The 43 Greatest Silent Films of All Time

Slapstick daredevils, Expressionist nightmares and Soviet montage experiments, all made before the talkies arrived. A handful sit on every critics' list, while others deserve far more viewers than they get.

1. 1
   Metropolis

   Fritz Lang's 1927 German science-fiction epic of a divided future city and its robot Maria.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Steamboat Bill, Jr.

   Keaton's 1928 river comedy, home of the falling house facade that misses him by inches.
   684pts
3. 3
   I Was Born, But...

   Yasujiro Ozu's 1932 silent comedy about two boys disillusioned to discover their father bowing to his boss.
   636pts
4. 4
   Faust

   Murnau's 1926 German version of the legend, with Emil Jannings as a towering Mephisto.
   581pts
5. 5
   Dr. Mabuse the Gambler

   Fritz Lang's 1922 two-part crime saga about a master manipulator and hypnotist preying on Weimar Berlin.
   581pts
6. 6
   The Birth of a Nation

   D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic, technically groundbreaking and infamous for its racist glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
   581pts
7. 7
   Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

   F.W. Murnau's 1927 Hollywood fable of a farmer tempted to drown his wife, voted the greatest silent film in Sight and Sound's 2012 poll.
   515pts
8. 8
   Un Chien Andalou

   Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's 1929 surrealist short with its infamous razor-and-eye opening.
   515pts
9. 9
   The Crowd

   King Vidor's 1928 portrait of an ordinary clerk swallowed by New York City.
   515pts
10. 10
    The Phantom of the Opera

    The 1925 Universal horror classic featuring Lon Chaney's self-designed skull-faced Phantom.
    515pts
11. 11
    Nanook of the North

    Robert Flaherty's 1922 portrait of Inuit life in the Canadian Arctic, often called the first feature documentary.
    515pts
12. 12
    Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

    MGM's lavish 1925 Roman epic with a chariot race that set the standard for decades.
    515pts
13. 13
    Sherlock Jr.

    Keaton's 1924 comedy about a projectionist who dreams himself into the movie he is screening.
    515pts
14. 14
    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

    Robert Wiene's 1920 German Expressionist nightmare with painted, jagged sets.
    515pts
15. 15
    The Wind

    Victor Sjostrom's 1928 frontier drama starring Lillian Gish as a woman driven to breaking by a relentless Texas wind.
    435pts
16. 16
    Man with a Movie Camera

    Dziga Vertov's 1929 Soviet city symphony, an experimental documentary with no actors or intertitles.
    435pts
17. 17
    Battleship Potemkin

    Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 Soviet mutiny drama whose Odessa Steps sequence changed film editing.
    435pts
18. 18
    Greed

    Erich von Stroheim's 1924 study of avarice, notoriously cut from about nine hours to two.
    435pts
19. 19
    Strike

    Eisenstein's 1925 debut feature about a factory uprising, ending in a brutal intercut massacre.
    435pts
20. 20
    The General

    Buster Keaton's 1926 Civil War locomotive chase, filled with real stunts and a famous bridge collapse.
    435pts
21. 21
    The Thief of Bagdad

    Douglas Fairbanks' 1924 Arabian Nights spectacle with flying carpets and enormous sets.
    435pts
22. 22
    Nosferatu

    Murnau's 1922 unauthorised Dracula adaptation starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok.
    339pts
23. 23
    The Gold Rush

    Chaplin's 1925 Klondike comedy with the dancing dinner rolls and the boiled-shoe supper.
    339pts
24. 24
    The Last Laugh

    Murnau's 1924 story of a demoted hotel doorman, told with a free-roaming camera and almost no intertitles.
    339pts
25. 25
    The Navigator

    Keaton's 1924 comedy of two spoiled heirs adrift alone on an empty ocean liner, his biggest hit.
    339pts
26. 26
    The Docks of New York

    Josef von Sternberg's 1928 waterfront romance between a stoker and a would-be suicide.
    339pts
27. 27
    Napoleon

    Abel Gance's 1927 biopic of the young Bonaparte, ending in a three-screen Polyvision finale.
    339pts
28. 28
    Pandora's Box

    G.W. Pabst's 1929 German drama that made Louise Brooks and her bob haircut an icon.
    339pts
29. 29
    A Trip to the Moon

    Georges Melies' 1902 trick-film fantasy in which a rocket lands in the eye of the Man in the Moon.
    339pts
30. 30
    The Kid

    Chaplin's 1921 first feature, in which the Tramp raises an abandoned boy played by Jackie Coogan.
    339pts
31. 31
    The Lodger

    Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 Jack the Ripper-style thriller, the first truly Hitchcockian film.
    339pts
32. 32
    Lonesome

    Paul Fejos' 1928 tale of two lonely workers who meet at Coney Island, rediscovered as a Criterion favourite.
    339pts
33. 33
    It

    The 1927 romantic comedy that made Clara Bow the original It girl.
    339pts
34. 34
    The Passion of Joan of Arc

    Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 trial drama told almost entirely in close-ups of Renee Falconetti's face.
    0pts
35. 35
    Wings

    William Wellman's 1927 First World War aviation epic and the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
    0pts
36. 36
    Intolerance

    D.W. Griffith's colossal 1916 epic weaving four stories across 2,500 years of history.
    0pts
37. 37
    Haxan

    Benjamin Christensen's 1922 Swedish-Danish docu-horror essay on the history of witchcraft.
    0pts
38. 38
    Earth

    Alexander Dovzhenko's 1930 lyrical Ukrainian film about collectivisation and the cycle of life.
    0pts
39. 39
    City Lights

    Charlie Chaplin's 1931 romantic comedy in which the Tramp helps a blind flower girl, made silent well into the sound era.
    0pts
40. 40
    Safety Last!

    Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy, remembered for its hero dangling from a skyscraper clock.
    0pts
41. 41
    The Big Parade

    King Vidor's 1925 First World War drama, one of the highest-grossing films of the silent era.
    0pts
42. 42
    Broken Blossoms

    Griffith's 1919 tragedy of an abused girl in London's Limehouse, starring Lillian Gish.
    0pts
43. 43
    The Unknown

    Tod Browning's 1927 circus horror with Lon Chaney as a knife thrower pretending to have no arms.
    0pts

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