Turner Classic Movies features Silent Sunday Nights every week with classic films from the silent era showing late night every Sunday.
If you’re interested in silent films, most of the greats are available through streaming channels, as noted below. Most of them can be viewed for free.
Related Story: Silent Movie Day on TCM
The 10 Greatest Silent Films
What are the greatest silent films of all time? There are many lists and many opinions, but here is a representative list: Top 100 Silent Era Films. The list includes the top films from the recognized masters of silent film, including Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, Charles Chaplin and F.W. Murnau.
Below are the Top 10 silent movies of all time, according to Silent Era. You’ll find a link where you can view the films you’re interested in. An alternative list of the greatest silent films is available at The Guardian.
1. The General (1926). Buster Keaton’s The General, with groundbreaking special effects and jaw-dropping stunts, is recognized as a masterpiece of early filmmaking, and gets the No. 1 spot on many best silent film lists.
Keaton starred in and co-directed the film. The General was was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The film contains many incredible stunts by Keaton and elaborate special effects, including a train wreck shot that cost $42,000, the most expensive single shot in silent film history.
Orson Wells called The General, “The greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made.” The General is recognized as the best of the Buster Keaton’s films, and was Keaton’s own favorite film. Get more details about The General at IMDB.
Where to see The General:
- If you are a Prime member you can rent it on Amazon Prime Video.
- If you subscribe to MGM+ you can stream it free there.
- Stream it free (with ads) on the plex channel. No subscription required.
- On YouTube. No subscription required.
2. Metropolis (1927). Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist, futuristic silent film directed by Fritz Lang. It is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction movie, being among the first feature-length movies of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in 1925–26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks, or the equivalent of about €21 million.
Made in Germany during the Weimar period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master.
“Metropolis does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert. “The ideas of Metropolis have been so often absorbed into popular culture that its horrific future city is almost a given. Lang filmed for nearly a year, driven by obsession, often cruel to his colleagues, a perfectionist madman, and the result is one of those seminal films without which the others cannot be fully appreciated.” Read Roger Ebert’s complete review HERE. Get more details about the film at IMDB.
Where to see Metropolis: You can see Metropolis for free on the Tubi channel or Pluto TV, which require no subscription or sign-in:
You can rent a colorized version from Amazon Prime Video
3. Sunrise (1927). Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (short title: Sunrise) is a 1927 American silent romantic drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau (in his American film debut). It stars George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. Sunrise tells the tale of a sophisticated city woman’s seduction of a farmer and attempt to convince him to murder his wife and join her in the city.
Murnau used the a new sound-on-film system to make Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack. The film incorporated Charles Gounod’s 1872 composition Funeral March of a Marionette, which was later used as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Frédéric Chopin’s A minor prelude also features prominently in orchestral arrangement.
Sunrise won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress. The film’s legacy has endured, and it is now widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made. Many have called it the greatest film of the silent era.
Although the original 35mm negative of the original American version of Sunrise was destroyed in the 1937 Fox vault fire, a new negative was created from a surviving print. Get more details about the film at IMDB.
Where to see Sunrise: You can see Sunrise for a rental fee from Amazon, and for free on Tubi or YouTube:
4. City Lights (1931). This romantic comedy-drama was written, produced, directed by and stars Charlie Chaplin. It is often recognized as Chaplin’s greatest film. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin’s Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers).
City Lights ranks No. 1 on the the American Film Institute’s 10 Top 10 list of the greatest romantic comedies and has is No. 11 on AFI’s list of the greatest American films. Read reviews and more at IMDB.
Where to see City Lights:
- City Lights on HBO Max (subscription required)
- City Light on Amazon Prime Video.
5. Nosferatu (1922). Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is the 2nd of German director F. W. Murnau’s films on the top 10 list. Nosferato stars the eccentric Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire with many similarities to Count Dracula. The heirs of Dracula author Bram Stoker won a court settlement over the unauthorized adaptation and the court ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.
“If you haven’t seen the original F W Murnau’s 1929 version of Nosferatu starring Max Schreck as the embodiment of vampiric grotesquerie, you are missing one of the best and most beautiful horror classics,” writes Cinema Siren. “It is visually stunning, has great acting, and is one of the creepiest movies you’ll ever see, even today.”
Get more details about the film at IMDB.
Where to see Nosferatu:
- Nosferatu on tubi
- Nosferatu on pluto
- Nosferatu on YouTube
- Nosferatu on AMC+ (requires subscription)
- Rent it at Amazon Prime Video.
6. The Gold Rush (1925). The Gold Rush is a silent comedy written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film also stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, along with Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, and Malcolm Waite.
The Gold Rush was critically acclaimed upon its release, and continues to be one of Chaplin’s most celebrated works; Chaplin himself cited it several times as the film for which he most wanted to be remembered. In 1942, Chaplin re-released a version with sound effects, music, and narration, which received Academy Award nominations for Best Music Score and Best Sound Recording.
“Here is a comedy with streaks of poetry, pathos, tenderness, linked with brusqueness and boisterousness. It is the outstanding gem of all Chaplin’s pictures, as it has more thought and originality than even such masterpieces of mirth as The Kid and Shoulder Arms,” wrote NYT critic Mordaunt Hall.
Where to see The Gold Rush:
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). This portrait of Saint Joan of Arc is based on documentation from the original trial and was directed by Carl-Theodor Dreyer. It stars Renee Maria Falconetti, giving what some critics call the best acting performance ever. Film critics and historians also praise Dreyer’s composition and direction.
“You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti,” wrote Roger Ebert. “In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc is to look into eyes that will never leave you.” Read Roger Ebert’s complete review HERE. Get more details about the film at IMDB.
Where to see The Passion of Joan of Arc:
8. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silenthorror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets.
It is considered a classic film, often shown in introductory film courses, film societies and museums, and is one of the most famous German films from the silent era. Get more details about the film at IMDB.
Where to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari:
- plex channel
- YouTube
- Rent The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at Amazon Prime Video.
9. Battleship Potemkin (1925) – Battleship Potyomki is a 1925 Soviet silent drama film directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstei. It is a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against its officers. Battleship Potemkin is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time.
“Potemkin is a vital viewing experience that transcends its landmark/milestone status,” writes Philip French at The Observer. Read more about the film on IMDB.
Where to see Battleship Potemkin:
You can rent it for $0.99 at Amazon Prime Video.
10. Greed (1924). Greed is a 1924 American silent psychological drama film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim and based on the 1899 Frank Norris novel McTeague. It stars Gibson Gowland as Dr. John McTeague; ZaSu Pitts as Trina Sieppe, his wife; and Jean Hersholt as McTeague’s friend and eventual enemy Marcus Schouler. The film tells the story of McTeague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Schouler’s girlfriend Trina.
Von Stroheim used sophisticated filming techniques such as deep focus cinematography and montage editing. He considered Greed to be a Greek tragedy, in which environment and heredity controlled the characters’ fates and reduced them to primitive bêtes humaines (human beasts), a naturalistic concept in the vein of Zola.
“Ferocity, brutality, muscle, vulgarity, crudity, naked realism and sheer genius are to be found — great hunks of them –in Von Stroheim’s production, Greed. It is a terribly powerful picture — and an important one,” wrote critic Robert Sherwood. Read more about the film on IMDB.
Where to see Greed:
- You can stream a remastered version free on YouTube HERE.
Below are trailers for some of the Top 10 Silent Movies.
