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Universal's ambitious silent adaptation of Jules Verne's novel, directed by Stuart Paton and produced by Carl Laemmle. Allen Holubar plays Captain Nemo, who stalks the seas in his submarine Nautilus seeking revenge against the man who destroyed his family, while a French professor and his companions are taken captive aboard the vessel. The production pioneered genuine underwater photography using the Williamson brothers' submarine tube, shot on location in the Bahamas, and was one of the most expensive films of its era at roughly half a million dollars. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Science Fiction · Silent

90 Day Wondering is a 1956 animated short directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros., commissioned by the United States Army to encourage discharged soldiers to re-enlist. The cartoon follows Ralph Phillips, who is overjoyed to be a civilian again after his discharge, but finds civilian life less glamorous than expected. Two pixies named Pete and Re-Pete act as his conscience, debating whether he should stay out or re-enlist. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · War

Walter Paisley is a awkward busboy at a Bohemian coffeehouse who longs to be accepted by the beatnik artists and poets who hang out there. When he accidentally kills his landlady's cat, he covers the body in clay and passes it off as a sculpture, and the café's crowd hails him as a genius. Pressured to produce more work, he graduates from dead cats to dead people. Roger Corman shot the film in five days on a $50,000 budget using leftover sets, and Charles B. Griffith's script turns the pretensions of the art world into a sharp black comedy. Dick Miller, a character actor who spent decades in small parts, gets a rare lead and carries it. The film is a companion piece to The Little Shop of Horrors, made the next year by the same team. It entered the public domain due to a missing copyright notice.

Comedy · Horror

Chaplin's spoof of Cecil B. DeMille's Carmen, released the same year as the film it mocks. Chaplin plays Darn Hosiery, the Don José figure — a dim Spanish officer seduced and ruined by the gypsy Carmen (Edna Purviance) — with Ben Turpin as the toreador Remendado, mangling his name in the bargain. The parody is affectionate but pointed, and its mock-tragic ending is a real gag rather than a whimper. Essanay later padded the two-reeler out to four reels with discarded footage for a 1918 re-release, prompting Chaplin to sue the studio; most surviving prints derive from that expanded version. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Silent

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

A Date to Skate is a 1938 Popeye cartoon from Fleischer Studios, distributed by Paramount Pictures. Popeye takes Olive Oyl on an ice-skating date, showing off his skating prowess until Bluto appears to cause trouble. The short features the distinctive Fleischer Studios animation style and the surreal, elastic transformations that characterized the Popeye series. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

A Day at the Zoo is a 1939 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Tex Avery for Leon Schlesinger Productions, distributed by Warner Bros. The short features a series of rapid-fire gags set at a zoo, with Egghead as a hapless visitor who provokes the animals. Avery's trademark pacing and absurdist humor are on full display, building to a typically explosive punchline. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

Frank Borzage's adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's World War I novel. Gary Cooper plays an American ambulance driver on the Italian front who falls in love with an English nurse, played by Helen Hayes in her screen debut. The romance unfolds against retreats, bombardments, and a hospital in Switzerland. The film's copyright was not renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Drama · Romance · War

A Few Quick Facts About Fear is a 1945 animated short from the "A Few Quick Facts" series, produced by UPA (United Productions of America) for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Directed by Zack Schwartz, it features Private Snafu in knight's armor encountering a fire-breathing dragon, using the allegory to examine the emotion of fear and its influence on human nature. The screenplay was written by Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), who contributed to many of the Snafu shorts. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · War · Educational

A Few Quick Facts About Inflation is a 1944 animated short from the "A Few Quick Facts" series, produced by UPA for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Directed by Osmond Evans, it features Private Snafu learning about inflation and its effects on the wartime economy. The short is one of a series of brief educational cartoons commissioned by the Army to explain complex topics to servicemen in an accessible, humorous way. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · War · Educational

A Fool There Was is a 1915 silent drama that made Theda Bara a star and coined the word "vamp." Produced and distributed by the Fox Film Corporation and directed by Frank Powell, it is based on the play by Porter Emerson Browne, itself inspired by Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Vampire." Bara plays an unnamed femme fatale who sets her sights on a successful diplomat and husband (Edward Jose) and methodically destroys his career, his family, and his life. The film was a sensational hit, and Bara's image as the exotic, predatory "vampire" woman shaped Hollywood notions of screen sexuality for a decade. As a 1915 release it is securely in the public domain.

Drama · Silent

A silent comedy directed by Howard Hawks, starring Victor McLaglen as Spike Madden, a rough-and-tumble sailor who leaves a girl in every port he visits. When he befriends fellow sailor Salami (Robert Armstrong), the two become inseparable buddies—until they both fall for the same woman, the alluring Marie (Louise Brooks) in a French port. Brooks, in one of her earliest American roles, is magnetic, her bobbed hair and smoldering gaze already hinting at the icon she would become. The film's blend of brawling humor, male bonding, and exotic locales made it a hit, and Fox remade it as Goldie (1931) with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

A Hitch in Time is a 1955 animated short directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros., commissioned by the United States Air Force to promote re-enlistment. The cartoon follows John McRogers, a character closely modeled on Private Snafu, who dreams about his future after four years in the Air Force. He is guided by Grogan, Technical Gremlin First Class — a reworking of the Technical Fairy from the original Snafu series — who explains the advantages of staying in the service versus returning to civilian life. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · War

A fast-paced silent comedy short directed by William Beaudine for Christie Film Company. Jack wants to marry Betty but inadvertently offends her parents, who declare they'd accept "anybody in the world but that whippersnapper!" With the help of an old actor friend, Jack schemes to make his prospective in-laws rue their words. The film is a classic farce of mistaken identity and romantic perseverance, preserved by the Academy Film Archive from material provided by the New Zealand Film Archive. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

A Is for Atom is a 1953 animated educational short directed by Carl Urbano for John Sutherland Productions, sponsored by General Electric. The film explains what an atom is, how nuclear energy is released from certain kinds of atoms, the peacetime uses of nuclear power, and the by-products of nuclear fission. The periodic table is represented as "Element Town," with each element depicted in a distinctive shape. The short ends with a majestic atomic giant straddling the earth as the narrator declares that our future "depends on man's wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power." The film won the Second Grand Award for science films at the Venice Film Festival in 1954 and was seen by more than twelve million people in its first three years. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Educational

Directed by Victor Sjöström and based on Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play *They Knew What They Wanted*, this pre-Code MGM drama stars Vilma Bánky as Lena, a San Francisco waitress who answers a marriage advertisement from a middle-aged Napa Valley grape-grower named Tony. Tony has sent her a photograph of his handsome younger hired man, Buck, instead of himself. When Lena arrives and discovers the deception, she goes through with the marriage anyway, drawn by the promise of a home and her growing attraction to Buck. Edward G. Robinson, still early in his screen career, plays the lonely Italian farmer with a tenderness far removed from the gangster roles that would soon make him famous. Bánky, the silent-era star opposite Valentino, made one of her last screen appearances here before her Hungarian accent ended her career in talkies. The film's copyright was not renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Drama · Romance

A Lamb in a Jam is a 1945 Noveltoons cartoon from Famous Studios, directed by Isadore Sparber and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It features Blackie the Lamb, who is chased by a wolf trying to shear Blackie's wool for a winter coat. The short is part of the Noveltoons series, which ran from 1943 to 1967 and produced over 140 cartoons. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Animation · Comedy

A Lecture on Camouflage is a 1944 Private Snafu cartoon directed by Chuck Jones for Leon Schlesinger Productions, written by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). Using Snafu as an example, Technical Fairy First Class teaches the methods of effective camouflage in a typically irreverent Snafu short, building to a famously shocking ending. As a U.S. government work produced for the Army Signal Corps, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · War · Educational

A 1913 British silent science fiction film directed by J. Wallett Waller, based on the play by Richard Ganthony. According to the British Film Institute, it is the first British science-fiction film. A Martian named Ramiel is sentenced to visit Earth to cure Horace Parker, a wealthy and selfish young man. The Martian shows him poverty and suffering on the streets, and after rescuing a soldier's wife from a fire, Parker reforms and regains the esteem of his community. The play was previously filmed in 1903 and remade again in 1921.

Sci-Fi · Fantasy · Comedy

Allan Dwan's A Modern Musketeer is a brisk Douglas Fairbanks comedy from the peak of his silent years, built on the short story "D'Artagnan of Kansas" by Eugene P. Lyle Jr. Fairbanks plays Ned Thacker, a Kansas boy raised on The Three Musketeers who dreams of chivalric adventure and gets more than he bargained for on a trip out west, where he single-handedly tangles with a bandit, rescues a damsel, and leapt from moving cars with the boundless energy that made Fairbanks a star. Produced by Fairbanks's own company and distributed by Artcraft, the film features an early appearance by ZaSu Pitts and cinematography by Victor Fleming, who would later direct The Wizard of Oz. As a 1917 release the film is securely in the United States public domain.

Adventure · Comedy · Silent

An anti-Mormon silent drama directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Jesse L. Lasky's Feature Play Company. Mae Murray stars as Dora Hogue, a young woman traveling west with her family when their cabin is overtaken by a Mormon caravan. An elder demands Dora as his plural wife, setting in motion a melodramatic conflict that capitalizes on the anti-Mormon sentiment prevalent at the time. Frank Borzage — better known today as one of Hollywood's great directors — appears as an actor in the role of Tom Rigdon. The film was originally eight reels but cut to five before release. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A pre-Code drama from First National, directed by Lloyd Bacon and adapted from the London play *Fame* by Audrey and Waverly Carter. Billie Dove plays Lady Patricia Hanley, a wealthy heiress who defies her family to marry Paul Gherardi, a struggling Italian violinist played by Basil Rathbone. As Paul's career falters and his pride festers, he falls into the orbit of Countess Olga Balakireff, a glamorous noblewoman played by Kay Francis, who seduces him as much for sport as for love. The film is a showcase for its three leads: Dove, the former Ziegfeld beauty; Rathbone, borrowed from MGM and years away from his Sherlock Holmes fame; and Francis, who steals the picture as the cool, predatory countess and would become one of the 1930s' biggest stars. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Romance

A silent drama directed by D.W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish and Robert Harron. John Logan Jr. leaves his parents and sweetheart, Jennie Timberlake, in the rural Kentucky of Happy Valley to seek his fortune in New York City. Those he left behind fall into hardship in his absence, while John is seduced by the wealth and cynicism of the city. The film was believed lost for nearly fifty years until a print was discovered in the State Film Archives of the Soviet Union in 1965 and donated to the Museum of Modern Art. Carol Dempster, who would become Griffith's leading lady of the 1920s, made her film debut in a small role as a girl John meets in New York. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A Cecil B. DeMille western starring Mary Pickford. Jenny Lawrence travels to a California logging camp to find her uncle, unaware he has been killed and his identity assumed by a stagecoach robber (Elliott Dexter) hiding from the law; recognizing the truth, she accepts his protection rather than face the camp alone. Shot on location in the redwoods and at the Lasky studio, the film was one of Pickford's early features under her own production company. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Western · Drama · Silent

Harold Lloyd's first feature-length comedy, directed by Fred Newmeyer for Hal Roach Studios. Lloyd plays a wealthy young idler who joins the Navy to impress his girlfriend's disapproving father. After a shore leave brawl in a foreign port, he finds himself aboard a ship where he must rescue his girl from a villainous maharajah. The film marks Lloyd's transition from two-reel shorts to features, and his "glasses character"—an ambitious, all-American go-getter—was now fully formed. The film's blend of physical comedy and romantic adventure set the template for Lloyd's greatest features to come. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

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

Wealthy, universally disliked Silas Wayne gathers his greedy relatives and mistreated servants to read them his will, and is stabbed to death in front of a room full of witnesses who all claim to have seen nothing. Detective Sergeant Mitchell (Regis Toomey) and wisecracking reporter "Nosey" Toodles (June Clyde) sort through a house full of suspects — a shrouded figure stalking the halls, a phony diamond in the safe, and a second body before the night is out. Lucille La Verne steals scenes as the dead man's housekeeper. Released by Monogram in November 1932 and reissued under the title The Wayne Murder Case, it is a brisk pre-Code old-dark-house mystery. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Mystery · Crime · Drama

Supreme Court Justice John Josephus Grant (Frank Morgan) slips away for a quiet duck-hunting trip and lands in a small town ruled by a corrupt mayor and a bought judge. Incognito, he watches local politicians railroad an innocent young man and decides to put the system on trial himself. A warm, Capra-flavored civics comedy built around the Wizard of Oz himself, with Richard Carlson and Jean Rogers as the young couple caught in the machine. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama · Romance

A Tale of Two Kitties is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions. It features two hungry cats, Babbit and Catstello — parodies of the comedy team Abbott and Costello — who scheme to catch a baby bird in a nest atop a high telephone pole. The bird is Tweety, making his first-ever appearance (then called "Orson"), who would go on to become one of Warner Bros.' most enduring characters. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

A silent melodrama directed by Frank Lloyd for Goldwyn Pictures, based on an original screen story by Gouverneur Morris. During the Boxer Rebellion in China, a white orphan girl is adopted and raised by a Chinese man who brings her to San Francisco's Chinatown. As she grows up, played by Leatrice Joy, no one suspects she is not Chinese, and the film follows the collision between the two cultures of its title as the truth of her identity surfaces. Wallace Beery plays the villain Li Fang. The production built an elaborate Chinese street set at the Goldwyn studio in Culver City, and Lloyd took advantage of a real fire in Venice, California, filming it with his camera crew to use as a burning temple scene. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Shot by the Miles Brothers just days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, this single continuous take rides a cable car down Market Street toward the Ferry Building, passing horse-drawn wagons, early automobiles, and pedestrians who wander casually into the frame. It is one of the most haunting pieces of early actuality footage ever made: the city it shows was largely destroyed by the quake and fire less than a week later. Historians have used everything from the cars' license plates to puddles on the street to pin down the exact filming date. The film is in the public domain.

Documentary · Silent · Short

A Trip to the Moon (original French title: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Melies. Widely regarded as the first science fiction film, it follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a bullet-shaped capsule, encounter the Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth. The film features Melies's most iconic image — the rocket landing in the Moon's eye — and pioneered numerous special effects techniques including superimposition, dissolves, and hand-painted color. The film is in the public domain.

Fantasy · Sci-Fi · Adventure

A Charlie Chaplin Essanay comedy in which the Tramp disrupts a family outing in the park. After charming a young woman and infuriating her father and suitor, Chaplin retreats to a hotel where he encounters the family again. In the film's famous sequence, Chaplin disguises himself as a woman to evade pursuit, leading to a farcical series of mistaken identities and flirtations—including the girl's father making advances toward the cross-dressed Tramp. The film showcases Chaplin's mastery of gender-bending comedy, a device he would refine throughout his career. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

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 pre-Code musical comedy directed by Michael Curtiz, originally released as Bright Lights and later retitled Adventures in Africa. Dorothy Mackaill plays Louanne, a Broadway star retiring to marry a wealthy aristocrat, whose past as a carnival performer and hula dancer in sleazy African dives threatens her new social standing. Frank Fay co-stars as her loyal stage partner Wally, and Noah Beery plays a diamond smuggler seeking revenge. The film was originally photographed entirely in Technicolor, but only a black- and-white print survives. It features the screen debut of John Carradine in a small, uncredited role.

Musical · Comedy

The Soviet Union's first science fiction spectacle, directed by Yakov Protazanov for Mezhrabpom-Rus and adapted from Alexei Tolstoy's novel. In post-revolutionary Moscow, engineer Los builds a rocket and flies to Mars, where he falls for the planet's queen, Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva), and helps spark a Martian proletarian uprising. The film's lasting fame rests on its astonishing constructivist design — Alexandra Exter's geometric Martian costumes and sets look like nothing else in silent cinema — while its Earthbound scenes offer a wry portrait of life under the New Economic Policy. Released in the United States as Revolt of the Robots. A 1924 production, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Science Fiction · Drama · Fantasy · Silent

Africa is a 1930 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Walter Lantz for Universal Pictures. Oswald goes on a big-game hunting expedition in Africa, encountering lions, elephants, and other jungle animals in a series of gags. Portions of this short were reused from the film King of Jazz, where they were originally colored in two-strip Technicolor. As a 1930 work, the film entered the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.

Animation · Comedy

Africa Before Dark is a 1928 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, produced by Winkler Pictures for Universal. Oswald goes hunting for big game in Africa, with the cartoon featuring the distinctive Iwerks animation style that characterized the Disney-era Oswald shorts. The film was lost for decades and rediscovered in Austria in 2013. As a 1928 work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

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 documentary-style expedition film combining genuine footage from Paul L. Hoefler's 14-month, 14,000-mile trek across Africa with staged scenes filmed in Los Angeles, narrated by Lowell Thomas. Directed by Walter Futter, the film was a surprise hit that captured the sounds and sights of African wildlife and tribal cultures. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Documentary · Adventure

Africa Squawks is a 1939 Terrytoons cartoon directed by Connie Rasinski, featuring the character Major Doolittle. The paunchy, monocled Englishman and his valet Jarvis go big-game hunting in Africa, where they try to trap a lion by dressing the servant in a lion skin — only to be outwitted at every turn. The short was part of a brief Terrytoons series built around the Colonel Blimp-like Major Doolittle. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

A 1975 American Western film directed by Earl Bellamy. When the eldest daughter of a pioneer family is kidnapped by a mysterious Native American warrior, her teenage brother Sam Sutter (Stewart Petersen) sets out to rescue her. Along the way, he encounters a wise but alcoholic trapper named Russian (Richard Boone) who agrees to help him track down the unknown tribe. Their perilous journey into the remote Red Rock region of Utah brings them face to face with Chief Cut Tongue (Henry Wilcoxon), whose solution to the situation is treacherous — Sam must sacrifice his own life by passing the test of "Crooked Sky" and shield his sister from an executioner's arrow. The film is marked Public Domain on Archive.org.

Western · Adventure · Family

A 1962 American drama film written and directed by James Landis, starring Bobby Diamond. Eddie Slocum, a young Indiana farm boy, volunteers for the Army's Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, inspired by his uncle's World War II paratrooper service. During jump school training, he clashes with Rocky, a bullying recruit jealous of the attention Eddie gets from local beauty Jenny May. During their first parachute jump, Rocky's chute becomes entangled in Eddie's lines, and Eddie must hold onto his former enemy as they descend to the ground — a brush with death that transforms Rocky and bonds the platoon.

Drama · War

Olive Oyl writes a screenplay in which Popeye plays Aladdin, who uses a magic lamp and his spinach-fueled strength to win the princess from a wicked vizier. The third and last of the Fleischer Studios' two-reel Popeye color specials. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Family · Fantasy

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

One of the earliest feature-length adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice stories, directed by W.W. Young for the Nonpareil Feature Film Corporation. Stage actress Viola Savoy plays Alice, who follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and encounters the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and the Queen of Hearts. Shot on a wooded Long Island estate, the film was a $25,000 production and one of only two screen appearances by Savoy. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Silent

The pilot for Walt Disney's Alice Comedies, made at his Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City. A live-action girl, played by Virginia Davis, falls asleep in a cartoonist's studio and dreams herself into an animated Wonderland full of lions, dancing cats, and marching soldiers. The short mixes live-action footage of Davis with hand-drawn backgrounds and characters, a technique Disney would build an entire series around after moving to Hollywood. The film is in the public domain in the United States as a pre-1930 work.

Animation · Silent · Short · Family

Based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, the film follows a group of young German schoolboys who enlist in the army at the urging of their teacher and are ground down by the realities of trench warfare in World War I. Lewis Milestone directed with a documentary plainness that was unusual for its time, and the result is one of the first great anti-war films. Lew Ayres plays Paul Bäumer, the idealistic recruit whose patriotism is hollowed out by what he sees; Louis Wolheim is Katczinsky, the veteran who teaches the new men how to survive. The film won the Academy Awards for Outstanding Production and Best Director, the first picture to take both. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama

Originally aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on November 12, 1974, this thriller directed by Burt Kennedy follows a man traveling through a remote backwoods area who is taken captive by a group of orphaned children. The children want him to become their father, and adults who refuse that particular honor have a way of disappearing. Stacy Keach leads the cast alongside Samantha Eggar, John Savage, and Robby Benson. The film, also known as *Evil in the Swamp*, was produced by Cinemation Industries and filmed in Lebanon, Tennessee. Because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977 without a copyright notice, it is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

All Wet is a 1927 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon directed by Ub Iwerks for the Walt Disney Studio, produced by Winkler Pictures for Universal. Oswald works as a lifeguard and gets into various aquatic misadventures. The cartoon was reissued in 1932 by Walter Lantz Productions with synchronized sound. As a 1927 work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

A Hunky and Spunky cartoon from Famous Studios, the successor to Fleischer Studios. The mischievous young donkey Spunky gets into trouble when he won't stop kicking, and his mother Hunky must teach him a lesson. The Hunky and Spunky series was one of several cartoon properties Famous Studios continued after the Fleischers lost control of their studio. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Family

American Aristocracy is a 1916 silent comedy-adventure directed by Lloyd Ingraham for the Fine Arts Film Company, with a story by Anita Loos and Douglas Fairbanks in the lead. Fairbanks plays Cassius Lee, a young entomologist and all-round egalitarian who tangles with a piratical arms smuggler while trying to win the heart of a rich man's daughter. The film gently satirizes American social climbing and the cult of European-style aristocracy, with Fairbanks doing his own stunts and radiating the athletic good humor that defined his early features. Produced under the Triangle banner, it is preserved at George Eastman House and is in the public domain.

Adventure · Comedy · Silent

A Harold Lloyd comedy directed by Fred Newmeyer for Hal Roach Studios. Lloyd plays a young man who works as an extra at a film studio and is mistaken for a society gentleman. Invited to a fancy dinner party, he must bluff his way through high-society etiquette with predictably disastrous results. The film's centerpiece is Lloyd's desperate attempt to ride a horse, a sequence of escalating physical comedy that showcases his trademark blend of daring and Everyman appeal. The film is a classic example of Lloyd's "glasses character" navigating social situations far above his station. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

Ten strangers lured to a remote island mansion by the unseen "Mr. Owen" are accused by a gramophone recording of crimes the law couldn't touch — then begin dying one by one, following the nursery rhyme tacked above the mantel. René Clair's adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel keeps the jagged suspense while letting an impeccable ensemble — Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, June Duprez — play it with dry wit. Still the benchmark screen version of the most-read mystery novel ever written. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Mystery · Drama

A wounded gunfighter is taken in and nursed by a family of Quakers, and their gentle faith slowly wears down his thirst for revenge against the man who killed his foster father. John Wayne produced and starred; it was the first film his own company made. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · 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

The Marx Brothers' second film, adapted from their 1928 Broadway hit. Groucho plays Captain Spaulding, an African explorer returning to society, who arrives at a Long Island estate at the same moment a valuable painting goes missing. What plot there is exists mainly to hang the brothers' routines on: Groucho's verbal avalanches, Chico's piano and patter, Harpo's silent anarchy, and Margaret Dumont's unflappable dignity under fire. Victor Heerman, who had directed them on stage, kept the camera out of the way and let the act play. The film's surrealist streak was admired by critics from Antonin Artaud to François Truffaut. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Comedy · Musical

The first film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, this silent version stars Blanche Sweet as Anna Christie, a young woman raised by relatives after her father, a Swedish coal barge captain, abandoned her. When she reunites with her father on his barge, she falls for a rough-hewn sailor, Matt Burke, but cannot be honest with either man about the life she led before finding them. Produced by Thomas H. Ince, who paid $100,000 for the stage rights, and directed by John Griffith Wray, the film was considered lost for decades until Blanche Sweet herself helped locate a print with Russian intertitles in a Soviet archive. O'Neill, who was famously difficult about adaptations of his work, cited this silent version as the best film made from his writing. George F. Marion recreated his stage role as Anna's father. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Greta Garbo's first talking picture, marketed with the slogan "Garbo Talks!" This is the German-language version MGM filmed alongside the English release, directed by Jacques Feyder using the same sets, with Garbo reprising her role opposite a German-speaking cast. Based on Eugene O'Neill's play, it follows a young woman, raised by relatives after her father abandoned her, who comes to live on his coal barge and falls for a sailor she cannot be honest with about her past. Garbo's famous first line, "Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby," revealed a husky voice that only added to her mystique. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Romance

A pre-Code backstage musical and the directorial debut of Rouben Mamoulian, who brought his innovative theatrical staging to the early sound film. Helen Morgan plays Kitty Darling, a fading burlesque star who tries to save her convent-educated daughter April (Joan Peers) from following in her footsteps. Mamoulian's extensive use of a moving camera and simultaneous sound tracks was technically groundbreaking for the early sound era. The film's copyright expired on January 1, 2025, entering the public domain.

Drama · Music

A historical drama directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Norma Talmadge, set in 16th-century France during the wars of religion between Catholics and Huguenots. When Catherine de' Medici orders the massacre of French Protestants, the Comte de la Roche spares his enemy, the Huguenot Rupert de Vrieac, by reducing him to an indentured servant in his castle. Rupert falls in love with Yolande, the count's sister, only to find his rival for her hand is the Duc de Tours, a notorious persecutor of Huguenots. Produced by the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation and presented by Joseph M. Schenck, the film was an expensive prestige production with lavish 16th-century costumes and a reproduction of the Louvre ballroom. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent · History

A 1960 Italian science fiction film directed by Antonio Margheriti (credited as Anthony Dawson), originally titled Space Men. In the 22nd century, reporter Ray Peterson (Rik Van Nutter) is assigned to cover events aboard an orbiting space station. When a malfunctioning spaceship controlled by a deranged electronic brain threatens to destroy Earth with its photon generators, Peterson joins a desperate mission to intercept it. Considered by many to be the best science fiction film from director Margheriti, distinguished by its almost-plausible plot and impressive special effects. Released in the U.S. as a double feature with The Phantom Planet (1961).

Sci-Fi

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

Stan and Ollie inherit a South Sea island, but on the voyage out their boat runs aground on a new atoll rising from the sea, where they declare their own tiny nation, until the discovery of uranium brings the world's powers swarming. The final film of Laurel and Hardy, a Franco-Italian co-production released in the U.S. as Utopia. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy

A 1960 Italian horror film directed by Anton Giulio Majano, originally titled Seddok, l'erede di Satana. When a singer named Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret) is horribly disfigured in a car accident, scientist Professor Alberto Levin (Alberto Lupo) develops a serum called Derma 28 that restores her beauty. But the treatment is only temporary, and Levin — who has fallen in love with Jeanette — must kill young women to obtain the glandular transplants needed to make the cure permanent. Unable to continue killing without remorse, Levin uses his earlier failed serum Derma 25 to transform himself into a monstrous killer. Despite its American title, the film contains no actual vampire.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A 1965 science fiction compilation film produced for American television from installments of the Japanese Super Giant film series by Shintoho. Starman (Ken Utsui), the steel-bodied champion of the Emerald Planet's Peace Council, comes to Earth to stop the alien Meropolitans, whose agents have infiltrated the planet and plan to destroy it with a super-weapon. The original Japanese films were edited and dubbed by Walter Manley Enterprises for American syndication, with the hero renamed from Super Giant — the same treatment that produced Attack from Space and Evil Brain from Outer Space. The film is in the public domain.

Sci-Fi · Action

A 1965 science fiction compilation film produced for American television from two installments of the Japanese Super Giant film series by Shintoho. The superhero Starman (Ken Utsui), a steel-bodied being created by the Peace Council of the Emerald Planet, is sent to Earth to protect it from belligerent aliens from the Sapphire Galaxy. The Sapphireans kidnap Dr. Yamanaka and force him to use his spaceship against Earth, and it falls to Starman to save the scientist, his family, and the planet. The original Japanese films were edited and dubbed by Walter Manley Enterprises for American syndication, with Starman's character renamed from Super Giant.

Sci-Fi · Action

People begin disappearing in a backwoods swamp, and a game warden and a local doctor discover that giant, slug-like leeches are responsible. The creatures drag their victims down into the water and keep them alive to feed on slowly. Produced by Gene Corman for American International Pictures and released on a double bill with A Bucket of Blood, Attack of the Giant Leeches is a tight little creature feature that gets its mileage out of the swamp atmosphere and the underwater scenes of the leeches at work. The monsters are men in rubber suits, which is part of the charm. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A small-town girl hungry for a grander life leaves her devoted sweetheart behind for a wealthy businessman's Riverside Drive apartment in Frank Borzage's silent drama. Adapted by Frances Marion from a Fannie Hurst story and produced by Cosmopolitan Productions for Paramount, the film stars Seena Owen as a woman who discovers, too late, the cost of the comfort she traded for love. Borzage's early interest in the emotional lives of working women, the thread he would pull through much of his later career, is already visible here. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Bad Man of Deadwood is a 1941 Republic Pictures western directed by Joseph Kane, starring Roy Rogers and George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers plays sharpshooter Brett Starr, who rolls into the town of Deadwood with Professor Blackstone's traveling medicine show, alongside singer Sally Payne. The show's tuneful pitch gets a hostile reception from the crooked businessmen who run the town and the hired guns who enforce their rule, so Starr sticks around to help the townsfolk — including a reform-minded judge's daughter — break the gang's grip. A classic singing-cowboy oater from Rogers's peak Republic years, the film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Music

Federal agent Alan O'Connor (Conrad Nagel) goes undercover to crack a gang pulling a string of small-town bank robberies, only to discover his sister (Eleanor Hunt) has unknowingly become engaged to the gang's smooth-talking ringleader. Directed by Louis J. Gasnier — the man behind Reefer Madness — for Grand National Pictures, it's a brisk G-man B-picture from the era when J. Edgar Hoover's bureau was Hollywood's favorite source of heroes. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

Sergei Eisenstein's account of the 1905 mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin, in which the crew rebels after being served maggot-ridden meat and the uprising spreads to the port of Odessa. The Odessa Steps sequence — tsarist troops firing on civilians as a baby carriage rolls down the stairs — remains one of the most studied and imitated passages in film history, and the picture is the foundational text of Soviet montage editing. Aleksandr Antonov plays the mutiny's leader Vakulinchuk, with Vladimir Barsky and Grigori Aleksandrov. Made as a state commission to mark the revolution's twentieth anniversary, it was banned in several countries on release and is still ranked among the greatest films ever made. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · History · Silent · War

Battling Bosko is a 1932 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Hugh Harman for Harman-Ising Productions, distributed by Warner Bros. Bosko tries his hand at boxing, with the usual slapstick results. The short is part of the early Looney Tunes series featuring Bosko, the first recurring character of the franchise. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

A pampered millionaire named Alfred Butler goes on a camping trip to toughen up and falls for a mountain girl who has no patience for his softness. To win her, Alfred passes himself off as a famous boxer who happens to share his name, and the impersonation spirals toward a real fight he has no hope of winning. Buster Keaton directed and stars, and the film is one of his more plot-driven features, leaning on mistaken identity rather than pure stunt work. It was Keaton's highest-grossing picture at the box office, even if it is less celebrated today than The General or Sherlock Jr. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Comedy · Silent

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

John Barrymore stars as George Bryan "Beau" Brummel, the impoverished soldier who talks his way into the friendship of the Prince of Wales and the heart of Regency London society, only to fall when the prince withdraws his favor. Directed by Harry Beaumont for Warner Bros. and based on Clyde Fitch's 1890 play, the film is a showcase for Barrymore's stage-trained intensity, from the arrogant dandy at his peak to the broken exile in Calais. Mary Astor plays the woman he cannot have. The film survives in several cuts of differing length and is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A sequel to Herbert Brenon's 1926 hit Beau Geste, this pre-Code adventure sends an American (Lester Vail) into the French Foreign Legion to rescue his boyhood friend John Geste (Ralph Forbes, reprising his silent role). Filmed on location in the Sonoran Desert and on the RKO lot, the picture adapts P.C. Wren's novel with a Max Steiner score and early all-dialogue location recording. Loretta Young and Irene Rich round out the cast. The film is marked public domain on its Internet Archive item.

Adventure · Romance · War

A social-climbing governess in early nineteenth-century England schemes her way through the Napoleonic era, leaving a trail of broken men in her wake. Miriam Hopkins stars in this adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, the first feature film shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · History

William Wellman's part-talking drama about a young woman who kills her abusive stepfather and goes on the run dressed as a boy, joining a band of hoboes riding the rails. Louise Brooks, in her best American role, plays the girl; Wallace Beery is Oklahoma Red, the hobo king who takes her in; Richard Arlen is the farm boy who throws in with her. The film was made in the transitional sound period and uses synchronized music, sound effects, and a few spoken passages rather than full dialogue. Wellman shot much of it on location with real trains and real transients, giving it a grit that most studio films of the year did not have. Brooks would leave for Germany and make Pandora's Box shortly after, and her American career never recovered. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Crime

A capable private secretary holds a struggling executive's business together, only to see him take the credit and the corner office, in a pre-Code workplace drama about the woman behind the man. Mary Astor and Ricardo Cortez star. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance

The earliest surviving film to feature the character Charlie Chan, directed by Irving Cummings and produced by Fox Film Corporation. Warner Baxter stars as Col. John Beetham, a man under suspicion in a complex murder mystery. Lois Moran plays Eve Mannering Durand, whose husband's death sets the investigation in motion. Boris Karloff appears as Beetham's sinister manservant in an early role before his horror fame. Charlie Chan, played by the Chinese American actor E. L. Park, gets one mention early in the film and then makes only a few momentary appearances after 75 minutes. Park was the first Chinese American to play Charlie Chan on screen. Producer William Fox chose this film to open the palatial Fox Theatre in San Francisco on June 28, 1929. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

Two nightclub entertainers, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, parachute into a Pacific jungle island where they meet a sarong-clad island princess and a mad scientist named Dr. Zabor, played by Bela Lugosi in full Dracula regalia. Jealous of Duke's romance with the princess, Zabor decides to use his evolution experiments to turn his rival into a gorilla. Mitchell and Petrillo were a comedy team built to imitate Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Jerry Lewis reportedly sued to shut the production down. William Beaudine, a veteran of silent comedy, directed with the workmanlike speed that earned him the nickname "One-Shot." The film is a strange collision of horror parody, knockabout slapstick, and stock jungle footage. It entered the public domain because no copyright was ever filed.

Comedy · Horror

One of the great silent epics, adapted from Lew Wallace's novel. A Jewish prince in Roman-occupied Jerusalem is falsely accused of treason by his childhood friend, now a Roman tribune, and condemned to the galleys. He survives, is adopted by a Roman consul, and returns to confront his betrayer in a chariot race that remains one of the most famous sequences ever filmed. Fred Niblo directed on a scale that was staggering even by 1920s standards: thousands of extras, a full-size Roman arena, and a naval battle staged with real ships. Ramon Novarro is the prince and Francis X. Bushman the villainous Messala. The film saved MGM from financial trouble and remained the studio's top earner for decades. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Action · Silent

One of the first features shot in CinemaScope, this Twentieth Century-Fox adventure drops a Romeo-and-Juliet romance into the sponge-diving wars of Tarpon Springs, Florida. Robert Wagner plays Tony Petrakis, son of a Greek sponge-boat captain (Gilbert Roland), who falls for Gwyneth Rhys (Terry Moore), daughter of the rival clan led by Richard Boone. Directed by Robert D. Webb, the film is remembered less for its melodrama than for Edward Cronjager's Oscar-nominated underwater cinematography and a shimmering early score by Bernard Herrmann. Shot on location in Florida and the Bahamas, it entered the public domain in the United States after its copyright was not renewed.

Adventure · Drama

Walter Ruttmann's portrait of one day in Berlin, from the morning trains arriving at an empty city through work, meals, nightlife, and back to the factories at dawn. There is no story and no characters — the city itself is the subject, organized in five "acts" that move through the rhythms of modern urban life. Edited like a piece of music with a commissioned score meant to be performed live, it established the "city symphony" genre and directly inspired Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera two years later. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Documentary · Silent

Three lonely millionaire engineers — Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, and Charles Winninger — throw their wallets out the window on Christmas Eve to see who returns them, and end up adopting the two strangers who do: a young singer and a cowboy who fall in love. When the three men die in a plane crash, they return as ghosts to shepherd the couple through the consequences of the money they left behind. Also released as Beyond Christmas, it is a gentle holiday fantasy directed by A. Edward Sutherland for RKO, and its dark second half — one ghost tempted away from the light — surprises anyone expecting pure sentiment. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Drama · Fantasy · Romance

Illustrated Press managing editor Steve Wilson and reporter Lorelei Kilbourne go after a gambling ring preying on college students after the publisher's niece is caught up in a crooked dice game and framed for murder. Phillip Reed and Hillary Brooke reprise their Big Town newspaper roles, with Richard Travis and Ann Gillis. The third of four Pine-Thomas features spun off from the popular radio series, directed by co-producer William C. Thomas. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Noir · Drama

Superman races to protect a train carrying a billion dollars in defense bonds from a gang of saboteurs who bomb the tracks, wreck a bridge, and commandeer the locomotive. The third of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Action · Sci-Fi

A young American sailor falls for a Polynesian princess on a South Seas island, ignoring warnings that she is destined to be sacrificed to a volcano god. Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea star in King Vidor's pre-Code romance, filmed on location in Hawaii. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Adventure · Romance · Drama

A musical short film written and directed by Dudley Murphy, set during the Harlem Renaissance. It was the first film to feature Duke Ellington and His Orchestra performing as a jazz band, and the film debut of actress Fredi Washington. The plot follows a couple in the performing arts: Duke's girlfriend Fredi, a dancer with a heart condition, collapses on stage while performing with the band. The Ellington Orchestra plays "The Duke Steps Out," "Black Beauty," "Cotton Club Storm," "Hot Feet," and the title piece "Black and Tan Fantasy." As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain.

Music · Drama

A wartime espionage quickie from Monogram, rushed into theaters three months after Pearl Harbor. Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Melcher, a plastic surgeon who has spent years transforming six agents of Japan's Black Dragon Society into doubles of prominent American industrialists — a fifth column planted to sabotage the US war effort. When the infiltrators start turning up dead with ceremonial daggers in their chests, a doctor and a detective try to untangle the conspiracy. Clayton Moore, a few years away from the Lone Ranger, plays a young FBI man. Cheap even by poverty-row standards, but a vivid snapshot of wartime paranoia. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Thriller · Mystery · War

A young woman stabs a man in self-defense when he tries to assault her, and a blackmailer who saw her flees the scene begins to prey on her and her detective boyfriend. Alfred Hitchcock began shooting Blackmail as a silent and then, partway through production, was asked to make it Britain's first talkie. The result is a film that straddles both eras, with famous set pieces built around sound: a breakfast table conversation dominated by the word "knife," a chase through the British Museum, and location shooting on the London streets that gives the thriller a documentary texture. Anny Ondra, a Polish actress whose accent was dubbed by Joan Barry, plays the heroine. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Thriller · Crime · Drama

Erich von Stroheim's directorial debut, in which he also stars as a predatory Austrian lieutenant who sets his sights on an American doctor's wife during a holiday in the Alps. Made for Carl Laemmle's Universal on a small budget, the film already bears von Stroheim's signatures: the meticulous detail, the moral rot beneath polite society, the contempt for men too absorbed in their work to notice their wives. Sam De Grasse and Francelia Billington play the couple, with Gibson Gowland as the mountain guide. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Leslie Brooks plays Claire Cummings, a society columnist who marries rich and keeps moving up, leaving a trail of dead husbands and a psychologist, played by Robert Paige, who realizes too late what she is. A cold-blooded B noir from poverty-row distributor Film Classics, the film runs its femme fatale premise harder than most A-pictures dared: Claire kills without remorse and without a mitigating backstory. Brooks, usually a musical-comedy blonde, is the whole show here, and director Jack Bernhard keeps the melodrama lean and mean. Neglected for decades, it has since been reclaimed as a minor noir classic. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Noir · Crime · Drama

Rudolph Valentino stars as Juan Gallardo, a Seville matador who rises from poverty to national fame only to be undone by his infatuation with a wealthy aristocrat, Doña Sol. Fred Niblo directed this Paramount adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel, with June Mathis writing the scenario that helped cement Valentino's screen persona as the brooding, doomed lover. Lila Lee plays the wife he betrays and Nita Naldi, in her breakout role, the temptress. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

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

A low-budget horror thriller written and directed by Ralph Brooke, based without attribution on Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game." Four young adults boat to a remote tropical island, where they discover the estate of Dr. Albert Balleau (Wilton Graff), a sadistic hunter who has grown bored with stalking animals and now collects human trophies. Balleau gives his captives a head start before hunting them with bow and arrow through the jungle. Filmed in 1959 at Screencraft Studios but not released until 1961 on a double bill with The Devil's Hand, the film is a threadbare but atmospheric retelling of the oft-adapted story. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Thriller

Bloody Pit of Horror (Italian: Il boia scarlatto, The Crimson Executioner) is a 1965 Italian Gothic horror film directed by Domenico Massimo Pupillo and starring Mickey Hargitay as a deranged former actor who believes himself the reincarnation of a 17th-century executioner. When a group of photographers and models arrives at his castle to shoot covers for horror novels, he traps them in his dungeon of elaborate torture devices and sets about purging them of their sins. The film is loosely inspired by the writings of the Marquis de Sade and is a prime example of mid-1960s Italian exploitation horror, full of campy grandeur, garish color, and baroque death traps. It is in the public domain.

Horror

A federal marshal working undercover as a drifter arrives in a town being terrorized by a gang led by a respectable citizen who is secretly hoarding gold and driving out the ranchers. John Wayne stars in one of his early Lone Star westerns. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western

In 19th-century Paris, puppeteer and portrait painter Gaston Morrell strangles the models who pose for him, while police hunt the killer the newspapers call Bluebeard. John Carradine gives one of his finest performances as the tormented Morrell, with Jean Parker as the dressmaker who loves him and Nils Asther as the inspector on his trail. Made on a five-day PRC schedule, it's poverty-row stylist Edgar G. Ulmer's most admired film — moody, literate, and shot with genuine atmosphere. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Horror · Noir

Felix the Cat seeks shelter in a castle whose boisterous king boasts endlessly of his courage, until the ghosts of those he wronged rise to teach him humility. A Van Beuren Technicolor Felix cartoon directed by Burt Gillett. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

Private Snafu blunders through a booby-trapped North African landscape, ignoring every warning about hidden explosives until the traps teach him their lessons the hard way. A Bob Clampett-directed Army training short. The film entered the public domain as a U.S. government work.

Animation · Comedy · War

An independently made short musical film directed by Hanus Burger, shot in September 1941 but not released until 1944. Lena Horne stars as a kitchen maid who joins an after-hours jam session at a nightclub with boogie-woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and Teddy Wilson and his orchestra. The film is significant in jazz history for its early glimpse of Horne (in only her second film) and as the only filmed record of Ammons and Johnson performing together. The film is in the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Music

The Los Angeles police know that Pete Ritchie is smuggling narcotics across the Mexican border, but they cannot make a single charge stick. They send an undercover officer, Madeleine Haley, to get close to his operation. Before she can get anywhere, she is grabbed by Johnny McEvoy, a government agent posing as a hoodlum who is also after Ritchie. Neither knows the other is on the same side of the law, and the two of them end up running the border together while Ritchie closes in. Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor play the two agents who keep each other in the dark, and Raymond Burr is the heavy. The film was the first production of Borderline Pictures, formed by MacMurray, director William Seiter, and producer Milton Bren, who deferred their own salaries to make it. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A pre-Code crime film directed by John Ford and staged by Andrew Bennison, based on the novel Louis Beretti by Donald Henderson Clarke. Edmund Lowe stars as a notorious gangster who is sentenced to fight in World War I rather than go to prison, a scheme cooked up by a district attorney looking to use the publicity to get re-elected. After returning from the war, Beretti tries to go straight by opening a nightclub, but his old criminal connections pull him back in. Lee Tracy plays a fast-talking reporter, and Marguerite Churchill plays Beretti's sister. The film features early uncredited appearances by John Wayne and Randolph Bond as soldiers. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · War

A 1971 American crime comedy-drama directed by Ivan Passer, his first American film after fleeing Czechoslovakia. George Segal stars as J, a former hairdresser turned heroin addict who scrounges for his next fix on the mean streets of New York City while committing petty crimes and running errands for a drug dealer. When he tries to steal a car, he meets Parm (Karen Black), and begins a tenuous romance. The film also features Paula Prentiss and an early supporting role by Robert De Niro. Shot on location in Manhattan, particularly Times Square, the film was not registered for copyright at the time of its release, placing it in the public domain.

Comedy · Crime · Drama

Bosko and Honey enjoy a day at the zoo until the animals break loose and chase them through the park in a barrage of gags. An early Looney Tunes short directed by Hugh Harman. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

Bosko endures the mud, shells, and absurdities of the First World War trenches, keeping spirits up with music until the bees and bullets prove too much. An early Looney Tunes short directed by Hugh Harman. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · War

Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid is a 1929 pilot short animated by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. It was never released to theaters but was used as a demonstration reel to sell the Looney Tunes concept to Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. In the short, animator Rudolf Ising draws Bosko on a pad of paper; the character comes to life, talks, sings, and plays the piano before being sucked back into the inkwell. This is the first appearance of Bosko and the founding document of the Looney Tunes franchise. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

Bosko joins a fox hunt that goes hilariously wrong as the fox outwits the hounds, the horses, and the hunters themselves. A Looney Tunes short directed by Hugh Harman. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

A respected university professor by day secretly runs a criminal ring out of a Bowery soup kitchen by night, disposing of disloyal henchmen by burying them in the cellar, where a junkie doctor keeps them in a zombie-like trance. Bela Lugosi stars in this Monogram quickie. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Horror · Crime

Bowery Blitzkrieg is a 1941 East Side Kids comedy-drama directed by Wallace Fox for Monogram Pictures. Policeman Tom Brady (Warren Hull) spots promising young boxer Danny Breslin (Bobby Jordan) and steers him toward an amateur boxing tournament, hoping to keep him off the streets. But Danny is torn between the ring and easy money, and when a gangster pressures him to throw the fight, Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), and the rest of the Kids rally around him. The first East Side Kids entry to feature Keye Luke as Clancy, the film's title trades on the wartime headlines of its day. It entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Crime

A boy and his dog romp through a Technicolor musical fantasy extolling the joys of pet ownership, originally produced as a sponsored short for Ipana Toothpaste. Walter Lantz directed this Castle Films home-movie perennial. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

Two producers trying to bankroll a musical lose their backer at the last minute, so they rope in female impersonator Bumpsie — played by vaudeville and Amos 'n' Andy star Tim Moore — to pose as a wealthy widow and keep the money flowing. Made by Herald Pictures for the "race film" circuit of Black theaters, it's a rare surviving showcase for a cast of African-American entertainers including Sheila Guyse and guest spots by the Harlemaniacs, with hot big-band numbers throughout. It is in the public domain.

Comedy · Music

The second East Side Kids film and the first to star Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, and Ernest Morrison. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis and produced by Sam Katzman for Monogram Pictures, the film follows a group of street kids who escape the city heat for a summer camp in the Adirondacks. When their car breaks down, they take shelter in the home of Judge Malcolm Parker, who is under indictment for bribery and has been threatened by racketeers. After the Judge is found strangled and his niece kidnapped, the boys must solve the murder themselves, navigating secret passages and unmasking the real killer. The film is also known by the alternative title The Ghost Creeps. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Mystery · Thriller

Popeye is overjoyed about marrying Olive tomorrow, but she dreams of their future twin sons running wild and gives him a frosty reception the next morning. A Famous Studios Popeye cartoon directed by Izzy Sparber. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

A 1951 jungle horror film written and directed by Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter of The Wolf Man. On a rubber plantation deep in the Amazon, foreman Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his employer and takes his beautiful wife Dina (Barbara Payton) — but a witch's curse condemns him to transform into a gorilla, stalking the jungle while the police commissioner (Lon Chaney Jr.) closes in. Essentially a loupe-garou tale transplanted to the tropics, it is a minor-key cult item with a remarkable cast for its budget. The film is in the public domain.

Horror

Ed Wood's belated follow-up to Glen or Glenda, and the closest he came to a conventional horror film. Bela Lugosi, in one of his final roles, plays Dr. Eric Vornoff, a mad scientist experimenting with atomic energy in a swamp-side laboratory, attempting to create a race of superhumans with the help of his brutish assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson). When a nosy reporter (Loretta King) investigates, she becomes Vornoff's next subject. The film features Wood's trademark blend of earnest ambition and staggering incompetence: a rubber octopus prop with visible wires, mismatched day-for-night footage, and dialogue that defies logic. Yet Lugosi gives it his all, delivering lines like "Home? I have no home. Hunted... despised... living like an animal!" with genuine pathos. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Sci-Fi

A voice teacher must marry within hours to inherit a fortune, and the Stooges scramble to find him a bride among a parade of bruisers and shrews. One of the four public-domain Columbia Stooge shorts, and a particular favorite of Shemp-era fans. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit works backstage at a theater trying to keep the show going amid chaotic animal acts and a runaway skeleton dance. A Walt Disney-directed Oswald short from the Winkler era. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

A 1929 American musical crime film directed by Paul Fejos from the 1926 play of the same name by George Abbott and Philip Dunning. Universal's first talking picture with Technicolor sequences, Broadway follows the backstage drama of a Paradise Nightclub choreographer Roy (Glenn Tryon) and his dancer girlfriend Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy), who try to avoid the criminal element running the club. Evelyn Brent plays Pearl, a woman tied to the nightclub's gangster owner. Director Fejos developed a special crane capable of moving the extremely cumbersome camera at 600 feet per minute, giving the film inventive camera work that contrasts sharply with the mostly static musicals of the 1928-30 period. The film was produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. and distributed by Universal Studios. The film is in the public domain.

Musical · Crime · 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 stage-struck country girl arrives in New York chasing Broadway stardom and lands in a chorus line, a Chinese cabaret, and finally a murder charge she did not commit. Colleen Moore stars as the aspiring actress, with Johnnie Walker as the songwriter who loves her and Alice Lake as a fellow hoofer. Irving Cummings produced and directed this independent feature, based on James Kyrle McCurdy's 1917 play, for release through Select Pictures. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A breezy, arrogant freshman arrives at Harvard and makes enemies of his roommate and a rival for a professor's daughter, then has to claw back his reputation on the crew and football teams. William Haines stars as Tom Brown, with Jack Pickford as his devoted friend and Mary Brian as the girl, in this MGM silent directed by Jack Conway. The film is best remembered today as John Wayne's screen debut, an uncredited turn as a Yale football player. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A musical comedy short directed by Leigh Jason, featuring Ethel Waters as a Harlem woman who works tirelessly to feed and clean up after her lazy husband and his numerous relatives who have taken over her apartment. The film includes musical performances by Waters and the Southernaires quartet. As a work published between 1930 and 1963 whose copyright was not renewed, the film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Music

A 1953 feature film edited from the 1939 Universal serial Buck Rogers, re-released for theatrical distribution. A 20th-century pilot named Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) and his young friend Buddy Wade awaken from 500 years in suspended animation to find the world has been taken over by the outlaw army of Killer Kane. Buck joins the hidden resistance forces to defeat Kane and restore freedom. The original serial was directed by Saul A. Goodkind and Ford Beebe. The film entered the public domain via non-renewal of its copyright.

Sci-Fi · Action · Adventure

Colonel Bleep, the extraterrestrial envoy from the planet Futura, arrives on a remote Earth island to establish his headquarters alongside his friends Squeak the puppet boy and Scratch the caveman. An episode of the first color cartoon series made for television. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Sci-Fi · Family

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

One of Paramount's 1930s B-series about the British adventurer Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, adapted from the novels by H.C. "Sapper" McNeile. Days before his long-delayed wedding, Drummond learns that his friend Colonel Nielson of Scotland Yard has been kidnapped and flown to a remote African compound. Drummond, his fiancée Phyllis, and his sidekick Algy follow, uncovering a plot to extract defense secrets from the colonel. John Howard plays Drummond as a breezy, unflappable gentleman hero, and Heather Angel is the fiancée who refuses to be left behind. The picture is a brisk, hour-long programmer of the old dark-house-in-the-bush variety. Released in 1938, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Adventure · Crime

The eighth and final film in Paramount's Bulldog Drummond series, and the wedding finally almost happens. Hugh Drummond (John Howard) and Phyllis Clavering (Heather Angel) are at the altar when a robbery interrupts the ceremony — a gang has hidden its take inside the radio in Drummond's own flat, and the chase to recover it takes the wedding party to a French village under siege. H.B. Warner, Reginald Denny, and E.E. Clive return as Nielsen, Algy, and Tenny for the last time, and Elizabeth Patterson joins as Phyllis's perpetually scandalized aunt. Directed by James P. Hogan, it plays the series' blend of drawing-room comedy and knockabout thrills at full speed. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Mystery · Comedy · Crime

Another entry in Paramount's Bulldog Drummond series, based on the McNeile novel "Temple Tower." Drummond is finally preparing to marry Phyllis at his ancestral country house when an absent-minded professor arrives with a story about a hidden treasure, and a murderer named Henry Seaton turns up to complicate the wedding plans. The plot winds through secret passages and a string of killings around the estate, with Colonel Nielson and Algy along for the chase. John Howard and Heather Angel continue their easy chemistry, and Leo G. Carroll plays the villain. Released in 1939, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Adventure · Crime

When his best friend is murdered while pursuing jewel smugglers, U.S. customs agent Cliff Holden (Dean Jagger) takes over the case, flying to Europe to board the same return flight as the chief suspect and following the trail back to a New York gang. John Carradine co-stars as the suave Doc Spencer. Shot almost entirely on New York City locations, C-Man has the gritty, documentary-style look of the independent noirs director Joseph Lerner made with his wife and producing partner Geraldine. The film was produced by Laurel Films and distributed by Film Classics, and is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Drama

Alla Nazimova produces and stars as Marguerite Gautier, the doomed Parisian courtesan, opposite Rudolph Valentino's Armand Duval in this stylized silent adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias. Directed by Ray C. Smallwood from June Mathis's scenario, the film transplants the story to 1920s Paris and surrounds it with lavish Art Deco sets by Natacha Rambova, whom Valentino would marry. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

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

Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 adaptation of Prosper Merimee's 1845 novella, the source material for Bizet's famous opera. Metropolitan Opera soprano Geraldine Farrar made her film debut as the gypsy Carmen, a wilful seductress who lures a soldier away from duty and into ruin. DeMille had intended to film the opera itself but its libretto was under copyright, so he had his brother William base the scenario on the public domain novella, whose Carmen is more calculating than the operatic version. Wallace Reid plays Don Jose, the officer destroyed by his obsession. The film was a major hit and established Farrar as a screen star. Existing prints derive from a re-edited 1918 re-release. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Mary Henry survives a car that plunges off a bridge into a river, dragged out hours later with no memory of how she escaped. She moves to a new town to start a job as a church organist, but she is drawn to an abandoned pavilion on the shore, and she keeps seeing a pale, grinning man no one else can see. Herk Harvey made the film for around thirty thousand dollars on weekends, with a crew borrowed from industrial film work. The organ score and the empty fairground imagery give it a dreamlike dread that influenced later horror. Mary keeps slipping out of the world entirely, becoming invisible and silent to the people around her, and the film never explains why in a neat way. The film was largely ignored on release and found its audience years later through television. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Horror · Mystery

A slapstick silent comedy spun from Ernest Thayer's baseball poem, with Wallace Beery as the legendary slugger Casey, here a small-town ballplayer beset by gamblers, romance, and his own mighty whiff. Ford Sterling, ZaSu Pitts, and Sterling Holloway (in his film debut) co-star. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Sport

Charlie Chaplin plays a waiter at a cheap cabaret who passes himself off to a society girl as a foreign dignitary, then has to juggle both lives when her wealthy family invites him to a garden party. The imposture collapses in a brawl back at the cabaret, with Mabel Normand's character watching her two worlds collide. Made at Keystone in Chaplin's first year on screen, the film was directed by Normand, his co-star, though Chaplin later claimed he had taken over direction himself. Whoever called the shots, it is an early showcase for the Tramp's gift for turning class resentment into slapstick. A 1914 release, it is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

Bedridden and convinced he's dying, George Jones (Barry Sullivan) becomes certain his wife Ellen (Loretta Young) and his doctor are planning to murder him — so he writes the district attorney a letter accusing them. Then he drops dead, and the letter is already in the mail. Ellen's desperate afternoon chasing a single envelope through a sunlit suburb makes for one of the tightest domestic noirs of the early 50s. Tay Garnett directed for MGM. The film is in the public domain.

Thriller · Drama · Crime

Private Snafu resents having his mail censored by the Army and wishes for a free hand to tell all, only to learn that his loose letters leak secrets straight to the enemy. A Frank Tashlin-directed Private Snafu training short. The film entered the public domain as a U.S. government work.

Animation · Comedy · War

Real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton star as a vaudeville singing act whose act is failing until their manager stages a publicity romance between Dorothy and a sharpshooter in the show. The sham engagement turns real, the marriage ends in murder, and the film frames its story as a courtroom problem no jury was built to answer: how do you punish one sister when the other is innocent and cannot be separated from her? The Hiltons, famous from the sideshow circuit since childhood and later seen in Freaks, sing several numbers and get the rarest thing exploitation cinema offered them, a story told from their own point of view. Directed by Harry L. Fraser for producer George Weiss's Classic Pictures, it is in the public domain.

Drama

Alfred Hitchcock's second film for British International Pictures, made during his silent period before he broke through with The Man Who Knew Too Much. A champagne heiress announces her engagement to provoke her father, who fakes bankruptcy to teach her a lesson, and the film follows the complications that spiral from the ruse. Hitchcock later dismissed the film as one of his weakest, saying he took it on without much interest in the material, and the thin story bears that out. What survives is the visual invention: a famous opening shot of a champagne cork popping into the camera, and a number of gags built around bottles and bubbles. It is a minor Hitchcock, but a revealing one for anyone tracing how he learned his craft. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Comedy · Romance · Silent

Chang is a remarkable early documentary feature from the team who would later make King Kong. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack traveled to the jungles of northern Siam, now Thailand, to film a real farming family's struggle against the wilderness. Kru, his wife, and their children battle a leopard, a tiger, and a herd of elephants that destroys their home. The film is staged in places, but the danger and the animals are real, and the result has the grip of an adventure story. Chang was nominated for an Academy Award and is now a forgotten gem. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Documentary · Adventure · Drama · Silent

Audrey Hepburn's husband is murdered and she discovers he was involved in a wartime gold theft. Several men who were his accomplices are after the gold, and they think she knows where it is. Cary Grant keeps turning up and helping her, but his identity keeps shifting. The film is often called the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made. The screenplay by Peter Stone has a good ear for banter. Henry Mancini wrote the score. The film failed to include a copyright notice on its prints, which put it in the public domain immediately upon release.

Thriller · Romance · Comedy

Warner Oland's tenth outing as Charlie Chan sends the detective to a San Francisco mansion where Allen Colby, the heir to the Lowell fortune, has returned after being presumed drowned for seven years — and is murdered at a séance before he can reclaim a cent. Chan sifts through a household of psychics, suspicious relatives, and a butler who knows more than he says, while the killer keeps striking. Henrietta Crosman and Rosina Lawrence co-star, with Jonathan Hale as the police chief. Directed by Gordon Wiles, it is one of the more atmospheric of the Fox Chan pictures, leaning hard into spiritualism and old-dark-house menace. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

The only feature film starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the creators and voices of the enormously popular radio program Amos 'n' Andy. The two play the owners of the Fresh Air Taxi Cab Company who get involved in a mystery at a haunted house while helping a wealthy man find a lost deed. The film captures the radio duo in blackface, a convention of the era that is deeply offensive by modern standards but was standard practice for the show. The film was a major box office hit at the time, riding the wave of Amos 'n' Andy's unprecedented radio popularity. Duke Ellington and his orchestra appear in a musical sequence. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy

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

Herman the mouse outwits a hungry cat and a dim-witted dog by pitting them against each other in a battle over the cheese he covets. A Famous Studios Noveltoon, the first solo cartoon for the Herman and Katnip series. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

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

On Christmas morning an orphanage full of glum children finds their cheap toys breaking one by one, until a kindly inventor wanders in and conjures wonderful new playthings from his bag of tricks. A Fleischer Color Classics holiday short. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

A Mary Pickford vehicle directed by James Kirkwood for Famous Players, and one of the earliest feature-length Cinderella adaptations. Pickford plays the fairy-tale heroine tormented by her stepmother and stepsisters, with her then-husband Owen Moore as Prince Charming. The film features early special effects in the pumpkin-to-coach transformation and was released as a Christmas attraction in December 1914. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Fantasy · Silent

A silent Laugh-O-Gram retelling of the fairy tale, in which Cinderella is tormented by her stepsisters, transformed by a fairy godmother, and whisked to the royal ball, with her animal friends lending comic help. One of Walt Disney’s earliest Kansas City cartoons. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

A college student travels to the New England village of Whitewood to research witchcraft for a paper, on the recommendation of her professor, played by Christopher Lee. She checks into the Raven's Inn, run by a mysterious woman who is in truth the reincarnation of a witch burned at the stake two centuries earlier, and the village proves to be in the grip of a coven. City of the Dead, released in the United States as Horror Hotel, is an atmospheric black-and-white horror film that relies on fog, shadow, and a genuine sense of dread. Its release happened to coincide with Psycho, and the two share a structural resemblance that was purely coincidental. The film is in the public domain and is regarded as a minor classic of British horror.

Horror

Linda Darnell plays a young woman who gets herself sent to a women's prison to be near her husband, a Coast Guard officer convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Inside she finds a population of wives and mothers serving time alongside — and sometimes instead of — the men who dragged them into trouble. Edgar Buchanan and Glenda Farrell lead the ensemble. Sidney Salkow directed this Columbia prison-reform drama at the height of the wartime cycle of women's-prison pictures. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Crime

A 1930 American pre-Code comedy film directed by Ted Wilde and starring Charles Murray as Michael Clancy, a plumber who accidentally purchases stocks that quickly rise in value, leading him to crash high society. Aggie Herring plays Mrs. Clancy and Lucien Littlefield plays Andy MacIntosh. The film was also known as Clancy Caught Short and was described as the first comedy about the stock market crash. It was the last film for director Ted Wilde, who died in December 1929 after suffering a paralytic stroke during filming. Edward F. Cline was hired to direct the unfinished scenes. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy

A fire drives a wolf pack out of the mountains and into the desert, where they threaten local ranchers. The pack leader, Lobo, is actually a half-breed dog, and when he is wounded during a chase he is found and nursed back to health by a prospector named Dave Weston. The two become loyal companions, and Lobo helps Dave protect his borax claim from a scheming claim jumper. Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd who was one of Warner Bros.' biggest box-office draws in the 1920s, is the star, and the film is a good showcase for his athleticism and screen presence. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2004. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Western · Silent

Helen Gardner's independent production was one of the first feature-length films made in America, a lavish six-reel telling of Cleopatra's seduction of Caesar and Antony that predates both the Theda Bara and Claudette Colbert versions. Gardner starred and produced through her own company, the Helen Gardner Picture Players, staking her own money on a spectacle with real Egyptian-style sets, a barge scene, and hundreds of extras. Directed by Charles L. Gaskill, it was marketed as an event rather than a program filler, helping convince American audiences and exhibitors that features were the future. A 1912 release, it is in the public domain.

Drama · History · Silent

Rudolph Valentino plays an Italian count and big-game hunter who moves to New York to work for a friend's antiques firm and is drawn into an affair with his employer's wife, a predatory socialite played by Nita Naldi. The title refers to the cobra that mesmerizes its prey, a metaphor the film lays on heavily. Valentino is in his element as the charming, doomed lover, and Nita Naldi's vamp persona is given full rein. The film was one of Valentino's last releases before his death in 1926, and it is a late showcase for the star persona that made him a phenomenon. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

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

Colonel Bleep, an envoy from the planet Futura, receives his first assignment on Earth and sets up his island headquarters with the help of Squeak the puppet boy and Scratch the caveman. The debut episode of the first color cartoon series made for television. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Sci-Fi · Family

A comedy directed by Irving Pichel, based on the novel by Berry Fleming. Colonel Willard Effingham (Charles Coburn), a retired Army officer, returns to his hometown of Fredericksville, Georgia, and discovers the town's historical monuments are being neglected. When the corrupt city council tries to sell the town square for a parking lot, the Colonel mounts a one-man crusade to preserve the town's heritage, enlisting the help of his niece (Joan Bennett) and a young newspaper editor (William Eythe). The film is a gentle satire of small-town politics and civic pride, with Coburn's blustering but warm-hearted performance as its centerpiece. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy

A U.S. Army Air Forces documentary produced by the First Motion Picture Unit and narrated by Clark Gable, who interrupted his superstar career to enlist after the death of his wife Carole Lombard. The film follows a single B-17 Flying Fortress crew of the 351st Bombardment Group from training in the United States through combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe — Gable himself flew five missions over Germany gathering footage. Built to sell war bonds and reassure audiences about what their sons were facing, it doubles as an unusually frank portrait of daylight bombing at its most dangerous. As a work of the United States government it is in the public domain.

Documentary · War

Coming!! Snafu is a 1943 Private Snafu cartoon directed by Chuck Jones for Leon Schlesinger Productions, produced for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. This is the very first Snafu short, serving as an introduction to the bumbling soldier character. The cartoon sets the template for the series: Snafu demonstrates exactly what NOT to do in military situations, with humorous consequences. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · War · Comedy

A 1930 mystery melodrama from RKO, directed by Christy Cabanne and based on the 1912 play by Robert B. Baker and John Emerson. Margaret Holt and her brother Victor investigate the narcotics ring responsible for their father's death, with the help of a crotchety crime author played by Ned Sparks, whose over-the-top performance steals the show. The film is a fascinating artifact of the early sound era, when actors and directors were still learning to adapt to the medium of talkies. Bessie Love and Hugh Trevor round out the cast. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 1958 because the copyright was never renewed.

Mystery · Crime · Drama

A Buster Keaton short co-directed with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a young man who is mistaken for an escaped convict and sentenced to death. After a series of chaotic prison sequences—including a golf game with a noose around his neck—he escapes and tries to rescue his girlfriend from a gang of criminals. The film features some of Keaton's most audacious physical gags, including a scene where he is nearly hanged for real when the prop rope was accidentally replaced with a real one. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

One of Buster Keaton's greatest short comedies, co-directed with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a young man trying to win the hand of his girlfriend, whose father insists he must become a successful businessman first. Through a series of mishaps involving a stolen wallet, a horse-drawn wagon of furniture, and a lit bomb, Keaton finds himself pursued through the streets of Los Angeles by the entire Keystone Kops-style police force—hundreds of officers in a escalating chase of breathtaking choreography. The film's famous opening, with Keaton rejected behind a gated door, and its apocalyptic climax, with cops everywhere, make it one of the most perfectly constructed chase comedies ever made. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · 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

A 1977 Italian science fiction film directed by Alfonso Brescia (credited as Al Bradley), originally titled Anno Zero - Guerra Nello Spazio. A strange signal arrives on Earth disturbing all communications. Captain Alex Hamilton (John Richardson) is sent with his spaceship and crew beyond the Solar System to find the source. They reach an unknown planet where a giant robot has enslaved a population of humanoids by taking their psychic energies. The crew pledges to help the inhabitants escape their enslavement and destroy the computer. The film is a low-budget Italian space opera typical of the post-Star Wars exploitation boom.

Sci-Fi · Adventure

A tour through a topsy-turvy town where fish swim in the fire hydrants, babies deliver their own stork, and the laws of physics are suggestions at best. A Famous Studios Noveltoon directed by Izzy Sparber. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

A horror-comedy directed by Roger Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith. American agent XK150, using the alias Sparks Moran (Robert Towne, billed as Edward Wain), infiltrates a gang led by Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone), who is transporting a Cuban general and a fortune in treasury gold out of Cuba. Capetto invents a sea monster to cover his murders, but a real creature from the haunted sea surfaces to complicate matters. Corman, exhausted by monster movie formulas, famously ended the film with the creature killing the entire cast and picking its teeth with their bones. Filmed in Puerto Rico in 1959, the film was released by The Filmgroup on a double bill with Devil's Partner. Robert Towne would go on to win an Academy Award for writing Chinatown (1974). The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Comedy

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

Mary Pickford stars in this 1919 silent comedy-drama based on Jean Webster's 1912 novel. An orphan named Judy Abbott is sent to college by a mysterious benefactor she knows only as "Daddy-Long-Legs," on the condition that she never try to meet him. She writes him letters chronicling her new life, falls into a romantic triangle, and eventually discovers that her benefactor is the man she has come to love. Directed by Marshall Neilan, the film was the first under Pickford's new production deal that gave her approval over the final edit, a hard-won concession that paid off: it was one of her biggest hits. The film's blend of comedy, sentiment, and Pickford's irrepressible screen presence made it a favorite with audiences. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Romance · Silent

Colonel Bleep, Squeak, and Scratch dive to the ocean-covered planet Aqualand, where the villainous Dr. Destructo and his giant octopus Octo have stolen the priceless pearls of the Frog Men. A Colonel Bleep episode directed by Jack Schleh. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Sci-Fi · Family

The hard-driving boss of a Montana railroad and his top engineer clash over a woman and the brutal demands of keeping the line open through the mountains. Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, and Jean Arthur star in this early-sound railroad drama, filmed partly on location. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Action

A 1929 pre-Code circus drama starring Clara Bow as a bareback rider caught between two men. Directed by Lothar Mendes, the film follows Patricia, a circus performer in love with tightrope walker Larry Lee, who is already partnered with the older Zara Flynn. When Larry leaves the circus for a society woman, Patricia and Zara are left to pick up the pieces. This was Clara Bow's second talking picture and the first Hollywood film for Kay Francis, who would become one of the biggest stars of the 1930s. The production used 48 aerial ballet artists and 200 clowns for its circus sequences. Published in 1929, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Drama · Romance

Colonel Bleep and his companions find their holiday turned perilous when danger threatens their island base, testing the futuristic envoy's futomic powers. A Colonel Bleep episode directed by Jack Schleh. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Sci-Fi · Family

A 1956 American Western co-directed by Albert C. Gannaway and Ismael Rodríguez, shot in Mexico and released through Republic Pictures. Bruce Bennett stars as Daniel Boone, leading a wagon train of settlers into Kentucky while fending off Shawnee warriors stirred up by the French renegade Simon Girty. Lon Chaney Jr. plays the Shawnee chief Blackfish, and country singer Faron Young appears as a settler — one of several Gannaway productions to cast Nashville stars. The film is in the public domain after its copyright went unrenewed, and it has been a fixture of budget western compilations ever since.

Western · 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

An all-Black gangster film produced by and co-directed with its star Ralph Cooper, Dark Manhattan reimagines the Hollywood gangster picture through a Black gaze. Cooper plays Curly Thorpe, a ruthless numbers racketeer who rises to power in Harlem by pushing aside mob boss Larry Lee (Clarence Brooks), only to face betrayal and violence as he pursues nightclub singer Flo Gray (Cleo Herndon). Produced by Randol-Cooper Productions for Black audiences, the film emphasizes interpersonal conflict and betrayal over the spectacle of violence that characterized mainstream gangster films of the era. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

Forest ranger Don Bradley watches the woman he loves marry his friend Steve Downey — not knowing Downey is secretly running a hijacking ring. When a murder forces the gang into the mountains, Bradley has to choose between duty and the lives of the people he cares about. Robert Lowery, Ellen Drew, and Regis Toomey star in this compact Pine-Thomas programmer for Paramount, with Elisha Cook Jr. among the gang. Directed by William Berke. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama · Noir

A hapless hound dog's pursuit of a clever bird leads him through a gauntlet of slapstick mishaps in this late Famous Studios Noveltoon. One of the last Noveltoons before the studio was reorganized as Paramount Cartoon Studios. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

A Buster Keaton short co-directed with Edward F. Cline. Keaton plays a young man who travels to the city to make his fortune, promising to send for his girlfriend once he succeeds. Each letter he writes home describes a glamorous new career—as a steam room attendant, a street cleaner, and an amusement park ride operator—but the reality is far less impressive. The film's structure, alternating between the girlfriend's romantic fantasies and the grim truth of Keaton's menial jobs, creates a comic tension between aspiration and reality. Though not as celebrated as Keaton's other 1922 shorts, it features excellent physical comedy and a memorable amusement park sequence. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Silent

John Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland made this film about the attack on Pearl Harbor for the U.S. Navy. The original cut ran 82 minutes and asked uncomfortable questions about American readiness and the treatment of Japanese Americans; the Navy shelved it and Ford cut it to 32 minutes, concentrating on the battle and the recovery. The shorter version won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1944. Toland's staged recreation of the attack was so convincing that feature films borrowed footage from it for decades. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the film is in the public domain.

War · Documentary

A small town is shaken when a high school girl's death is ruled suicide — until a reporter and a detective dig into the dance halls and shady hangouts preying on local teens. June Carlson, Fifi D'Orsay, and Margia Dean star in this PRC "juvenile delinquency" exposé, wartime exploitation fare that mixed moral panic with low-budget crime thrills. Directed by Albert Herman. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama

The first great disaster movie. When unexplained earthquakes unleash a catastrophic storm and tidal wave that obliterates New York City — footage later recycled into serials and films for decades — lawyer Martin Webster (Sidney Blackmer) is separated from his family and left to survive in the ruins. On a devastated coast he meets swimmer Claire Arlington (Peggy Shannon), and the two must contend with looters and lawless survivors in a Hobbesian world. Produced by RKO and directed by Felix E. Feist, its miniature work and destruction sequences were astonishing for 1933. The film's copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Sci-Fi · Drama

Francis Ford Coppola's feature directorial debut, produced by Roger Corman with leftover money from another shoot. A woman conceals her husband's death and travels to his family's Irish castle to secure a share of the inheritance, only to find the household haunted by the drowning of a young daughter years before. Then an ax-wielding killer begins picking off members of the family. Coppola shot the film in Ireland on a tiny budget, and Corman later added a prologue by Monte Hellman to pad the runtime. The result is a rough but atmospheric black-and-white horror picture that hints at the talent Coppola would soon develop. It entered the public domain and has circulated widely on budget labels ever since.

Horror · Mystery

A Johnny Mack Brown western from Supreme Pictures, one of the smallest of the poverty-row studios. Brown plays Billy Donovan, a drifter who rides into a valley looking for the man who murdered his sister and hires on at the Halloran ranch, where a masked night rider the locals call the Phantom has been picking off anyone who gets too close to a stolen fortune. Directed by S. Roy Luby, who cut his teeth editing B-westerns before moving into the director's chair. The phantom-rider gimmick gives it a whiff of the era's "weird western" cycle — more mystery than shootout. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

A British documentary about the Allied campaign to drive Germany and Italy from North Africa, centered on the Battle of El Alamein. Produced by the Army Film and Photographic Unit and the Royal Air Force Film Production Unit, it was shot by cameramen embedded with the Eighth Army during the advance across the desert, and four of them were killed, seven wounded, and six captured in the making of it. The film follows Montgomery's army from the defensive line at El Alamein through the pursuit of Rommel's forces across 1,400 miles to Tripoli. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. As a work of the United Kingdom government, the film is in the public domain.

War · Documentary

Ralph Byrd, then riding high as the screen's Dick Tracy, stars as Tony Bronson, a pilot whose plane is hijacked mid-flight over the Caribbean by a gang after the payroll he's carrying. When the plane goes down on a remote island, Bronson has to outwit the hijackers with help from a stranded showgirl troupe. Directed by William Beaudine — the famously tireless "One Shot" of Poverty Row — Desperate Cargo is a brisk PRC programmer that packs a hijacking, a crash, and a jungle standoff into barely an hour. The film's copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Adventure · Crime · Thriller

Al Roberts is a piano player hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles to find his girlfriend, a singer who left to try her luck on the coast. He is picked up by a man who dies, and Al takes the man's identity and his car to avoid being blamed. Then he picks up Vera, a woman who knew the dead man and who decides to use what she knows against him. The film was shot in under a week on a tiny budget, and it is one of the bleakest films noir ever made. Edgar G. Ulmer uses voiceover, rear projection, and obvious sets to make the world feel closed in, and the story Al tells is so unreliable that the truth of what happened is never clear. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Drama

Chapter one, "The Spider Strikes," of the 15-chapter Republic serial. Plainclothes detective Dick Tracy hunts the masked criminal mastermind known as the Spider, who has kidnapped his brother and threatened the city. Ralph Byrd stars as Chester Gould's square-jawed hero in the first Dick Tracy screen serial. The serial entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Action · Crime · Adventure

The fourth and final RKO Dick Tracy feature, and the only one to star Boris Karloff. A convicted killer called Gruesome gets his hands on a canister of experimental nerve gas that freezes anyone who breathes it mid-action, and uses it to stage a bank robbery in which the customers and staff stand paralyzed while the vault is cleaned out. Tess Trueheart witnesses the robbery and barely escapes, bringing Dick Tracy onto the case. Ralph Byrd, who had played Tracy in the Republic serials, returns to the role here. Karloff's presence gives the picture a jolt of real menace that the series had lacked, and the gas gimmick is a neat piece of B-noir plotting. Released in 1947, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Mystery · Thriller

The second of RKO's four Dick Tracy features, based on Chester Gould's comic strip. A bald, thick-necked ex-convict called Cueball strangles a diamond courier with a shoelace and goes hunting for the rest of the stolen stones, leaving a trail of bodies across the city. Dick Tracy and his girlfriend Tess Trueheart work the case from opposite ends, she going undercover as a diamond broker to draw the killer out. Morgan Conway plays Tracy as a placid, square-jawed straight arrow, and Dick Wessel's Cueball is an effectively brutal heavy. The film is a tight, cheap, well-paced B-mystery that clocks in at just over an hour. Released in 1946, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Mystery · Action

The second half of Fritz Lang's Nibelungenlied adaptation, picking up after Siegfried's murder. Kriemhild marries the Hun king Etzel (Attila) to gather an army, then engineers a massacre of the Burgundians at his court. Where the first film was a myth of heroism, this one is a study of grief hardening into vengeance, ending in a burning hall strewn with bodies. Lang's staging of the climactic siege, with Huns setting the hall alight and Burgundians choosing death, is one of the most violent images in silent cinema. The two films together were meant as a national epic for Weimar Germany, and their ambivalence about loyalty, honor, and revenge has been read and re-read through every German crisis since. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Adventure · Drama · Silent

The first half of Fritz Lang's two-part adaptation of the medieval Nibelungenlied, written with his wife Thea von Harbou. Siegfried of Xanten forges a magic sword, slays a dragon, bathes in its blood to become invulnerable, and travels to Worms to woo the Burgundian princess Kriemhild. Lang stages the legend on a monumental scale, with carved forests, a mechanical dragon, and geometric compositions that turn myth into architecture. The film was a prestige production for UFA, meant to assert German cinema's ambition after the First World War, and its visual grandeur has influenced fantasy filmmaking ever since. The story continues in the companion film, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Fantasy · Adventure · Drama · Silent

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

The Three Stooges are called as witnesses at a murder trial and proceed to wreck the courtroom with their chaos, accidentally helping to expose the real killer. One of the four Columbia Stooge shorts that fell into the public domain, and among the best-loved. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy

The third chapter of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series picks up after Britain and France declare war on Germany. It follows the Nazi capture of Denmark and Norway, the conquest of Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and the collapse of France in just over a month. The film pays blunt attention to Nazi atrocities, including the bombing of Rotterdam, and explains the German tactic of flooding roads with refugees to slow Allied armies. Made for the U.S. War Department, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the film is in the public domain.

War · Documentary

A Pre-Code musical comedy set in a traveling circus in the Old South, directed by Luther Reed for RKO. Bebe Daniels stars as Dixiana, a circus performer caught in a love triangle between a wealthy plantation owner's son and a villainous suitor. The film introduced the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey (Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey) to film audiences, and their rapid-fire banter and physical comedy made them instant favorites, launching a decade-long series of RKO comedies. The film was originally released in Technicolor sequences, though most surviving prints are in black and white. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Musical · Romance

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 farm dog desperately needs sleep before an early morning rabbit hunt, but a scheming rabbit does everything in his power to keep the dog awake all night. A Tex Avery MGM cartoon, one of the few MGM shorts in the public domain. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

John Barrymore at the peak of his matinee-idol powers, swashbuckling through Borgia-era Italy as the legendary lover. Directed by Alan Crosland for Warner Bros., it's a lavish silent spectacle — duels, dungeons, and Lucrezia Borgia herself — but its place in history is technical: Don Juan was the first feature released with a synchronized Vitaphone musical score and sound effects, the experiment that led directly to The Jazz Singer a year later. Mary Astor and a young Myrna Loy are among the women pursued through its nearly two hours. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Romance · Silent

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

A 1972 American science fiction film mostly filmed in 1967 under Herbert J. Leder's direction but completed years later without the original cast, costumes, or sets. Spies discover that the Red Chinese have built a "doomsday machine" capable of destroying the surface of the Earth, and plan to use it within days. The U.S. scrambles a mission to Venus, at the last minute replacing three male crew members with female ones to ensure repopulation. The film is notorious for its disjointed production history and marked Public Domain on Archive.org. Casey Kasem appears as the Mission Control Officer.

Sci-Fi

A New York magazine editor offers a job to hotshot Iowa photographer "Pat Marvin" — then discovers Pat is Patricia, and promptly falls for her. She's still carrying a torch for her boyfriend Ben, who follows her to the city, and the romantic tangle gets complicated by a staged murder photo that turns out to be real. Chester Morris and Nancy Kelly star in this snappy Pine-Thomas comedy-mystery for Paramount, directed by William Berke. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Crime

Buster Keaton's most successful sound picture, directed by Edward Sedgwick for MGM. Keaton plays Elmer J. Butts, a wealthy young man who accidentally enlists in the army during World War I after trying to follow his girlfriend's brother into the service. Through a series of mix-ups, the hapless millionaire finds himself in the trenches of France, where his ineptitude becomes an asset. The film was Keaton's biggest box office success of the sound era, though by his own account he had minimal creative control—the gags were largely devised by Sedgwick and the MGM story department. Still, Keaton's physical comedy shines through, particularly in a memorable sequence where he disguises himself as a tree. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · War

Downhill is one of the darkest of Hitchcock's early films, a bleak downward spiral he later dismissed but that still carries his signature. Ivor Novello plays a schoolboy who takes the blame for a theft committed by his best friend and is expelled, disowned by his father, and sent sliding through a succession of humiliations in Paris and London. Each act is a step down, and Hitchcock makes the descent literal with a famous shot of an escalator. The film reunites Hitchcock with Novello after The Lodger and is one of the silent pictures restored by the BFI. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Drama · Silent

The definitive silent adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, directed by John S. Robertson for Famous Players-Lasky. John Barrymore delivers a tour de force as the virtuous Dr. Jekyll, whose experiments in separating good from evil unleash the hideous Mr. Hyde. Barrymore's transformation, achieved largely through facial contortion and makeup rather than camera tricks, remains one of the most effective in screen history. Nita Naldi plays the dance hall temptress who draws Jekyll toward his darker self. The film cemented Barrymore's reputation as a serious screen actor and established the visual vocabulary for cinematic split-personality horror. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Drama · Silent

Fritz Lang's two-part criminal epic introduced cinema's first great supervillain. Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a hypnotist, master of disguise, and criminal psychologist who manipulates Berlin's decadent gambling clubs, ruins the industrialist Hull, and destroys the young Count Told — all while state prosecutor von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) doggedly hunts the phantom pulling the strings. Adapted from Norbert Jacques's novel and subtitled *A Picture of the Time*, the film is both a cracking crime saga and a portrait of Weimar Germany's postwar instability. Mabuse's chilling final descent into madness made him an archetype Lang would revisit twice more. Published in 1922, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Thriller · Silent

Bela Lugosi's defining role. He plays Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman who leases a ruined abbey in London and begins preying on the city's residents. The film was based on the stage play rather than Stoker's novel directly, which is why the pacing feels theatrical and the dialogue is sparse. Dwight Frye as Renfield is genuinely unhinged. The film was released during the Great Depression and was a box office hit, saving Universal from bankruptcy and launching the Universal monster franchise. Lugosi's interpretation of the Count, with his hypnotic stare and deliberate accent, set the template for every screen Dracula that followed.

Horror · Drama

The last of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Three apparently ordinary music boxes, made by prisoners in Dartmoor and sold at auction, turn out to hide a coded message pointing to a fortune in stolen Bank of England plates. A collector who buys one of the boxes is murdered, and Holmes and Watson race a coolly ruthless woman, Hilda Courtney, to recover the other two before she cracks the code. Patricia Morison plays the villain, one of the series' most memorable, against Rathbone's weary, finally retiring Holmes. Roy William Neill produced and directed his final film before his death later that year. Released in 1946, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Crime

The only film John Grierson directed himself, made for the Empire Marketing Board at the birth of the British documentary movement. It follows a North Sea herring fleet from port to fishing grounds to the market where the catch is sold — an ordinary industry turned into an epic through montage borrowed from Eisenstein and underwater photography that still looks remarkable. Grierson, who coined the word "documentary," made the film to argue that cinema could dignify everyday work. The film is in the public domain.

Documentary · Silent