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A personal screening room for early cinema

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Kino-polis — Discover & Watch Public Domain Films

Pioneers of Cinema

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

1889–1977

Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

1895–1966

Alice Guy-Blaché

Alice Guy-Blaché

1873–1968

Oscar Micheaux

Oscar Micheaux

1884–1951

Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd

1893–1971

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks

1906–1985

Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang

1890–1976

Clara Bow

Clara Bow

1905–1965

F. W. Murnau

F. W. Murnau

1888–1931

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès

1861–1938

D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith

1875–1948

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein

1898–1948

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer

1889–1968

Robert Wiene

Robert Wiene

1873–1938

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

1899–1980

Lon Chaney

Lon Chaney

1883–1930

Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish

1893–1993

Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt

1893–1943

Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim

1885–1957

Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks

1883–1939

Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford

1892–1979

Recently Added

Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe

Absinthe

Absinthe

George Edwardes-Hall, Herbert Brenon

That Certain Thing

That Certain Thing

Bluebeard

Bluebeard

Georges Méliès

The Blue Bird

The Blue Bird

Maurice Tourneur

His Innocent Dupe

His Innocent Dupe

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Lucius Henderson

A Daughter of Brahma

A Daughter of Brahma

Ashes of Vengeance

Ashes of Vengeance

Borderline

Borderline

Kenneth MacPherson

Moana

Moana

Robert Flaherty, Frances H. Flaherty

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

All Films

13 Washington Square

13 Washington Square

Melville W. Brown

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

7th Heaven

7th Heaven

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

J. Searle Dawley, Ashley Miller, Charles Kent

A Corner in Wheat

A Corner in Wheat

A Cottage on Dartmoor

A Cottage on Dartmoor

Anthony Asquith

A Daughter of Brahma

A Daughter of Brahma

A Daughter Of Destiny

A Daughter Of Destiny

A Dog's Life

A Dog's Life

Charlie Chaplin

A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms

A Film Johnnie

A Film Johnnie

A Flirt's Mistake

A Flirt's Mistake

Collections

Silent 101

The silent era spans roughly three decades — from the Lumière brothers' first public screening in 1895 to the arrival of synchronized sound in the late 1920s — and contains some of the most inventive, visually stunning, and emotionally powerful filmmaking ever produced. These twenty films offer an introduction to the period's essential works and movements: the trick films that first revealed cinema's capacity for magic, the rise of narrative storytelling, the explosive creativity of German Expressionism and Soviet montage, the golden age of screen comedy, and the artistic peaks that still define what the medium can achieve. If you're new to silent film, start anywhere — every one of these will change your understanding of what early cinema was.

20 films

A Trip to the Moon

The Great Train Robbery

Broken Blossoms

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Lon Chaney: The Man of a Thousand Faces

Lon Chaney could make you believe he was anyone. A legless crime lord. A vengeful paralytic. A tormented circus clown. A disfigured phantom haunting the Paris Opera. He designed his own makeup, often enduring considerable physical pain to achieve his transformations, and he brought to every role a depth of feeling that elevated genre material into something genuinely moving. Between 1919 and 1930, he was the biggest star in horror cinema and one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, period. He died of throat cancer at forty-seven, just as the sound era was beginning, and the loss is still felt. What made Chaney extraordinary was not the makeup alone but what he did underneath it. His characters are almost always outcasts: men deformed by accident or birth, criminals shaped by cruelty, performers hiding behind disguises. In lesser hands these roles would be freak-show spectacle. Chaney found the humanity in them. His Quasimodo is heartbreaking. His Phantom is tragic. Even his most monstrous creations carry a loneliness that makes the audience complicit in their suffering. He understood that the most effective horror comes not from revulsion but from recognition. This collection traces Chaney's career from his first collaboration with Tod Browning through the iconic roles that made him a legend. Five of the thirteen films were directed by Browning, whose fascination with the grotesque and the marginal made him Chaney's ideal creative partner. The others showcase the range of directors who recognized what Chaney could bring to their work, from Victor Sjöström's European gravity to the grand spectacle of Universal's horror productions. Together, they constitute the most remarkable body of screen performance in the silent era.

13 films

Pioneers: Oscar Micheaux

Oscar Micheaux was the most prolific Black filmmaker in American history, and one of the most remarkable self-inventors the film industry has ever produced. The son of former slaves, he worked as a Pullman porter, homesteaded 500 acres in South Dakota, and published a series of semi-autobiographical novels before turning to filmmaking in 1919 because Hollywood wouldn’t make his stories, so he made them himself. Over the next three decades he wrote, produced, directed, and personally distributed more than forty films to the segregated theaters of the “race circuit,” becoming the only Black filmmaker to survive the transition from silents to sound. His films were made under conditions of radical constraint - underfunded, shot fast, technically rough and they addressed subjects Hollywood refused to touch: lynching, racial passing, intermarriage, the violence of white supremacy, and the full complexity of Black American life at a time when the dominant cinema offered only caricature and contempt. Two-thirds of his work is lost. What survives is essential.

9 films

Within Our Gates

The Symbol of the Unconquered

Body and Soul

Spotlight: Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand was the first great female comedy star in American cinema, and one of the most talented people to work in the early film industry. She was a performer, writer, director, and producer at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, where she helped invent the slapstick comedy form and mentored a young Charlie Chaplin during his first months on screen. She threw the first pie in a motion picture. She directed some of Chaplin's earliest films. She was, by virtually every contemporary account, the funniest woman in America. Her partnership with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle produced some of the best short comedies of the 1910s, built on genuine chemistry and physical fearlessness. Her feature-length vehicle Mickey, delayed for two years by studio politics, became one of the biggest hits of 1918 and proved she could carry a picture on her own. She was athletic, inventive, and willing to take any fall, and she combined physical comedy skill with a warmth and naturalism that set her apart from the broader mugging typical of the period. Normand's career was derailed not by lack of talent but by scandal and illness. She was tangentially connected to the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor in 1922, and the resulting tabloid coverage destroyed her reputation despite her having nothing to do with the crime. Tuberculosis further limited her work, and she died in 1930 at thirty-seven. The films collected here capture what was lost: a comic talent of the first order, working at the dawn of an art form she helped define.

10 films

A Film Johnnie

The Wicked Darling

The Penalty

Outside the Law

The Ace of Hearts

The Darktown Revue

Mabel at the Wheel

Caught in a Cabaret

Mabel's Strange Predicament

Action

The Three Must-Get-Theres

The Three Must-Get-Theres

Zorro Rides Again

Zorro Rides Again

Serpent

Serpent

Tell It to the Marines

Tell It to the Marines

By the Law

By the Law

The Montana Kid

The Montana Kid

Life of an American Fireman

Life of an American Fireman

Men Without Women

Men Without Women

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The Dawn Patrol

The Dawn Patrol

Easy Street

Easy Street

The Son of the Sheik

The Son of the Sheik

Adventure

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Zorro Rides Again

Zorro Rides Again

Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe

Sumurun

Sumurun

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain

The Magic Cloak of Oz

The Magic Cloak of Oz

Robin Hood

Robin Hood

East of Borneo

East of Borneo

The Cave of the Silken Web

The Cave of the Silken Web

Animation

The New Gulliver

The New Gulliver

The Enchanted Drawing

The Enchanted Drawing

The Sinking of the Lusitania

The Sinking of the Lusitania

Fantasmagorie

Fantasmagorie

The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel

Interplanetary Revolution

Interplanetary Revolution

How a Mosquito Operates

How a Mosquito Operates

Out of the Inkwell

Out of the Inkwell

And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or, the Author's Dream

And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or, the Author's Dream

Black and White

Black and White

Victorious Destination

Victorious Destination

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

From: Early Hitchcock

Blackmail

1929 · Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock's first sound film — and a watershed moment in British cinema. A young woman stabs a man who tries to assault her, and her boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective investigating the case, gradually realizes she's the killer. The film exists in both silent and sound versions (shot simultaneously), and both are remarkable, but the sound version contains innovations that changed cinema: a famous breakfast scene where the word "knife" seems to stab through the heroine's guilt-wracked consciousness, a chase through the British Museum that climaxes on the dome of the Reading Room, and an atmosphere of moral ambiguity that would define Hitchcock's entire career. Anny Ondra is superb as the traumatized heroine, and the film's refusal to resolve the moral dilemma cleanly — she killed a man, but he was assaulting her — feels startlingly modern.

From: Pioneers: Buster Keaton

The Navigator

1924 · Directed by Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton

The wealthy and impulsive Rollo Treadway decides to propose to his beautiful socialite neighbor, Betsy O'Brien. Although Betsy turns Rollo down, he still opts to go on the cruise that he intended as their honeymoon. When circumstances find both Rollo and Betsy on the wrong ship, they end up having adventures on the high seas.

From: Spotlight: Mabel Normand

Caught in a Cabaret

1914 · Directed by Mabel Normand

Charlie is a clumsy waiter in a cheap cabaret, suffering the strict orders from his boss. He meets a pretty girl in the park and tries to impress her by pretending to be an ambassador. Unfortunately she has a jealous fiancé.

Films Like “Ivanhoe”

Sinners in Paradise

Sinners in Paradise

Male and Female

Male and Female

Beggars of Life

Beggars of Life

Born Reckless

Born Reckless

Beau Ideal

Beau Ideal

Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Absinthe

Absinthe

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock

The Late Mathias Pascal

The Late Mathias Pascal

The Scar of Shame

The Scar of Shame

Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box

Film of the Day

Out of the Inkwell

Released 107 years ago today

Out of the Inkwell

1919 · Dave Fleischer

The Fleischer brothers' Out of the Inkwell series (1918-1929) is one of the most inventive bodies of work in early animation, and the shorts that launched it remain startling in their formal…