Tully Marshall as a morphine-addicted artist in The Devil's Needle (1916)2wk ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Happy New Year, the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons are finally in the public domain4mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton gets rejected by a hatcheck girl without a word being spoken in Seven Chances (1925)6yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Theda Bara was one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the 1910s, but little of her work is available to watch today. Of the 38 films she starred in between 1915 and 1919, 36 have been lost or exist only in small fragments2mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In 1922, Paramount Pictures released 90 feature films. Last year, all the Hollywood studios combined released 88 films to cinemas3mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
As Seen Through a Telescope, in which a man uses his telescope to look at a woman's ankle, feels like a parody of what people think movies were like in 19003mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Here's Charlie Chaplin somehow carrying 11 chairs at once in 'Behind the Screen' (1916)2yr ⋅ Quantum_Key ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Some audience members reportedly fainted when Lon Chaney's mask was removed in The Phantom of the Opera (1925)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
A century ago, Oscar Micheaux made Within Our Gates (1920), a movie about the violence and terror experienced by black people in America. Today it's the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
College Chums (1907) found a very creative way of depicting a phone conversation4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The actor seen here being rescued by Teddy the Wonder Dog in Down on the Farm (1920) is still alive at the age of 102, making him the oldest living actor from the American silent film era4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Between 1918 and 1920 a deadly influenza pandemic was killing millions of people, but you wouldn't know it from watching movies from that time period. This scene from Daddy-Long-Legs (1919) is a rare exception. Note how the mask-wearing crowd scatters when Mary Pickford sneezes4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Some day someone will write a story demanding a real Chinese girl — then perhaps I’ll have my chance. Anna May Wong in an interview with Screenland magazine in 1928, lamenting the limited roles available to her in Hollywood1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
By the age of five, Baby Peggy was one of the highest paid actors in 1920s Hollywood, with a $1.5 million contract with Universal. Almost all that money would be gone before her 18th birthday, squandered by her free-spending parents1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Rear projection wasn't an option yet, so to film the aerial scenes in Wings (1927) the actors learned how to fly their planes2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
French director Raymond Bernard made pioneering use of a handheld camera in his historical epic Le Miracle des loups (1924)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
A fun thing about silent comedies is that sometimes a dog will wander into a shot, and you have no way of knowing if that was an intentional choice by the director or if the dog just happened to be there1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton's The Haunted House was released 100 years ago today, on February 10, 19213yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton's My Wife's Relations was released 100 years ago today, on May 18, 19222yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In the 1920s, Olive Borden was a Hollywood star, earning the equivalent of over $1 million a year. When she died in 1947 at the age of 41 her only possession was a signed photo of herself1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In 1910, Bebe Daniels played Dorothy in the earliest surviving film version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Alice's Egg Plant is a Walt Disney cartoon from 1925 where a communist chicken encourages hens to go on strike for better working conditions1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Cecil B. DeMille's original silent version of The Ten Commandments premiered 100 years ago today. It went on to be one of the biggest hits of the 1920s5mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Between the 1890s and the 1930s, staged train crashes were a popular attraction throughout the United States. Tens of thousands of people would gather to watch two old trains be smashed into each other2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
A shot from near the start of Metropolis (1927) and another from near the end2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Douglas Fairbanks had small trampolines placed inside the pots for this scene in The Thief of Bagdad (1924)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
A lot of early westerns were actually filmed in New Jersey. Painted backdrops were sometimes used to provide the scenery. (The House of Cards 1909)3mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Does anyone recognize the movie advertised on the posters in the photos? It is 1915 and after.2mo ⋅ Bkseneca ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton in Three Ages (1923)/Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones, season 2, episode 28 The Rock Vegas Story (1962)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The famous Jesus in a gas mask scene from Fridrikh Ermler's silent drama Fragment of an Empire (1929) was removed from some versions of the film by censors4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Clarence Brooks and Anita Thompson in By Right of Birth (1921), a film produced by the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first African-American-owned film production company. Only a fragment of this film survives4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Metropolis (1927) is now in the public domain in the United States. (In the European Union it will remain under copyright until 2046)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Filming wasn't allowed at the coronation of Edward VII in 1902, so Georges Melies staged his own version for a short film, which was released on the same day as the actual ceremony1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Cinematography pioneer Billy Bitzer filmed night scenes for Intolerance (1916) by using a large number of magnesium flares to light the sets1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
To give this battle scene in Joan the Woman (1916) added realism, Cecil B. DeMille offered a bonus to the extras playing the English army if they captured Joan of Arc, and a bonus to the extras playing the French if they prevented it1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Eight years before The Gold Rush, Roscoe Arbuckle did his own version of a roll dance in The Rough House (1917)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In Alice's Egg Plant (1925), the boss the chickens go on strike against is a non-animated girl (played by future Academy Award nominee Anne Shirley)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Eleven P.M. (1928) is the only surviving movie made by Black American filmmaker Richard Maurice. It's also a rare example of a silent film that was shot in Detroit4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Renee Falconetti delivered what is considered one of cinema's greatest performances in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and then never appeared in another movie1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery was released 120 years ago this month, in December of 19034mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Peg Leg Pete kills an unnamed, drunken rodent in Alice's Tin Pony (1925). Directed by Walt Disney1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Douglas Fairbanks's The Black Pirate (1926) was one of the first movies shot entirely in Technicolor4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Charlie Chaplin showing Albert Austin how to eat beans in 'The Immigrant' (1917)2yr ⋅ Quantum_Key ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton trying to get into a family photo. My Wife's Relations (1922)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
To disguise a nervous facial tic, Greta Garbo's close-ups in The Joyless Street (1925) were filmed in slow motion4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Joan of Arc (1900) was larger in scale than any movie Georges Melies had made previously. It was advertised as showing almost 500 people in a parade scene, an effect achieved by having the same group of extras walk repeatedly across the set4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
This gag might look a bit familiar. Lige Conley in Fast And Furious (1924)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
John Ford made sure this baby's mother was off set when this scene in 3 Bad Men (1926) was filmed2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Charlie Chaplin could get a lot of comedy out of sliding door. (The Adventurer 1917)7yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
This is what the Universal Pictures logo looked like 100 years ago1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
One extra was killed and five others were injured when a cannon accidentally exploded during the filming of a naval battle scene for Old Ironsides (1926)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In 1888, Louis Le Prince filmed what is widely considered to be the earliest known motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene. Two years later he vanished after boarding a train to Paris and was never seen again2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
It took Buster Keaton three days of filming to get this gag in The Boat (1921) to work the way he wanted. Despite adding weight to the boat and rigging it to break apart, the boat wouldn't sink as quickly as he wanted, so eventually it was pulled under using a rope1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
With a running time exceeding an hour, The Story of the Kelly Gang was the longest narrative film ever made when it was released in Australia in 1906. Today only about 17 minutes of the film are known to survive4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
1917's Namakura Gatana (or The Dull Sword) by Jun'ichi Kouchi is the earliest surviving example of a Japanese animated film4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Billy Bevan accidentally vacuums up a dog in Wall Street Blues (1924)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is a character created by Walt Disney for Universal Pictures. When Disney lost control of the character in 1928, Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement (Oh What a Knight 1928)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released 100 years ago today, on February 26, 19204yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton in The Bell Boy, which was released 100 years ago today, on March 18, 1918. Still a brilliant gag a century later6yr ⋅ mchoul ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The first films documented real events, like the arrival of a train. L'Arroseur Arrose (1895) is the earliest known example of a film that portrays a fictional story1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Mary Pickford trying to decide if she should take a piece of pie in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The ending of the first Felix the Cat cartoon is pretty dark. (Feline Follies 1919)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The Garage was released 100 years ago today, on January 11, 1920. It was the last movie Buster Keaton made with Roscoe Arbuckle before striking out on his own4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The World’s First Lady Mayor (1900) is New Zealand’s second oldest surviving film. It shows Elizabeth Yates, who was elected mayor of Onehunga in 1893, recreating a speech she gave1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Harold Lloyd gets engrossed in Jobyna Ralston's crossword in The Freshman (1925)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
This is Pepper. In 1912 she was born at Keystone Studios, where, over the next 16 years, she appeared in dozens of films, including Down on the Farm (1920)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Within Our Gates, director Oscar Micheaux's response to the racist message of The Birth of a Nation, was released 100 years ago today. It is the earliest surviving film made by an African-American director4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Charlie Chaplin working on an assembly line in Modern Times (1936)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton said this gag from Hard Luck (1921) got some of the biggest laughs of his career. For years the ending was believed missing before being rediscovered in a Russian archive print7yr ⋅ silentmoviegifs ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Cinematographer Karl Struss developed a technique using a colour filter to achieve this effect in Ben-Hur (1925). When the filter was adjusted, the women's leper makeup was no longer visible on film2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
I'm Insured (1916) is a cartoon about a guy attempting to commit insurance fraud, with animation by Harry Palmer4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Kathryn Boyd in The Flying Ace (1926), which is the only surviving film from the Florida-based Norman Studios, which made silent films with all African-American casts4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The films of Larry Semon have some of the best stunts you'll see in any silent comedy, like this bit from The Show (1922)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The alley where Buster Keaton filmed this scene from Cops (1922) still exists in Los Angeles3yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Lorna Doone was released 100 years ago today, on Oct. 1, 1922. It was directed by Maurice Tourneur1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
How Buster Keaton made it look like he was hanging off a cliff in Our Hospitality (1923)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
In the background of this shot from Wall Street Blues (1924), it looks like motorists have pulled off to the side of the road to watch the stunt being filmed1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
A scene from the French historical drama The Miracle of the Wolves (1924) where a bunch of extras fight with wolves1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore, was released 100 years ago today. It was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1920, grossing more than $1 million4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton in One Week (1920) and Mickey Mouse in Building a Building (1933)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The Flapper, starring Olive Thomas, was released 100 years ago today on May 10, 1920. It is credited with helping to introduce the concept of the flapper into American popular culture4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
An interesting thing about silent comedies is that offer a window into a vanished world. Like this sidewalk vendor who makes and sells business cards in the Charley Chase short A Ten-Minute Egg (1924)1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
John Barrymore and Camilla Horn in Eternal Love (1929), the final silent movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and the final silent role for Barrymore. It was believed to be a lost film until a print was found in the film collection of Mary Pickford1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
At one point during the filming of Intolerance (1916), the payroll for extras was reported to have reached $12,000 a day. Many of the extras were recruited from L.A.'s Skid Row and reportedly were paid $2 a day2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Keaton’s face ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny; he improved matters by topping it off with a deadly horizontal hat, as flat and thin as a phonograph record: film critic and screenwriter James Agee4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Greta Garbo and Nils Asther in Wild Orchids (1929). Filmed by William Daniels, who was known as Garbo's personal cinematographer1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Lois Weber's Shoes (1916) tells the story of a young shopgirl whose low wages prevent her from replacing her worn-out footwear4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Creepy cemetery by the sea - one of my favorite shots in Nosferatu4yr ⋅ sheikah_wolf ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Brigitte Helm was only 18 when she was cast in Metropolis (1927), her first film role3yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
These few brief seconds are all that remain of The Undying Flame (1917), directed by Maurice Tourneur and starring Olga Petrova. This fragment only survived by being included in a compilation film celebrating the first 20 years of Paramount Pictures4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901), the earliest surviving screen adaptation of A Christmas Carol1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The last movie Buster Keaton ever made was The Scribe (1966), a Canadian industrial safety short4yr ⋅ mchoul ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
One hundred years ago today, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared together on a cinema screen for the first time when The Lucky Dog was released on Dec. 1, 19212yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The Harold Lloyd short High and Dizzy was released 100 years ago today, on July 11, 19204yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Little Red Riding Hood, starring Mary Pickford, was released 110 years ago this week2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
The British science-fiction film High Treason (1929) envisioned people using video phones in the 1940s4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Dragnet Girl (1933), Japanese silent gangster film directed by Yasujiro Ozu1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Here's a piece of anti-union propaganda produced by the Ford Motor Company in 1919, depicting the Industrial Workers of the World union as a Bolshevik rat3yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923), one of the most famous images in silent comedy2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
William McKinley was the first U.S. president to appear in a motion picture. This footage is from Sept. 5, 1901, the day before he was fatally shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York3yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Oliver Hardy played the Tin Man in the 1925 silent movie version of The Wizard of Oz6mo ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Some silent comedians might have just cut to a shot of a dummy tumbling down the hill, but that wasn't how Buster Keaton rolled (Seven Chances 1925)4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Alfred Hitchcock achieved this shot in Champagne (1928) by using an over-sized glass with a lens placed in the bottom4yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Cyrano de Bergerac (1925) was coloured using the Pathe Stencil Color process, which delayed its release by three years because the process took so long to complete1yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
At the first Academy Awards, there was no Best Picture category. Instead there was Outstanding Picture, won by Wings, and Best Unique and Artistic Picture, won by Sunrise2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Lillian Gish recreates her famous smile gesture from Broken Blossoms (1919)2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Nosferatu (1922) established the convention of vampires dying from exposure to sunlight. In the novel Dracula, which Nosferatu was based on, sunlight was only an irritant to vampires2yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Star Wars films are basically silent movies. The music has a very large role in carrying the story, more than it would in a normal movie. George Lucas3yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Within weeks of the Titanic sinking in April of 1912, movies were already being made about it. These scenes are from a German film called In Nacht und Eis, which began production in May and was released in August of 19124yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Buster Keaton's The Goat was released 100 years ago today, on May 18, 19213yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
Wings (1927), directed by William Wellman, won the first Academy Award for Best Picture6yr ⋅ Auir2blaze ⋅ r/silentmoviegifs
