United Artists

D.W. Griffith's first all-talking picture is a biographical portrait of Abraham Lincoln, from his youth as a rail-splitter and storekeeper in New Salem through his romance with Ann Rutledge, his marriage to Mary Todd, his legal career, his election to the presidency, and his leadership during the Civil War, ending with his assassination at Ford's Theatre. Walter Huston plays Lincoln with a plainspoken gravity, and Una Merkel is Ann Rutledge. The film, scripted in part by Stephen Vincent Benét, was Griffith's penultimate film and one of his last major productions. It was not a commercial success on release but has been reassessed as a late work of a foundational director. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Biography · Drama · History

A bookseller and his bumbling assistant get tangled up with a diamond-hunting expedition to Africa, where they are pursued by lions, cannibals, and a rival explorer. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello star in one of their most popular vehicles. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Adventure

A suave jewel thief hides out in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, safe from the French police, until a beautiful French tourist tempts him toward the outside world. Charles Boyer's performance inspired Pepe le Pew, and Hedy Lamarr made her American debut. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Drama · Romance

A group of stranded swindlers in an Italian port wait for a ship to East Africa, where they plan to corner the uranium market. Humphrey Bogart leads an international cast through John Huston's sly parody of the caper films he helped invent, with a script shaped by Truman Capote. The film lapsed into the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Crime · Adventure

An American newspaper editor in 1920s Tokyo uncovers a secret Japanese military plan for expansion across the Pacific, and becomes a target of both the army and a double agent. James Cagney stars in this wartime thriller, which won an Academy Award for art direction. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Thriller · War · Drama

The notorious pirate Captain Kidd is hired by the king to escort a treasure ship from India, while secretly plotting to seize the cargo, and a convict pressed into his crew works to expose him. Charles Laughton reprises his swaggering villain. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · History

The seventeenth-century swordsman and poet Cyrano, self-conscious about his enormous nose, loves the beautiful Roxane but helps a handsome but inarticulate rival woo her with his words. Jose Ferrer won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

Four soldiers stranded behind enemy lines in an unnamed war make their way toward a river and escape, killing an enemy officer and a peasant girl along the way. Stanley Kubrick's first feature, made on a tiny budget with a crew of friends; he later disowned it and tried to suppress it. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

War · Drama

A former convict is framed for a bank robbery he had nothing to do with and, to clear his name, infiltrates the gang of masked thieves on their way to a heist in Mexico. Phil Karlson's taut, hard-edged noir was a touchstone for later heist films. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime

A wily Baghdad beggar, through a single day's reversals of fortune, rises to wealth and engineers his daughter's marriage to a prince, only for fate to snatch it all back. Otis Skinner recreates his famed stage role of Hajj in this silent adaptation of Edward Knoblock's play. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

A vaudeville impersonator is hired by a mad scientist to assist in his experiments, then kills him and takes his place, slowly losing his own mind as he poses as the doctor. Dwain Esper's lurid 1934 exploitation film splices in medical footage and cribbed text from a psychiatry textbook. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror

A bestselling novelist's long-suffering secretary finally quits and writes her own successful book, only for her idle former boss to chase her to the country and try to win her back. Laraine Day and Kirk Douglas star in this romantic comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Romance

A film version of Thornton Wilder's play about life, love, and loss in the small New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners at the turn of the twentieth century. William Holden and Martha Scott play the young couple whose courtship and marriage anchor the story. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance

A young man returns to his uncle's music store business and falls for a singer from a feuding family, getting tangled in a radio giveaway contest and a war between the two clans. James Stewart and Paulette Goddard star in this musical comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Musical · Romance

A federal agent goes undercover to bring down the Reno brothers' gang of train robbers in post-Civil War Indiana, only to find the local townspeople and officials are in the gang's pocket. Randolph Scott and Forrest Tucker star in this fact-based western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A hard-living prostitute stranded by a quarantine on a South Seas island clashes with a self-righteous missionary determined to reform her, with tragic consequences for both. Joan Crawford and Walter Huston star in Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's story. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

Tarzan returns to his jungle estate to find his home pillaged and his wife abducted by a band of Arab slavers, and sets out across the wilderness with a golden lion at his side to rescue her. James Pierce stars as the ape-man, with Boris Karloff in a supporting role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

The orphaned son of marooned English aristocrats is raised by apes in the African jungle and grows into the powerful Tarzan, who discovers his human heritage when a party of explorers arrives. Elmo Lincoln stars in the first screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

An alien youth sent ahead of an invasion fleet to prepare Earth for colonization turns against his mission after experiencing human kindness, and tries to stop the giant lobsters his people intend to unleash. Tom Graeff wrote, directed, produced, edited, and scored this micro-budget curio. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A wealthy widow is convinced she hears her late husband's voice on the beach, and a suave spiritualist seems to confirm it, while her skeptical sister and a psychiatrist try to expose him as a fraud. Turhan Bey stars in this atmospheric noir, also released as The Spiritualist. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

The cocky son of a champion racer killed at the Indianapolis 500 fights his way onto the track to redeem his father's name, alienating his loved ones along the way. Mickey Rooney stars in this independent racing drama, which features Hattie McDaniel's final screen appearance. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Sport

An out-of-work veteran takes a job as a chauffeur to a mobster and falls for the gangster's girlfriend, getting swept into a nightmare of murder, mistaken identity, and a dreamlike escape across Cuba. Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre star in this offbeat Cornell Woolrich adaptation. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Thriller · Crime

A Pullman porter who escapes from prison makes his way to a Caribbean island and, through bluff and bravado, talks and fights his way to becoming its emperor, until his regime begins to crumble. Paul Robeson repeats his stage role in this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey play themselves in this musical biopic tracing the brothers from their coal-country boyhood through their rise to the top of the swing era, their famous on-stage breakup, and their reunion. The plot is a sanitized version of a genuinely combative relationship, but the band sequences — including a show-stopping "Green Eyes" — are the real thing. Directed by Alfred E. Green for United Artists, with Janet Blair and Paul Whiteman. The film is in the public domain.

Music · Drama · Biography

A star reporter about to leave the newspaper business for marriage is roped back in by his wily editor for one last story, the execution of an anarchist. Lewis Milestone's fast-talking adaptation of the Hecht and MacArthur play defined the newspaper comedy and later inspired His Girl Friday. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Drama

A biographical drama tracing the life of heavyweight champion Joe Louis, from his Detroit youth to his title reign and the racial pressures he bore as a Black sports hero. Coley Wallace portrays Louis in staged fight sequences. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Biography · Drama · Sport

A card-dealing junkie fresh out of prison tries to go straight as a drummer, but his wheelchair-bound wife and old dealer pull him back toward heroin. Otto Preminger fought the Production Code to release the film, which broke the taboo on depicting drug addiction. Frank Sinatra gives one of his most serious performances. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Noir

A rough Bering Sea skipper rescues a young woman from a shipwreck and comes to regard her as a daughter, until a returning sweetheart and a rival sealing schooner test his hardened heart. Hobart Bosworth stars in this early Arctic adventure. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Drama

The fifteen-chapter serial follows Jack Clayton, son of Tarzan and Jane, as he comes of age in the jungle and journeys to America to rescue a kidnapped friend before returning to Africa to claim his birthright as Korak the killer. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

A Texas cotton picker decides to stop working other people's land and farm a patch of his own, battling poor soil, a hostile neighbor, weather, and exhaustion to give his family a better life. Jean Renoir's loving, unsentimental portrait of rural American poverty was one of his favorite films. It entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

A bag of stolen cash is thrown into the back seat of a couple's car by mistake, and the wife, hungry for a better life, decides to keep it, dragging her husband into a spiral of deceit and murder. Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea star in one of the bleakest noirs of the era. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller

A young woman is murdered at a creepy mansion and returns as a ghost to enlist the mild-mannered Cosmo Topper to find her killer, dragging the bewildered man through a house full of secret passages and suspects. The third Topper comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Fantasy

A 1937 American Technicolor drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, starring Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress and Fredric March as a fading movie star who helps launch her career. The screenplay was written by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell. At the 10th Academy Awards, it became the very first color film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it received an honorary award for cinematographer W. Howard Greene. The film was remade in 1954 (with Judy Garland) and 1976 (with Barbra Streisand) and 2018 (with Lady Gaga). The supporting cast features Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, and Owen Moore. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Drama · Romance

Charlie Chaplin's first serious drama, written and directed by him as a starring vehicle for his longtime leading lady Edna Purviance—Chaplin himself appears only in a brief, uncredited cameo. Marie St. Clair (Purviance) believes she has been abandoned by her lover Jean and moves to Paris, where she becomes the mistress of wealthy playboy Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou). Years later, Jean reappears, and Marie must choose between respectability and the glamorous life she has built. Chaplin's sophisticated approach to adult relationships, his satirical eye for high society, and his rejection of melodramatic conventions stunned audiences and critics. The film was a commercial failure but influenced directors from Lubitsch to Renoir, and is now regarded as one of the great silent dramas. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Romance · Silent

D.W. Griffith's first all-talking picture is a biographical portrait of Abraham Lincoln, from his youth as a rail-splitter and storekeeper in New Salem through his romance with Ann Rutledge, his marriage to Mary Todd, his legal career, his election to the presidency, and his leadership during the Civil War, ending with his assassination at Ford's Theatre. Walter Huston plays Lincoln with a plainspoken gravity, and Una Merkel is Ann Rutledge. The film, scripted in part by Stephen Vincent Benét, was Griffith's penultimate film and one of his last major productions. It was not a commercial success on release but has been reassessed as a late work of a foundational director. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Biography · Drama · History

A bookseller and his bumbling assistant get tangled up with a diamond-hunting expedition to Africa, where they are pursued by lions, cannibals, and a rival explorer. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello star in one of their most popular vehicles. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Adventure

A suave jewel thief hides out in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, safe from the French police, until a beautiful French tourist tempts him toward the outside world. Charles Boyer's performance inspired Pepe le Pew, and Hedy Lamarr made her American debut. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Drama · Romance

A supernatural comedy in the Here Comes Mr. Jordan vein, directed by Archie Mayo as his final film. Paul Muni plays Eddie Kagle, a murdered gangster whom the Devil (Claude Rains) sends back to Earth in the body of an upright judge to corrupt him, only to watch Kagle gradually reform. Anne Baxter is the judge's fiancée who sees through the swap. The film's U.S. copyright expired in 1973, leaving it in the public domain.

Comedy · Fantasy

Two former nightclub partners, now an army sergeant and a hapless private at a stateside training post, run afoul of officers, paperwork, and the women's auxiliary in a series of service-comedy routines. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis star in their first starring vehicle. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Musical

A group of stranded swindlers in an Italian port wait for a ship to East Africa, where they plan to corner the uranium market. Humphrey Bogart leads an international cast through John Huston's sly parody of the caper films he helped invent, with a script shaped by Truman Capote. The film lapsed into the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Crime · Adventure

An American newspaper editor in 1920s Tokyo uncovers a secret Japanese military plan for expansion across the Pacific, and becomes a target of both the army and a double agent. James Cagney stars in this wartime thriller, which won an Academy Award for art direction. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Thriller · War · Drama

D.W. Griffith's tragic melodrama, subtitled *The Yellow Man and the Girl*, was his deliberate turn away from spectacle toward intimacy after the scale of *Intolerance*. Lillian Gish gives one of the great performances of the silent era as Lucy, the abused daughter of a brutal London prize-fighter (Donald Crisp), who finds fleeting tenderness with Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess), a Chinese shopkeeper whose dreams of peace have curdled in the Limehouse fog. The interracial romance at its center was daring for 1919, though the casting and caricature reflect the era's prejudices. Shot in hazy, oppressive studio interiors, it is among Griffith's most visually beautiful films. Published in 1919, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A 1929 American pre-Code crime film in which Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond helps a young woman in distress. Ronald Colman stars as the title character in his first talking picture, a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Claud Allister plays his loyal friend Algy Longworth, while Montagu Love plays the villain Carl Peterson and Lawrence Grant plays his accomplice Dr. Lakington. Joan Bennett appears as Phyllis Benton, the young woman whose plea for help sets the plot in motion. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by F. Richard Jones, the film was adapted by Sidney Howard from the 1921 play by H. C. McNeile. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

The notorious pirate Captain Kidd is hired by the king to escort a treasure ship from India, while secretly plotting to seize the cargo, and a convict pressed into his crew works to expose him. Charles Laughton reprises his swaggering villain. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · History

Martha Scott stars as Ella Bishop, a small-town Midwestern schoolteacher looking back over fifty years at Midwestern College — the men she loved and lost, the students whose lives she shaped, and the niece (Marsha Hunt) she raised. William Gargan plays the suitor who never quite catches her. Directed by Tay Garnett and adapted from Bess Streeter Aldrich's novel Miss Bishop, it is a sentimental women's picture in the Goodbye, Mr. Chips mold, carried by Scott's performance, which earned her comparisons to the best character actresses of the day and an Oscar nomination for its score by Edward Ward. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Drama · Romance

A bookish high school graduate gives a graduation speech condemning athletics, which costs him the girl, who prefers the jock. Ronald follows her to college and tries to win her back by joining every sports team on campus, failing at baseball, track, and rowing in a string of set pieces built around his total lack of athletic ability. When the girl is threatened by the school bully, Ronald finally gets to act instead of fumble, sprinting and pole-vaulting across campus in a rescue that reuses every sport he failed at earlier. James W. Horne directed, with Keaton producing and doing his own stunts, including the pole vault into a second-story window. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Mary Pickford's first talkie and the film that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the second ever awarded. She plays Norma Besant, a Southern coquette whose flirtatious ways mask a genuine love for Michael Jeffery, a man her domineering father forbids her to see. When the father takes matters into his own hands, the consequences spiral toward tragedy. The film was a deliberate departure for Pickford, who shed her curls and childlike image to play a sophisticated young woman, though the transition was not entirely smooth: early sound technology was unforgiving, and her performance has a stiffness that critics noted at the time. Still, the film was a box office success and proved that Pickford could make the leap into talkies. It is also notable as one of the earliest talkies to use the word "damn." Published in 1929, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Drama · Romance

The seventeenth-century swordsman and poet Cyrano, self-conscious about his enormous nose, loves the beautiful Roxane but helps a handsome but inarticulate rival woo her with his words. Jose Ferrer won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

Stockholm, 1918: a French spy running a high-fashion dress shop, played by Vivien Leigh, falls for the German counterintelligence chief assigned to catch her, played by Conrad Veidt. Both know what the other is; neither can quite stop. Victor Saville directs the London Films production as an elegant cat-and-mouse romance where every ballroom scene doubles as tradecraft. Leigh, on the verge of Gone with the Wind, and Veidt, the great German exile who had played Cesare in Caligari, make an improbably magnetic pair, and the neutral Swedish setting lets the film keep its sympathies ambiguous. It is in the public domain in the United States.

War · Romance · Thriller

A film noir directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Hedy Lamarr, who also co-produced. Lamarr plays Madeleine Damien, a Manhattan magazine editor living a fast, scandalous social life who retreats from it all after a murder charge and attempts to rebuild with a kind psychiatrist (Dennis O'Keefe), only to be drawn back into danger by the wealthy Felix Courtland (John Loder, Lamarr's real-life husband at the time). Based on the 1930 play by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes, the film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

Frank Bigelow walks into a police station and says he wants to report a murder: his own. The film then rewinds to show how he got there. Frank, a small-town accountant, is in San Francisco for a few days and is slipped a luminous poison in a drink at a bar. A doctor tells him he has only days to live and no cure exists, and Frank spends his remaining hours trying to find out who killed him and why. The premise, a man investigating his own murder, is one of the tightest hooks in film noir. Rudolph Maté had been a cinematographer before he directed, and the film has a clean, hard look. The story ties Frank's death to a routine bill of sale he notarized, a small thing with large consequences. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Thriller

A sequel to The Mark of Zorro (1920), with Douglas Fairbanks now playing Don Cesar, the son of the original Zorro, in Spain rather than California. Framed for the murder of a rival archduke, he fakes his death and returns to clear his name and win back the woman he loves. Fairbanks produced and starred, and Donald Crisp directed while also playing Don Cesar's father. The swordplay is elaborate even by Fairbanks's standards, and the film leans into the swashbuckling spectacle that made him the action star of the silent era. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Action · Romance · Silent

Four soldiers stranded behind enemy lines in an unnamed war make their way toward a river and escape, killing an enemy officer and a peasant girl along the way. Stanley Kubrick's first feature, made on a tiny budget with a crew of friends; he later disowned it and tried to suppress it. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

War · Drama

Howard Hughes produced and directed this World War I aviation epic, spending three years and a fortune on it and reshooting much of it for sound after The Jazz Singer changed the industry. The story follows two brothers, Roy and Monte, who join the Royal Flying Corps and fall for the same woman, with Jean Harlow making her debut as the platinum blonde who comes between them. The film is best remembered for its airborne sequences, staged with real aircraft and real danger; several pilots died during production. The Zeppelin climax, shot in early two-color Technicolor, is a spectacle of its era. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama · Action

A wealthy businessman survives a murder attempt arranged by his wife and her lover, then disappears so that the two of them can be charged with killing him. He hides out in a small town under an assumed name while the police, led by a sharp lieutenant played by Charles Coburn, work to build the case. Brian Donlevy is the wronged husband who has to decide whether to come back at all, and Ella Raines is the woman who helps him. The film was shot entirely in Northern California, around San Francisco and Marin County, which gives it a different look from the usual Los Angeles noir. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Mystery

When a newspaper columnist is murdered while investigating the Crusaders, a flag-waving hate group building itself into a political power, assistant district attorney Howard Malloy (Franchot Tone) is named special prosecutor and digs into the shadowy organization. The film is famous for its uncredited cameos — Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Burgess Meredith, and Everett Sloane all turn up in small roles as a favor to director Fletcher Markle. Produced by the Danziger brothers and released by United Artists, Jigsaw is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Mystery

The man-cub Mowgli, raised by wolves in the Indian jungle, is drawn back toward the human village even as he battles the tiger Shere Khan and the cunning serpent Kaa. Sabu stars in Zoltan Korda's lavish Technicolor adaptation of Kipling's stories, filmed in India with real wildlife. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Family · Fantasy

A former convict is framed for a bank robbery he had nothing to do with and, to clear his name, infiltrates the gang of masked thieves on their way to a heist in Mexico. Phil Karlson's taut, hard-edged noir was a touchstone for later heist films. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime

A wily Baghdad beggar, through a single day's reversals of fortune, rises to wealth and engineers his daughter's marriage to a prince, only for fate to snatch it all back. Otis Skinner recreates his famed stage role of Hajj in this silent adaptation of Edward Knoblock's play. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Adventure

Striptease artist Dixie Daisy is riding out backstage feuds and fending off brash comic Biff Brannigan when a string of murders starts picking off her fellow dancers one by one — and she's next on the list. Barbara Stanwyck leads the wisecracking company in William A. Wellman's adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee's novel The G-String Murders, with Michael O'Shea, Iris Adrian, and a backstage world rendered with real backstage bite. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Mystery · Music

A young lawyer and a woman he met on a business trip marry after a whirlwind courtship and struggle through the first year of marriage, money troubles, a difficult mother-in-law, and a medical crisis with their baby. Carole Lombard and James Stewart star in this bittersweet domestic drama. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Comedy

A vaudeville impersonator is hired by a mad scientist to assist in his experiments, then kills him and takes his place, slowly losing his own mind as he poses as the doctor. Dwain Esper's lurid 1934 exploitation film splices in medical footage and cribbed text from a psychiatry textbook. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror

Douglas Fairbanks's final starring film sends the great swashbuckler out on a high note. Yachting playboy Steve Drexel accepts a bet that he can't survive alone on a deserted South Seas island with nothing but his dog — then proceeds to build a radio, a waterslide, and an elegant treetop penthouse out of salvaged wreckage and sheer ingenuity. When a fleeing dancer (Maria Alba) washes ashore and is dubbed "Saturday," the wager becomes a romance. Made when Fairbanks was nearing fifty, the film still showcases the effortless athletic charm that defined silent-era adventure, now with sound-era wisecracks. Released through United Artists, the company he co-founded, its copyright was not renewed. It is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Comedy · Romance

A bestselling novelist's long-suffering secretary finally quits and writes her own successful book, only for her idle former boss to chase her to the country and try to win her back. Laraine Day and Kirk Douglas star in this romantic comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Romance

A small-town Vermont woman, Hazel Flagg, is mistakenly told she has fatal radium poisoning. A New York newspaper reporter desperate for a human-interest story brings her to the city and turns her into a celebrity, only to discover she was never sick at all. Carole Lombard and Fredric March spar through one of the great screwball comedies of the 1930s, shot in early three-strip Technicolor. The film fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Romance

A 1922 American Gothic silent mystery film directed by D. W. Griffith. The plot revolves around a series of murders on a wealthy estate and the attempts of the cast to uncover the murderer's identity. A young orphan girl (Carol Dempster), courted by an unpleasant older wealthy man who has a hold over her adoptive mother, falls in love with a young stranger (Henry Hull) at a party. Odd noises begin to be heard as a group of bootleggers clandestinely try to get away with their hidden loot. One of them is killed and the young man is suspected of being the killer. Griffith reassembled the cast and shot a new ending involving a terrifying hurricane, using a combination of real hurricane footage and studio special effects. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Silent

D.W. Griffith's lavish silent epic, set against the French Revolution. Two orphaned sisters, the sighted Henriette (Lillian Gish) and the blind Louise (Dorothy Gish), travel to Paris seeking a cure and are swept apart by aristocratic abduction and the coming Terror, until a kindly chevalier (Joseph Schildkraut) and the rise of Danton (Monte Blue) turn the tide. Griffith built enormous period sets and staged crowd scenes on a scale to rival Intolerance, and the film marked Lillian Gish's final role for him. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

King Vidor self-financed this Depression-era drama as a spiritual sequel to *The Crowd*, again following an ordinary young couple — John and Mary Sims (Tom Keene and Karen Morley) — crushed by unemployment. Given a failing farm, they gather a community of displaced tradesmen and try to run it as a cooperative, pooling skills to bring in one last crop. The climax, in which the whole settlement digs a miles-long irrigation ditch in a single night to save the fields, is one of the great sequences of early American cinema — pure rhythmic montage. Made outside the studio system and released through United Artists, the film's copyright was never renewed. It is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance

A film version of Thornton Wilder's play about life, love, and loss in the small New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners at the turn of the twentieth century. William Holden and Martha Scott play the young couple whose courtship and marriage anchor the story. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance

A young man returns to his uncle's music store business and falls for a singer from a feuding family, getting tangled in a radio giveaway contest and a war between the two clans. James Stewart and Paulette Goddard star in this musical comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Musical · Romance

Dan Brady is a garage mechanic who wants to impress a waitress, so he borrows twenty dollars from the till at work, intending to pay it back before anyone notices. He does not. One small bad choice leads to another, and within a day Dan has stolen a car, robbed a nightclub, and talked himself deeper with every lie. Mickey Rooney plays him as a normal guy who keeps making the wrong decision under pressure, and the film watches a petty theft snowball into serious crime with a kind of grim inevitability. Peter Lorre is the amusement-pier owner who pulls Dan further in. The film was shot on a low budget with Rooney and Lorre helping to finance it themselves. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir

A 1930 American pre-Code comedy-mystery film produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by George Fitzmaurice. Ronald Colman stars as A.J. Raffles, a distinguished English gentleman who leads a secret life as the notorious jewel thief the press has dubbed "The Amateur Cracksman." When Raffles falls in love with Gwen (Kay Francis), he decides to retire from crime, but an old friend, Bunny (Bramwell Fletcher), comes to him with a predicament that entails committing one last job. The film is based on the 1906 play by E. W. Hornung and Eugene Wiley Presbrey, adapted from Hornung's 1899 short story collection. Oscar Lagerstrom was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Recording. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Comedy · Mystery · Romance

A federal agent goes undercover to bring down the Reno brothers' gang of train robbers in post-Civil War Indiana, only to find the local townspeople and officials are in the gang's pocket. Randolph Scott and Forrest Tucker star in this fact-based western. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

A hard-living prostitute stranded by a quarantine on a South Seas island clashes with a self-righteous missionary determined to reform her, with tragic consequences for both. Joan Crawford and Walter Huston star in Lewis Milestone's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's story. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

The Halperin brothers' follow-up to their cult hit White Zombie — loosely, since this one's set in post-WWI Cambodia and has no Lugosi. An expedition hunts for the lost Angkor secret that once let priests raise armies of the dead, and Count Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy, doing his best zombie-hypnotist glare) gets to it first, turning the local population into an undead work force. Dean Jagger, in one of his earliest leads, plays the expedition's psychic officer. Slow even by mid-thirties horror standards, but the premise — zombies as a weapon of war — was decades ahead of its time. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Horror

Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckles through twelfth-century England as the Earl of Huntingdon turned outlaw, scaling walls and leaping from battlements to win Maid Marian from the usurping Prince John. Allan Dwan directed this lavish silent epic, built around one of the largest sets ever constructed. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Action

A silent comedy directed by and starring Max Linder, the French comedian whom Charlie Chaplin called "my professor." Linder plays a wealthy young man who breaks a mirror and becomes convinced he is cursed with seven years of bad luck. His attempts to avoid catastrophe only create more chaos, culminating in a famous sequence where his servant, believing Max has been murdered, tries to dispose of a "body" that is actually Max himself. The film's most celebrated scene—a split-body gag where Max appears to be severed in half by a closing door—was later echoed in Keaton's Sherlock Jr. Linder's elegant, understated comic style was a major influence on Chaplin and the entire silent comedy tradition. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

Sparrows stars Mary Pickford as Molly, the oldest orphan on a Louisiana bayou "baby farm" run by the cruel Mr. Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz). When a kidnapped baby is brought to the farm, Molly resolves to lead the children to safety across the treacherous swamplands. Directed by William Beaudine and produced by Pickford through her own company, the film is a Gothic melodrama featuring atmospheric photography by Charles Rosher, Karl Struss, and Hal Mohr, including a celebrated night sequence in the alligator-infested swamp. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent · Thriller

A steamboat captain's effete college son comes home to a Mississippi river town and falls for the daughter of his father's business rival. Willie tries to live up to the image of the rough riverman his father wants, with little success, until a cyclone tears through the town. The storm sequence is the film's centerpiece, with buildings collapsing around Keaton, and it contains the most famous single shot in silent comedy: the full facade of a house drops over him and he survives only because he is standing exactly where an open window in the wall passes around his body. The real clearance was a matter of inches. Keaton's deadpan expression never changes throughout. This was his last independent production before moving to MGM.

Comedy · Action · Silent

A small-town woman marries a wealthy man, finds herself out of place in his social world, and eventually sacrifices her own happiness for the sake of her daughter's future. Belle Bennett gives the definitive performance of the mother who, recognizing that her daughter will have a better life without her, steps aside and lets the girl's father and his new wife raise her. Ronald Colman plays the husband, and Lois Moran the daughter who grows up ashamed of her mother and then too late realizes what she has lost. Henry King directs with the emotional directness that made the film a major hit. The story was filmed again in 1937 with Barbara Stanwyck. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A professional assassin and his men take over a quiet house in the small town of Suddenly, California, planning to shoot the President of the United States when his train stops there. The family living in the house becomes hostages, and the town sheriff, who is sweet on the daughter, stumbles into the trap and has to find a way to stop it. Frank Sinatra plays the killer as a jittery, sneering psychopath who genuinely enjoys the prospect of murder, a long way from his usual smooth persona. Sterling Hayden is the upright sheriff who matches wits with him. The whole film plays out almost entirely inside one house, which keeps the tension coiled. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright. It is one of the more tense and compact crime thrillers of the 1950s, and Sinatra's performance is the reason it is still watched.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

Tarzan returns to his jungle estate to find his home pillaged and his wife abducted by a band of Arab slavers, and sets out across the wilderness with a golden lion at his side to rescue her. James Pierce stars as the ape-man, with Boris Karloff in a supporting role. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

The orphaned son of marooned English aristocrats is raised by apes in the African jungle and grows into the powerful Tarzan, who discovers his human heritage when a party of explorers arrives. Elmo Lincoln stars in the first screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

An alien youth sent ahead of an invasion fleet to prepare Earth for colonization turns against his mission after experiencing human kindness, and tries to stop the giant lobsters his people intend to unleash. Tom Graeff wrote, directed, produced, edited, and scored this micro-budget curio. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Sci-Fi · Horror

A bored wife of an insurance salesman seeks psychoanalysis for her mysterious neuroses, only to find herself entangled with an eccentric pianist and demanding a divorce. Ernst Lubitsch's remake of his own silent film Kiss Me Again, starring Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, and Burgess Meredith. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Romance

A 1936 British romantic comedy directed by Alfred Zeisler and starring Cary Grant, originally titled The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss and released in the U.S. as The Amazing Adventure. Based on the 1919 novel The Curious Quest by E. Phillips Oppenheim, the film follows a bored, idle millionaire (Grant) who bets his doctor 50,000 pounds that he can survive for a year supporting himself solely on what he earns, without touching his inherited fortune. The film was edited down from 80 minutes (UK) to 62 minutes (US) for its American release. As a non-U.S. film that was not under copyright in its country of origin on January 1, 1996, it was not eligible for GATT restoration and is in the public domain.

Comedy · Romance

A wealthy widow is convinced she hears her late husband's voice on the beach, and a suave spiritualist seems to confirm it, while her skeptical sister and a psychiatrist try to expose him as a fraud. Turhan Bey stars in this atmospheric noir, also released as The Spiritualist. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

A masked criminal known as the Bat terrorizes the guests of an old dark house rented by a mystery writer, while a stolen bank fortune is hidden somewhere inside. The Bat announces his crimes in advance and dares the police to stop him, and the household spends the night hunting for the money, the Bat, and a killer who may or may not be the same person. Roland West directed this adaptation of the 1920 Broadway hit by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, and his use of a bat signal and a caped figure inspired Bob Kane's later creation of Batman. The film was considered lost for decades before a print surfaced in the 1980s. Pre-1930 films are in the public domain in the United States.

Horror · Comedy · Silent

A 1930 pre-Code mystery film directed by Roland West and produced by Joseph M. Schenck for United Artists. Based on the 1920 play The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, the film follows the mysterious criminal known as "The Bat" who terrorizes the occupants of a lonely country mansion. Notable as one of the first widescreen films, West shot the picture in both standard 35mm and an experimental 65mm format requiring two cameramen. The film stars Chester Morris, Una Merkel, and Grayce Hampton, and is widely cited as an inspiration for Bob Kane's Batman. Long thought lost, a nitrate print was discovered at the Mary Pickford Estate in 1987 and restored by UCLA. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

A loose, swashbuckling portrait of the 15th-century French poet Francois Villon, played by John Barrymore at the height of his stage and screen fame. Villon is a tavern brawler and versifier who runs afoul of King Louis XI, played by the German actor Conrad Veidt in a Hollywood sojourn between Caligari and his later work in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's shadow. The production was lavish, with sets by William Cameron Menzies and an estimated million-dollar budget. The only surviving domestic print was found years later in Barrymore's own former mansion by its next occupant, Edgar Bergen, and donated to the American Film Institute. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Adventure · Drama · Silent

The Big Cat is a 1949 outdoor adventure directed by Phil Karlson and set in the Utah canyon country during the Great Depression. A young man (Lon McCallister) returns to his mother's birthplace in the high country and finds the community terrorized by a marauding mountain lion and by a bitter feud between two families. Preston Foster and Forrest Tucker play the older men at odds, and Peggy Ann Garner is the girl between them. Karlson, later known for his tough 1950s noir, brings real tension to the wilderness scenes and the climactic hunt. The film was released by United Artists and is in the public domain.

Adventure · Drama

The cocky son of a champion racer killed at the Indianapolis 500 fights his way onto the track to redeem his father's name, alienating his loved ones along the way. Mickey Rooney stars in this independent racing drama, which features Hattie McDaniel's final screen appearance. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Sport

A nobleman's son vows revenge after pirates murder his father, so he infiltrates the pirate band to destroy it from within. Douglas Fairbanks produced, starred in, and drove this swashbuckler, performing his own stunts including the famous slide down a sail on the point of a knife. The film is one of the earliest feature-length pictures shot entirely in two-strip Technicolor, and the limited red-and-green palette gives it a storybook look unlike anything else from the silent era. Fairbanks pushed the budget to roughly $1.3 million, an enormous sum at the time, which limited the profit even though the picture was a hit. The Black Pirate is a landmark of color filmmaking and one of the great action spectacles of the 1920s. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Adventure · Action · Silent

A 1957 American Western directed by Carl K. Hittleman and distributed by United Artists. Patricia Medina plays Angela Medley, a frontier gambler who supports her hard-drinking father "Doc" Medley (Henry Hull) while running with the gunslinger Slinger (Gerald Mohr). When the new town physician Dr. Bruce Merritt (Richard Denning) arrives, Angela falls for him, setting up an inevitable showdown between the outlaw and the respectable life she wants. A compact, unpretentious B-western carried by Medina's sympathetic lead performance, it circulated widely on television and fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Western

An out-of-work veteran takes a job as a chauffeur to a mobster and falls for the gangster's girlfriend, getting swept into a nightmare of murder, mistaken identity, and a dreamlike escape across Cuba. Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre star in this offbeat Cornell Woolrich adaptation. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Thriller · Crime

Chaplin's Tramp stumbles into a circus and accidentally becomes the star of the show. The audience laughs at him, not with his act but at his bumbling, and the ringmaster realizes the Tramp is the draw. The Tramp himself is oblivious, thinking he is a serious performer. He falls for the ringmaster's daughter, who in turn falls for the tightrope walker. Chaplin produced, directed, wrote, edited, and starred in the film, and composed the score years later. It won an Academy Award for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing, and producing.

Comedy · Silent

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy directed by George Fitzmaurice and starring Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Myrna Loy, and Frederick Kerr. Written by Frederick Lonsdale and Benjamin Glazer, the film follows spendthrift Willie Hale (Colman), who returns penniless to his family home in London and smooth-talks his father into letting him stay. At the same time, he turns the charm on Dorothy Hope (Young), whose father is big in linoleum and who was about to become engaged to a Russian aristocrat. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, the film features cinematography by George Barnes and Gregg Toland. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Comedy · Romance

A loose adaptation of Pushkin's novel Dubrovsky, with Valentino as a Cossack lieutenant who catches the eye of Catherine the Great, rejects her, and goes on the run. When a corrupt nobleman seizes his father's lands and kills the old man, Vladimir dons a black mask and becomes the Black Eagle, a Robin Hood figure, then infiltrates the nobleman's household as a French tutor and falls for his daughter. Clarence Brown directs with a light, fleet touch, and George Barnes's cinematography includes a celebrated extended tracking shot across a banquet table. Vilma Banky is the love interest and Louise Dresser a memorably imperious Czarina. Valentino, in his first United Artists picture, gets to swashbuckle in the Fairbanks mode and romance in his own, and the balance suits him. Published in 1925, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

A Pullman porter who escapes from prison makes his way to a Caribbean island and, through bluff and bravado, talks and fights his way to becoming its emperor, until his regime begins to crumble. Paul Robeson repeats his stage role in this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey play themselves in this musical biopic tracing the brothers from their coal-country boyhood through their rise to the top of the swing era, their famous on-stage breakup, and their reunion. The plot is a sanitized version of a genuinely combative relationship, but the band sequences — including a show-stopping "Green Eyes" — are the real thing. Directed by Alfred E. Green for United Artists, with Janet Blair and Paul Whiteman. The film is in the public domain.

Music · Drama · Biography

A star reporter about to leave the newspaper business for marriage is roped back in by his wily editor for one last story, the execution of an anarchist. Lewis Milestone's fast-talking adaptation of the Hecht and MacArthur play defined the newspaper comedy and later inspired His Girl Friday. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Drama

A swaggering gaucho leader in the Argentine Andes falls for a mountain girl, but his head is turned by a woman known as the Miracle Girl of a mountain shrine. Misunderstanding her spiritual hold over him, the mountain girl betrays him to the authorities, and the Gaucho must escape to save the shrine and the priest who sheltered him. Douglas Fairbanks produced, wrote, and starred, and his then-wife Mary Pickford appears in a cameo as the Virgin Mary. The film was shot at the height of Fairbanks's box-office clout, with lavish sets and a budget to match, though he chose to film it in black and white rather than the Technicolor of The Black Pirate. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Adventure · Drama · Silent

Johnnie Gray is a railroad engineer in the South who is turned down for service when the Civil War breaks out because he is more useful driving trains than fighting. His sweetheart thinks he is a coward. Union spies steal his locomotive, The General, with Annabelle on board, and Johnnie gives chase in another engine. The chase runs in both directions and is built almost entirely from real trains, real track, and real stunts, with no miniatures. The famous shot of a locomotive plunging into a river was a single take with a real engine, and the wreckage sat in the river for years. The film was a commercial disappointment on release but is now regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made. Buster Keaton produced, directed, and starred, and performed his own stunts.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp heads to the Klondike during the gold rush and finds himself stranded in a remote cabin through a blizzard, starving alongside a towering prospector named Big Jim McKay. The famous sequence of Chaplin boiling and eating his boot, twirling the laces like spaghetti, began here. The film follows the prospector into a frontier town, where he falls for a dance-hall girl named Georgia and tries, mostly badly, to win her regard. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, scored, and starred, and the production was enormous: a full Alaskan town built on a Hollywood backlot, real location work in the Sierra Nevada, and a shoot that ran more than a year. The result is the film Chaplin said he most wanted to be remembered by. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Adventure · Silent

A Pre-Code comedy directed by Lowell Sherman, produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Three Broadway showgirls—Schatzi (Joan Blondell), Jean (Madge Evans), and Teddy (Ina Claire)—share an apartment and a talent for extracting gifts from wealthy men. When Teddy announces her engagement to a respectable businessman, the other two try to sabotage the wedding, each scheming to land a rich husband of her own. The film's frank depiction of gold-digging and sexual maneuvering is pure Pre-Code Hollywood, and the three leads sparkle with wit and chemistry. The film was later remade as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Pre-Code

A 1952 American-French film noir directed by Rudolph Maté, starring Glenn Ford as Michael Blake, a World War II veteran who returns to France to recover a priceless jeweled gauntlet — the "green glove" — he found during the Normandy invasion and hid in a village church. The treasure is also sought by suave art dealer Count Paul Rona (George Macready), whose men are willing to kill for it, while Blake is aided by a Parisian tour guide (Geraldine Brooks) and a parish priest (Cedric Hardwicke). Shot on location in postwar Paris and the south of France, the film mixes heist thriller and travelogue. Also known as The White Road and Gauntlet. It is in the public domain.

Crime · Mystery

Douglas Fairbanks' sequel to his 1921 hit The Three Musketeers, and the last of his great swashbucklers. He plays D'Artagnan, racing to protect the rightful King of France from the schemes of Cardinal Richelieu and the masked prisoner who may hold the secret of the throne. The Iron Mask is a part-talkie, one of the few films in which Fairbanks spoke on camera, and his farewell to the silent action hero he had defined for a decade. The stunts are fewer than in his earlier pictures, and the tone is darker, with a tragic ending that surprised audiences used to seeing him win. Allan Dwan directed, and the production was mounted with Fairbanks' usual ambition. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Adventure · Action · Silent

A biographical drama tracing the life of heavyweight champion Joe Louis, from his Detroit youth to his title reign and the racial pressures he bore as a Black sports hero. Coley Wallace portrays Louis in staged fight sequences. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Biography · Drama · Sport

Charlie Chaplin's first feature film and one of the greatest films of the silent era. The Tramp discovers an abandoned baby in an alley and, after trying to leave it, raises the boy as his own. Five years later, the Kid (Jackie Coogan) is his partner in a glass-replacing scam, and the two share a tender, scrappy life together. When the boy falls ill and welfare officials try to take him away, the Tramp fights to keep him. Chaplin balanced broad comedy with genuine pathos, and Coogan's performance made him the first major child star in film history. The dream sequence, in which Chaplin imagines heaven as a rooftop populated by angels and devils, is one of the most imaginative passages in silent cinema. The film was co-founded through United Artists, the distribution company Chaplin had helped create in 1919. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

Mary Pickford stars as Angela Carlotti, an Italian lighthouse keeper's sister whose life is upended when a wounded Austrian spy (Fred Thomson) washes ashore during World War I. Believing him to be a deserter seeking refuge, Angela shelters and falls in love with him, unaware of his true mission. Directed by Frances Marion, one of the most celebrated screenwriters and one of the few female directors of the silent era, the film showcases Pickford in a more dramatic, less childlike role than her usual fare. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A card-dealing junkie fresh out of prison tries to go straight as a drummer, but his wheelchair-bound wife and old dealer pull him back toward heroin. Otto Preminger fought the Production Code to release the film, which broke the taboo on depicting drug addiction. Frank Sinatra gives one of his most serious performances. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Noir

The first screen appearance of Zorro, and the film that turned Douglas Fairbanks from a modern comedian into the swashbuckler who defined an era. Based on Johnston McCulley's 1919 story "The Curse of Capistrano," it follows Don Diego Vega, a foppish aristocrat newly returned to old California, who dons a mask and cape at night to fight the corrupt oppressors of the common people and court the lovely Lolita Pulido. Fairbanks's athleticism is the engine of the picture: he leaps over rooftops, fences with whip-crack speed, and carves his signature "Z" into the scenery. The masked-avenger template it set would echo through every costumed hero to follow. Produced by Fairbanks's own company, it was the first picture released through United Artists. Published in 1920, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

A silent comedy starring Douglas Fairbanks, directed by Theodore Reed. Fairbanks plays Charlie Butters, an eccentric inventor and self-styled "scientific detective" who tries to win the heart of a beautiful social worker by helping her rescue a young woman from white slavery. The film was intended as a spoof of the detective genre and a showcase for Fairbanks's athletic comedy, but it was one of his few box office disappointments. Still, Fairbanks's boundless energy and physical virtuosity are on full display, and the film offers a fascinating glimpse of the star testing material that would later inform his swashbuckling adventures. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

A fictionalized western in which Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, and Pat Garrett circle one another in a love-and-rivalry triangle over a half-Mexican woman. Howard Hughes produced and directed, famously clashing with the Production Code over Jane Russell's presence; the film's release was delayed for years. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Drama

Pete Morgan is a farmer with a bad leg and a dark secret. He has raised his niece Meg as his own and forbids her from going near an abandoned house deep in the woods on his land, warning her that the woods are haunted. When a hired hand starts asking questions and Meg grows more curious, the family's buried past begins to surface. Edward G. Robinson plays against type as the gentle, haunted farmer, and the film leans on atmosphere and dread rather than violence. Miklos Rozsa's score and Bert Glennon's camerawork make the forest feel like a place that does not want its secrets found. The film was the first production of Thalia, the company Robinson formed with producer Sol Lesser. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

A rough Bering Sea skipper rescues a young woman from a shipwreck and comes to regard her as a daughter, until a returning sweetheart and a rival sealing schooner test his hardened heart. Hobart Bosworth stars in this early Arctic adventure. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Drama

The fifteen-chapter serial follows Jack Clayton, son of Tarzan and Jane, as he comes of age in the jungle and journeys to America to rescue a kidnapped friend before returning to Africa to claim his birthright as Korak the killer. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Action

Valentino's final film, released two weeks after his death from peritonitis at thirty-one. He plays a double role: the aging Sheik Ahmed and his hot-blooded son, who falls for Yasmin, a dancing girl, and is tricked by a band of outlaws into believing she betrayed him. The younger Ahmed abducts her in revenge, and the story plays out as a compressed echo of the first film, sharper and a little harder. Vilma Banky is a strong match for Valentino, and the desert photography has a clean, harsh beauty. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2003. Long held under copyright by the Copyright Term Extension Act, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022, and is now freely watchable.

Romance · Adventure · Silent

A Texas cotton picker decides to stop working other people's land and farm a patch of his own, battling poor soil, a hostile neighbor, weather, and exhaustion to give his family a better life. Jean Renoir's loving, unsentimental portrait of rural American poverty was one of his favorite films. It entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama

In 1820s Bangor, Maine, the beautiful and ruthless Jenny Hager schemes her way from poverty to power, marrying a rich lumber baron and seducing his son along the way. Hedy Lamarr gives one of her best performances opposite George Sanders in this adaptation of Ben Ames Williams' novel — a prestige production for B-movie master Edgar G. Ulmer, who brings his usual moody economy to a story of ambition and desire. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Thriller

A silent romantic fantasy-adventure on a scale that still startles. Douglas Fairbanks plays a thief of Bagdad who, on a whim, sneaks into the Caliph's palace, steals an apple, and falls in love with the Princess. To win her he must best rival princes in a quest across a world of magic: a flying horse, a six-armed statue, an underwater kingdom, a monstrous spider, an invisibility powder. Raoul Walsh directs from a scenario Fairbanks co-wrote under a pseudonym, and the production design draws on the illustrations of Edmund Dulac to build an Arabian Nights dreamscape out of lumber, paint, and ingenuity. Anna May Wong is a standout as the treacherous Mongol slave. The film's influence on the fantasy genre is hard to overstate. Published in 1924, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Fantasy · Adventure · Silent

The young swordsman d'Artagnan arrives in Paris and joins the King's Musketeers, pledging all for one against the scheming Cardinal Richelieu and the treacherous Milady. Douglas Fairbanks stars in this lavish silent swashbuckler. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Action

James Cagney plays Joe, a gentle idler who spends his days observing life in Nick's waterfront saloon in San Francisco, sending lackey Tom on eccentric errands and watching the bar's regulars drift through: an old cowboy spinning tall tales, a hoofer who can't get a laugh, and Kitty Duval, played by Cagney's sister Jeanne. William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play comes to the screen under director H.C. Potter, with William Bendix as Nick and Broderick Crawford and Ward Bond among the ensemble. Warm, odd, and unhurried, it is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Drama

An ex-con noir shot on location in postwar Italy. Frank Keeler (Lloyd Bridges) did four years in a military prison for a payroll robbery and never revealed where he hid the money. Now out, he returns to the small Italian town to recover his loot — but the cash has been moved, his old flame Elena (Lea Padovani) has questions, and the gang he double-crossed is waiting. Directed by W. Lee Wilder (Billy's brother), the film pairs Italian neorealist locations with hard-boiled American crime conventions. Released through United Artists, its copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama · Noir

A bag of stolen cash is thrown into the back seat of a couple's car by mistake, and the wife, hungry for a better life, decides to keep it, dragging her husband into a spiral of deceit and murder. Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea star in one of the bleakest noirs of the era. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller

A young woman is murdered at a creepy mansion and returns as a ghost to enlist the mild-mannered Cosmo Topper to find her killer, dragging the bewildered man through a house full of secret passages and suspects. The third Topper comedy. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Fantasy

Mary (Ava Gardner) returns to her small whistle-stop hometown and reignites an old rivalry between two men who never got over her — bitter, jobless Kenny Veech (George Raft) and slick nightclub owner Lew Lentz (Tom Conway). When Kenny gets pulled into a robbery scheme aimed at Lentz, old jealousy turns to murder. An early starring role for Gardner and a moody small-town noir from Russian émigré director Léonide Moguy, produced by Seymour Nebenzal (M) for United Artists release. The film is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Drama

Often cited as the first feature-length zombie film, White Zombie stars Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre, a Haitian voodoo master who runs a sugar mill worked by the walking dead. A young couple arrives in Haiti to marry at the estate of a wealthy acquaintance, who turns to Legendre to zombify the bride so he can have her for himself. The film predates the flesh-eating zombie of George Romero by decades; its zombies are enslaved laborers, drawn from the same folklore that fascinated 1930s audiences. Lugosi, fresh off Dracula, carries the picture with his hypnotic stare. Made independently for around fifty thousand dollars, it was a surprise hit and the only real success for the Halperin brothers. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Horror