Films
Read about the filmsFind a film by title, director, mood or the time you have.
A large-scale adaptation of Stowe’s novel follows families separated by slavery. Its 1927 silent premiere and later recorded-score release belong to different presentations.
A gang leader rescues a destitute lawyer, then discovers that loyalty becomes harder to command when both men love the same woman.
Two young pilots carry rivalry, friendship, and romantic misunderstanding into the aerial violence of the First World War.
A status-conscious mother tries to prevent her son’s marriage while a burglar, a supposedly haunted house, and several competing schemes disrupt her control.
A scientist creates a woman through an experiment shaped by a mandrake legend, then attempts to control the life he treats as proof of his theory.
A gambler finances his ward’s education by cheating at cards in Otto Brower’s silent Western for Paramount.
A young woman of mixed heritage leaves a hostile household with the Indigenous man she loves, only to face displacement, poverty, and violence.
A master criminal, a government agent, and a conflicted operative move through a modern network of surveillance and deception.
An awkward college son returns to his riverboat father just as rivalry, romance, and a cyclone overturn every expectation.
A peasant officer’s love for a princess collides with military hierarchy, imprisonment, and the Russian Revolution.
A street photographer buys a motion-picture camera and tries to become a newsreel cameraman while pursuing a woman who works at the studio.
One ambitious office worker discovers how difficult it is to remain an individual inside a modern city.
A coal stoker on one night of shore leave rescues a woman from the water, and their hurried marriage tests whether either can imagine a life beyond the docks.
A former Russian general, now an impoverished Hollywood extra, is cast by a director who recognises him from the revolution that destroyed his old life.
A performer whose face was surgically fixed into a grin is pulled between love, spectacle, and aristocratic power.
An impoverished Viennese prince falls for a working-class woman while family debt and social expectation prepare marriages for both of them.
A young woman arrives on an isolated Texas plain where relentless wind turns social danger into psychological siege.
A silent adaptation of Zane Grey’s novel directed by Herman C. Raymaker, listed as lost in the Library of Congress’s February 2021 inventory. Later versions appeared in 1933 and 1947.
An ageing burlesque performer tries to keep her convent-raised daughter away from the backstage life that has consumed her.
Two Christmas-tree salesmen and one resistant customer escalate a failed doorstep sale into the systematic destruction of property.
A struggling pianist and his dancer partner face poverty, illness, and the cost of accepting work that could separate them.
A poor young woman forms a bond with a disabled war veteran whose isolated farm offers both refuge and a test of independence.
Lulu moves through desire, scandal, and social punishment with a presence the film cannot contain.
A family outing repeatedly fails to begin as a car, neighbours, weather, and irritation dismantle the promise of a perfect day.
A Hungarian servant’s attempt to retain her child is crushed by class power, bureaucracy, and the authority of a wealthy family.
A British officer who resigns before a military campaign receives four white feathers and travels to Sudan to prove his courage in disguise.
MGM stars appear in a succession of songs, comedy sketches, dances, and novelty acts designed to display the studio’s arrival in sound.
A woman who killed her lover claims self-defence, until a letter threatens the account on which her marriage and trial depend.
A young man tending an isolated river property meets a woman bound to an absent lover, and winter turns their encounter into dependence.
Petruchio courts Katherina through a contest of authority, performance, and humiliation in an early sound Shakespeare adaptation.
German schoolboys enlist with patriotic excitement and encounter a trench war that steadily dismantles every promised meaning.
Logging in Maine is followed from forest work through transport and milling towards the shipment of finished lumber.
A self-made young man plans to stop working while he is still young, alarming the wealthy family of the woman he intends to marry.
A cabaret singer in Morocco is drawn to a Foreign Legion soldier even as a wealthy admirer offers the security he cannot provide.
A scout leads a vast wagon train west while pursuing the men responsible for a friend’s murder.
A strict schoolteacher follows his pupils into a nightclub and becomes obsessed with the performer he intended to discipline them for watching.
A First World War squadron commander must keep sending inexperienced pilots into combat while the officers beneath him mistake responsibility for indifference.
Wrongly blamed for crimes after a shooting in self-defence, Buck Duane joins the Texas Rangers to clear his name and win Mary Aldridge’s trust.
Three former sideshow performers operate a criminal scheme through a false domestic identity, disguise, and divided loyalty.
A cavalry setting becomes the stage for romantic deception, honour, and the pressure placed on a woman whose choices are judged unequally.
A restless newspaper editor and his family move through decades of Oklahoma settlement, expansion, politics, and repeated departure.
After an underground disaster, German miners cross the border to rescue French workers despite the political divisions above them.
Made at night on Universal’s sets, George Melford’s Spanish-language production gives Dracula a distinct rhythm, cast, and visual life.
A boy robbed on his journey to Berlin recruits a fast-growing group of city children to follow the thief and recover the money.
A travelling cowboy enters a compact Western of danger, assistance, and conflict built around Tom Tyler’s direct screen presence.
Five men from different backgrounds shelter between the front lines of the First World War; only one understands all their languages.
Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and their friends enter a loose adventure drawn from Mark Twain but reshaped around child-star comedy.
A singer tries to protect her sister from a charming man whose previous relationship has already exposed the limits of his honesty.
A child-killer hunted by the whole underworld. Electric.
Four stowaways loose on an ocean liner evade authority, invade other people’s roles, and turn a gangster plot into organised interruption.
A factory worker leaves her small town for New York, becomes the companion of a wealthy lawyer, and confronts the social limits placed on their relationship.
A privileged man confronts the damage caused by an earlier relationship when the woman he abandoned appears before a court as a defendant.
A mysterious gunman enters a frontier conflict shaped by persecution, concealed identity, loyalty, and the pressure placed on an independent woman.
Two young islanders flee after the woman is declared sacred and forbidden, but colonial money and religious authority follow their escape.
A washed-up boxer tries to remain a hero to his young son while gambling, alcohol, and an unstable life make love an insufficient plan.
Debt, secrecy, and coercion tighten around a married woman after private risk-taking gives a predatory man power over her.
A long-running feud over land and water draws a younger generation into divided loyalties, business rivalry, and romance.
A Chicago street boy turns Prohibition crime into a career whose speed leaves loyalty and family behind.
Criminal celebrity Mackie Messer marries Polly Peachum and provokes her father into mobilising London’s thieves, beggars, and police against him.
An American ambulance driver and a British nurse fall in love in wartime Italy, where military duty and institutional interference repeatedly separate them.
Still deciding? Ask Momo.
Read a film closely
Character companions, film comparisons and a closer look at particular scenes.
- Seven Samurai
Who are the seven samurai?
Names, actors and roles to keep the seven apart.
- The Wages of Fear
The original, Sorcerer, or the remake?
Three films compared before you choose.
- Breathless
What disappears in a jump cut?
A diagram of the time Godard leaves out.
- Wild Strawberries
What do the dreams mean?
Trace the clocks, mirror and final scene.
After watching · Spoilers - Persona
Why hear the same speech twice?
Follow who speaks and whose face fills the frame.
After watching · Spoilers - Bicycle Thieves
What happens at the end?
The final encounter, seen through father and son.
After watching · Spoilers