Director: René Clair
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France
The great French filmmaker René Clair crafted this elegant sepia-toned profile of Paris’s iconic landmark almost forty years after the Eiffel Tower took its first bow (at the 1889 Exposition Universelle).
Director: G.W. Pabst
Stars: Gustav Diessl, Brigitte Helm, Hertha von Walther
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Germany
Neglected by her husband, an ambitious lawyer, Irene seeks variety in Berlin’s nightlife, drugs and flirtations included.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Norma Shearer, Lowell Sherman, Gwen Lee
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Seasoned grifter Dolly Crandall returns to the ‘badger game’ but has a change of heart when she falls in love with a young man she believes is a rich Southerner.
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr McIntosh
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Molly Kelly wants to marry a millionaire. When she runs into Andy Charles, heir to a restaurant fortune, she jumps at the chance and marries him. Andy’s father if furious and disinherits them. Andy tries his hand at ditch digging to support his wife, but that doesn’t work out.
Director: Joe May
Stars: Lars Hanson, Dita Parlo, Gustav Fröhlich
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Germany
Following World War I, after a long imprisonment, two German prisoner-of-war soldiers escape from a Siberian lead-mine. Karl manages to reach Germany before Richard, and is sheltered by Anna, wife of Richard. While Richard is still on his homeward trek, Karl and Anna fall in love. And then Richard comes home.
Director: Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich
Stars: Jules Raucourt, Voya George, Robert Florey
Genre: Short, Drama
Country: USA
This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized (he is identified by the number 9314 written on his forehead), after which he dies and goes on to Heaven where the number is removed.
Director: Gregory La Cava
Stars: Bebe Daniels, Richard Arlen, William Powell
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
A rich but hypochondriac heiress inherits a sanitarium. What she doesn’t know is that it is a front for bootleggers, and a hideout for criminals on the run from the law.
Director: Frank Capra, Irvin Willat
Stars: Jack Holt, Dorothy Revier, Ralph Graves
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: USA
Two sailors who are always competing against each other set their sights on the same girl. When she chooses one over the other, their friendship ends acrimoniously. However, things change when one the men is in a submarine trapped beneath the ocean and the other, a diver, is sent down on a rescue mission.
Director: Hans Richter
Stars: Werner Graeff, Walter Gronostay, Paul Hindemith
Genre: Short, Art Film, Experimental
Country: Germany
Hans Richter, noted for his abstract shorts, has everyday objects rebelling against their daily routine.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Kiki of Montparnasse, André de la Rivière, Robert Desnos
Genre: Short, Romance, Art Film, Experimental
Country: USA
Two people stand on a road, out of focus. Seen distorted through a glass, they retire upstairs to a bedroom where she undresses. He says, “Adieu.” Images: the beautiful girl, a starfish in a jar, city scenes, newspapers, tugboats. More images: starfish, the girl. “How beautiful she is.” Repeatedly. He advances up the stair, knife in hand, starfish on the step. Three people stand on a road, out of focus. “How beautiful she was.” “How beautiful she is.” “Beautiful.”
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Marion Davies, Jetta Goudal, Nils Asther
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: USA
A ditzy American girl visiting Monte Carlo is hired by a tennis champ to be his “cardboard lover”–to pretend to be in love with him so he can teach his two-timing fiancé a lesson and win her back. What he doesn’t realize is that the girl isn’t pretending–she actually is in love with him, and she sets out to win him for herself.
Director: Clarence Brown
Stars: Dolores del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Karl Dane
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: USA
Fortune hunters from all over the country rush to the Klondike in 1897 to seek their fortunes in the gold are tested by hardships of the journey.
Director: George W. Hill, Clarence Brown
Stars: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Ernest Torrence
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A peace-loving Cossack chooses to prove himself in battle when his village and childhood sweetheart label him a coward.
Director: Lewis Milestone
Stars: Corinne Griffith, Louise Dresser, Lowell Sherman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually a baroness incognito. Toni falls in love with the handsome Richard, but as they prepare to marry, she comes to believe he is only after the wealth accompanying her new noble status. But truth, like true love, will not be kept secret long.
Director: Anthony Asquith
Stars: Brian Aherne, Elissa Landi, Cyril McLaglen
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
A working-class love story set in and around the London Underground of the 1920s. Two men – gentle Bill and brash Bert – meet and are attracted to the same woman on the same day at the same Underground station. But the lady chooses Bill, and Bert isn’t the type to take rejection lightly.
Director: Victor Sjöström
Stars: Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Lowell Sherman
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Lucien, a French soldier, deserts his regiment, steals, and serves a term in prison for Marianne, the girl he loves. Marianne becomes a great actress, but after Lucien serves his time, she breaks her contract as an actress and they go away to live on his ranch.
Director: Bryan Foy
Stars: Helene Costello, Cullen Landis, Mary Carr
Genre: Crime, Drama, Music
Country: USA
Two men are conned into bootlegging business.
Director: John Ford
Stars: James Hall, Margaret Mann, Charles Morton
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA
A family saga in which three of a Bavarian widow’s sons go to war for Germany and the fourth goes to America, Germany’s eventual opponent.
Director: George Fitzmaurice, Frank Lloyd
Stars: Colleen Moore, Gary Cooper, Eugenie Besserer
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA
All of those handsome young men in their flying machines are billeted in a field next to the Widow Berthelot’s farmhouse in France. Her daughter Jeannine is curious about the young men fighting for England in World War I and their airplanes. Then one of the aviators is killed. His replacement is Captain Philip Blythe who can’t help but notice Jeannine. When he lands the first time, she is standing in the middle of his “runway.” She makes a more favorable impression when he sees her later by the lilacs. When all of the young men depart on a mission, Blythe promises to return.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Stars: Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost, Tom Keene
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Two teenagers, one an atheist and the other a Christian, fall in love at a brutal reform school.
Director: Germaine Dulac
Stars: Alex Allin, Genica Athanasiou, Lucien Bataille
Genre: Short
Country: France
Obsessed with a general’s woman, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.
Director: Marcel L’Herbier
Stars: Brigitte Helm, Marie Glory, Yvette Guilbert
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France
The business tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by his rival Gunderman, when he tries to raise capital for his company. To push up the price of his stock, Saccard plans a publicity stunt involving the aviator Jacques Hamelin flying across the Atlantic to Guyana and drilling for oil there, much to the dismay of Hamelin’s wife Line. While Hamelin is away, Saccard tries to seduce Line. Line finally realizes that she and her husband were pawns in Saccard’s scheme, and she accuses him of stock fraud.
Director: Anthony Asquith, A.V. Bramble
Stars: Annette Benson, Brian Aherne, Donald Calthrop
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
The husband and wife acting team of Mae Feather and Julian Gordon is torn apart when he discovers she is having an affair with the screen comedian Andy Wilks. Mae hatches a plot to kill her husband by putting a real bullet in the prop gun which will be fired at him during the making of their new film, ‘Prairie Love’.
Director: Fred Niblo
Stars: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Gustav von Seyffertitz
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
An attractive Russian spy seduces an Austrian officer in order to get some important plans, but when she actually falls in love with him, both of them are placed in a dangerous situation.
Director: Pál Fejös
Stars: Barbara Kent, Glenn Tryon, Fay Holderness
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Two lonely people in the big city meet and enjoy the thrills of an amusement park, only to lose each other in the crowd after spending a great day together. Will they ever see each other again?
Director: William Nigh
Stars: Ramon Novarro, Joan Crawford, Ernest Torrence
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Conflict ensues when a young man’s childhood sweetheart becomes betrothed to his older brother.
Director: Paul Leni
Stars: Laura La Plante, Montagu Love, Roy D’Arcy
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
A producer decides to reopen a theater, that had been closed five years previously when one of the actors was murdered during a performance, by staging a production of the same play with the remaining members of the original cast.
Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Wallace Beery, Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: USA
After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.
Director: King Vidor
Stars: Marion Davies, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
An awkward teenager hopelessly in love with her elder sister’s boyfriend tries to make him notice her.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK
After his daughter weds, a middle-aged widower with a profitable farm decides to remarry, but finds choosing a suitable mate a problematic process.
Director: W.S. Van Dyke, Robert J. Flaherty
Stars: Monte Blue, Raquel Torres, Robert Anderson
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
An alcoholic doctor on a Polynesian island, disgusted by white exploitation of the natives, finds himself marooned on a pristinely beautiful island.
Director: Tod Browning
Stars: Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nolan
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: USA
A magician seeks vengeance upon the man who paralyzed him and the illegitimate daughter he sired with the magician’s wife.
Director: Herbert Brenon
Stars: Lon Chaney, Bernard Siegel, Loretta Young
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A professional clown and a self-indulgent count learn to help each other with their problems, but then become romantic rivals.
Director: Jean Epstein
Stars: Jean Debucourt, Marguerite Gance, Charles Lamy
Genre: Horror
Country: France
Allan visits the sinister Usher family mansion, where his friend Roderick is painting a portrait of his sickly wife Madeline. The portrait seems to be draining the life out of Madeline, slowly leading to her death.
Director: Clarence Brown
Stars: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lewis Stone
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
When two childhood sweethearts are kept from marrying, misery ensues.
Director: Ted Wilde
Stars: Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Bert Woodruff
Genre: Action, Comedy, Family
Country: USA
Harold “Speedy” Swift, a fan of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, saves from extinction the city’s last horse-drawn trolley, operated by his girlfriend’s grandfather.
Director: Harry Beaumont
Stars: Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Nils Asther
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A flapper who’s secretly a good girl and a gold digging floozy masquerading as an ingénue both vie for the hand of a millionaire.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Blanche Friderici, Charles Lane
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A prostitute seeking a fresh start becomes the obsession of a religious extremist.
Director: Paul Leni
Stars: Mary Philbin, Conrad Veidt, Julius Molnar
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: USA
When a proud noble refuses to kiss the hand of the despotic King James in 1690, he is cruelly executed and his son surgically disfigured.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Jean Renoir, Jean Tédesco
Genre: Short, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on NYE. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, she sees things in the flame.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Isabel Jeans, Franklin Dyall, Eric Bransby Williams
Genre: Romance, Thriller
Country: UK
A recently divorced woman hides her scandalous past from her new husband and his family.
Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Natalie Kingston
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A woman on the run from the law finds her past catching up to her just as she is on the verge of true happiness.
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Stars: George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA
A blue-collar worker on New York’s depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.
Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Janet Gaynor, Mary Duncan, Charles Morton
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Four orphans, raised by an aging clown, becomes a high wire act in a circus.
*Note: this title is currently a “lost film.”
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gerda Maurus, Willy Fritsch
Genre: Romance, Thriller
Country: Germany
The mastermind behind a ubiquitous spy operation learns of a dangerous romance between a Russian lady in his employ and a dashing agent from the government’s secret service.
Director: Erich von Stroheim
Stars: Erich von Stroheim, Fay Wray, Zasu Pitts
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A young impoverished aristocrat falls in love with an inn-keepers daughter, but has to marry money.
Director: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton
Stars: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: USA
Hopelessly in love with a woman working at MGM Studios, a clumsy man attempts to become a motion picture cameraman to be close to the object of his desire.