1910s & 1920s

  • Die Nibelungen (1924)

    Fritz Lang’s majestic fable of ambition, betrayal, and vengeance stands as a monumental achievement of silent filmmaking in Die Nibelungen, lifting mythical kings and battles out of Germanic legend, and giving them operatic, larger-than-life form on the cinema screen.

  • The Last Laugh (1924)

    It is a cruel reversal of fortune which sees a proud hotel doorman demoted to washroom attendant in The Last Laugh, and F.W. Murnau’s liberated camerawork evocatively traces his tragic descent into deep humiliation, dwelling in the shame and indignity that comes with an earth-shattering challenge to one’s entire identity.

  • The Wind (1928)

    Through the violent hurricanes which ravage the Texan wastelands in The Wind, Victor Sjöström delivers a haunting metaphor for life’s mercurial turbulence, plunging one helpless ingénue into a howling, elemental chaos which harshly erodes our sanity.

  • October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)

    Rarely has history been instilled with as much lively effervescence as it is in October: Ten Days That Shook the World, as Sergei Eisenstein immortalises that jolt of radical exhilaration once felt in the Russian Revolution through the eloquent arrangement of visual symbols, using statues, weapons, and religious icons to recount this tale of Bolshevik…

  • Mother (1926)

    The radicalisation of a long-suffering family matriarch in Mother channels her fierce devotion towards the people of Russia, casting her as a revolutionary icon whose anguish and resilience is felt deeply in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s eloquent, invigorating montages.

  • Battleship Potemkin (1925)

    Fervent expressions of agony, apprehension, and patriotic joy are made visceral in Battleship Potemkin’s recount of a historic naval mutiny, resulting from Sergei Eisenstein’s passionate experimentations in cinematic montage, and reaching a peak of visual, kinetic innovation that has never been surpassed.

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