# The 18 Best Black-and-White Films of the 1920s

> A century on, these silent-era landmarks still hypnotize: expressionist nightmares, death-defying slapstick and revolutionary spectacle from the medium's boldest decade. Which one wins?

*By YPB Team · Published July 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-18-best-black-and-white-films-of-the-1920s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Metropolis** — score 1000/1000
   Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist epic set in a dystopian city divided between workers and rulers.
2. **The General** — score 862/1000
   Buster Keaton's 1926 Civil War action-comedy famed for its daring, precisely timed train stunts.
3. **Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans** — score 724/1000
   F. W. Murnau's 1927 lyrical romance, an early Best Picture winner praised for its fluid camerawork.
4. **The Gold Rush** — score 596/1000
   Charlie Chaplin's 1925 comedy following the Little Tramp prospecting through the Klondike.
5. **Nanook of the North** — score 596/1000
   Robert Flaherty's 1922 pioneering documentary chronicling an Inuit family's life in the Arctic.
6. **Faust** — score 517/1000
   F. W. Murnau's 1926 expressionist retelling of the man who sells his soul to the devil.
7. **Safety Last!** — score 517/1000
   Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy featuring his indelible image dangling from a skyscraper clock.
8. **Nosferatu** — score 517/1000
   F. W. Murnau's 1922 unauthorized Dracula adaptation and a foundational vampire horror film.
9. **The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari** — score 517/1000
   Robert Wiene's 1920 landmark of German Expressionism with jagged, painted dreamlike sets.
10. **Battleship Potemkin** — score 517/1000
   Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 revolutionary drama celebrated for its groundbreaking montage and Odessa Steps sequence.
11. **Steamboat Bill, Jr.** — score 517/1000
   Buster Keaton's 1928 comedy home to his legendary falling-building-facade stunt.
12. **Un Chien Andalou** — score 423/1000
   Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 surrealist short famous for its shocking dreamlike imagery.
13. **Sherlock Jr.** — score 310/1000
   Buster Keaton's 1924 comedy about a projectionist who dreams himself into the movie on screen.
14. **Pandora's Box** — score 310/1000
   G. W. Pabst's 1929 drama starring Louise Brooks as the magnetic, doomed Lulu.
15. **Greed** — score 172/1000
   Erich von Stroheim's 1924 realist epic tracing how a fortune corrupts an ordinary couple.
16. **The Passion of Joan of Arc** — score 172/1000
   Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 masterpiece portraying Joan's trial through stark, intimate close-ups.
17. **The Kid** — score 172/1000
   Charlie Chaplin's 1921 blend of comedy and pathos about the Tramp raising an abandoned child.
18. **The Phantom of the Opera** — score 172/1000
   Rupert Julian's 1925 horror classic with Lon Chaney's iconic unmasking as the disfigured Phantom.

Tags: movies, classics, silent film, 1920s