40. Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

US 71m Silent BW

Director: Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton

Producer: Josheph M. Schenck

Screenplay: Carl Harbaugh

Photography: Bert Haines, Devereaux Jennings

Cast: Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire, Ernest Torrence, Tom Lewis, Marion Byron

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In the riverside town of River Junction, Captain William Canfield (Ernest Torrence) has an old steamship and disputes the passengers with the powerful banker John James King (Tom McGuire), who has a brandy new passenger vessel. William is informed that his unknown son William Canfield Jr. (Buster Keaton) will arrive by train from Boston to visit him. When Willie arrives, William trains him to work with him in his ship. However, Willie meets his friend Marion King, the daughter of James King, and they date each other, against the will of their fathers. When a hurricane reaches River Junction, Willie rescues his father and his future father-in-law from the river.

39. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) [The Passion of Joan of Arc]

France 82m Silent BW

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Screenplay: Joseph Delteil, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Photography: Rudolph Maté

Cast: Renée Jeanne Falconetti, Eugène Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz

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One of the last great silent films made during the advent of sound, Carl-Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is a haunting, riveting portrait of the historical martyr based on documentation from the original trial. Focusing primarily on the series of courtroom examinations that doomed the young warrior, the film gloriously employs vivid close-ups to accentuate the ordinariness (while at the same time exaggerating the most grotesque qualities) of Joan’s inquisitors. Maria Falconetti is unforgettable as Joan, perfectly distilling the pain, terror, and saintliness required by what is probably one of the most demanding roles an actor could attempt. The consequence of Joan’s conviction — her burning at the stake — allows Dreyer to hammer home his exquisite visual motif balancing erotic corporeality with transcendent spirituality.

38. The Docks of New York (1928)

US 76m Silent BW

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Producer: J.G. Bachmann

Screenplay: Jules Furthman, from the story The Dock Walloper by John Monk Saunders

Photography: Harold Rosson

Cast: George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova, Clyde Cook, Mitchell Lewis, Gustav von Seyffertitz

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The ship on which Bill Roberts is a stoker has just put into port, giving the crew one night ashore. The ship’s bad-tempered third engineer orders the stokers to clean up, while the engineer heads for a dockside bar, where he has a confrontation with the wife he had abandoned. Then, as Bill himself goes ashore, he sees a young woman attempt to drown herself. Bill dives in, saves her, and then, assisted by the engineer’s wife, sees that she is cared for. Bill and the rescued woman begin to enjoy one another’s company, but they must contend with the malice of the engineer, as well as a number of other complications.

37. The Crowd (1928)

US 104m Silent BW

Director: King Vidor

Producer: Irving Thalberg

Screenplay: King Vidor & John V.A. Weaver

Photography: Henry Sharp

Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark

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Born on the fourth of July, 1900, the future holds unlimited potential for newborn John Sims. But dreams soon fade with the death of his father when John is but a lad. Like many before him, John sets out to make his mark in New York City, but ends up a faceless worker (#137) in a large office of a large business. Still he is happy with his fate and soon meets a young woman named Mary on a blind double date. Things take their course and they soon marry and live in a small apartment. Soon John is bickering with Mary and finds that he has no love for the in-laws. When the marriage looks like a bust, he finds that Mary is with child and he stays. After 5 years, he has a son and a daughter and the same dead end job. When tragedy strikes, John must find the conviction to continue or lose what little he has left.

36. The Kid Brother (1927)

US 84m Silent BW

Director: Ted Wilde, J.A. Howe

Producer: Jesse L. Lasky, Harold Lloyd, Adolph Zukor

Screenplay: Thomas J. Crizer, Howard J. Green, John Grey, Lex Neal,Ted Wilde

Photography: Walter Lundin

Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James, Leo Willis, Olin Francis, Constantine Romanoff

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The most important family in Hickoryville is (naturally enough) the Hickorys, with sheriff Jim and his tough manly sons Leo and Olin. The timid youngest son, Harold, doesn’t have the muscles to match up to them, so he has to use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and also the love of beautiful Mary.

35. Napoléon (1927) – Kevin Brownlow Restoration

France 313m Silent BW(some color)

Director: Abel Gance

Producer: Abel Gance (executive in charge of production)

Screenplay: Abel Gance

Photography: Jules Kruger, Joseph-Louis Mundwiller, Nikolai Toporkoff

Music: Arthur Honegger

Cast: Albert Dieudonné, Vladimir Roudenko, Edmond Van Daële, Alexandre Koubitzky, Antonin Artaud, Abel Gance

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A massive six-hour biopic of Napoleon, tracing his career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign), his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797 (the film stops there because it was intended to be part one of six, but director Abel Gance never raised the money to make the other five). The film’s legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens.

34. The Jazz Singer (1927)

US 88m BW

Director: Alan Crosland

Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson (play), Alfred A. Cohn (adaptation)

Photography: Hal Mohr

Music: Louis Silvers

Cast: Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugene Besserer, Otto Lederer, Bobby Gordon

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Cantor Rabinowitz is concerned and upset because his son Jakie shows so little interest in carrying on the family’s traditions and heritage. For five generations, men in the family have been Cantors in the synagogue, but Jakie is more interested in jazz and ragtime music. One day, they have such a bitter argument that Jakie leaves home for good. After a few years on his own, now calling himself Jack Robin, he gets an important opportunity through the help of well-known stage performer Mary Dale. But Jakie finds that in order to balance his career, his relationship with Mary, and his memories of his family, he will be forced to make some difficult choices.

33. Oktyabr (1927) [October]

USSR 102m Silent BW

Director: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein

Screenplay: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein

Photography: Vladimir Nilsen, Vladimir Popov, Eduard Tisse

Music: Alfredo Antonini, Edmund Meisel

Cast: Vladimir Popov, Vasili Nikandrov, Layaschenko, Chibisov, Boris Livanov, Eduard Tisse

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Expanding on his editing experiments in Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein melded documentary realism with narrative metaphor to depict the pivotal events of the Russian Revolution in October (1927). Commissioned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, Eisenstein focused on a few key events from February 1917 to October 1917. Underlining the symbolic importance of those episodes, Eisenstein constructed October as an elaborate “intellectual montage,” deriving meaning from the metaphorical or symbolic relationships between shots. Drawing out narrative time through cutting, Eisenstein turns an opening drawbridge into a sign of the divisive struggle in St. Petersburg. Similarly exaggerating the time that it takes provisional leader Kerensky to climb a palatial staircase, and intercutting shots of Kerensky with a Napoleon statue and a mechanical peacock, Eisenstein satirically reveals Kerensky’s imperial hubris and vanity. Having done extensive research for accuracy, Eisenstein also staged mass battles, particularly the storming of the Winter Palace, with thousands of extras, including the Soviet army. Before October’s release, however, Josef Stalin’s ascent to power required Eisenstein to edit out all references to Stalin rival Trotsky. Neither the Soviet public nor the Soviet leaders cared for the finished film; the government accused Eisenstein of “formalist excess.” An edited version of the film was released in the U.S. using the title of John Reed’s book, Ten Days That Shook the World. While the film’s whole is not as great as its parts, the abstract power and narrative innovation of its greatest sequences still render it a seminal work in the development of film form.
~Lucia Bozzola allmovie

32. The Unknown (1927)

US 63m Silent BW

Director: Tod Browning

Producer: Irving G. Thalberg

Screenplay: Tod Browning (story), Waldemar Young

Photography: Merritt Gerstad

Cast: Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford, Nick De Ruiz

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Alonzo is an apparently armless knife thrower who uses his feet to encircle Estrellita with blades. Zanzi is killed by Alonzo (who really does have arms). Estrellita allows herself to fall in love with Alonzo (she fears men’s arms), so he goes to a hospital and has his amputated. Meantime Malabar cures Estrellita of her fear of men’s arms, so Alonzo tries to have him killed during a circus act.

31. The General (1927)

US 75m Silent BW

Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton

Producer: Joseph M. Schenck, Buster Keaton

Screenplay: Al Boasberg, Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton

Photography: Bert Haines, Devereaux Jennings

Music: Carl Davis (1987), Robert Israel (1995), Joe Hisaishi (2004)

Cast: Buster Keaton, Marlon Mack, Charles Smith, Richard Allen, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley

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The General is perhaps Buster Keaton’s finest film and shows the great comic of the silent era at the height of his powers. Keaton’s talent lay in his slapstick ability and his famous supposedly “stony face” expression which he gave at moments of great confusion. Currently much of his work is being re-appreciated at the true extent of his comic genius re-evaluated. Unfortunately for Keaton’s career, after the introduction of sound, no one was interested in his comic abilities anymore.