European silent cinema

Until the end of the twenties, European films speak only through images and a few title cards, and each country looks for its own means. Cabiria, in 1914, puts its camera on a moving dolly; The Phantom Carriage layers several exposures so that the dead pass through objects; Battleship Potemkin turns a staircase in Odessa into a massacre scene that has remained famous. Dreyer films the trial of Joan of Arc almost entirely in close-ups, and Gance ends his Napoleon on three screens. Many of these films were cut, lost and found again: a complete print of The Passion of Joan of Arc resurfaced in 1981 in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital, and a print of Metropolis was found in 2008 in Buenos Aires.

works 14

• CinemaDamn the WarMaudite soit la guerreAlfred Machin · 1914Two friends, both aviators, on either side of a border, become enemies the day war breaks out.Cinema
• CinemaCabiriaGiovanni Pastrone · 1914A little Sicilian girl who falls into the hands of pirates, in the time when Rome and Carthage are at war.Cinema
• CinemaThe Phantom CarriageKörkarlenVictor Sjöström · 1921The coachman of the dead comes for a drunkard on New Year's Eve and shows him what he has left behind.Cinema
• CinemaNosferatuNosferatu, eine Symphonie des GrauensF. W. Murnau · 1922A German port in 1838, where rats and plague come ashore along with a count from the Carpathians.Cinema
• CinemaWitchcraft Through the AgesHäxanBenjamin Christensen · 1922An illustrated lecture on witchcraft that shifts along the way into fiction, to show what superstition does to the sick and the weak.Cinema
• CinemaLittle Red Devilsწითელი ეშმაკუნებიIvane Perestiani · 1923An adventure film of the civil war, shot between Tbilisi and Odessa at the very beginning of Soviet cinema, in which three teenagers wage a war of their own against the anarchist bands of Ukraine.Cinema
• CinemaThe Saga of Gösta BerlingGösta Berlings sagaMauritz Stiller · 1924A disgraced pastor lives for feasting with ruined noblemen, and all the women who become attached to him suffer for it.Cinema
• CinemaBattleship PotemkinБроненосец «Потёмкин»Sergei Eisenstein · 1925A silent film of 1925 about the mutiny of a Russian battleship during the first revolution, made for its twentieth anniversary.Cinema
• CinemaMetropolisFritz Lang · 1927A future city split in two, the towers of the masters and the underground city of the workers, in the most expensive film in German cinema of its time.Cinema
• CinemaNapoleon by Abel GanceNapoléonAbel Gance · 1927The youth of Bonaparte, from the school at Brienne to the gates of Italy.Cinema
• CinemaThe Passion of Joan of ArcLa Passion de Jeanne d'ArcCarl Th. Dreyer · 1928An accused woman faces her judges in 1431, filmed almost entirely in close-ups of faces.Cinema
• CinemaDiary of a Lost GirlDas Tagebuch einer VerlorenenG. W. Pabst · 1929A pharmacist's daughter, rejected by her family after a pregnancy, goes from the reformatory to the brothel.Cinema
• CinemaPiccadillyE. A. Dupont · 1929A customer's complaint brings the owner of a cabaret down to its basement.Cinema
• CinemaArsenalАрсеналOleksandr Dovzhenko · 1929A silent film of 1929 on the strike and revolt at the Kyiv arms factory, built from tableaux rather than plot.Cinema