Shawn Hall What’s the greatest silent film ever made? Or even the Top 100 Silent Movies? Twenty-five years ago, the folks at SilentEra.com sought to answer this question. Soliciting votes from silent film enthusiasts around the world, SilentEra.com crowdsourced a list of the Top 100 Silent Movies.
When first getting into silent film over a decade ago, I stumbled upon Silent Era’s Top 100 Silent Movies list and used it to guide my own viewing. The list drew me to the classics from the usual suspects: the silent clowns of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, to the big dramatic Hollywood stars like Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Lon Chaney. It also exposed me to films I hadn’t heard of before like Carl Thedore Dreyer’s arthouse films, Frank Borzage’s romantic melodramas, and Vsevold Pudovkin’s and Sergei Eisenstein’s experimental montage-filled spectacles.
The list serves as an excellent entry point for anyone interested in exploring silent film. For ardent silent films fans, this list also has plenty of great discoveries that might not be the most well-known films (at the time of this writing, I still have ten more movies on the list I haven’t seen). I’m now returning to the Top 100 silent movies list, armed with years of silent film knowledge to review the canon.
Buster Keaton’s comedy The General (1926) tops the list, with Josef von Sternberg’s gangster drama Underworld (1928) rounding out the top 100.
Publishing every 1st and 3rd Tuesday each month, my short reviews will explore why the film was influential and whether I’d put it in my top 100 favorite silent movies. By the end of my 100 reviews, I hope to curate my own Best Silent Movies List to reflect my own personal taste and diversify the canon just a bit.
I will be ping-ponging between the top and bottom of the list (i.e., reviewing #100, then #1, #99, #2, etc), working my way to the middle. So far, I’ve reviewed over a dozen silent films covering diverse films from German Expressionist masterpieces, to Hollywood Westerns, to Charlie Chaplin comedies.
Silent Era’s Top 100 Silent Movies
| Top 50 |
|---|
| 1. The General (1926) |
| 2. Metropolis (1927) |
| 3. Sunrise (1927) |
| 4. City Lights (1931) |
| 5. Nosferatu (1922) |
| 6. The Gold Rush (1925) |
| 7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) |
| 8. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) |
| 9. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) |
| 10. Greed (1924) |
| 11. Pandora’s Box (1929) |
| 12. The Crowd (1928) |
| 13. The Wind (1928) |
| 14. Napoléon (1927) |
| 15. The Birth of a Nation (1915) |
| 16. Intolerance (1916) |
| 17. Sherlock, Jr. (1924) |
| 18. The Big Parade (1925) |
| 19. Safety Last (1923) |
| 20. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) |
| 21. Broken Blossoms (1919) |
| 22. The Last Laugh (1924) |
| 23. The Kid (1921) |
| 24. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) |
| 25. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) |
| 26. The Thief of Bagdad (1924) |
| 27. Flesh and the Devil (1927) |
| 28. Our Hospitality (1923) |
| 29. Wings (1927) |
| 30. Man With the Movie Camera (1929) |
| 31. Nanook of the North (1922) |
| 32. Faust (1926) |
| 33. Way Down East (1920) |
| 34. Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) |
| 35. The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) |
| 36. The Unknown (1927) |
| 37. The Cameraman (1928) |
| 38. The Circus (1928) |
| 39. Show People (1928) |
| 40. Un chien Andalou (1928) |
| 41. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) |
| 42. Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) |
| 43. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) |
| 44. The Sheik (1921) |
| 45. Die Nibelungen (1924) |
| 46. The Freshman (1925) |
| 47. The Mark of Zorro (1920) |
| 48. Tol’able David (1921) |
| 49. He Who Gets Slapped (1924) |
| 50. Girl Shy (1924) |
| Bottom 50 |
|---|
| 100. Underworld (1927) |
| 99. Stella Maris (1918) |
| 98. The Penalty (1920) |
| 97. The Iron Horse (1924) |
| 96. The King of Kings (1927) |
| 95. The Iron Mask (1929) |
| 94. Big Business (1929) |
| 93. Joyless Street (1924) |
| 92. Variety (1925) |
| 91. The Cheat (1915) |
| 90. Mother (1926) |
| 89. The Unholy Three (1925) |
| 88. The Last of the Mohicans (1920) |
| 87. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) |
| 86. A Woman of Paris (1923) |
| 85. Tess of the Storm Country (1922) |
| 84. Sadie Thompson (1928) |
| 83. Speedy (1928) |
| 82. Destiny (1921) |
| 81. The Great Train Robbery (1903) |
| 80. Strike (1924) |
| 79. The Docks of New York (1928) |
| 78. Robin Hood (1922) |
| 77. Cabiria (1914) |
| 76. October (1928) |
| 75. Queen Kelly (1928) |
| 74. The Immigrant (1917) |
| 73. The Kid Brother (1927) |
| 72. The Lost World (1925) |
| 71. It (1927) |
| 70. 7th Heaven (1927) |
| 69. The Son of the Sheik (1926) |
| 68. A Trip to the Moon (1902) |
| 67. The Golem (1920) |
| 66. Cops (1922) |
| 65. My Best Girl (1927) |
| 64. Beggars of Life (1928) |
| 63. The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) |
| 62. Les Vampires (1915–16) |
| 61. Tabu (1931) |
| 60. Earth (1930) |
| 59. The Navigator (1924) |
| 58. Sparrows (1926) |
| 57. Orphans of the Storm (1921) |
| 56. Foolish Wives (1922) |
| 55. The Last Command (1928) |
| 54. Seven Chances (1925) |
| 53. The Lodger (1926) |
| 52. The Man Who Laughs (1928) |
| 51. The Wedding March (1928) |
I’ve already started reviewing these films on my TikTokand YouTube channels, which you can view if you want a preview of some of my thoughts on these classic silent movies:
I’m excited to rewatch and discover so many classics and hope you will join me on the adventure!
I’m really enjoying reading your thoughts so far on the individual reviews for some of these silent films. Looking forward to your future reviews and thoughts.
Maddy
Thanks! I’ve had a lot of fun rewatching so many classics and checking off a few that I haven’t gotten around to yet.