Pathé Exchange

A 1929 American pre-Code drama directed by Howard Higgin, starring William Boyd and Carole Lombard in her feature-length talkie debut. A busload of passengers stranded in a snowstorm takes refuge in an abandoned church, where they encounter a mysterious man (Boyd) who may be on the run from the law. Among the passengers is Billie Davis (Lombard, billed as "Carol Lombard"), a young woman being transported by a detective. As the group waits out the storm, tensions rise and relationships develop between the stranded travelers. The film was produced by Pathé Exchange and released in both sound and silent versions during the transition to talkies.

Drama

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy directed by Edward H. Griffith, starring Ann Harding, Mary Astor, and Edward Everett Horton. Wealthy Julia Seton (Astor) meets struggling young lawyer Johnny Case at Lake Placid and brings him home to meet her family as her future husband. But Johnny is a free spirit who wants to make enough money to retire early and enjoy life — a plan that horrifies Julia's conservative father. Julia's rebellious sister Linda (Harding) is taken with Johnny's unconventional philosophy and finds herself falling for him. Based on the 1928 play by Philip Barry, this is the first film adaptation of the story later remade in 1938 with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Edward Everett Horton reprises his role as Nick Potter in both versions.

Comedy · Drama · Romance

A Close Call is a 1929 animated short from the Aesop's Sound Fables series, produced by the Van Beuren Corporation and distributed by Pathé Exchange. Directed by Harry Bailey and John Foster, it features Milton Mouse and Rita in a series of musical and slapstick gags. The cartoon is an early sound-era entry in the long-running Aesop's Fables series, which began as silent shorts in the 1920s. As a 1929 work, the film entered the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2025.

Animation · Comedy

The first film adaptation of Maurine Dallas Watkins' 1926 play Chicago, produced by Cecil B. DeMille and directed by Frank Urson. Phyllis Haver stars as Roxie Hart, a fame-obsessed housewife who kills her lover in cold blood and, after trying to coerce her husband into taking the blame, is put on trial for murder. Victor Varconi plays her long-suffering husband Amos, who has a much more sympathetic and active role than in later adaptations. The film was a box office disappointment upon release but modern viewers praise its sharp satire and acting. The story would be adapted twice more, most famously in the 2002 Oscar-winning musical version. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Comedy · Drama · Silent

Harold Lloyd's first feature as an independent producer, and one of his best. He plays a stuttering, girl-shy tailor's apprentice who writes a bogus advice book on how to woo women, then has to live up to it when he falls for a wealthy girl visiting from the city. The film builds to a celebrated chase in which Harold races a jalopy, a horse, a trolley, and finally a stolen motorcycle (with no driver) through Los Angeles traffic to stop his beloved's wedding. Lloyd's gift was for ordinary-guy heroism, and here the romantic setup and the stunt climax feed each other perfectly. It was the first release from his own Harold Lloyd Corporation. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Comedy · Romance · Silent

A Harold Lloyd feature comedy directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. Lloyd plays a young newlywed whose blissful marriage is complicated when his formidable mother-in-law moves in, followed by her shiftless son and her henpecked husband. The film is structured as a series of domestic comic set pieces, culminating in the famous sequence where Lloyd tries to drive home a carload of groceries while a streetcar full of passengers watches in horror. The film's gentle satire of family life and its expertly staged physical comedy make it one of Lloyd's most charming features. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

A 1928 American silent crime comedy directed by Elmer Clifton for DeMille Pictures Corporation. Young Gallagher (Frank Coghlan Jr.) wants to be a newspaper reporter. One day he witnesses a murder committed by a mysterious man with only four fingers on one hand. He gives his account of the murder and a description of the killer to his hero, newsman Henry Callahan (Harrison Ford), resulting in his getting a job on the paper as an office boy. When circumstances arise that result in Callahan losing his job, he and Gallagher team up to discover the identity of the killer and help Callahan get his job back. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Comedy · Silent

The first feature-length documentary and still one of the most famous ever made. Robert Flaherty spent years among the Inuit of the Hudson Bay region and returned with the story of Nanook — really a hunter named Allakariallak — and his family struggling through an Arctic winter. Flaherty staged and romanticized much of it: "Nanook's" family was cast for the film, and harpoons were used after rifles had already arrived. Critics have argued about that for a century, but the film invented the documentary feature and remains gripping survival cinema. The film is in the public domain.

Documentary · Silent

A Harold Lloyd short directed by Fred Newmeyer. Lloyd plays a young man who, believing his girlfriend has rejected him for another, decides to end it all. But every suicide attempt fails spectacularly—he can't even jump out a window without landing on a fire escape. The film's masterstroke is a vertiginous sequence on a construction site, where Lloyd dangles from a girder high above the street, a precursor to his famous skyscraper climb in Safety Last! (1923). The film's dark comic premise—suicide as slapstick—is handled with Lloyd's characteristic optimism, as the boy's despair gives way to increasingly inventive physical comedy. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

A small-town clerk moves to the city to make his fortune and tells his sweetheart back home he is a success. When she visits, he has to keep up the act, and to earn real money he arranges a publicity stunt in which a friend will climb the outside of the department store. The friend is chased off by a policeman, so the clerk does the climb himself, floor by floor, dodging pigeons, a collapsing ledge, a flagpole, and finally a clock that leaves him hanging from its hands high above the street. The climb is the most famous image in silent comedy. Harold Lloyd produced the film, Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor directed, and real buildings on real streets were used with carefully placed platforms just out of frame. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Harold Lloyd plays a small-town boy so primed for college life that he has rehearsed his entrance greeting in front of a mirror for months. He arrives on campus full of pep and immediately becomes the patsy of the football team and the joke of the student body, all while believing he is the most popular man in school. The film builds to a football finale where he finally gets his chance on the field. Lloyd's everyman optimism was never better matched to a story, and The Freshman was one of the biggest hits of the silent era. The glasses character, Lloyd's signature screen persona, is in full form here. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Silent

The King of Kings is Cecil B. DeMille's silent epic of the life of Jesus, from the healing of Mary Magdalene through the crucifixion and resurrection. H.B. Warner plays Jesus with a restrained dignity DeMille demanded of the cast and crew, who were asked to behave with reverence during filming. The film was a serious religious picture, not a spectacle, and it was seen by hundreds of millions of people over the decades, often in churches and schools. DeMille's sense of scale is here, but the heart of the film is intimate. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Drama · History · Silent

A Hal Roach two-reel parody of Rex Beach's rugged Yukon novel The Spoilers — released the same year as yet another straight adaptation of the story. Stan Laurel, in one of the solo shorts he made before teaming with Oliver Hardy, plays prospector Bob Canister, whose gold claim is jumped by the corrupt local sheriff, played by perennial Roach foil James Finlayson. Directed by Ralph Ceder, the short spoofs the novel's legendary climactic brawl with a saloon fight that keeps escalating. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Western · Silent · Short

A hypochondriac millionaire sails to a tropical island resort seeking rest and quiet, only to find himself in the middle of a revolution led by a brutal dictator. Harold Lloyd's feature-length comedy, directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy