What to generally think about silent film

People always claim Chaplin’s *Modern Times* is a silent movie. It isn't. Not really. It’s just built using all that old-school silent framework, but don't call it silent.
Take that scene in the restaurant—you can actually hear the music. It's full audio.
I guess Chaplin was already getting a little bit old-fashioned back then, maybe clinging to the past.

But look, let's be clear here: *Modern Times* is easily one of my top 20 favorite

I’ve been chipping away at my silent film watchlist lately, pulling from various recommendations in this thread and digging through some curated Google lists... I was wondering if anyone could point me toward some essential titles I might have missed. I know the French school has its own specific obsessions, and as far as German cinema goes, I’ve only really managed to scratch the surface with a few Fritz Lang films. Then there's the Soviet masters, the Scandinavians, and so on...




I’ve seen most of these before, and for the most part, they hold up quite well.

Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Michael (1924)
Foolish Wives (1922)
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Ben-Hur (1925)
The Gold Rush (1925)
The Cheat (1915)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
Frankenstein (1910)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
The Hayseed (1919)
True Heart Susie (1919)
A Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)
The Man with the Twisted Lip (1921)
Arsenal (1929)
Paris Asleep (1924)
The Kiss (1896)

In my opinion, these are the best silent films, organized by director.
Some might already be on your list, but whatever. 😁

New York Subway (Billy Bitzer, 1905)
War Is Hell (Alfred Machin, 1914)
Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915)
Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
The Dying Swan (Yevgeni Bauer, 1917)
I Don't Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
The Swallow and the Titmouse (André Antoine, 1920)
Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, 1920)
The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921)
Johan (Mauritz Stiller, 1921)
Backstairs (Leopold Jessner & Paul Leni, 1921)
The Lighthouse Keepers (Maurice Mariaud, 1922)
The Woman from Nowhere (Louis Delluc, 1922)
Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)
Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
Cœur fidèle (Jean Epstein, 1923)
Os lobos (Rino Lupo, 1923)
At 3:25 (René Clair, 1924)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
Faces of Children (Jacques Feyder, 1925)
Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
Variety (E. A. Dupont, 1925)
By the Law (Lev Kuleshov, 1926)
Berlin Still-Life (László Moholy-Nagy, 1926)
Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926)
Emak-Bakia (Man Ray, 1926)
A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926)
The Girl with the Hat Box (Boris Barnet, 1927)
Underworld (Josef von Sternberg, 1927)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau, 1927)
7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Bed and Sofa (Abram Room, 1927)
Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
Women of Ryazan (Olga Preobrazhenskaya & Ivan Pravov, 1927)
The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
Impatience (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1928)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1928)
A Woman Passed By (René Jayet, 1928)
The Little Match Girl (Jean Renoir & Jean Tédesco, 1928)
Balançoires (Noël Renard, 1928)
Lonesome (Pál Fejős, 1928)
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Hans Richter, 1928)
L'argent (Marcel L'Herbier, 1928)
The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber, 1928)
The Dance of the Paroxysms (Jorge Brum do Canto, 1929)
Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
Erotikon (Gustav Machatý, 1929)
Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)
The Pearl (Henri d'Ursel, 1929)
Diary of a Lost Girl (G. W. Pabst, 1929)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1929)
Rain (Joris Ivens & Mannus Franken, 1929)
Scenes of Ostend (Henri Storck, 1929)
Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness (Phil Jutzi, 1929)
People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak & Edgar G. Ulmer, 1930)
Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
À propos de Nice (Jean Vigo & Boris Kaufman, 1930)
Autumn Fire (Herman G. Weinberg, 1931)
Nail in the Boot (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1931)
The Dancing Girl of Izu (Heinosuke Gosho, 1933)
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)
Every-Night Dreams (Mikio Naruse, 1933)
Police Officer (Tomu Uchida, 1933)
Dragnet Girl (Yasujirô Ozu, 1933)
The Downfall of Osen (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1935)
Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)

ruggedbadger2, you've seen every movie ever made. That list is impressive.

Thanks, man, I’ll definitely add that to the list. Although, strictly speaking, "Modern Times" isn't actually a silent film, it was just shot as if it were...

@Amy Jones2 - Well, maybe not every single movie ever made 😁, but I definitely went through a major silent film phase for a while.

@Jessica Morris6 - To me, Modern Times feels like a symbolic farewell to the silent era. Technically it isn't silent, but "spiritually," it totally is.