building up their lists. The days of the Lumiere brothers, Keaton, Méliès, Griffiths and Murnau are upon us. Hoping to have a healthy turnout.

Rules are the same as all the other times, but here's a reminder.

The gist/ rules:

BEA's composes a list of our 100 favourite films of early cinema

All lists will be PMed to me, maxing out at 100. The final list will be 100 films. This time around, I'll be accepting lists of any denotation up to 100. The size of your list determines it's weight.

There are no time limits to films this time around. Films of any length will be accepted.

Lists will also be accepted in IMDb and Letterboxd format. Deadline will be March 18th.

[mickilennial]

I'll be watching films I haven't before offically PMing Hayden with my list. Speculative current order is this:

Metropolis (1927)
The Hands of Orlac (1924)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Last Laugh (1924)
Greed (1924)
The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924)
The Joyless Street (1925)
Seven Chances (1925)
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
The Gold Rush (1925)
I Accuse (1919)
Pandora’s Box (1929)
The Faithful Heart (1923)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)
The Wind (1928)
A Page of Madness (1926)
The Immigrant (1917)
The Last Command (1928)
Arsenal (1929)
The Big Parade (1925)
Strike (1925)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Temptation (1929)
West of Zanzibar (1928)
Blackmail (1929)
The Kid (1921)
Die Nibelungen (1924)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
The Unknown (1927)
The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
For Heaven’s Sake (1926)
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927)
The Phantom of the opera (1925)
Nosferatu (1922)
The Mark of Zorro (1920)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
Hallelujah! (1929)
Ben-Hur (1925)
My Best Girl (1927)
Robin Hood (1922)

[Norman Bates]

1. Greed (Von Stroheim)
2. Dr Mabuse the Gambler (Lang)
3. The Last Laugh (Murnau)
4. Sunrise (Murnau)
5. Nosferatu (Murnau)
6. Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov)
7. The General (Keaton)
8. The Wind (Sjöström)
9. Foolish Wives (Von Stroheim)
10. Intolerance (Griffiths)

11. Un chien andalou (Buñuel)
12. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
13. The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
14. Les vampires (Feuillade)
15. Broken Blossoms (Griffiths)
16. Pandora's Box (Pabst)
17. 7th Heaven (Borzage)
18. October (Eisenstein)
19. Faust (Murnau)
20. The Burning Soil (Murnau)

21. Strike (Eisenstein)
22. The Circus (Chaplin)
23. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
24. The Cameraman (Keaton)
25. The Kid (Chaplin)
26. Entr'acte (Clair)
27. The Fall of the House of Usher (Epstein)
28. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Keaton)
29. The General Line (Eisenstein)
30. Nanook of the North (Flaherty)

31. Master of the House (Dreyer)
32. Battling Butler (Keaton)
33. Metropolis (Lang)
34. Leaves from Satan's Book (Dreyer)
35. Häxan (Christensen)
36. Orphans of the Storm (Griffiths)
37. The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström)
38. Fantômas (Feuillade)
39. Paris qui dort (Clair)
40. The Black Bird (Browning)

41. Woman in the Moon (Lang)
42. The Birth of a Nation (Griffiths)
43. Die Nibelungen (Lang)
44. The Unknown (Browning)
45. The Italian Straw Hat (Clair)
46. The Three-Sided Mirror (Epstein)
47. The Hands of Orlac (Wiene)
48. The Cheat (DeMille)
49. Shoulder Arms (Chaplin)
50. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)

51. The Spiders (Lang)
52. The Girl With the Hat Box (Barnet)
53. The Lodger (Hitchcock)
54. The Golem (Wegene)
55. The Unholy Three (Browning)
56. The Musketeers of Pig Alley (Griffiths)
57. A Dog's Life (Chaplin)
58. The Smiling Madame Beulet (Dulac)
59. The Rink (Chaplin)
60. Twilight of a Woman's Soul (Bauer)

[Norman Bates]

Hell, I forgot Nosferatu and Vampyr. How could I.

[Norman Bates]

Hang on, vampyr is 1932. God I'm lost.

[Applerill]

The Dancing Pig better get #1 this time, or some heads are gonna roll.

[Hayden]

[CA Dreamin]

For those looking for suggestions, I highly recommend Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, F.W. Murnau, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and G.W. Pabst. Those names alone account for at least 40 notable silent films.

I also highly recommend this website, where I found a ton of suggestions when I first got into silent cinema:

http://www.silentera.com/info/top100.html

Once again, the great thing about silent films is that so many are in the public domain and can easily be found streaming on YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. Seriously, anything you want, just google it and there's an excellent chance you'll find it.

Happy watching everyone!

[Hayden]

My list changed considerably since... but here's the top 10:

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc
2. The Gold Rush
3. Sunrise
4. Un Chien Andalou
5. The Kid
6. A Page of Madness
7. Metropolis
8. Nosferatu
9. The Oyster Princess
10. A Trip To The Moon

[CA Dreamin]