Films
Read about the filmsFind a film by title, director, mood or the time you have.
A widowed farmer makes a list of suitable women to marry, overlooking the person who understands both him and his household best.
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.
After killing a man during an assault, a young woman finds guilt, police procedure, and blackmail closing around her.
A poor young woman forms a bond with a disabled war veteran whose isolated farm offers both refuge and a test of independence.
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.
Two lifelong friends love the same woman on the Isle of Man, and a promise made before one man leaves creates a private tragedy on his return.
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.
An English soldier loses his memory of Lola, the dancer he loved in Paris. Their later reunion brings his wartime promise into conflict with his marriage.
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 Dublin family facing poverty believes an inheritance will rescue them, while political violence and self-deception close in.
A cabaret singer in Morocco is drawn to a Foreign Legion soldier even as a wealthy admirer offers the security he cannot provide.
A juror who helped convict an actress begins to doubt the verdict and privately investigates the theatrical world around the crime.
A scout leads a vast wagon train west while pursuing the men responsible for a friend’s murder.
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.
Made at night on Universal’s sets, George Melford’s Spanish-language production gives Dracula a distinct rhythm, cast, and visual life.
A travelling cowboy enters a compact Western of danger, assistance, and conflict built around Tom Tyler’s direct screen presence.
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.
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 bored married couple inherit money, leave suburban routine for a world cruise, and discover that escape magnifies rather than solves their dissatisfaction.
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.
An American ambulance driver and a British nurse fall in love in wartime Italy, where military duty and institutional interference repeatedly separate them.
A bank president who lends on character rather than collateral faces robbery, panic, and a run that tests whether public trust can move faster than fear.
A woman accepts a life kept out of public view as the long-term lover of a wealthy married man.
A circus community closes ranks after a trapeze artist’s scheme against a performer with a substantial inheritance.
Guests and workers cross inside a Berlin hotel where money, loneliness, performance, and chance briefly share a lobby.
A young man enters a struggle over a Western ranch, where land, water, loyalty, and a growing romance are threatened by organised violence.
A veteran’s search for work leads to wrongful implication in a robbery, a brutal chain gang, escape, and a life made increasingly impossible by the system pursuing him.
A socialite and a pilot fall in love, while the money behind his invention complicates their freedom to choose each other.
A Parisian tailor follows an unpaid bill into an aristocratic household and lets a borrowed identity become a musical romance.
A vacant house, a corpse, a missing necklace, and several uncertain identities lead into a chase that refuses to remain indoors.
On a remote rubber plantation, a manager’s attraction to two very different women exposes the emotional and colonial assumptions sustaining his authority.
A gangster climbs through a city with such speed that every victory already looks like a warning.
A train journey through civil conflict reunites a notorious courtesan with the British officer who once loved her.
Two elegant thieves discover that love can be harder to manage than a perfect robbery.
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