#36 (tie) – Metropolis (1927), dir. Fritz Lang

Futurama. The prototypical mad scientist Rotwang shows off his mechanical hand and his mechanical-man to Joh Frederson, the effective ruler of Metropolis, the dystopic society created by director Fritz Lang.

Above ground, a towering, glittering city filled with a pleasure-seeking elite. Below ground, the tenement colony of workers who operate the massive machines that drive the city above. Metropolis (1927) is the story of a young man and woman who try to break down the divide between the classes in the name of love and common humanity. But little of that matters, because the film is foremost a canvas on which director Fritz Lang creates some of cinema’s most enduring images and characters. The most expensive silent film ever made, Metropolis represents ground zero for cinematic science fiction — even more so than A Trip to the Moon. Every cinematic dystopia from Blade Runner to Akira to The Matrix owes a debt to Metropolis‘ title city. The novel Frankenstein may have created the mad scientist, but it is the performance of Lang regular Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the fiendish inventor Rotwang that serves as the model for every deranged scientist to come. And Metropolis‘ most famous creation, the Machine-Man, was effectively cinema’s first robot (and served as direct model for C-3PO in Star Wars). In all, Metropolis is a simplistic take on class conflict, but one told on a grand scale and with a visual inventiveness that has kept it relevant and eye-popping for over 85 years. (150 min.)

#154 (tie) – The Gold Rush (1925), dir. Charlie Chaplin

That’s usin’ yer head. Charlie Chaplin gives a boost to his prospector pal as their cabin teeters on the edge of a cliff in The Gold Rush, a “dramatic comedy” set in the snows of the Klondike.

The Gold Rush (1925) marks the earliest Sight & Sound entry by inarguably the most famous figure of the silent era: Charlie Chaplin. More than just a shabbily dressed clown, Chaplin was a true pioneer of early cinema and a rampant perfectionist. He didn’t just write, direct, and star in his films, he got involved in everything, even writing some of the musical scores. The Gold Rush serves as a decent introduction to his most famous persona, the irrepressible loser the Little Tramp, whose waddling gait, bowler hat, cane, and toothbrush mustache are basically synonymous with Chaplin. In this comedic adventure, the Little Tramp makes his way into the mountains of Alaska during the gold rush days of the 1890s. Seeking to strike it rich, he instead runs afoul of a desperate murderer and a surly, burly prospector. Foiled in his mining efforts, the Little Tramp falls for a high spirited young woman back in town, only to be teased and humiliated by her and her friends. But don’t worry, things come together nicely — in a death-defying sort of way. In the opening credits, Chaplin calls The Gold Rush a “dramatic comedy,” and given its strong currents of pathos and romance that serves as very apt description. (95 min.)

#144 (tie) – Napoleon (1927), dir. Abel Gance

Able was I… Napoleon surveys the rain-soaked aftermath of his assault on a British garrison during the siege of Toulon in Abel Gance’s silent epic on the youth and early career of the famed French military commander and emperor.

For a time he was the most feared and powerful man in the world, he gave his name to an era of history, and he was a character in both War and Peace and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But before he would command hundreds of thousands of troops and be crowned an emperor, he would first need to win a snowball fight. At least that’s how it all starts in director Abel Gance’s 1927 silent epic Napoleon. The massive, sprawling film spends over five hours (in the version we watched) documenting the early years of Napoleon’s rise to power, beginning with his days at school and moving through the first years of the French Revolution, the siege of Toulon, the Reign of Terror, Napoleon’s courtship of and marriage to Josephine, and his invasion into Italy. The film features a remarkable array of cinematic techniques and innovations to tackle the incredibly complex story of not just a remarkable man but also the fate of a nation in transition. Perhaps Gance’s most famous innovation in Napoleon was the first use of a widescreen format, which he accomplished by utilizing three cameras which would simultaneously film scenes that would then be projected onto three linked screens. Unfortunately unavailable on DVD, Napoleon is tricky to track down but it presents truly remarkable spectacle on a scale most movies can only dream of. (310 min.)

#84 (tie) – Greed (1924), dir. Erich Von Stroheim

“Open up and say, ‘Meh.'” Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed strives to tell the story of ordinary working class people corrupted by a winning lottery ticket. The film makes strong use of real life locations instead of the usual Hollywood sets.

Pretty much from the beginning, Hollywood has been a factory for producing glitz and glamour — attractive people engaged in impossibly amazing stories meant to entertain the masses (and turn a profit). Greed (1924) was an attempt by Austrian-born director Erich Von Stroheim to run against the grain of the system to produce a down-to-earth story that would tackle the unpleasant lives of some rather unpleasant people. Adapting the late 19th century realist novel McTeague, Von Stroheim steered clear of the artificial opulence of Hollywood to film on location at the actual places mentioned in the novel — including the scorching Death Valley, California. He also cast actors who are decidedly not among the beautiful people, wanting to have his characters portrayed by individuals who would suit the working class environments in which the story takes place. But that does not mean Von Stroheim was content to have the film look as everyday as its sets and actors; Greed utilizes numerous unusual techniques for the period, including selective bursts of color, chiaroscuro lighting schemes, montage editing, and deep focus cinematography (16 years before The Grapes of Wrath and Citizen Kane). But Greed is perhaps most famous for its epic length. The first cut was over 9 hours, but was eventually slashed down by the studio to just over 2 hours without Von Stroheim’s approval (he disowned the final cut). The excised 6-plus hours of the film still remain unaccounted for and are considered by many to be the holy grail of cinema. (140 min., 239 min. in TCM reconstruction)

#5 – Sunrise (1927), dir. F.W. Murnau

Love is blind, careless. The Man and The Wife rekindle their love and stroll right into traffic in F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, which makes use of innovative visual techniques to tell a modern day fairy tale.

After a number of big hits in Germany, director F.W. Murnau was enticed to come to Hollywood, given a massive budget, and promised complete creative control. The result of this deal was Sunrise (1927), the highest ranking silent film on the Sight & Sound list. The story of Sunrise is very simple: a farmer is seduced by a woman from the city and convinced to kill his wife. He finds himself unable to commit the murder and instead falls in love with his wife all over again during a day out in the big city. But to tell this fable Murnau employs a number of innovative visual techniques, impressive and elaborate sets, and some of the first use of sound in a major motion picture. For most of the silent era the camera remained static, or perhaps a few tracking shots were possible; in Sunrise the camera flies over tables and marshes, freed from prior constraints. It was also the first movie to have a musical score attached to the film, enabling the syncing of music and even some sound effects to the action on screen. At the first Academy Awards, Sunrise won the Oscar for Best Creative or Artistic Film, an award that has not been handed out since. (95 min.)

#59 (tie) – Sherlock, Jr. (1924), dir. Buster Keaton

Excitebike. No stranger to close calls, Buster Keaton hurtles forward on a driver-less motorcycle to rescue his beloved in Sherlock, Jr.

We have already yammered about a few early films that incorporated impressive dream sequences or dream imagery, but none of those movies have the relentless comedic energy of Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. This 1924 silent comedy features Keaton as a cinema projectionist who literally leaps into the movies to fulfill his dream of being a detective. After falling asleep in his projection booth, Keaton’s dream-self enters the movie screen and begins a series of bizarre adventures that push the boundaries of early filmmaking and involve a number of inspired comedic set pieces — including perhaps the craziest motorcycle chase ever caught on film. Because it is all a dream, Keaton is able to throw away all pretense to reality and not let logic or physics get in the way of a good gag. Sherlock, Jr. may lack the grand scale complexity of Keaton’s triumph The General (1926), but the danger and derring-do of that later film can be found here in spades (Keaton actually fractured his neck doing one Sherlock, Jr. stunt). And as with any decent silent comedy it ends with a nice bit of romance… um, sort of. (45 min.)

#127 (tie) – The Last Laugh (1924), dir. F.W. Murnau

Pride cometh… Emil Jannings stars as a man defined by his job at a luxury hotel, who loses everything when old age leads to a humiliating demotion in F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh.

Some people live for their work, even when it isn’t the most groundbreaking or vital of gigs. In F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann, 1924), Emil Jannings plays a man whose entire life is defined by his job as the doorman of an upscale hotel. His doorman uniform isn’t just the symbol of his occupation, but serves as a marker of distinction and eminence in the working class apartment block where he lives with his niece. As the day laborers shuffle off to work each morning, Jannings can glide through the tenements like a general surveying the troops. But when the aging doorman loses his position, his world crumbles down around him, leaving him humiliated, fearful, guilt-ridden, and ridiculed… at least until an unexpected series of events befalls the poor man. Murnau and cinematographer Karl Freund’s silent drama/comedy tells a simple story through striking sets and compositions, inventive camera movements, and (almost) a complete lack intertitles, creating a new language of cinema in the process. (90 min.)

#9 – The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer

The bower of prayer. Maria Falconetti gives an impassioned performance as the 15th century teenage heroine of France, Jeanne d’Arc, in Carl Th. Dreyer’s silent masterpiece.

Shackled round the ankles and dressed simply in boy’s clothing, Joan of Arc is escorted into a austere white room to be jeered and ogled by hostile soldiers and scheming clerics. The fearful teenage girl is placed upon a stool and the gallery of old men sets to work wringing a confession from her. What follows in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928) is an unusual take on the courtroom drama, and not just because of its medieval setting and strongly religious elements. A fortune was apparently spent constructing the movie’s elaborate castle sets, but you’d never know it as Dreyer photographed almost the entire film in close-ups, making The Passion of Joan of Arc a viewing experience very different from traditional narratives. With few intertitles and almost no wide shots to get one’s bearings, it is the makeup-less faces of the actors that communicate the downfall of the heroine of Orleans. (82 min.)

#117 (tie) – Nosferatu (1922), dir. F.W. Murnau

Stranger in the night. Count Dracu… er, I mean, Count Orlok haunts the minds and plagues the bodies of his shipbound victims in a scene from the silent horror film Nosferatu (1922).

Nosferatu has long been considered a horror movie staple, and it is the earliest film on the Sight & Sound Top 250 list by German director F.W. Murnau. Between 1922 and his untimely death in an automobile accident in 1931, Murnau produced four movies now considered by critics to be among the very greatest ever made, with his 1927 film Sunrise (#5) being the highest ranked silent film on the list. Nosferatu was the first attempt to bring Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the silver screen, but it was filmed without securing the rights from the author’s estate. Consequently all of the characters have different names and some story details were changed in the hopes of avoiding a lawsuit (it didn’t work, they were sued and most prints of the film were destroyed as a result). So while it is a familiar story, Nosferatu gives it a spin all its own and produces one of the most iconic villains of cinema — the hideous bloodsucker Count Orlok. (92 min.)

#34 (tie) – The General (1926), dir. Buster Keaton

On a crazy train. You know how sometimes actors make a big deal about doing their own stunts; Buster Keaton could laugh in their faces.

The phrase “they don’t make ’em like they used to” is an over-used and often rather meaningless expression. But when it comes to Buster Keaton’s The General, it is all too apt, if only because studios and insurance companies would never, ever let a major star get away with performing the dozens of life-threatening stunts that Keaton pulls off throughout the movie. No computer imaging, no painting out of safety harnesses, no stand-ins, no problem — just get that massive train rolling right on ahead. The General is an action comedy loosely based on a true event from the American Civil War. Keaton plays a Southern engineer whose engine (The General of the movie’s title) is stolen by Union spies. Keaton races to take his engine back — and maybe rescue the woman he loves — kicking off a series of crazy chases along railroad lines and across the front lines of the war. (75 min.)