Silent film era: Media
Videos
Learn about the movie The Great Train Robbery by watching it.
Video: Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Washington, D.C.
“This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show.”
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Hiss. Pop. Slurp. Hear that? That's Foley.
Video: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Images
(From left) Zasu Pitts, Gibson Gowland, and Hughie Mack in the silent film Greed...
From a private collection
W.K.L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison, designed the Kinetograph,...
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Advertisement for the Kinetoscope, a device that could show movies and stereopticon...
© Jay Paull—Archive Photos/Getty Images
Image from the film Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902; A Trip to the Moon),...
© 1902 Star Film
Image from the film Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902; A Trip to the Moon),...
Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York
A scene from the movie The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed by Edwin...
From a private collection
Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968) was a pioneer of the French and American film industries.
The History Collection/Alamy
A scene from the movie Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912; also called...
© 1912 Paramount Pictures
A scene from the film The Birth of a Nation (1915), directed by D.W. Griffith.
David W. Griffith Corporation
The temple of Babylon sequence from Intolerance (1916), directed by D.W....
Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York
A still from Robert Wiene's classic Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari...
From a private collection
Werner Krauss in the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert...
Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
A scene from the film Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang.
From a private collection
Peter Lorre in M (1931), a film directed by Fritz Lang.
© Paramount Pictures Corporation; photograph, the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
A scene from the ending montage of Strike (1925), directed by Sergei Eisenstein.
Photographs from David Cook and the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
The descent of the baby carriage during “The Odessa Steps” sequence from Battleship...
Courtesy of the Rosa Madell Film Library; photograph from the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
A scene from “The Odessa Steps” sequence in the film Battleship Potemkin...
Goskino/photograph, the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops appeared in his silent film comedies from 1914 to the...
Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City
Charlie Chaplin (left) and Harry Myers (center) in the film City Lights...
© 1931 United Artists Corporation; photograph from a private collection
Buster Keaton and Marion Mack in The General (1927), a film directed by...
© 1927 United Artists Corporation
Movie poster for The Ten Commandments (1923), directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
From a private collection
De Forest Phonofilm crew on the grounds of the White House, Washington, D.C., 1924.
National Photo Company Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File no. LC-DIG-npcc-11945)
Billboard for the film Don Juan (1926), starring John Barrymore.
Property of AT&T Archives. Reprinted with permission of AT&T
Al Jolson and Eugenie Besserer in the movie The Jazz Singer (1927), directed...
© Warner Brothers, Inc.
