1910s & 1920s

If there is anything that will save Buster Keaton’s stone-faced romantic from the violent family feud in Our Hospitality, then it is the amusing code of honour that ironically grants him sanctuary in the home of those who wish to kill him most, setting up a series of hilarious misadventures that erupt into bold, death-defying…

In the delicate hands of G.W. Pabst, this fable of female scapegoating develops beguiling nuances in its thoughtful characterisations, unequivocally rejecting clear-cut labels of vamps and virgins baked into the history of mythological storytelling, yet never failing to draw us deeper into Louise Brooks’ dazzling feminine thrall.

Fritz Lang distils the fearful mistrust of authority in Weimar Germany down to a single criminal mastermind in Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, painting out an expressionistic world under his hypnotic control with dark, jagged strokes, and setting the proto-noir standard of elaborately plotted crime narratives.

With his staggering aerial sequences and daring set pieces, William A. Wellman turns magnificent feats of engineering into vehicles for exhilarating storytelling in Wings, taking a birds-eye perspective of wartime conflicts and innovation that heightens both as displays of monumental human ambition.

Broken Blossoms may be a simple, tragic fable of ill-fated lovers, though such eloquent visual poetry refreshes its archetypes through crisp close-ups and propulsive editing, inviting the sort of intimacy that D.W. Griffith alone realised in these early years of cinema was uniquely suited to this young, nascent artform.