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Films from 1929 — 20 films

Year: 1929Clear filters
A woman at a dressing-room mirror looks toward a distant stage curtain.
Applause
1929 · Rouben Mamoulian82 min · Musical drama

An ageing burlesque performer tries to keep her convent-raised daughter away from the backstage life that has consumed her.

BleakBeautifulEasy
Original illustration: Big Business lettering above a paper Christmas tree, a doorstep and a vintage car, with Momo holding an evergreen branch.
Big Business
1929 · James W. Horne, Leo McCarey19 min · Comedy

Two Christmas-tree salesmen and one resistant customer escalate a failed doorstep sale into the systematic destruction of property.

FunnyTenseEasy
Original illustration: A cut-paper piano keyboard becomes a staircase beside a trumpet, dancing shoes and large Black and Tan lettering.
Black and Tan
1929 · Dudley Murphy19 min · Musical drama

A struggling pianist and his dancer partner face poverty, illness, and the cost of accepting work that could separate them.

BeautifulBleakEasy
Original illustration: Enormous black Blackmail lettering on cream paper above an easel and a long red shadow.
Blackmail
1929 · Alfred Hitchcock85 min · Crime

After killing a man during an assault, a young woman finds guilt, police procedure, and blackmail closing around her.

TenseMysteryEasy
Two eighteenth-century sleeves and hands pass a sealed note around lively Figaro lettering.
Figaro
1929 · Gaston RavelHistorical comedy

Beaumarchais’s Figaro moves through a late-silent adaptation drawing on The Marriage of Figaro and material from the surrounding plays.

FunnyRomanticModerate
A man's profile is assembled from torn blue, rust-coloured and monochrome paper strips, with buildings below.
Fragment of an Empire
1929 · Fridrikh Ermler110 min · Political drama

A soldier with amnesia gradually recovers memories and returns to a society transformed by revolution.

StrangeBleakPatient
Two pairs of hands hold wooden pieces together on a sunlit workbench.
Lucky Star
1929 · Frank Borzage85 min · Romantic drama

A poor young woman forms a bond with a disabled war veteran whose isolated farm offers both refuge and a test of independence.

RomanticGentleEasy
Man with a Movie Camera — Momo operates a movie camera amid constructivist paper shapes, film strips and city trams.
Man with a Movie Camera
1929 · Dziga Vertov67 min · Documentary

A city wakes, works, plays, and becomes cinema while the camera reveals its own tricks.

BeautifulFunnyModerate
Pandora's Box — A glove and camellia rest beside an enigmatic dressing-room mirror.
Pandora's Box
1929 · G. W. Pabst132 min · Drama

Lulu moves through desire, scandal, and social punishment with a presence the film cannot contain.

RomanticBleakModerate
Momo leans against a large car wheel beneath cream title lettering on sky blue.
Perfect Day
1929 · James Parrott19 min · Slapstick comedy

A family outing repeatedly fails to begin as a car, neighbours, weather, and irritation dismantle the promise of a perfect day.

FunnyGentleEasy
A working woman's bowed profile sits beneath an immense layered bundle of bureaucratic papers.
The Case of Lena Smith
1929 · Josef von SternbergDrama

A Hungarian servant’s attempt to retain her child is crushed by class power, bureaucracy, and the authority of a wealthy family.

A heavy chain with an open link lies across rough stone and dark green velvet.
The Count of Monte Cristo
1929 · Henri Fescourt223 min · Adventure drama

Edmond Dantès’s imprisonment, escape, reinvention, and revenge unfold across an unusually expansive silent adaptation of Dumas.

TenseRomanticPatient
Four white feathers lie on a pale envelope above a folded dark coat.
The Four Feathers
1929 · Merian C. Cooper, Lothar Mendes, Ernest B. Schoedsack80 min · Adventure drama

A British officer who resigns before a military campaign receives four white feathers and travels to Sudan to prove his courage in disguise.

TenseBeautifulModerate
Dark purple title lettering fans out between white rays on a peach background.
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
1929 · Charles Reisner113 min · Musical revue

MGM stars appear in a succession of songs, comedy sketches, dances, and novelty acts designed to display the studio’s arrival in sound.

FunnyBeautifulModerate
Dark ink spreads across the creases and handwriting of a folded letter.
The Letter
1929 · Jean de Limur62 min · Drama

A woman who killed her lover claims self-defence, until a letter threatens the account on which her marriage and trial depend.

TenseBleakEasy
Three figures stand apart at a pale seawall, looking in different directions.
The Manxman
1929 · Alfred Hitchcock100 min · Romantic drama

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.

RomanticBleakEasy
Two hands wrap around a cold hand in a close view.
The River
1929 · Frank Borzage55 min · Romantic drama

A young man tending an isolated river property meets a woman bound to an absent lover, and winter turns their encounter into dependence.

RomanticBleakPatient
Black silhouettes of a woman and a man stand with folded arms against coral pink.
The Taming of the Shrew
1929 · Sam Taylor, H. Bruce Humberstone63 min · Romantic comedy

Petruchio courts Katherina through a contest of authority, performance, and humiliation in an early sound Shakespeare adaptation.

FunnyTenseEasy
Un Chien Andalou: Paper ants fall from a glove above a bicycle wheel, moon and surreal stairways.
Un Chien Andalou
1929 · Luis Buñuel16 min · Experimental

Sixteen minutes of dream logic sever cause from effect and make familiar objects suddenly unsafe.

StrangeBleakPatient
Two cropped women's profiles face each other across a wide pale gap.
Woman to Woman
1929 · Victor Saville90 min · Drama

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.

RomanticBleakModerate

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