My Favorite Films of the 1920s
by AlanSwann | created - 17 Dec 2015 | updated - 12 Jan 2016 | Public- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Passed | 114 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1431, Jeanne d'Arc is placed on trial on charges of heresy. The ecclesiastical jurists attempt to force Jeanne to recant her claims of holy visions.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz
Votes: 60,591 | Gross: $0.02M
2. The Gold Rush (1925)
Passed | 95 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
A prospector goes to the Klondike during the 1890s gold rush in hopes of making his fortune, and is smitten with a girl he sees in a dance hall.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman
Votes: 118,536 | Gross: $5.45M
3. Sunrise (1927)
Passed | 94 min | Drama, Romance
A sophisticated city woman seduces a farmer and convinces him to murder his wife and join her in the city, but he ends up rekindling his romance with his wife when he changes his mind at the last moment.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing
Votes: 53,810 | Gross: $0.54M
4. The Kid (1921)
Passed | 68 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
The Tramp cares for an abandoned child, but events put their relationship in jeopardy.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan, Carl Miller
Votes: 134,675 | Gross: $5.45M
5. The Circus (1928)
Passed | 72 min | Comedy, Family, Romance
The Tramp finds work and the girl of his dreams at a circus.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Al Ernest Garcia, Harry Crocker
Votes: 36,008
6. Safety Last! (1923)
Not Rated | 74 min | Action, Comedy, Thriller
A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job. As soon as he makes it big his sweetheart will join him and marry him. His enthusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting adventures.
Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young
Votes: 22,885 | Gross: $1.36M
7. The General (1926)
Passed | 78 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
After being rejected by the Confederate military, not realizing it was due to his crucial civilian role, an engineer must single-handedly recapture his beloved locomotive after it is seized by Union spies and return it through enemy lines.
Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley
Votes: 98,056 | Gross: $1.03M
8. The Freshman (1925)
Not Rated | 77 min | Comedy, Family, Romance
A nerdy college student will do anything to become popular on campus.
Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict, James H. Anderson
Votes: 6,061 | Gross: $0.00M
9. The Cameraman (1928)
Passed | 76 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
Hopelessly in love with a woman working at MGM Studios, a clumsy man attempts to become a motion-picture cameraman to be close to the object of his desire.
Directors: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracey
Votes: 13,160
10. The Last Command (1928)
Not Rated | 88 min | Drama, History, Romance
A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.
Director: Josef von Sternberg | Stars: Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, William Powell, Jack Raymond
Votes: 4,508
11. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Not Rated | 66 min | Drama, History, Thriller
In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskiy, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Ivan Bobrov
Votes: 61,402 | Gross: $0.05M
12. The Crowd (1928)
Not Rated | 98 min | Drama, Romance
The life of a man and woman together in a large, impersonal metropolis through their hopes, struggles, and downfalls.
Director: King Vidor | Stars: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark
Votes: 9,156
13. Wings (1927)
PG-13 | 144 min | Drama, Romance, War
Two young men, one rich, one middle class, who are in love with the same woman, become fighter pilots in World War I.
Directors: William A. Wellman, Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast | Stars: Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen, Jobyna Ralston
Votes: 14,519 | Gross: $6.59M
14. The Docks of New York (1928)
Not Rated | 76 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.
Director: Josef von Sternberg | Stars: George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova, Clyde Cook
Votes: 5,025
15. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Hypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders.
Director: Robert Wiene | Stars: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
Votes: 69,991
16. Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 153 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Votes: 185,325 | Gross: $1.24M
17. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
Not Rated | 143 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A Jewish prince seeks to find his family and revenge himself upon his childhood friend who had him wrongly imprisoned.
Directors: Fred Niblo, Charles Brabin, Christy Cabanne, J.J. Cohn, Rex Ingram | Stars: Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, Betty Bronson
Votes: 7,972 | Gross: $12.45M
18. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
Passed | 150 min | Drama, Romance, War
An extended family split up in France and Germany find themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield during World War I.
Director: Rex Ingram | Stars: Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, Pomeroy Cannon, Josef Swickard
Votes: 3,545 | Gross: $9.20M
19. The Ten Commandments (1923)
Passed | 136 min | Biography, Drama, History
After hearing the story of Moses, the sons of a devout Christian mother go their own ways, and the atheist brother's breaking of the Ten Commandments leads to tragedy.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille | Stars: Theodore Roberts, Charles de Rochefort, Estelle Taylor, Julia Faye
Votes: 2,654 | Gross: $5.36M
20. The King of Kings (1927)
Not Rated | 160 min | Biography, Drama, Family
Jesus Christ faces religious and political oppression during his ministry and in the days before his death and resurrection.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille | Stars: H.B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence, Joseph Schildkraut
Votes: 2,410 | Gross: $1.77M
21. Underworld (1927)
Not Rated | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.
Directors: Josef von Sternberg, Arthur Rosson | Stars: George Bancroft, Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, Fred Kohler
Votes: 3,472 | Gross: $1.64M
22. The Big Parade (1925)
Not Rated | 151 min | Drama, Romance, War
A young American soldier witnesses the horrors of the Great War.
Directors: King Vidor, George W. Hill | Stars: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Claire McDowell
Votes: 7,266 | Gross: $11.00M
23. Pandora's Box (1929)
Not Rated | 109 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst | Stars: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz
Votes: 11,846 | Gross: $0.01M
24. Speedy (1928)
Passed | 85 min | Action, Comedy, Family
Harold "Speedy" Swift, a fan of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, saves from extinction the city's last horse-drawn trolley, operated by his girlfriend's grandfather.
Director: Ted Wilde | Stars: Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Bert Woodruff, Babe Ruth
Votes: 4,262
25. The Cocoanuts (1929)
Passed | 96 min | Comedy, Musical, Romance
During the Florida land boom, The Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land, thwart a jewel robbery, and generally act like themselves.
Directors: Robert Florey, Joseph Santley | Stars: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx
Votes: 8,191 | Gross: $3.92M
26. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Not Rated | 155 min | Adventure, Family, Fantasy
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher
Votes: 6,968 | Gross: $4.36M
27. The Iron Horse (1924)
Passed | 150 min | Drama, History, Romance
After witnessing the murder of his father by a renegade as a boy, the grown-up Brandon helps to realize his father's dream of a transcontinental railway.
Director: John Ford | Stars: George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull, Cyril Chadwick
Votes: 2,444 | Gross: $2.06M
28. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Passed | 93 min | Horror
A mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer.
Directors: Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle, Edward Sedgwick | Stars: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe
Votes: 20,081 | Gross: $3.75M
29. Faust (1926)
Not Rated | 107 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
The demon Mephisto wagers with God that he can corrupt a mortal man's soul.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Frida Richard
Votes: 16,608
30. Noah's Ark (1928)
Passed | 135 min | Drama, War
The Biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood, with a parallel story of soldiers in the First World War.
Directors: Michael Curtiz, Darryl F. Zanuck | Stars: Dolores Costello, George O'Brien, Noah Beery, Louise Fazenda
Votes: 917 | Gross: $1.37M
31. The Ace of Hearts (1921)
Passed | 75 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A romantic rivalry among members of a secret society becomes even tenser when one of the men is assigned to carry out an assassination.
Director: Wallace Worsley | Stars: Leatrice Joy, John Bowers, Lon Chaney, Hardee Kirkland
Votes: 1,325
32. Way Down East (1920)
Passed | 145 min | Drama, Romance
A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Mrs. David Landau, Lowell Sherman
Votes: 5,892 | Gross: $4.50M
33. Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Not Rated | 150 min | Drama, History, Romance
Two orphaned sisters are caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, encountering misery and love along the way.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee
Votes: 5,474 | Gross: $0.79M
34. 7th Heaven (1927)
110 min | Drama, Romance
A street cleaner saves a young woman's life, and the pair slowly fall in love until war intervenes.
Director: Frank Borzage | Stars: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, Albert Gran
Votes: 4,156 | Gross: $3.92M
35. What Price Glory (1926)
116 min | Comedy, Drama, War
U.S. Marine sergeants Quirt and Flagg are inveterate romantic rivals on peacetime assignments in China and the Philippines. In 1917, W.W. I brings them to France, where Flagg, now a captain... See full summary »
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Dolores Del Río, William V. Mong
Votes: 478 | Gross: $0.70M
Tell Your Friends