The Story of Film: An Odyssey (1918-1928)
by cameron-askin | created - 15 May 2013 | updated - 29 May 2013 | PublicA selection of films from the documentary series.
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1. Blind Husbands (1919)
Not Rated | 102 min | Drama, Romance
An Austrian officer sets out to seduce a neglected young wife.
Director: Erich von Stroheim | Stars: Sam De Grasse, Francelia Billington, Erich von Stroheim, Gibson Gowland
Votes: 1,689
2. The President (1919)
75 min | Drama
A judge sees his illegitimate daughter facing a trial for the murder of her newborn child, also out of wedlock. He is certain that she will be sentenced to death.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Richard Christensen, Christian Engelstoft, Hallander Helleman, Halvard Hoff
Votes: 1,057
3. The Oyster Princess (1919)
Not Rated | 60 min | Comedy
An American heiress seeks the hand of an impoverished German prince.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Victor Janson, Ossi Oswalda, Harry Liedtke, Julius Falkenstein
Votes: 2,162
4. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Hypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders.
Director: Robert Wiene | Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
Votes: 70,016
5. The Golem (1920)
Unrated | 91 min | Fantasy, Horror
In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.
Directors: Paul Wegener, Carl Boese | Stars: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Ernst Deutsch, Lyda Salmonova
Votes: 8,530
6. Way Down East (1920)
Passed | 145 min | Drama, Romance
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.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Mrs. David Landau, Lowell Sherman
Votes: 5,893 | Gross: $4.50M
7. One Week (1920)
TV-G | 25 min | Short, Comedy
A newly wedded couple attempts to build a house with a prefabricated kit, unaware that a rival sabotaged the kit's component numbering.
Directors: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Sybil Seely, Joe Roberts
Votes: 9,228
8. Haunted Spooks (1920)
Passed | 25 min | Short, Comedy, Horror
After numerous failed attempts to commit suicide, our hero (Lloyd) runs into a lawyer who is looking for a stooge to stand in as a groom in order to secure an inheritance for his client (... See full summary »
Directors: Alfred J. Goulding, Hal Roach | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Wally Howe, Marie Benson
Votes: 1,426
9. The Kid (1921)
Passed | 68 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
The Tramp cares for an abandoned child, but events put their relationship in jeopardy.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan, Carl Miller
Votes: 134,742 | Gross: $5.45M
10. Never Weaken (1921)
Passed | 19 min | Short, Comedy, Thriller
A man hits the streets with a scheme to keep his fiancé from losing her job, however, things quickly go from bad to worse.
Director: Fred C. Newmeyer | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Roy Brooks, Mark Jones
Votes: 2,093
11. The Wildcat (1921)
Not Rated | 79 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A charismatic lieutenant newly assigned to a remote fort is captured by a group of mountain bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce that is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann, Wilhelm Diegelmann
Votes: 1,314
12. Lichtspiel Opus 1. (1921)
13 min | Animation, Short, Music
Against a dark background, several bright, curved or rounded shapes pulse towards the center of the screen, one at a time. They are followed by many other shapes, some irregular, some ... See full summary »
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Votes: 964
13. The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Not Rated | 107 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
On New Year's Eve, the driver of a ghostly carriage forces a drunken man to reflect on his selfish, wasted life.
Director: Victor Sjöström | Stars: Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm
Votes: 14,076
14. Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Not Rated | 150 min | Drama, History, Romance
Two orphaned sisters are caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, encountering misery and love along the way.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee
Votes: 5,475 | Gross: $0.79M
15. Souls on the Road (1921)
91 min | Drama
A small town boy dreams of being a famous fiddler; meanwhile, two convicts escape from prison and hide in the woods
Director: Minoru Murata | Stars: Kaoru Osanai, Haruko Sawamura, Denmei Suzuki, Mikiko Hisamatsu
Votes: 229
16. Der Sieger (1921)
3 min | Animation, Short
An animated short film from German film directors Julius Pinschewer and Walter Ruttmann.
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Votes: 318
17. Nanook of the North (1922)
Passed | 78 min | Documentary
In this silent predecessor to the modern documentary, film-maker Robert J. Flaherty spends one year following the lives of Nanook and his family, Inuits living in the Arctic Circle.
Director: Robert J. Flaherty | Stars: Allakariallak, Alice Nevalinga, Cunayou, Allegoo
Votes: 13,446
18. Häxan (1922)
Not Rated | 91 min | Documentary, Fantasy, Horror
Fictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.
Director: Benjamin Christensen | Stars: Benjamin Christensen, Elisabeth Christensen, Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppidan
Votes: 16,705
19. Three Ages (1923)
Not Rated | 63 min | Comedy
The misadventures of Buster in three separate historical periods.
Directors: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy, Wallace Beery, Joe Roberts
Votes: 5,203
20. Safety Last! (1923)
Not Rated | 74 min | Action, Comedy, Thriller
A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job. As soon as he makes it big his sweetheart will join him and marry him. His enthusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting adventures.
Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young
Votes: 22,892 | Gross: $1.36M
21. The Wheel (1923)
Not Rated | 417 min | Drama
A railway engineer adopts a young girl orphaned by a train crash. Years later when she starts getting suitors, he grapples with whether or not to tell her the truth about her parentage.
Director: Abel Gance | Stars: Gabriel de Gravone, Pierre Magnier, Georges Térof, Séverin-Mars
Votes: 2,561
22. Glumov's Diary (1923)
Not Rated | 5 min | Short, Comedy, Fantasy
Filmic insert to Eisenstein's modernized, free adaptation of Ostrovskiy's 19th-century Russian stage play, "The Wise Man" ("Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty"). The anti-hero Glumov ... See full summary »
Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Aleksandr Antonov, Sergei Eisenstein, Mikhail Gomorov
Votes: 903
23. Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Passed | 45 min | Action, Comedy, Romance
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.
Director: Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly
Votes: 56,907 | Gross: $0.98M
24. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Not Rated | 155 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher
Votes: 6,968 | Gross: $4.36M
25. Greed (1924)
Not Rated | 140 min | Drama, Thriller, Western
The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved.
Director: Erich von Stroheim | Stars: Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller
Votes: 10,754 | Gross: $0.16M
26. Aelita, the Queen of Mars (1924)
Not Rated | 111 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Engineer Mstislav Sergeyevich Los travels to Mars where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group of Elders with the support of Queen Aelita who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.
Director: Yakov Protazanov | Stars: Yuliya Solntseva, Igor Ilyinsky, Nikolai Tsereteli, Nikolay Batalov
Votes: 2,891
27. The Marriage Circle (1924)
Not Rated | 85 min | Comedy
Professor Stock and his wife Mizzi are always bickering. Mizzi tries to seduce Dr. Franz Braun, the new husband of her good friend Charlotte.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Florence Vidor, Monte Blue, Marie Prevost, Creighton Hale
Votes: 1,503 | Gross: $0.81M
28. Entr'acte (1924)
22 min | Short
An absolute dada movie. Somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a chase it stops. The person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin dissapear.
Director: René Clair | Stars: Jean Börlin, Inge Frïss, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp
Votes: 4,194
29. Kino-pravda no. 19 - Chernoe more - Ledovityi okean - Moskva (1924)
16 min | Short, News
A series of newsreel films from Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman which document Russian Life in the early 1920s.
Director: Dziga Vertov
Votes: 133
30. The Iron Horse (1924)
Passed | 150 min | Drama, History, Romance
After witnessing the murder of his father by a renegade as a boy, the grown-up Brandon helps to realize his father's dream of a transcontinental railway.
Director: John Ford | Stars: George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull, Cyril Chadwick
Votes: 2,444 | Gross: $2.06M
31. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Not Rated | 66 min | Drama, History, Thriller
In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskiy, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Ivan Bobrov
Votes: 61,417 | Gross: $0.05M
32. Stage Struck (1925)
70 min | Comedy
A young woman dreams of becoming a great actress. When her boyfriend starts to flirt with an actual actress, she becomes jealous and decides to fight with her rival.
Director: Allan Dwan | Stars: Gloria Swanson, Lawrence Gray, Gertrude Astor, Oliver Sandys
Votes: 1,061 | Gross: $0.24M
33. The General (1926)
Passed | 78 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
After being rejected by the Confederate military, not realizing it was due to his crucial civilian role, an engineer must single-handedly recapture his beloved locomotive after it is seized by Union spies and return it through enemy lines.
Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley
Votes: 98,086 | Gross: $1.03M
34. A Page of Madness (1926)
Not Rated | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller
A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa | Stars: Masuo Inoue, Ayako Iijima, Yoshie Nakagawa, Hiroshi Nemoto
Votes: 4,567
35. Nothing But Time (1926)
45 min | Documentary
The life of a great city (Paris) from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor, with little or no comment (intertitles) from the director, Cavalcanti (whose first film this was).
Director: Alberto Cavalcanti | Stars: Blanche Bernis, Nina Chousvalowa, Philippe Hériat, Clifford McLaglen
Votes: 585
Date on Wikipedia says 1926.
36. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
Not Rated | 80 min | Animation, Adventure, Family
A handsome prince rides a flying horse to faraway lands and embarks on magical adventures, which include befriending a witch, meeting Aladdin, battling demons and falling in love with a princess.
Directors: Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch
Votes: 6,884
37. Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Passed | 112 min | Drama
Childhood friends are torn apart when one of them marries the woman the other fiercely loves.
Director: Clarence Brown | Stars: John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent
Votes: 4,631 | Gross: $1.61M
38. Napoleon (1927)
330 min | Biography, Drama, History
A film about the French general's youth and early military career.
Director: Abel Gance | Stars: Albert Dieudonné, Vladimir Roudenko, Edmond Van Daële, Alexandre Koubitzky
Votes: 8,793
39. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Not Rated | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A landlady suspects that her new lodger is the madman killing women in London.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: June Tripp, Ivor Novello, Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney
Votes: 13,373
40. Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 153 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Votes: 185,409 | Gross: $1.24M
41. Sunrise (1927)
Passed | 94 min | Drama, Romance
A sophisticated city woman seduces a farmer and convinces him to murder his wife and join her in the city, but he ends up rekindling his romance with his wife when he changes his mind at the last moment.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing
Votes: 53,824 | Gross: $0.54M
42. Xi xiang ji (1927)
50 min | Drama, Romance
A famous Chinese story about a young couple who consummate their marriage without the approval of their parents.
Directors: Minwei Li, Hou Yao | Stars: He Minzhuang, Chichang Lin, Dandan Li, Cijiang Ge
Votes: 164
43. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Passed | 114 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1431, Jeanne d'Arc is placed on trial on charges of heresy. The ecclesiastical jurists attempt to force Jeanne to recant her claims of holy visions.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz
Votes: 60,616 | Gross: $0.02M
44. The Telltale Heart (1928)
24 min | Short, Drama, Horror
An expressionistic film based on Poe's story, about a murderer and his mental breakdown.
Directors: Charles Klein, Leon Shamroy | Stars: Otto Matieson, William Herford, Hans Fuerberg, Charles Darvas
Votes: 366
45. The Crowd (1928)
Not Rated | 98 min | Drama, Romance
The life of a man and woman together in a large, impersonal metropolis through their hopes, struggles, and downfalls.
Director: King Vidor | Stars: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark
Votes: 9,163
46. Plane Crazy (1928)
Approved | 6 min | Animation, Family, Comedy
Inspired by Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris, Mickey builds a plane to take Minnie for a trip involving some necking, though Minnie objects to the necking.
Directors: Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks | Star: Walt Disney
Votes: 2,308
47. October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1927)
95 min | Drama, History
A large-scale view on the events of 1917 in Russia, when the monarchy was overthrown.
Directors: Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Boris Livanov, Nikolay Popov, Vasili Nikandrov, Layaschenko
Votes: 8,442
48. The Wind (1928)
Not Rated | 95 min | Drama, Romance, Thriller
A frail young woman from the East moves in with her cousin in the West, where she causes tension within the family and is slowly driven mad.
Director: Victor Sjöström | Stars: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming
Votes: 7,155
49. The Cameraman (1928)
Passed | 76 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
Hopelessly in love with a woman working at MGM Studios, a clumsy man attempts to become a motion-picture cameraman to be close to the object of his desire.
Directors: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracey
Votes: 13,171
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