Pandora’s Box is my favorite drama. Safety Last or Sherlock, Jr my favorite comedies.
Keaton and Bruckman’s THE GENERAL. Pure perfection, a joy to behold.
If we limit it to Hollywood silents:
SUNRISE, tied with THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
DIE NIBELUNGEN, if we open it up internationally.
My Winnipeg and Brand Upon The Brain. :) Metropolis is my favorite classic silent.
I definitely liked “Sunrise : A Song of Two Humans”. I recently saw Sunrise at a local theater with a live electronic orchestra, it was quite entertaining and added so much into an already great movie. Simply mesmerising.
Any number of Keaton films, but especially Sherlock, Jr.
Brand Upon The Brain was pretty awesome. I saw Nosferatu at an old theatre with a live orchestra, that too was pretty rad.
Flesh and the Devil
Nanook of the North
Sunrise
Nosferatu
The Freshman
And DIE NIBELUNGEN, and THE LAST LAUGH, and the amazing BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! and THE HEART OF THE WORLD.
Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera” with its new score by The Cinematic Orchestra
Renoir’s “THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL”
Pabst’s “PANDORA’S BOX”
Murnau’s “THE LAST LAUGH”
Dreyer’s “THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC”
My top silent films:
1. Strike – Sergei Eisenstein
2. Coeur Fidèle – Jean Epstein
3. Four Sons – John Ford
4. Limite – Mario Peixoto
5. The Old and the New – Sergei Eisenstein
6. Arsenal – Alexander Dovzhenko
7. The Last Laugh – F.W. Murnau
8. Happiness – Alexander Medvedkin
9. The New Babylon – Grigori Kozintsev
10. By The Law – Lev Kuleshov
11. Sunrise – F.W. Murnau
12. The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Dreyer
13. Nail in the Boot – Mikhail Kalatozov
14. Pandora’s Box – G.W. Pabst
15. Lady with the Hat Box – Boris Barnet
Sunrise
The Fall of the House of Usher – Jean Epstein
Either “Potemkin” or “The Passion of Joan of Arc.”
I’ve never really appreciated SUNRISE. I like the opening parts well enough, but that extended trip in the city gets awfully cloying, and that really extravagantly happy ending really left me cold.
I guess it is more a matter of temperament than anything else: I first saw it on a double bill with von Stroheim’s GREED. I’d been eagerly awaiting SUNRISE, and was planning on sticking around to see GREED if I felt like it. I remember I was bored senseless by SUNRISE (a view I’ve moderated somewhat since then, of course) and thought well, let’s kill two over-rated birds with one viewing. And I loved every second of GREED, absolutely horrifying and often grimly funny.
saw a VHS of Vidor’s THE CROWD years ago, bad print, but i’d have to say it’s my favorite.
I Was Born But. . .
Faust
City Lights
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
L’Argent
Pandora’s Box
Sherlock Jr.
Les Hautes Solitudes
Either Menilmontant or
Haxan
Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON or J’ACCUSE
Keatons General most likely….
Gotta be The General although I’ve never seen Gance’s Napoleon.
I’ve only seen these…
Sunrise
A Dog’s Life (I think thats the name, its by Chaplin)
Dr. Mabuse The Great Gambler
Sean and Sarajevo – It is heartening to find The Passion of Jean d’Arc on your lists. When leading European film critics choose their ten best or even twenty-five best, silent or not, this film inevitably turns up, often at the very top. Never have I found Citizen Kane on any European critic’s All-Time Best list (though I certainly haven’t seen them all.). Americans (I’m one) have a puzzling fascination with Citizen Kane, perhaps because the story typifies a quintissential and particularly ugly American idiom – greed. Got it all, lost it all: the futility of ambition. I’m a journalist and film-lover, and Orson Wells is one of my favorites, but darned if I can find in Citizen Kane what everyone else seems to find. Cheers.
The Dueling Cavalier.
Sorry for the low form Singin’ in the Rain joke.
Les Triplettes de Belleville, if that counts. I hope it does.
Chaplin’s The Circus, The Kid or Gold Rush
King Vidor’s The Crowd. (1928) It is an absolute CRIME that this legendary film is unavailable on DVD.
Also, Giovanni Pastrone’s epic Cabiria (1914) is a phenomenal film. See it on the big screen if you ever get the chance.
Jean Epstein’s Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is also a favorite of mine. A true surrealist masterpiece.
I also really love Stroheim’s Greed (1924) and Queen Kelly (1929).
Metropolis
Battleship Potemkin
Pandora’s Box
tough question. i generally dont care for silent films. but still and all, i dont remember one sticking out in my mind as something i love if i’m forced to pick one.
the closest things i like to silent films are godard’s “vivre sa vie”, or hitchcock’s “vertigo”! haha!
Gordon Ackerman
Apart from “Our Super-Eight Baby’s First Steps” (God deliver me), and “Dad’s Trout Catch – 1971” (Yuk, Yuk, Yuk), what’s the best silent film you have ever seen? After City Lights, I mean. Of course, I could suggest that the greatest silent scene in film history was Wynona Ryder’s weddng in Great Balls of Fire – everything you ever wanted to know about acting in 30 seconds.Watch that expression! Take care, Peasants.