Victor Sjöström
1921 • 106 minutes • 1.37:1 • Sweden
Spine: #579 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray
Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, this extraordinarily rich and innovative silent classic (which inspired Ingmar Bergman to make movies) is a Dickensian ghost story and a deeply moving morality tale, as well as a showcase for groundbreaking special effects.
Robert Flaherty
1922 • 79 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #33 Edition: DVD
Robert Flaherty’s classic film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay region.
Benjamin Christensen
1922 • 87 minutes • 1.33:1 • Denmark
Spine: #134 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets
Benjamin Christensen’s legendary silent film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. Häxan is a witches’ brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.
Cecil B. DeMille
1927 • 155 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #266 Edition: DVD
The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster.
Carl Th. Dreyer
1928 • 82 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #62 Edition: DVD
Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, in which Renée Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, convinced the world that movies could be art.
Paul Fejos
1928 • 69 minutes • 1.19:1 • United States
Spine: #623 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray
The early Hollywood gem Lonesome is the creation of a little-known but audacious and one-of-a-kind auteur, Paul Fejos (a filmmaker/explorer/anthropologist/doctor!), who bridged the gap between the silent and sound eras.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
1929 • 133 minutes • 1.33:1 • Germany
Spine: #358 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets
Sensationally modern, G. W. Pabst’s lurid, controversial melodrama follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu (Louise Brooks), whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with.
René Clair
1930 • 92 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #161 Edition: DVD
In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking.
Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer
1930 • 73 minutes • 1.33:1 • Germany
Spine: #569 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray
People on Sunday, an effervescent, sunlit silent, about a handful of city dwellers (a charming cast of nonprofessionals) enjoying a weekend outing, offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin, would influence generations of film artists around the world.
Fritz Lang
1931 • 110 minutes • 1.19:1 • Germany
Spine: #30 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets
Peter Lorre stars as serial killer Hans Beckert in Fritz Lang’s harrowing masterwork M, a suspenseful panorama of private madness and public hysteria that to this day remains the blueprint for the psychological thriller.
René Clair
1931 • 81 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #72 Edition: DVD
By turns charming and inventive, René Clair’s lyrical masterpiece about the journey of a winning lottery ticket had a profound impact on not only the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin but the American musical as a whole.
René Clair
1931 • 81 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #160 Edition: DVD
One of the all-time comedy classics, René Clair’s À nous la liberté tells the story of Louis, an escaped convict who becomes a wealthy industrialist. Unfortunately, his past returns (in the form of old jail pal Emile) to upset his carefully laid plans.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
1931 • 110 minutes • 1.19:1 • Germany
Spine: #405 Edition: DVD
Set in the impoverished back alleys of Victorian London, The Threepenny Opera follows underworld antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) as he tries to woo Polly Peachum and elude the authorities. Set to Kurt Weill’s irresistible score, this film remains a benchmark of early sound cinema.
Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel
1932 • 63 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #46 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets
One of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror, The Most Dangerous Game stars Leslie Banks as a big-game hunter with a taste for the world’s most exotic prey—his houseguests.
Carl Th. Dreyer
1932 • 73 minutes • 1.19:1 • Denmark
Spine: #437 Edition: DVD
With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result is nearly unclassifiable. Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.
Ernst Lubitsch
1932 • 82 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #170 Edition: DVD
When thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets his true love in pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), they embark on a scam to rob lovely perfume company executive Mariette Colet (Kay Francis). Legendary director Ernst Lubitsch’s masterful touch is in full flower in Trouble in Paradise.
Jean Renoir
1932 • 84 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #305 Edition: DVD
In Jean Renoir’s satire of the bourgeoisie, Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, whose family decides to take in the irrepressible bum.
Erle C. Kenton
1932 • 70 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #586 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray
A twisted treasure from Hollywood’s pre-Code horror heyday, Island of Lost Souls is
a cautionary tale of science run amok, adapted from H. G. Wells’s novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Monte Brice, Clyde Bruckman, Edwin Middleton…
1933 • 115 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #79 Edition: DVD
W. C. Fields’s prolific career placed him at the forefront of slapstick comedy. Gathered here are six gems that feature the comic genius at his peak.
Fritz Lang
1933 • 121 minutes • 1.19:1 • Germany
Spine: #231 Edition: DVD
In Fritz Lang’s landmark of mystery and suspense, Berlin’s star detective must connect the fragmented clues of an insane criminal mastermind’s last will: a manifesto establishing a future empire of crime.
Ernst Lubitsch
1933 • 91 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #592 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray
Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult “gentleman’s agreement” in this continental pre-Code comedy, freely adapted by Ben Hecht from a play by Noël Coward and directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
Josef von Sternberg
1934 • 104 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #109 Edition: DVD
Filmmaker-svengali Josef von Sternberg escalates his obsession with screen legend Marlene Dietrich in this lavish depiction of sex and deceit in the eighteenth-century Russian court, a self-proclaimed “relentless excursion into style.”
Alfred Hitchcock
1935 • 86 minutes • 1.33:1 • United Kingdom
Spine: #56 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets
A heart-racing spy story by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) as he stumbles upon a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors.
Gregory La Cava
1936 • 93 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #114 Edition: DVD
The definitive screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey follows the madcap antics of a wealthy and eccentric family when they hire a down-and-out “forgotten man” as their butler.
Anatole Litvak
1936 • 91 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets
In this sumptuous tragic romance from Anatole Litvak, Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux star as the doomed adulterous lovers Archduke Rudolf, heir to the Austrian throne, and the young and innocent baron’s daughter Marie Vetsera.