cinemadiso's - Best Films from Silent Era List

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Shortly after that 1927 release, an entire quarter of Lang's original version was cut by Paramount for the US release, and by Ufa in Germany, an act of butchery very much against the director's wishes.

The excised footage was believed lost, irretrievably so - that is, until one of the most remarkable finds in all of cinema history, as several dusty reels were discovered in a small museum in Buenos Aires. Argentina in 2008. Since then, an expert team of film archivists has been working at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in Germany to painstakingly reconstruct and restore Lang's film.

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Manic stunt work, elaborate sight gags and mind-boggling mechanical comedy are just some of Keaton's work featured in these movies.

Known the world round as the 'Stone' face comedy actor, with charming moments of intimate humour flavoured with rich pathos, uniquely graceful and characteristically hilarious. That's Buster Keaton'

Our Hospitality
Keaton plays a New Yorker who returns to his roots in the South and finds himself involved in a feud between his family and those of the woman he loves. Packed with superb visuals and sight gags including a train journey, which has to be seen to be believed.

Sherlock Junior
A mild mannered theatre projectionist dreams of becoming a great detective when he enters the film he is projecting! This is one of Keaton's finest masterpieces which within its fourty-four minutes manages to present a dazzling display of cinematic inventiveness, non-stop comedy and dare-devil stunts.

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Just out of jail after serving time on an assault rap, Max (Gene Hackman) is headed for Pittsburgh to open a deluxe car wash. Back from five years at sea, Lion (Al Pacino) wants to hit Detroit and visit the child he's never seen.

The dreams may not be glorious but you'll want Max and Lion to fulfill them because 'Scarecrow', has a heart as big as its cross-country journey. It's hard-luck drifters drift permanently into our souls. This is due to teamwork of a high order: the moving performances of Hackman and Pacino, the sensitive direction of Jerry Schatzberg and the glowing landscape cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. Hit the road with these two. You'll find the trip unforgettable.

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In 1929, F. W.

Mufnau, one of the greatest of all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty to collaborate on a film to be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their "primitive" culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss. Subtitled "A Story of the South Seas", Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman and his love for a young woman whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the "civilised" world?

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When Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) visits his fiancee Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) in her crumbling family mansion, her brother Roderick (Vincent Price) tries to talk him out of the wedding, explaining that the Usher family is cursed and that extending its bloodline will only prolong the agony.

Madeline wants to elope with Philip, but neither of them can predict what ruthless lengths Roderick will go to in order to keep them apart.

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One of the most emotional film experiences of any era, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' is a miracle of the cinema, an enigmatic and profoundly moving work that merges the worlds of the viewer and of saintly loan herself into one shared experience of hushed delirium.

Drever's film charts the final days of Joan of Arc as she undergoes the debasement that accompanies her trial for charges of heresy - through her imprisonment and execution at the stake.

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A city-educated student returns to his home-town and his cantankerous father's Mississippi river boat, where he's an embarrassment to dad. But they bond together to ward off the owner of a rival boat, whose daughter Keaton falls for.

When his father is arrested, Willie decides to get him out of Jail.

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F. W. Murnau, Germany's finest director, was imported to Hollywood in July 1926. William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation promised and gave him complete artistic freedom. Fox told Murnau to take his time, spend whatever he had to, and make any film he wished to make.

The film that resulted was Sunrise, made entirely without studio interference. Sunrise, a psychological thriller from the silent movie era, begins when the pleasant and peaceful life of a naive country Man (George O'Brien) is turned upside down when he falls for a cold-blooded yet seductive Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston). She persuades him to drown his virtuous Wife (Janet Gaynor) in order to be with her. This is one of the most moving stories ever told on screen - a tale of temptation, reconciliation, reconsecration, and redemption, told with a lyrical simplicity that gives it the timeless universality of a fable.

Un Chien Andalou is Bunuel's first film and collaboration with Salvador Dali, a surreal exploration of desire and passion. L'Age D'or is another collaboration with Dali, a surrealist dissection of civilised values.

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Young John Sims (James Murray) weathers the death of his father and travels to New York City in search of success. Instead, he becomes a low-level worker in an enormous office of a nameless corporation.

After he meets a beautiful young woman (Eleanor Boardman), things seem to be looking up, but before long the newlyweds are sullen and bickering, and the arrival of their children leaves John feeling trapped in a dead-end existence. Then tragedy strikes, causing him to reassess his life.