Drama Films

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 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Drama · Romance

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

Drama · Romance · Adventure

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

A 1923 silent melodrama directed by Tod Browning and set in the opium underworld of Shanghai. Priscilla Dean plays Cassie Cook, an American woman smuggling opium who falls under the surveillance of a government agent disguised as a mining engineer. When she falls in love with him, she tries to leave the drug trade, but the head of the ring will not let her go. Wallace Beery plays her menacing confederate, and Anna May Wong appears in a supporting role. The film is based on the 1910 Broadway play by John Colton and Daisy H. Andrews and was produced by Carl Laemmle at Universal. It is a precursor to the stranger, darker films Browning would make later in the decade. The film's copyright expired at the end of its first term, and it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.

Drama · Crime · Silent

Cecil B. DeMille's first all-talking feature, made at MGM after he left Paramount. A pampered society girl will lose her trust fund if she is not married by a certain date, so she marries a condemned coal miner on death row, expecting him to be executed before the deadline. When he is pardoned at the last minute, the rough, honorable man arrives at her penthouse to claim his marital rights, upending her world. The film is packed with the class-conscious, never-quite-consummated scandal that was DeMille's specialty, complete with a polo-playing playboy, a penthouse, and a coal mine. Kay Johnson plays the socialite, Conrad Nagel her polo-playing beau, and Charles Bickford the miner. Mitchell Leisen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for his work on the film. A silent version was released simultaneously for theatres not yet wired for sound. Published in 1929, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Drama · Romance

The final film of Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and his last silent film. Earth follows a Ukrainian village through the upheaval of collectivization: the arrival of the first tractor, the resistance of the kulak landowners, and the murder of the young communist Vasyl by a hostile neighbor. Dovzhenko was commissioned to make propaganda for Stalin's farm policy, but what he delivered is a lyrical, almost pantheistic meditation on birth, death, and the soil. The film is built from images, apples in the sun, a farmer's face against the sky, a body laid out in the orchard, that have been quoted by filmmakers for decades. It was banned by Soviet authorities nine days after release. At the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, a poll of critics named it one of the twelve greatest films ever made. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Silent

Directed by Allan Dwan and based on Felix Riesenberg's 1927 novel, this silent drama was shot extensively on location in New York City, from the Bowery to Fifth Avenue to Harlem. George O'Brien stars as a man who rises from the Lower East Side slums to the world of high society, with Virginia Valli as the woman he loves and June Collyer as the socialite who comes between them. The film culminates in a spectacular maritime disaster sequence loosely inspired by the sinking of the RMS Titanic. O'Brien, fresh from his lead in Murnau's *Sunrise* earlier that same year, anchors the production with his naturalistic presence. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of the Noël Coward play, made during his British silent period. A woman divorces her abusive husband, flees the scandal to the Riviera, and marries a younger man whose aristocratic family does not know her past and turns on her when they learn it. Hitchcock was not fond of the material and the film is largely a commission job, but it shows his early interest in the social trap: a woman judged by a code that does not apply to the men around her. Most of the Coward dialogue is conveyed through intertitles rather than spoken, since this was a silent film of a talkie play. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A 1929 American sound romantic drama film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring John Barrymore and Camilla Horn. Set in 1806 in the Swiss Alps village of Pontresina, the film follows Marcus Paltran (Barrymore), a mountain man in love with Ciglia (Horn). But the jealous and vindictive Pia throws herself at Marcus and, when rejected, spreads rumors that force Marcus into a loveless marriage with her. Marcus and Ciglia struggle to find happiness together amid the constraints of their marriages and the rigid village society. Based on the novel Der König der Bernina by Jakob Christoph Heer, this was the last silent film for both Lubitsch and Barrymore. While the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score and sound effects.

Drama · Romance

A 1971 American biographical film starring George Hamilton as motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel. Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky and co-written by John Milius, the film depicts Knievel reflecting on major events in his life — particularly his relationship with his wife Linda (Sue Lyon) — through a flashback narrative leading up to a big jump. Much of the film was shot in Knievel's hometown of Butte, Montana, with actual stunt footage intercut with staged scenes. The film ends with Knievel completing his February 1971 jump at the Ontario Motor Speedway and riding toward the Grand Canyon, referencing a planned jump that never materialized. Although the film bears a copyright statement, it was never registered for copyright, placing it in the public domain.

Action · Biography · Drama

F.W. Murnau's final German film is a lavish silent adaptation of the Faust legend, drawing on Goethe and older folk versions of the tale. An archangel and Mephisto wager over the soul of an aged scholar, and the devil unleashes a plague to drive Faust to desperation. The pact gives Faust youth and worldly pleasure, but the story turns on his seduction of the innocent Gretchen and the tragedy that follows. Emil Jannings plays Mephisto as a leering, theatrical tempter, while Gosta Ekman ages and de-ages across the picture. The film is a high point of German Expressionism, famous for its optical tricks, painted skies, and the surreal image of Mephisto's wings spreading over a miniature town. It was a financial disappointment on release but has been revered by critics ever since. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Fantasy · Horror · Drama · Silent

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

War · Drama

Evelyn Venable plays the wife of a small-time crook who takes the fall for a payroll robbery and goes on the run, hiding out as a cook on a truck farm where Craig Reynolds's earnest farmer slowly falls for her — while her husband's gang closes in. A Crescent Pictures production released through Monogram, it is a compact poverty-row crime melodrama built on the era's favorite engine: a decent woman on the wrong side of the law through no fault of her own. Director William Nigh keeps it moving at the pace Monogram audiences expected. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Crime · Drama

A 1963 American exploitation drama directed by John Hayes, starring Rue McClanahan (later of The Golden Girls) as Poochie, a woman living in a junkyard. A young couple, Ben and Edna, are traveling to California with their baby when their car breaks down. Ben walks to a nearby junkyard for a spare part, where the seedy owner Harry frames him for selling stolen auto parts. When Ben fails to return, Edna goes looking for him and is chased around the junkyard by Harry's strange, dim-witted friend Blowhard. The film was critically lambasted and later picked up by exploitation filmmaker Kroger Babb. Also known as The Rotten Apple, Junk Yard Love, and It Only Takes Five Minutes.

Drama · Crime · Thriller

Two childhood friends, Leo and Ulrich, return from military service and fall for the same alluring woman, Felicitas, with destructive consequences. Greta Garbo and John Gilbert's on-screen chemistry was matched by a real-life romance that began during filming, and the picture made them one of Hollywood's first great celebrity couples. Clarence Brown directs with a fluid, intimate camera that was advanced for its time, and the film's sensual love scenes pushed the boundaries of what censorship would allow. Based on Hermann Sudermann's novel The Undying Past, the film was a sensation at New York's Capitol Theatre, where it ran longer than any picture before it. It was selected for the National Film Registry in 2006. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Romance · Drama · Silent

Richard Arlen stars as Jim Clark, a pilot running a small airline service out of Los Angeles, with Jean Parker as the stewardess torn between him and a smooth-talking passenger. That passenger is a spy who has stolen a secret military navigation device, and when his escape is bungled he hijacks the airliner mid-flight. The plane goes down in the wilderness, leaving the survivors stranded as a forest fire closes in. One of the early "Dollar Bills" from Pine-Thomas Productions, Paramount's B-picture unit, Flying Blind is a compact wartime aviation thriller released just months before Pearl Harbor. Its copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Action · Adventure · Drama

Erich von Stroheim's third directorial effort was advertised as "the first million-dollar picture," a claim producer Carl Laemmle happily promoted even as he battled his director over the spiraling budget. Stroheim stars as Count Karazmin, a phony Russian aristocrat who, with his "cousins" Marietta and Olga, sets up in a villa above Monte Carlo to prey on wealthy women. The production recreated the casino and plaza of Monte Carlo on the California coast at Point Lobos, with hundreds of carpenters building an entire Riviera resort. Stroheim's obsessive attention to detail, from hand-tailored uniforms to accurate military decorations, established the template for his later extravaganzas. The surviving version runs about 130 minutes, a fraction of the director's original cut. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A pre-Code crime drama from Paramount, directed by John Cromwell. William Powell plays William Foster, a slick criminal defense lawyer who specializes in getting crooks acquitted. He is in love with Irene Manners, played by Kay Francis, a dancer who is also seeing Jack Defoe on the side. When Irene kills a pedestrian while driving Jack's car, Jack takes the blame, and Foster ends up defending him, only to discover that a ring he gave Irene is at the crime scene. The film is a showcase for Powell's effortless sophistication and Francis's cool glamour, a pairing Paramount would reuse the same year in *Ladies of Leisure*. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Drama · Romance

A film noir directed by John Reinhardt and starring Cathy Downs and Paul Langton. With only a year left on his sentence, convict Johnny Coulter (Langton) is forced into a jailbreak by the violent Matt Gruber, who kills a guard during the escape. Once free, Johnny makes his way to a remote diner where he meets Hope Novak (Downs), a waitress with her own ties to Gruber. Together they plan to turn Gruber in, but the arrival of the ruthless convict threatens both their freedom and their growing affection. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

John Ford's silent drama about a Bavarian widow whose four sons are scattered by the First World War: three go to fight for Germany, and one emigrates to America and ends up on the other side of the lines. The film was Ford's answer to the wave of anti-war films that followed The Big Parade, and it is built around the mother waiting at home while the war absorbs her family one by one. Ford's feeling for family and loss, the thing his later films are most remembered for, is already fully formed here. The film was a hit and established Ford as a director who could handle large-scale emotional material, not just westerns and action pictures. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · War · Silent

A silent film telling the story of Jesus Christ's life from birth to crucifixion, filmed on location in Jerusalem and Palestine. Directed by Sidney Olcott for the Kalem Company, it was one of the earliest feature-length films and a landmark of biblical cinema. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · History · Religion

Professional gambler Ross Hadley runs a plush gaming house in New York while his childhood friend Mike McGlennon, now a police lieutenant, is sworn to shut it down. Their rivalry turns personal when both men fall for nightclub singer Mary Hayes, and a murder forces each to choose between duty, friendship, and the law. Chester Morris, Nancy Kelly, and Russell Hayden star in this Pine-Thomas crime drama for Paramount, directed by Frank McDonald. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Drama

A protection racket run by mobster "Big Bill" Morgan moves in on a small city's shopkeepers, and the only people standing up to it are a crusading district attorney and a gutsy girl reporter (Anne Nagel). Robert Kent plays the detective who infiltrates the gang. A Monogram B-crime picture directed by Lambert Hillyer, who made hundreds of programmers and westerns for the Poverty Row studios. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

One of the earliest screen adaptations of Henrik Ibsen, this silent film was produced by D.W. Griffith and directed by George Nichols. Henry B. Walthall, fresh from *The Birth of a Nation*, plays a dual role as both Captain Arling, a dissolute father, and Oswald, the grown son who inherits his father's alcoholism and disease. When Oswald falls in love with the family maid, Regina, not knowing she is his half-sister, the family doctor intervenes to stop the marriage, and the sins of the father are visited upon the son. Erich von Stroheim, then a young technical assistant at Griffith's studio, served as wardrobe assistant and appeared in a bit part. The film was rereleased in 1919 under the title *The Curse*. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Go for Broke! is a 1951 war film directed by Robert Pirosh and produced by Dore Schary for MGM, starring Van Johnson as a young National Guard lieutenant who is assigned to command the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the segregated Japanese-American unit that became the most decorated in American military history. Initially resentful of his assignment, the lieutenant comes to respect and depend on his men as they fight their way through Italy and France. Many of the soldiers on screen were actual veterans of the 442nd, and the film is notable for treating its Japanese-American characters with a dignity and directness that was rare for the era. The film is in the public domain.

War · Drama

A crime film starring James Cagney and directed by John G. Blystone, produced for Grand National Pictures after Cagney's departure from Warner Bros. Cagney plays Johnny Cave, a pugnacious new inspector for the New York Department of Weights and Measures who takes on corrupt merchants and the political machine behind them. Mae Clarke, his co-star from The Public Enemy, plays his love interest. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

Erich von Stroheim's adaptation of Frank Norris's novel McTeague follows a gentle San Francisco dentist who marries the woman his best friend courted, and watches their life curdle over a lottery jackpot she hoards while he drinks. Von Stroheim shot a film that reportedly ran over nine hours; MGM cut it to roughly two, and the excised footage is believed lost. What survives is still one of the most celebrated silent films ever made, famous for its naturalistic location shooting in San Francisco and Death Valley and for ZaSu Pitts's harrowing portrait of avarice. The final crawl across the baking desert, with the two survivors handcuffed to a corpse, is one of the great endings in cinema. The film was a financial failure on release and is now regarded as a high-water mark of American silent drama. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Drama · Silent

A wartime drama based on the real-life Makin Island raid by the U.S. Marine Corps' 2nd Raider Battalion, led by Colonel Evans Carlson. Randolph Scott plays the officer who assembles a volunteer unit of "Carlson's Raiders" from civilians and soldiers, trains them in jungle warfare, and leads them on a mission to attack a Japanese-held Pacific island. The film was made with the cooperation of the Marine Corps and was released less than a year after the raid it dramatizes. A young Robert Mitchum appears in one of his earliest credited roles. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

War · Drama

An early RKO talkie built around a then-modern question: what happens when a society girl secretly marries a man her parents would never approve of and has to keep the marriage hidden while living at home? Olive Borden plays the debutante who weds Morgan Farley's penniless architect and then splits her life between his boarding-house room and her family's mansion, dodging a mother's plan to marry her off to a rich suitor. Directed by William J. Cowen and produced by William LeBaron, it is a time capsule of both the transitional sound era and 1920s anxieties about class and working wives. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Drama · Romance

A late-silent-era romance from Paramount, directed by George Abbott and based on Henry Leyford Gates's novel *Here Comes the Bandwagon*. Charles "Buddy" Rogers stars as Jimmy, a young man caught between two women, with Jean Arthur as Mary and Paul Lukas as the rival Nick. The film was released in both sound and silent versions, as was common during the transition to talkies. Abbott, better known today as a legendary Broadway director, was then a Hollywood contract director at Paramount. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance

King Vidor's first sound film and one of the first studio features with an all-Black cast. Vidor, who had spent three years persuading MGM to back it, deferred his own salary to get the picture made. The story follows Zeke, a sharecropper who finds God, falls for the seductive Chloe, and is pulled between the pulpit and the cotton field. Shot partly on location in the South and the Mississippi Delta with a non-professional cast drawn from the communities it depicts, the film blends gospel music, melodrama, and location photography in a way no Hollywood film had before. Nina Mae McKinney, in her screen debut, became known as "the Black Garbo." The film's portrayals draw heavily on the stereotypes of their time, and it remains a complicated, landmark work in the history of American cinema. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Drama · Musical

John Ford's silent drama set against the Irish War of Independence. Victor McLaglen plays a man who returns to Ireland disguised as a hangman to avenge himself on the brutal commandant who drove his family out, while a young woman is forced into a marriage she does not want. Ford, who was born in Maine to Irish immigrant parents, made several films about Ireland across his career, and this is one of the earliest: the sympathy for the rebel cause and the suspicion of the colonial authorities are already in place here, decades before The Quiet Man. The film was made in the transitional sound period and uses a synchronized score and effects rather than spoken dialogue. A young John Wayne appears briefly as an uncredited spectator at a horse race. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

The first production to begin filming at the newly formed MGM, directed by the Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjostrom from Leonid Andreyev's play. Lon Chaney plays a scientist humiliated when his patron steals his wife and his work; he flees to a circus and reinvents himself as a clown whose act consists of being slapped by the audience, turning private shame into public spectacle. Chaney's performance is a study in dignified suffering, and the film gave early prominent roles to Norma Shearer and John Gilbert, both soon to be MGM stars. It was also the first film to feature Leo the Lion as the MGM logo. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2017. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Drama · Silent

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

War · Drama · Action

A low-budget juvenile delinquency film written and directed by Joel Rapp and released by Roger Corman's Filmgroup. Tom Pittman, in his final film role before his death in a car crash at age 26, plays Marv Grant, a bright high school student manipulated by a popular girl (Virginia Aldridge) into writing her term paper, then driven to plan a million-dollar robbery to win her back. The film was not copyrighted at the time of its release and is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

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

Drama

Directed by Edward Sloman and produced by Carl Laemmle at Universal, this silent drama tells the story of a poor Russian-Jewish pushcart peddler on New York's Lower East Side and his two sons. The elder son, Morris, ashamed of his immigrant roots, wants to become a lawyer and assimilate into American society. The younger son, Sammy, secretly becomes a prizefighter under the name "Battling Rooney" to help support the family. When the father falls ill and Morris denies his own parent at an engagement party, Sammy denounces his brother and drags him home. The film was praised for its sympathetic and detailed portrayal of Jewish immigrant life, and was a major commercial success, reportedly grossing $3 million. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

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

Comedy · Drama · Romance

A D.W. Griffith silent feature built around the life of John Howard Payne, the impoverished songwriter who wrote "Home, Sweet Home," and three episodic stories in which the song redeems its hearers. Henry B. Walthall plays Payne, with Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, and Robert Harron in the surrounding tales. Shot by G.W. Bitzer and advertised at the time as the first "all-star" cast, the film was produced at the Reliance-Majestic studio and distributed by Mutual. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A 1951 MGM drama directed by Arthur Pierson. Defeated for re-election to the state legislature, Blake Washburn (Jeffrey Lynn) blames local manufacturer John MacFarland (Donald Crisp) and takes over his uncle's small-town newspaper to crusade against big business. When tragedy strikes his own family, Blake is forced to reconsider his crusade. The film is best remembered today for an early role by Marilyn Monroe as office secretary Iris Martin — a small part, but one of her first credited screen appearances. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama

An orphan abandoned on a Friday the thirteenth grows up believing she is cursed, and a string of mishaps seems to prove it, until she rescues a fellow orphan from a fire and is adopted by a grieving couple. Mae Marsh plays the superstitious heroine with the naturalness Griffith prized, opposite Robert Harron as the boy next door. Written and supervised by D.W. Griffith and directed by Lloyd Ingraham for the Fine Arts Film Company, the comedy-drama was released through Triangle. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

Mickey Rooney plays Shockey Carter, a small-town Indiana schoolboy whose quick temper and ragged clothes hide the real problem: a widowed, shell-shocked father (Frank Shields) who's lost the will to work. When the town's new schoolteacher takes an interest in the boy, local busybodies use it as an excuse to run the family out of town. A Monogram drama directed by William Nigh that gave the teenage Rooney one of his better pre-Hardy dramatic roles. The film is in the public domain.

Drama

A Lower East Side boy from an immigrant Jewish family grows up to become a celebrated violinist, only to enlist and head to the trenches as war breaks out. Frank Borzage directed this Cosmopolitan Productions release, adapted by Frances Marion from a Fannie Hurst story, with Vera Gordon's Mama Kantor anchoring the family and Gaston Glass as the adult Leon. The film was a hit and a model for the immigrant-family melodramas that followed. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Cowboy Dan Somers and oilman Jim "Hunk" Gardner square off over drilling rights on Indian land in Oklahoma — and over schoolteacher Catherine Allen — in a feud that escalates from fists to sabotage to a race against a burning oil field. John Wayne stars opposite Martha Scott and Albert Dekker, with Gabby Hayes, Marjorie Rambeau, and Dale Evans. One of Republic's biggest pictures of 1943, later reissued as War of the Wildcats. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Romance · Drama

The first feature-length film with an entirely Indigenous cast, depicting the world of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of British Columbia's Central Coast. Written and directed by photographer Edward S. Curtis, the film blends authentic representations of Kwakwaka'wakw culture with a melodramatic narrative of love, war, and sorcery. A landmark of early cinema, restored and re-edited in the 1970s as In the Land of the War Canoes. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Documentary · Adventure

A pre-Code spy drama set at Gibraltar during the First World War, where a pair of German agents posing as a British officer and a family friend plot to seize the key to the harbor's mine field, each unaware of the other's true loyalty. Betty Compson and Ralph Forbes star, with Montagu Love as the governor and Mischa Auer as the Hindu servant who unmasks them. Directed by effects pioneer Roy Pomeroy for RKO from Earl Derr Biggers' 1915 play, the film entered the public domain in the United States when its copyright was not renewed after 28 years.

Drama · War

D.W. Griffith's mammoth reply to the criticism of The Birth of a Nation, intercutting four stories of intolerance across the ages: the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion of Christ, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, and a modern labor conflict. The Babylonian sets, with their towering walls and armies of extras, remain among the largest ever built, and the cross-cutting between the strands influenced nearly every epic that followed. Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, and Constance Talmadge lead the enormous cast. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · History · Silent

A young man gets involved with a criminal who forces him to participate in a robbery. Things go wrong, and the criminal uses a plastic surgeon to change his face. Ed Wood's first feature film, made before the movies that made him infamous. Steve Reeves, who would later become a Hercules star, appears in a supporting role. The film was registered for copyright in 1954 and never renewed, which is why it entered the public domain on January 1, 1983. It is a competent low-budget crime picture, more straightforward than the science fiction and horror films Wood would become known for.

Crime · Drama

Alfred Hitchcock's last British film before leaving for Hollywood. Orphaned Mary Yelland (Maureen O'Hara, in her first major role) arrives at a lonely Cornish coaching inn run by her brutal uncle Joss (Leslie Banks) — headquarters of a gang that wrecks ships on the rocks and murders the survivors. Charles Laughton, who also produced, plays the local squire Sir Humphrey Pengallan with deliberate, scenery-chewing menace. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier's novel, the production was famously contentious — Laughton reshaped scenes around himself — but the wreckers' coast, the inn, and O'Hara's debut charisma carry it. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Crime · Adventure · Drama

Cecil B. DeMille's first historical epic, with Metropolitan Opera soprano Geraldine Farrar as Joan of Arc, framed by a modern story in which a British officer on the eve of a dangerous mission is inspired by her vision. Wallace Reid, Theodore Roberts, and Hobart Bosworth support, and DeMille's early experiments with color effects light the burning-at-the-stake scenes. Produced through the Cardinal Film Corporation for Paramount, the film was among the first screen spectacles devoted to Joan of Arc. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · History · Silent

Hitchhiking con men Bad News Johnson (Spencer Williams) and July Jones roll into a small Kansas town with twenty-five cents between them. Posing as Hollywood acting coaches, they set up shop in Mama Lou Holiday's boarding house and promise to turn her daughter Honey Dew into a beauty-contest winner, while the juke joint next door pulls the whole family toward trouble. Williams — later TV's Andy Brown on Amos 'n' Andy — wrote, directed, and starred in this all-Black-cast comedy for Dallas-based Sack Amusement Enterprises, and it's a prime example of the "race films" made for Black theaters in the 1940s. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama

A Kentucky horse breeder of the old school loses his fortune at the card table and pins everything on a colt that breaks down in the Futurity, then watches years later as the colt's offspring carries the hopes of his family and his trainer. John Ford directed this gentle Fox silent, one of his lesser-known works, with Henry B. Walthall as the breeder and J. Farrell MacDonald as the loyal trainer. Several real thoroughbreds appear, including the legendary Man o' War. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A spoiled heiress marries a working-class steel man on a whim and sets out to remake him into a society ornament, driving him toward a breaking point. Dorothy Mackaill and Joel McCrea star in this pre-Code class-and-gender drama. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Comedy

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

Drama · Romance · Adventure

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck. Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves), the artistic son of a wealthy railroad magnate, hires Kay Arnold (Stanwyck), a "party girl" he meets while driving along the waterfront, as his model. As they work together, Kay falls in love with Jerry and begins to reform herself, but faces strong opposition from Jerry's family, who disapprove of her past. The film was based on the 1924 Broadway play Ladies of the Evening by Milton Herbert Gropper. The success of the film made Stanwyck a star and established Capra as a major director at Columbia Pictures.

Drama · Romance

Ernst Lubitsch's silent adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play about a respectable woman who suspects her husband of infidelity, receives a fan as a birthday gift, and finds herself at a party where the fan becomes the center of a misunderstanding that threatens her reputation. Lubitsch, working without dialogue, strips the play to its emotional mechanics and lets gesture, glance, and editing carry the wit. The result is a showcase for the "Lubitsch touch," the blend of sophistication and feeling that defined his career. Ronald Colman plays the husband and May McAvoy the wife. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

The second collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and one of the first sound films made in France. A man and a woman are repeatedly drawn together and torn apart by the hypocrisies of bourgeois society and the Catholic Church, in a series of incidents that range from the absurd to the blasphemous. The film scandalized Paris on its release in 1930; members of the Ligue des Patriotes threw ink at the screen and assaulted audience members, and the film was banned in France for nearly fifty years. Its mixture of deadpan comedy, religious provocation, and dream logic made it a foundational text of surrealist cinema. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Comedy · Drama · Surrealist

A 1960 American science fiction film produced and directed by Roger Corman. Shady businessman Harold Gern (Antony Carbone), his wife Evelyn (Betsy Jones-Moreland), and his lawyer Martin Joyce (Robert Towne, in his screenwriting debut, credited as Edward Wain) are scuba diving off Puerto Rico when a mysterious temporary absence of oxygen kills everyone on the island — and possibly the world. When they surface, they find themselves the sole survivors of an unexplained apocalypse. As the three adjust to their new existence, the tension of being the last people on Earth — with only one woman — drives the two men into a deadly rivalry. Shot in Puerto Rico on a low budget, the film features an early screenplay by Robert Towne, who later won an Oscar for Chinatown (1974).

Sci-Fi · Drama

Herbert Brenon's silent drama about a circus clown who adopts an abandoned girl and raises her, only to fall in love with her as she grows up and to watch her turn toward a wealthy suitor instead. Lon Chaney plays Tito, a role that lets him do what he did best: contort a face into a smile that hides a wound. The film is built around the gap between the painted grin and the man beneath it, and Chaney's performance in the final scenes is the reason the film is still watched. Loretta Young was fourteen when she played Simonetta, an early role in a career that would run for another half century. The title comes from the opera Pagliacci, and the story follows its logic to its end. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy-drama directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Norma Shearer and Marie Dressler. Dowdy housewife Kitty Brown (Shearer) dotes on her self-centered husband Bob (Rod La Rocque), but divorces him when his mistress shows up at their home. Bob had become bored with her lackluster appearance. Kitty re-invents herself and becomes a Continental favorite, dressing like a fashion model and behaving gaily. Three years later, a wealthy socialite (Dressler) enlists Kitty's help to break up her granddaughter's infatuation with Bob — unaware that Kitty is his ex-wife. Based on the 1929 play by Rachel Crothers, which starred Tallulah Bankhead on Broadway.

Comedy · Drama · Romance

An aspiring young actress keeps her famous actor father a secret to avoid accusations of nepotism, while he refuses to acknowledge her publicly to protect his own career. Adolphe Menjou and Andrea Leeds star in this backstage drama directed by cinematographer-turned-director Karl Freund. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Drama

The first full-length all-talking feature film, released by Warner Bros. in the middle of the sound transition. The plot is a routine gangster story: two barbershop owners get pulled into a Broadway bootlegging operation and a murder they did not commit. What matters about the film is not the story but the fact that every line of dialogue was recorded and played back in sync, which audiences in 1928 had never seen in a feature. The technology was primitive, the actors were often stiff from playing to fixed microphones, and the film was widely mocked even at the time for its awkwardness. But it was a hit, and it proved that audiences would sit through a feature-length talkie. It is a historical artifact more than a great film, but the history it marks is a real one. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Crime · Drama

Marion Davies plays twins separated at birth in this Monta Bell directed comedy-drama: one raised in a wealthy Dutch family, the other in the tenements, who grows up to be a musical-comedy star. The film uses the dual role to contrast old-money respectability with the rough energy of the immigrant streets, and the two worlds collide when the twins fall for the same man. Davies, a gifted comedienne whose talents were often overshadowed by her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, gets to show her range. The film includes early Technicolor and Handschiegl color sequences. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Comedy · Silent

Frank Borzage's adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's 1909 play about a carousel barker in Budapest whose doomed romance with a servant girl ends in tragedy and a chance at redemption from beyond the grave. Charles Farrell stars as Liliom, a swaggering but troubled carnival worker, with Rose Hobart as Julie, the woman who loves him despite his flaws. Lee Tracy plays the Sparrow, a heavenly marshal who oversees Liliom's posthumous trial. The film was one of several Borzage-directed romances that blended realism with spiritual fantasy, a hallmark of his career. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Fantasy

The landmark gangster film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson in the role that made him a star. Robinson plays Caesar Enrico Bandello, a small-time hood who rises to become a crime boss in the city's underworld, only to be destroyed by his own ambition and the inevitable betrayal of those around him. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. co-stars as his friend Joe Massara, a dancer torn between loyalty and going straight. Alongside The Public Enemy and Scarface, Little Caesar defined the gangster genre in early sound cinema. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

Mary Pickford stars in a dual role as both the young Cedric Errol and his devoted mother "Dearest" in this adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved 1886 novel. Cedric, a poor American boy living in Brooklyn, discovers he is the heir to an English earldom and is sent to live with his estranged, irascible grandfather in England, where his innocence and kindness gradually melt the old man's heart. Directed by Alfred E. Green with uncredited assistance from Jack Pickford, the film was one of Pickford's most successful productions and showcased her remarkable ability to play both a child and an adult in the same picture. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Family · Silent

Paul Fejos's lyrical tone poem about two lonely strangers in New York City who meet at Coney Island and fall in love over the course of a single day, only to be separated by the crowd and the city's relentless pace. Glenn Tryon and Barbara Kent play the unnamed couple, whose brief connection stands in vivid contrast to the mechanized urban world around them. The film features early Technicolor sequences at Coney Island and brief synchronized sound dialogue scenes, making it a fascinating transitional work between the silent and sound eras. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Maurice Tourneur's atmospheric adaptation of R.D. Blackmore's 1869 novel, set in 17th-century Exmoor, England. Madge Bellamy stars as Lorna Doone, a young woman raised by a clan of outlaw Doones who falls in love with John Ridd (John Bowers), a farmer's son whose father was murdered by the Doones. Tourneur, one of the great visual poets of silent cinema, brought a painterly sensibility to the moors and the romance, creating one of the most admired literary adaptations of the era. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Adventure · Silent

A Monogram aviation melodrama built around the era's fascination with record-breaking balloon ascents. Army pilots Tom "Soapy" Cooper (William Cagney, James's brother) and Richard "Woody" Wood (Edward J. Nugent) are inseparable in the air but rivals on the ground, both courting Evelyn Worthington (June Collyer), daughter of their commanding officer. When a high-altitude balloon mission goes wrong, the feud must give way to survival miles above the earth. Typical of Monogram's brisk B-pictures, it pads its stock footage with pre-Code barracks banter and a genuinely tense stratospheric climax. The film's copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Adventure · Drama · Romance

MGM's second teaming of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, this time in a loose silent adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The studio changed the title from Heat to Love so the marquee could read "Garbo and Gilbert in Love," one of the great publicity stunts of the silent era. The plot follows a married woman who ruins her social standing for a young officer, and the film leans hard into the erotic chemistry that made the pair famous after Flesh and the Devil. Edmund Goulding directed, and William Daniels photographed Garbo in the soft light that became her signature. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Romance · Drama · Silent

A French playboy and an American singer meet aboard an ocean liner and fall in love, though both are engaged to others. They agree to reunite in six months atop the Empire State Building to test their love. Leo McCarey's original was remade by him as An Affair to Remember and later by Warren Beatty. The 1939 version lapsed into the public domain through non-renewal.

Romance · Drama

One of Oscar Micheaux's final films and his last fully realized melodrama. Nightclub singer Elsie Bellwood (Edna Mae Harris) refuses to entertain her boss's wealthy patrons and is framed for the murder of her own aunt; her loyal boyfriend Benjamin (Carman Newsome), a law student, gives up his career plans to clear her name. Robert Earl Jones — father of James Earl Jones — plays the detective whose "lying lips" testimony is central to the frame-up. Shot quickly in Harlem, it is Micheaux's familiar mix of courtroom drama, nightclub numbers, and moral instruction for Black audiences. Its copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Crime

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

Drama · Romance · Comedy

A 1953 independent drama produced and directed by Hal R. Makelim. John Agar stars as Ray Compton, the son of self-made industrial tycoon J.R. Compton (Edward Arnold, in one of his final roles). Raised on his father's ruthless creed that a man must be hard to succeed, Ray returns home torn between the ruthless empire he's expected to inherit and his conscience — a conflict that comes to a head over his father's treatment of workers and the woman Ray loves. A modest, earnest postwar drama about power and principle, the film is in the public domain.

Drama

Gloria Swanson stars as Tessie McGuire, a department store clerk who rises through New York's social strata after a wealthy man takes an interest in her, only to discover that high society can be as exploitative as the shop floor. Directed by Allan Dwan from a story by Frank R. Adams, the film is a sharp class comedy that gives Swanson ample opportunity to display both comic timing and dramatic depth. The film's critique of urban capitalism and its treatment of working women was unusual for a mainstream Paramount production of the period. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

Cecil B. DeMille's social drama about Lydia Thorne (Leatrice Joy), a wealthy, reckless socialite whose careless driving kills a policeman and lands her in prison. There she encounters the district attorney who prosecuted her, Daniel O'Bannon (Thomas Meighan), a man who once loved her, and Evangelin (Lois Wilson), a selfless fellow inmate whose example forces Lydia to confront the moral emptiness of her privileged life. The film's parallels between Jazz Age excess and Roman decadence, conveyed through one of DeMille's trademark flashback sequences, gave it a moral weight that resonated with 1920s audiences. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Crime · Silent

A silent comedy-drama directed by Victor Fleming, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis. Clara Bow stars as Alverna, a restless manicurist from Minneapolis who marries a backwoods trader (Ernest Torrence) to escape city life, only to find herself bored in the wilderness. When a city lawyer (Percy Marmont) arrives on a fishing trip, Alverna sees her chance to return to civilization—with disastrous results. The film showcases Bow at the height of her "It Girl" fame, her magnetic energy and modern sensibility clashing with the primitive frontier setting. Fleming's direction captures both the beauty of the Canadian wilderness and the claustrophobia of a love triangle with no easy exit. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

Dwain Esper's answer to Reefer Madness, billed on release as "Marihuana: The Weed with Roots in Hell." High schooler Burma Roberts (Harley Wood) falls in with a slick dealer whose beach-house parties lead to skinny-dipping, a drowning, a pregnancy, and eventually a kidnapping plot — all blamed on the demon weed. Like Esper's Maniac and Reefer Madness, it was an "adults only" roadshow picture sold on sensation rather than accuracy, and today it plays as a prime artifact of 1930s exploitation cinema. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Crime

Carl Theodor Dreyer's intimate domestic drama about a husband who takes his hardworking wife for granted, mistreats her, and is reformed by the quiet intervention of his old nanny. After Ida is driven to leave, the nanny moves in, takes over the household, and forces Viktor to confront how much his wife did and how little he appreciated it. Dreyer, better known for his austere spiritual films like The Passion of Joan of Arc, here works in a warm, observational register, using close-ups and carefully composed interiors to build a portrait of a marriage. The film was a commercial success in Denmark and helped establish Dreyer's reputation. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A newspaper columnist about to lose her job invents a letter from a "John Doe" who says he will jump off a building on Christmas Eve to protest the state of the country. The letter goes viral, the paper hires a former ballplayer turned hobo to play John Doe, and his radio speeches about neighbors helping neighbors start a real movement. Then the publisher who owns the paper tries to turn that movement into a political machine for himself. Frank Capra's film sits between his optimistic comedies and his darker wartime work, and it argues that ordinary decency is the only thing standing between people and demagogues. Gary Cooper plays the reluctant symbol and Barbara Stanwyck the writer who created him and comes to regret what she built. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Drama · Comedy

Mabel Normand's only feature-length production, made under the banner of the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, a short-lived division of Mack Sennett's Keystone studio. Normand plays Mickey, a tomboyish orphan raised in a western mining camp who is sent to live with her aunt in New York society. The film's production was troubled — it was begun in 1916, halted by Normand's illness, and then shelved for nearly two years because distributors thought it was a flop. When it finally screened at a small theater in Bayside, Long Island, it became a surprise smash, eventually grossing millions and proving that Normand could carry a feature as easily as a two-reel comedy. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

A young woman marries a philanderer, divorces him, and raises their daughter alone while navigating the compromises of love and independence through the Jazz Age and the Depression. Helen Twelvetrees stars with Joan Blondell in this pre-Code adaptation of Donald Henderson Clarke's novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance

Marie Dressler won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Min, the hard-boiled proprietress of a waterfront hotel who has raised the foundling Nancy (Dorothy Jordan) as her own. Wallace Beery co-stars as Bill, the boozy fisherman who lives at the inn and is Min's sometime suitor. When Nancy's disreputable birth mother Bella (Marjorie Rambeau) reappears to reclaim the girl, Min must make painful sacrifices to protect the child's future. Directed by George W. Hill for MGM and adapted by Frances Marion from Lorna Moon's novel *Dark Star*, the film was a runaway hit that cemented the late-blooming Dressler as one of Hollywood's most beloved stars. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Comedy · Drama

Directed by William C. deMille (Cecil's older brother) and based on Zona Gale's Pulitzer Prize-winning play and novel, this silent drama is a quietly devastating portrait of a woman's self-emergence. Lois Wilson stars as Lulu Bett, an unmarried woman in a dull Midwestern town who serves as an unpaid household drudge for her sister and overbearing brother-in-law. When a chance at marriage seems to offer escape, only to collapse, Lulu gradually evolves from servitude into self-assurance. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2001. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

John Gilbert stars as Edmond Dantès in this Fox Film Corporation adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's classic novel of wrongful imprisonment and revenge. Directed by Emmett J. Flynn, the film follows Dantès from his betrayal by jealous rivals, through years of solitary confinement in the Château d'If, to his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo and his methodical vengeance against those who destroyed his life. Estelle Taylor plays Mercedes, the woman he loves. Long thought lost, a print surfaced in the Czech Republic and the film has been restored. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Adventure · Silent

Josef von Sternberg's first Hollywood film with Marlene Dietrich, made immediately after The Blue Angel launched her to stardom. She plays Amy Jolly, a cabaret singer who arrives in Morocco with no money and fewer illusions, and falls for a Legionnaire played by Gary Cooper. Adolphe Menjou is the wealthy man who offers her everything except the one thing she wants. The film is famous for Dietrich's performance in a man's tailcoat, kissing a woman in the audience, a scene considered scandalous in 1930. Lee Garmes's photography wraps the desert and the nightclub in the same haze of smoke and shadow. Dietrich received the only Academy Award nomination of her career for this role. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Romance · Drama · War

Vsevolod Pudovkin's adaptation of the Maxim Gorky novel, set during the failed Russian revolution of 1905. Vera Baranovskaya plays a timid working-class mother whose son Pavel (Nikolai Batalov) joins the strike against the factory owners; when he is arrested, she takes up the cause herself and is transformed from bystander into revolutionary. Pudovkin uses montage for emotion rather than Eisenstein's intellectual collision — the famous sequence cuts the prison break to melting ice on the river, movement itself becoming hope. Made at Mezhrabpom-Rus studio, it was a huge international success and established Pudovkin as a major director alongside Eisenstein. Baranovskaya's performance is often cited among the greatest of the silent era. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Silent

Lon Chaney plays a dual role — both the Chinese patriarch Mr. Wu and his grandfather — in this MGM silent drama directed by William Nigh. When Wu's daughter Nang Ping (Renée Adorée) falls in love with a young Englishman and becomes pregnant, Wu kills her according to custom and then turns his vengeance on the Englishman's family. Louise Dresser co-stars as the mother who offers her own life to save her children. Chaney's elaborate makeup and prosthetics for the role were as remarkable as ever, though the film's racial politics have not aged well. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

The East Side Kids rescue Sylvia, a young girl fleeing her abusive stepfather Morley, and hide her in their clubhouse dressed as a boy. When Morley turns up dead — killed by racketeer McGaffey for a stolen stash of money — Danny is arrested for the murder after returning to the girl's apartment for her clothes. Muggs is then blackmailed into joining a warehouse robbery, leaving the kids to clear their friend's name and catch the real killer, with help from Rusty, a former East Side Kid home on leave from the Navy. The eleventh East Side Kids picture, directed by Wallace Fox for Monogram, and one of the series' more dramatic entries. The film entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Crime · Drama

A modern love story and the biblical tale of Noah and the Flood run in parallel, building to a spectacular deluge that swept extras to their injuries and helped end silent-era recklessness. Dolores Costello and George O'Brien star in Michael Curtiz's part-sound Warners epic. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Epic

A Canadian wilderness drama based on James Oliver Curwood's own 1919 novel, co-directed by David Hartford and Curwood himself. Lon Chaney plays Buck McDougall, a man who fabricates evidence that Nanette Roland's (Betty Blythe) long-absent fiancé Raoul Challoner (Lewis Stone) is dead so he can marry her. When Raoul returns alive, a fight erupts, a man is killed, and Raoul and Nanette flee into the northern wilderness with the North West Mounted Police in pursuit. The film features extensive location photography of the Canadian wilderness and a dramatic bear fight sequence. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A sensitive, clubfooted medical student abandons his artistic ambitions in Paris to study in London, where he becomes destructively obsessed with a cold, cruel waitress who has no feeling for him. Leslie Howard and a breakout Bette Davis star in this adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance

A Vitaphone-era synchronized-sound historical drama from Warner Bros., directed by Alan Crosland (who would direct *The Jazz Singer* the same year). Dolores Costello stars as Dolores Vasquez, the daughter of an old Spanish California family, and Warner Oland plays Chris Buckwell, a villainous landowner with underworld connections who schemes to steal the Vasquez property. The film climaxes with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score and sound effects via the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · History · Romance

Jackie Coogan, fresh from his triumph in Chaplin's *The Kid* (1921), stars as Dickens's orphan hero in this First National silent adaptation directed by Frank Lloyd. Lon Chaney plays Fagin, the sinister fence who trains young street urchins as pickpockets, in one of his most memorable character performances beneath layers of makeup. The film was considered lost for decades until a print surfaced in Yugoslavia in 1973. Sol Lesser produced the picture for Jackie Coogan Productions at a budget of nearly half a million dollars, with elaborate sets recreating Victorian London. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

The earliest sound adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel, made on a shoestring by Poverty Row studio Monogram. Young Dickie Moore plays the workhouse orphan who falls in with Fagin's gang of boy pickpockets, with Irving Pichel as Fagin and William "Stage" Boyd as the brutal Bill Sikes. Stripped to the bare bones of the story by its tight budget, the film nevertheless preserves the novel's core scenes and was the only talking-picture Oliver Twist for more than a decade. The film is in the public domain.

Drama

The only film ever directed by Marlon Brando, who also stars as Rio, a bank robber betrayed by his partner Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) after a Mexican heist. Years later Rio escapes prison and tracks Dad to a California coastal town where the betrayer has reinvented himself as a respectable sheriff with a wife and stepdaughter (Pina Pellicer). Stanley Kubrick was originally set to direct before Brando took over himself, and the production became legendary for its cost overruns — but the result is a brooding, unusually psychological western shot in VistaVision along the Monterey coast. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Western · Drama

A newspaper man frames a man's final year in flashback: convicted of a murder he insists was a frame-up, he is paroled into the custody of a crusading reporter who intends to prove his innocence, with the dead man's own wife falling for the prisoner along the way. Russell Hopton and Mary Brian star in this Allied Pictures drama, produced by M.H. Hoffman and directed by silent-era veteran E. Mason Hopper. It is a depression-era crime story in which the real antagonist is the machinery of justice itself. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Crime · Drama · Romance

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

Drama · Silent

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama directed by Harry Beaumont, starring Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page, and Dorothy Sebastian. Three small-town girls — Gerry (Crawford), Connie (Page), and Franky (Sebastian) — share an apartment in New York City while working at Jardine's Department Store, each seeking a wealthy husband. While Connie and Franky are reckless with their affections, Gerry is determined to remain practical, resisting the advances of the store owner's son Tony Jardine (Montgomery) even as she falls for him. The film was Crawford's first "shopgirl Cinderella" role, marking a transition from her flapper persona of the silent era to the more sophisticated image MGM would develop for her throughout the 1930s.

Drama · Romance

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

Drama · Romance

A late-silent MGM comedy-drama released with a synchronized musical score but no spoken dialogue, and Joan Crawford's final film without talking. She plays Billie Brown, a flapper who believes herself in love with one man while another pines for her, with Rod La Rocque, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Anita Page rounding out the quartet. Fairbanks and Crawford married during production, and the film's party sequence features his impersonations of contemporary stars. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Romance

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

Drama · Romance

A 1930 American pre-Code crime film directed by Tod Browning and starring Edward G. Robinson. The picture is a remake of the 1920 film of the same name starring Lon Chaney, which was also directed by Browning. Robinson plays Cobra Collins, the ruthless boss of a criminal gang who is willing to do anything to prevent a rival gangster from pulling off a bank robbery on his territory. The film was one of Robinson's early sound films, made before his breakout role in Little Caesar (1931). Produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. and distributed by Universal Studios. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

A pre-Code drama that marked Joan Crawford's transition from flappers to serious roles. She plays Mary Turner, a shopgirl wrongly convicted of theft who, on release, turns the law against those who jailed her through a series of breach-of-promise "heart balm" scams, until she targets the department store owner who ruined her by marrying his son. Sam Wood directed from Bayard Veiller's play Within the Law, with Robert Armstrong and Kent Douglass (in his film debut) supporting. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

A newspaperman and a former shop girl meet over a phonograph record in a San Francisco music store, and their marriage plays out through the songs that bookend it. As Julie packs to leave Roger, she plays each record and remembers: the courtship, the move to Japan, the earthquake that costs them everything, the long wait to adopt a child, and the strain of Roger's failing newspaper that pulls them apart. George Stevens directs with a gentle, unhurried hand, letting the music carry the emotion the dialogue will not. Cary Grant, in one of his two Oscar-nominated dramatic performances, is loose and wounded as Roger, and Irene Dunne matches him with a performance built on small, precise gestures. The film is a melodrama in the old sense, earned by patience rather than contrivance. Its copyright was not renewed at the end of its first 28-year term, and it entered the public domain in 1970.

Romance · Drama

A reckless test pilot and his mechanic brother clash over a woman and the dangerous new aircraft they are developing for the war effort. Richard Arlen and Jean Parker star in this brisk PRC aviation programmer. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Action · War

A 1957 American Western directed by Albert C. Gannaway and released by Republic Pictures, notable for its cast of Grand Ole Opry stars. Faron Young plays a young marshal and Marty Robbins a fellow lawman, while Jim Davis plays the villainous ex-cavalry officer Angus McKane, who is trying to force Mexican landowners off their grants after the Mexican American War. Lee Van Cleef appears as McKane's henchman Damon Pardee. More famous for its country music casting than its craft, the film fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed and remains a curiosity for fans of both westerns and classic country.

Western · Drama

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

Drama

Frank Capra's circus comedy, adapted from the hit Broadway musical. When her father dies, Mary Rainey (Joan Peers) inherits his struggling show, kept afloat by the manic clown Smiley Johnson (vaudevillian Joe Cook, recreating his stage role) until a climactic fire threatens to end it all. Originally shot as a full musical, the numbers were cut before release to dodge the public's backlash against the genre, leaving a fast-paced comedy that was a hit for the young Columbia Pictures. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama

A propaganda film depicting the supposed horrors of marijuana, in which a few puffs lead straight to hit-and-run, manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, and madness. Originally financed as an exploitation picture under the title Tell Your Children, it was rediscovered in the 1970s and became a counterculture favorite. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Crime

Directed by Raoul Walsh, Regeneration is a 1915 American silent crime drama and one of the first full-length gangster films. Based on the 1903 memoir My Mamie Rose by Owen Frawley Kildare, the film stars Rockliffe Fellowes as Owen Conway, a poor orphan who rises to become a gang leader on the Lower East Side before a chance encounter with social worker Marie Deering (Anna Q. Nilsson) inspires him to seek redemption. Long feared lost, the film was rediscovered by preservationist David Shepard and selected for the United States National Film Registry in 2000. It was the first full-length feature directed by Walsh, who would go on to become one of Hollywood's most prolific directors.

Crime · Drama · Silent

A U.S. Army Air Forces docudrama training film directed by Robert B. Sinclair and produced by Ronald Reagan. The film dramatizes the experiences of a five-man American bomber crew shot down over Italy and captured by German forces. Though reminded to provide only name, rank, and serial number, the crew members gradually fall prey to the clever interrogation techniques of their Nazi captors at Dulag Luft, revealing seemingly harmless information that is pieced together into valuable military intelligence. The film stars Lloyd Nolan, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Tormé, Craig Stevens, and Peter Van Eyck. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1945. As a U.S. government work, it is in the public domain.

War · Drama

A 1956 musical drama film directed by Will Price, conceived and co-produced by Milton Subotsky. An early jukebox musical featuring performances by established rock and roll singers of the era, including Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, Teddy Randazzo, the Moonglows, the Flamingos, and the Teenagers with Frankie Lymon as lead singer. Famed disc jockey Alan Freed appears as himself. The thin plot follows teenager Dori Graham (Tuesday Weld, in her feature film debut at age 13), who is trying to get together enough money to buy a strapless gown for the school prom after her father cuts off her allowance. Connie Francis provided Dori's singing voice. The film was not included in the Copyright Catalog, placing it in the public domain. Subotsky later co-founded Amicus Productions, the rival to Hammer Films.

Musical · Drama

Henry King's adaptation of George Eliot's novel was filmed on location in Florence, giving this tale of Renaissance intrigue an authenticity Hollywood couldn't build on a backlot. Lillian Gish plays Romola, the scholar's daughter whose world collapses when she discovers her charming husband Tito (a young William Powell in an early villainous role) has betrayed her father, secretly wed the trusting Tessa (Dorothy Gish), and sold his loyalty to Savonarola's enemies. Ronald Colman co-stars as the principled Carlo Bucellini. The climactic bonfire of the vanities — with the real Piazza della Signoria standing in for itself — makes the film a lavish time capsule of 1920s prestige filmmaking. Published in 1924, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

Alfred Hitchcock's loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. Sylvia Sidney plays Winnie Verloc, wife of a London cinema owner (Oskar Homolka) who is secretly part of a gang of saboteurs, while Scotland Yard detective Ted Spencer (John Loder) watches the family from the shop next door. The film is infamous for its bus sequence, in which a bomb is carried through London by someone who doesn't know what they're carrying — a set piece Hitchcock later said he regretted for violating his own rule of suspense over shock. Released in the US in 1937 as The Woman Alone. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Thriller · Drama

Alla Nazimova produced and stars in this adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play, with Charles Bryant directing. Nazimova plays Salomé, the stepdaughter of Herod who demands the head of John the Baptist in exchange for her dance. The film is a sustained art-deco experiment, shot almost entirely on a single set draped in beaded curtains, with designs by Natacha Rambova that lean hard into the stylized look Wilde's text invites. The cast and crew were largely gay and lesbian, and the production has long been read as a coded piece of queer cinema. It was a financial failure on release and nearly disappeared, but surviving prints made it one of the most talked-about rediscoveries when 1923 works entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.

Drama · Religious · Silent

A landmark of independent American cinema, Salt of the Earth was made by three blacklisted filmmakers — director Herbert J. Biberman, producer Paul Jarrico, and writer Michael Wilson — entirely outside the Hollywood studio system. Based on the 1951 Empire Zinc strike in Grant County, New Mexico, the film tells the story of Mexican-American miners and their wives fighting for equality. Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas stars as Esperanza, the wife who emerges as a leader when the men are enjoined from picketing and the women take over the picket line. Many of the supporting roles were played by real miners and their families from Mine-Mill Local 890. The film was suppressed upon release, denounced as communist propaganda, and effectively banned from theaters. It was rediscovered decades later and is now recognized as a seminal work of social realism and one of the first American films to present a Mexican-American community from within. The producers placed the film in the public domain.

Drama

John Ford's Salute is a military drama set at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, where two brothers — one a West Point cadet, the other a Navy midshipman — find themselves on opposite sides during the annual Army-Navy football game. George O'Brien stars as the older brother, with Helen Chandler as the love interest. The film features early sound sequences and was made during the transition from silent to sound cinema. A young John Wayne, then a prop man and extra at Fox, served as an assistant on the production. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent · War

A 1929 American pre-Code musical drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring Al Jolson and Davey Lee. Joe Lane (Jolson), a radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that studio manager Arthur Phillips has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine (Marian Nixon). Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison and insists that Katherine divorce him for her and their son's sake. When Joe is released, he visits his son, Little Pal (Lee), at school — but the boy follows him downtown and is struck by a truck, causing paralysis of his legs and loss of his voice. This was a follow-up to The Singing Fool (1928), reuniting Jolson with child star Davey Lee, and was the first film in which Jolson did not appear in blackface.

Drama · Musical

A mild-mannered middle-aged cashier and amateur painter is manipulated by a cynical young woman and her hustler boyfriend, who pass his work off as her own and sell it to a dealer. Fritz Lang's first of three films with Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea is a bleak noir of guilt and doom. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Noir

The first feature-length sound adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, directed by Henry Edwards for Twickenham Film Studios. Seymour Hicks, who had played Scrooge on stage since 1901 and in a 1913 silent film, reprises the role as the Victorian miser visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. The production relies on atmosphere and Hicks's seasoned performance rather than elaborate effects, and the spirits are partly conveyed as voices and outlines. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Fantasy

7th Heaven is the romance that won Frank Borzage the first Academy Award for Best Director and helped win Janet Gaynor the first Best Actress award. She plays Diane, a young woman abused by her sister and rescued from the Paris slums by Chico, a sewer worker who invents a marriage to protect her. Their love grows real, only to be interrupted by the First World War. Borzage directs with a soaring, almost spiritual faith in love that survives distance and death. The film was a huge hit for Fox and was selected for the National Film Registry. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Romance · Drama · Silent

Shadows is a silent drama starring Lon Chaney as Yen Sin, a gentle Chinese immigrant who settles in a small New England town and quietly befriends the community while operating a laundry. When he discovers a plot to blackmail the local minister (Harrison Ford) and his wife (Marguerite De La Motte), Yen Sin devises a plan to expose the scheme. Chaney's nuanced portrayal of a sympathetic Chinese character was notable for its era, spending hours each morning applying his makeup. Directed by Tom Forman and produced by B.P. Schulberg through Preferred Pictures, the film was praised by critics upon release. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

An early Roger Corman quickie shot in Hawaii for American International Pictures. Two brothers on the run after a robbery — wanted man Chris (Bill Cord) and his younger brother Jim (Don Durant) — are shipwrecked on a remote island colony of pearl-diving women, whose queenly keeper (Lisa Montell) answers to a shark god with a taste for human sacrifice. Barely over an hour long, it's a shaggy tropical pulp adventure typical of Corman's late-50s output. The film is in the public domain.

Adventure · Drama

She Shoulda Said No! (also released as Wild Weed and The Devil's Weed) is a 1949 exploitation film directed by Sam Newfield and starring Lila Leeds, whose arrest with Robert Mitchum on marijuana charges the previous year provided the marketing hook. Leeds plays a chorus girl whose descent into marijuana addiction ruins her career and drives her brother to suicide, in the spirit of earlier drug-scare pictures like Reefer Madness. The film was produced and roadshown by the exploitation impresario Kroger Babb under his Hygienic Productions banner, with a sensational prologue and an in-person lecture component. It features the feature-film debut of the character actor Jack Elam. The film is in the public domain.

Exploitation · Drama

From her hotel window, Janet Stewart witnesses Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) murder his wife — and the sight leaves her in a catatonic state. Worse, she's committed to Cross's own sanitarium, where the doctor must decide whether to cure her or make sure she never recovers. Shock was Vincent Price's first real stab at a psychological thriller, and he plays the charming, increasingly desperate psychiatrist with silky menace. Made at 20th Century Fox on a B-picture budget, it's in the public domain.

Noir · Thriller · Drama

Shoes is a social-problem drama directed by Lois Weber, one of the most important women directors of the silent era. Mary MacLaren stars as Eva Meyer, a young shopgirl who works in a five-and-dime store to support her destitute family. When her worn-out shoes finally fall apart and she cannot afford new ones, she faces an agonizing moral dilemma. Weber's film is a powerful indictment of poverty and the exploitation of working women, made with a realism and sensitivity that was unusual for its time. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

The 1929 Show Boat was the first film adaptation of Edna Ferber's 1926 novel, produced by Carl Laemmle at Universal Pictures and directed by Harry A. Pollard. Laura La Plante stars as Magnolia Hawks, the daughter of a show boat captain, who falls for the gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Joseph Schildkraut). The film incorporates songs from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1927 stage musical, including "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." Made during the transition to sound, the film is a part-talkie with both silent intertitles and sound sequences. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Musical · Romance

Constance Bennett plays Sylvia Brenner, a dowdy secretary who agrees to a marriage of convenience with her divorce-lawyer boss Gaylord Stanton (Kenneth MacKenna) so he can fend off a demanding client. She sails to Paris to wait out the arrangement and comes back transformed — which is when the fake marriage starts becoming a problem. An early RKO pre-Code romantic comedy that makes good use of Bennett's knack for playing women smarter than the plot around them. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Romance · Drama

A 1930 pre-Code crime drama and the film debut of James Cagney, who reprises his Broadway role from the play Penny Arcade by Marie Baumer. Directed by John G. Adolfi for Warner Bros., the film is set at a Coney Island penny arcade run by Ma Delano (Lucille La Verne). When her son Harry (Cagney) gets involved in a bootlegging operation run by Mitch McKane (Warren Hymer), a fatal shooting on the darkened pier sets off a tense family drama. Joan Blondell also makes her film debut, repeating her stage role as Myrtle. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

A 2008 American independent animated musical written, directed, produced, and animated by Nina Paley. The film intersperses events from the Ramayana, light-hearted discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppet narrators, musical interludes voiced with 1920s jazz recordings by Annette Hanshaw, and scenes from the filmmaker's own life. The ancient mythological and modern biographical plots are parallel tales, sharing numerous themes. After a prolonged copyright battle over the Hanshaw recordings, Paley released the film under a CC-0 public domain license, waiving all rights to the extent possible under law. The film has been widely distributed and shown freely online, becoming a landmark case in copyright reform advocacy.

Animation · Comedy · Musical · Drama

The East Side Kids earn money for baseball uniforms, but their plans collide with gangster Butch Brocalli when Muggs catches the eye of the ex-boxer's gang. Muggs lands in jail for refusing to inform on an old friend, while Danny's sister Ruth desperately needs money for an operation. Former East Side Kid Hank Salko, fresh out of prison, falls back in with the gang before deciding where his loyalties lie. Former light-heavyweight champion Maxie "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom plays Brocalli, and Gale Storm appears as Ruth. The tenth East Side Kids picture, directed by Wallace Fox for Monogram. The film entered the public domain because its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Crime · Drama

Singer Angie Evans gives up her own rising career to marry struggling crooner Ken Conway, and when his star finally ascends she finds herself alone with a baby, a bottle, and a husband who's never home. Susan Hayward earned her first Academy Award nomination as the wife sliding into alcoholism, with Lee Bowman, Eddie Albert, and Marsha Hunt in support. Walter Wanger produced and Stuart Heisler directed this stark melodrama, released by Universal-International. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Noir

Smouldering Fires is a silent drama directed by Clarence Brown for Universal Pictures. Pauline Frederick stars as Aurelie Kimball, a successful businesswoman whose much younger secretary (Laura La Plante) catches the eye of her husband, setting in motion a story of jealousy, desire, and self-discovery. The film explores the tensions between age, ambition, and romantic longing with a subtlety characteristic of Brown's direction. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A young woman flees her marriage on the train to a small town and ends up in a desert film camp, where she stumbles into the movie business and becomes an extra, then a star. novelist and filmmaker Rupert Hughes wrote, produced, and directed the picture from his own novel, and the result is one of the great inside-Hollywood silents, full of real behind-the-scenes footage of a working studio. The film-within-a-film sequences show cameras cranking, sets being built, and stunts being rigged, and a string of famous directors of the day, including Erich von Stroheim and Fred Niblo, appear as themselves. Eleanor Boardman, in one of her first leads, carries the picture as Remember Steddon, a runaway who learns that fame costs something. Barbara La Marr, the "girl who was too beautiful," plays her rival. The film was a Goldwyn release and is one of the quieter rediscoveries of the 1923 public domain class. It entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.

Drama · Romance · Silent

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

Drama · Silent · Thriller

Fei Mu's 1948 masterpiece, regularly named the greatest Chinese film ever made. In a ruined house in a war-scarred provincial town, Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei) cares for her invalid husband while drifting through a marriage emptied of love — until Zhang Zhichen (Shi Yu), her husband's old friend and her own first love, arrives as a visiting doctor. What follows is almost unbearably restrained: long walks on the ruined city wall, glances held a beat too long, and a narration that confesses what the characters cannot say. Fei Mu films adulterous longing without a single transgressive act, and the result influenced generations of Chinese-language cinema. Made on the eve of revolution and rediscovered decades later, the film is in the public domain.

Drama · Romance

A two-reel short film directed by Dudley Murphy and the only known film appearance of Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues." Smith plays a woman abandoned by her roving lover (Jimmy Mordecai) for a younger woman (Isabel Washington). In a speakeasy during Prohibition, she sings the W. C. Handy standard "St. Louis Blues" accompanied by James P. Johnson on piano and the Hall Johnson Choir. The film features an entirely Black cast and was selected for the National Film Registry. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain.

Music · Drama

A Monogram crime programmer built on a genuinely nasty twist. Warren Hull plays John Randolph, an idealistic newspaper editor crusading against a crime syndicate — not knowing that the gang's secret boss is his own father, long believed dead. When a hit man with a conscience gets involved and a society engagement party turns into a shootout, the crusade becomes very personal. Howard Bretherton, one of poverty row's fastest and most reliable directors, keeps it moving through a tight hour. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama

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

Drama · Romance · Silent

Mary Pickford plays a celebrated dual role in this Marshall Neilan drama adapted from William J. Locke's novel by Frances Marion. Stella Maris is a rich, sheltered invalid who has never been allowed to see the world's ugliness; Unity Blake is a beaten-down orphan from the workhouse who knows nothing else. When Unity is taken into the household of Stella's cousin (Conway Tearle), the two women's lives cross in ways neither understands, and Pickford's transformation into the plain, hunched Unity remains startling — she asked to be made as unbeautiful as possible. One of the best showcases of what silent-era star vehicles could do when their stars wanted to act rather than pose. Published in 1918, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

Frank Borzage's silent romance about a destitute woman in Naples who flees the police and finds love with a struggling painter, only for the past to catch up with her. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell were paired here for the first time and became one of Fox's most popular screen couples, making a string of films together through the early sound years. The film is one of three for which Gaynor received the first Academy Award for Best Actress, awarded for her body of work that year rather than a single performance. Borzage's direction favors a soft, fatalistic sentimentality that was out of step with the harder realism coming into fashion, but the film's emotional directness is its own thing. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A pre-Code musical film directed by Wesley Ruggles, and the first film produced by RKO Radio Pictures. Betty Compson plays Frederika, a homeless young woman taken in by a four-piece band led by Mike Fall (John Harron). She becomes their manager and guides them to success, but romantic complications ensue when a prince takes an interest in her. Jack Oakie co-stars as band member Joe Spring. The film was a box office hit, accounting for nearly half of RKO's profits for the year. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain.

Musical · Drama · Romance

A pre-Code crime drama directed by John Cromwell and produced by David O. Selznick, Street of Chance stars William Powell as a jewel thief who suffers amnesia after being struck on the head during a robbery. He awakens to find himself living a respectable life as a wealthy businessman, with no memory of his criminal past — until his old associates resurface. Jean Arthur plays his wife and Kay Francis his former accomplice. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing. As a work published in 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama

F.W. Murnau's first American film and one of the high points of silent cinema. A farmer is lured by a woman from the city into a plan to drown his wife and run away with her; the wife escapes, the husband is consumed by guilt, and the two travel by tram to the city, where their marriage is slowly, tenderly rebuilt. The story is simple, almost a fable, but Murnau tells it with layered dissolves, forced perspective, and tracking shots that move through spaces as if the camera were breathing. Charles Rosher and Karl Struss shared the first ever Academy Award for cinematography, and the film won the only Oscar ever given for "Unique and Artistic Picture." Janet Gaynor's performance is the quiet center of the film. Its copyright was renewed in 1954, and it entered the public domain on January 1, 2023.

Romance · Drama · Silent

A 1927 American silent romantic drama directed by Edward Sloman, based on the 1915 play Lea Lyon by Alexander Brody. The film stars Mary Philbin as Lea Lyon, daughter of a rabbi in a Galician town near the Russian border, and Ivan Mosjukine as Constantine, a Russian prince. When war is declared and the Russians occupy the town, Constantine demands Lea surrender to him, threatening to burn the village and its inhabitants. Impressed by her character, the prince discovers he loves her and spares both the town and the girl. This was Mosjukine's only American film — a major star of Russian and French silent cinema, he never made another Hollywood picture.

Drama · Romance · War

John Barrymore gives one of his great performances as Svengali, the grotesque, mesmeric music teacher who hypnotizes the artists' model Trilby (Marian Marsh) into becoming a famous singer — and destroys himself loving what he created. Adapted from George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, the novel that gave English the word "svengali" for a manipulative mentor. Directed by Archie Mayo for Warner Bros., with expressionist sets that turn the hypnosis sequences into genuine nightmare imagery. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Romance · Horror

A Depression-era family drama built around music. Aging concert violinist Adolph Greig (Al Shean, of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean) has sacrificed everything for his art; his son (John Darrow) distrusts him and keeps his own boy from the old man, while Paula (Evelyn Brent) — once Adolph's pupil — is torn between the two generations. Directed by Poverty Row workhorse Frank R. Strayer for Invincible Pictures, it is a sentimental studio B-feature redeemed by its musical sequences and Shean's warm performance. The film's copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Music

Tess of the Storm Country is a 1914 silent drama directed by pioneer filmmaker Edwin S. Porter and starring Mary Pickford as Tessibel Skinner, a spirited young woman from a community of squatters living at the bottom of a hill. When a wealthy man builds a house atop the hill and seeks to evict the squatters, Tess fights to protect her family and neighbors. Based on the 1909 novel by Grace Miller White, the film was a major hit and helped establish Pickford as "America's Sweetheart." She would reprise the role in a 1922 remake. The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2006. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent

A secret society holds a meeting to determine what to do about a powerful and dangerous man whom they have been studying closely for the past three months. They all agree that he deserves to die. Two of the members, Farallone and Forrest, are both in love with Lilith, the group's only female member. But Lilith accepts neither of them, preferring to devote herself to the group's cause. When the group meets again and deals cards to all the members, Forrest draws the ace of hearts, meaning that he will be the one to carry out the assassination. Lilith then suddenly agrees to marry him, in order to give him courage. But after their first night together, both of them begin to feel differently about what they have planned. Lon Chaney stars in this silent crime drama directed by Wallace Worsley, distributed by Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · Silent

A 1928 American silent comedy-drama directed by Burton L. King for Chesterfield Motion Picture Corporation. The daughter of a wealthy industrialist wants to take over the company when her father retires, but the old-fashioned father plans to leave it to her wastrel playboy brother. To prove she can handle the job, she disguises herself as an ordinary working girl and gets a job at her father's factory. The film stars Lila Lee, Cornelius Keefe, and Burr McIntosh. A Poverty Row production made on a $10,000 budget with a ten-day shooting schedule, it is a surviving example of Chesterfield's low-budget output.

Drama · Comedy

The Affairs of Anatol is a 1921 silent comedy-drama directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Wallace Reid as Anatol, a wealthy man who repeatedly tries to "save" women from moral peril, often to the distress of his wife Vivian (Gloria Swanson). Based on the 1893 play by Arthur Schnitzler, the film features a lavish production design by Paul Iribe and showcases DeMille's growing taste for opulent sets and decadent subject matter. The all-star cast includes Bebe Daniels as the mysterious Satan Synne, Elliott Dexter, Wanda Hawley, and Monte Blue. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Drama · Romance · Silent

A publisher torn between a free-spirited artist and a manipulative socialite must choose which woman truly understands him. Leslie Howard, Ann Harding, and Myrna Loy star in this pre-Code adaptation of Philip Barry's play, produced by David O. Selznick. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Romance · Comedy

A D.W. Griffith silent feature inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "Annabel Lee." A young man (Henry B. Walthall) lives under the tyrannical rule of his uncle, whose murder he plots and commits. But guilt gnaws at him—apparitions of Poe's vision haunt his waking hours, and the beating of a dead heart seems to echo from beneath the floorboards. Griffith blends psychological horror with pastoral romance, intercutting the nephew's torment with scenes of courtship with his sweetheart (Blanche Sweet). Cinematographer G.W. Bitzer's inventive use of tinting and irises gives the film a dreamlike, Expressionist quality that anticipates the German Expressionist movement. Released August 2, 1914, the film is in the public domain.

Horror · Drama · Crime · Silent

A teensploitation crime film written and directed by Paul Frees, better known as a prolific voice actor. Tony Travis stars as Eddy Crane, a young singer discovered by a television producer whose chance at fame is threatened by his hoodlum pals, who drag him back into a world of petty crime and violence. The film was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

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

Adventure · Drama · Silent

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

Adventure · Drama

A carnival boxer (John Darrow) falls for a nightclub girl (Merna Kennedy) who is mixed up with a gangster, and tries to fight his way out — literally, in a fixed fight he is paid to throw. Mickey Rooney, thirteen and billed as Mickey McGuire, turns up in a supporting role on the way to stardom, and J. Carrol Naish plays the heavy. A typical poverty-row crime melodrama of 1933, it is worth watching mainly for Rooney and for the seedy carnival atmosphere Albert Herman shoots on real midway locations. Released the same year as King Kong and Forty-Second Street, this is what the other half of Hollywood was making. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · Romance

One of the first and most influential prison films. Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery), a young man convicted of manslaughter after a drunk-driving accident, is sent to an overcrowded prison and shares a cell with two hardened men: the violent career criminal Butch (Wallace Beery) and the more measured Morgan (Chester Morris), who tries to show the new man how to survive. George Hill directed from Frances Marion's screenplay, which was inspired by a spate of 1929 prison riots. The film's attention to the routines and terrors of prison life set the template for the genre, and its mess-hall riot sequence was widely imitated. Marion won the Academy Award for her screenplay and Douglas Shearer won the first Oscar for Sound. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Crime · Drama

A 1950 American drama written and directed by George Seaton, shot on location in bombed-out Berlin barely a year after the airlift ended. Montgomery Clift plays Danny MacCullough, a C-54 flight engineer, and Paul Douglas plays Hank Kowalski, a ground-controlled approach operator whose wartime experience as a POW leaves him bitter toward the Germans they are now feeding. Danny falls for a German war widow (Cornell Borchers) whose motives are not what they seem. Nearly every military role apart from the two leads is played by actual Air Force personnel, and the film incorporates real airlift operations at Tempelhof, making it a semi-documentary record of Operation Vittles. The copyright was never renewed; this is the complete 120-minute print rather than the common 102-minute cut.

War · Drama

King Vidor's World War I epic follows a wealthy young idler who enlists on a whim, ships out to France, falls for a French farm girl, and is marched into the meat grinder of the Western Front. The film was a sensation: it became the highest-grossing silent film of the 1920s and turned John Gilbert into a major star. Vidor stages the battle sequences with a grim, ground-level realism rare for the period, and the famous march through a forest under shellfire is still studied. Beneath the spectacle is an antiwar streak that distinguishes it from the gung-ho pictures that came after. MGM made it on a large budget and a long schedule, and it paid for itself many times over. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

War · Drama · Romance · Silent

Kirk Douglas plays a timber baron who arrives in California's redwood country in 1900 planning to strip it bare, only to run up against a Quaker community whose land sits on the biggest trees. The land scheme he builds with the help of a saloon singer and a treacherous foreman slowly collapses as he falls for the widow who leads the settlers and starts to see what the forest is worth. Directed by Felix E. Feist for Warner Bros and shot in Technicolor among the real redwoods, it is a conservation western a generation before that was a genre. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Western · Drama

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

Drama · Sport

D.W. Griffith's Civil War and Reconstruction epic was the first true blockbuster — the film that proved the feature-length movie could be a mass cultural event. Its technical innovations in cross-cutting, night photography, and large-scale battle staging reshaped the language of cinema. It is also infamous propaganda: adapted from Thomas Dixon's novel *The Clansman*, it depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroic saviors and portrays Black characters — mostly white actors in blackface — through vicious racist caricature. The film sparked protests led by the newly formed NAACP and helped inspire the Klan's real-world revival. It is presented here as a historically significant work that must be understood in that context. Published in 1915, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · History · War · Silent

Josef von Sternberg's adaptation of Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat follows a respectable schoolteacher, Immanuel Rath, who is undone by his infatuation with Lola Lola, the cabaret singer at the Blue Angel. Emil Jannings plays the professor's descent from authority to humiliation, and Marlene Dietrich, in her breakthrough role, introduces "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)." Von Sternberg's command of light and shadow gives the cabaret scenes a smoky opulence that defined his style. The film made Dietrich an international star and launched her seven-film collaboration with von Sternberg in Hollywood. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Music

The first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and MGM's first all-talking musical. Two sisters from the vaudeville act the Mahoney Sisters, Hank and Queenie, arrive in New York chasing a spot in a Broadway revue. Hank's sweetheart, the songwriter Eddie Kearns, promises them a break, but the plot turns on the oldest showbiz story there is: the man falls for the wrong sister. Bessie Love's performance as the self-sacrificing Hank earned an Oscar nomination. The film is creaky by modern standards, but its success proved that audiences would sit through a feature of synchronized song and dialogue, and it set off the Hollywood musical gold rush that defined the early sound era. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Musical · Romance · Drama

A 1950 American film noir Western directed by John Sturges, starring Lew Ayres and Teresa Wright. Lin Vanner, an American oil company manager in Mexico, shoots a man he believes stole the payroll — then learns the suspect was likely innocent. Guilt-ridden, he seeks out the dead man's widow Ellen and her son at their remote ranch, concealing his role in her husband's death as an uneasy romance grows between them. An early credit for Sturges before his run of classic Westerns, the film is a compact psychological study of guilt and expiation. It entered the public domain and is also known by its reissue title, Tar Comes Back.

Drama · Crime · Western

A venal socialite embezzles from a charity and turns to a Burmese ivory trader to cover the loss, only to find he expects her body as payment. When she tries to renege, he brands her with a hot iron. Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 melodrama was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for its significance and for Sessue Hayakawa's landmark performance, which made him one of the first Asian stars of American cinema and a genuine matinee idol. The film's treatment of race and sexuality was controversial even at the time: a Japanese-American newspaper in Los Angeles campaigned against it, and the 1918 re-release changed Hayakawa's character from Japanese to Burmese to avoid offending a wartime ally. Fannie Ward plays the spoiled wife whose recklessness sets the catastrophe in motion. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Crime · Silent

A silent college sports drama directed by David Butler for Columbia Pictures. The film follows a college student who rises from underdog to campus hero through athletic prowess, navigating romance and rivalry along the way. Pauline Garon stars as the love interest in one of the many college-themed films that were popular in the 1920s. The film is a product of the era's fascination with collegiate culture, which would reach its peak with Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (1925). The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Drama · Silent

The Cradle of Courage is a 1920 silent drama starring William S. Hart as 'Square' Kelly, a former crook who serves in World War I and returns home to join the police force — only to find himself confronting his old gang. Directed by Lambert Hillyer and produced by Hart through his own production company, the film explores themes of redemption and moral courage. Ann Little plays Hart's love interest, with Tom Santschi as her criminal brother. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures through the Artcraft Pictures Corporation. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · Silent · Crime

King Vidor's film about an ordinary man who believes he is meant to be somebody and discovers he is, in fact, nobody. John Sims grows up dreaming of greatness, marries, has children, and slowly drowns in the routine of office work and a marriage that curdles. Vidor opens with a montage of a boy's birth and the title "The crowd laughs with you always, but it will cry with you never," then follows John into a vast, fluorescent office floor that was built as a single set to dwarf him. The film was a departure from the glamour MGM usually sold, and Irving Thalberg reportedly backed it against his own instincts. It was not a hit, but its influence on social realism in American film is hard to overstate. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.

Drama · Silent

A pre-Code musical film directed by John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland, the first of three film adaptations of the popular 1927 Broadway play Burlesque. Hal Skelly reprises his Broadway role as Skid Johnson, a vaudeville comic who teams up with dancer Bonny King (Nancy Carroll) to form a comedy- dance act. Their marriage and career flourish until Skid's Broadway success leads him astray. The film was originally made with Technicolor sequences, now lost; only black-and-white prints survive. It entered the public domain in 1957 when its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Musical · Romance

Howard Hawks' World War I aviation drama follows a Royal Flying Corps squadron on the Western Front, where pilots are sent on near-suicidal dawn patrols and the survivors drink to forget. Richard Barthelmess plays Dick Courtney, an ace who chafes under the cautious command of Major Brand (Neil Hamilton); when Courtney is promoted to command the squadron himself, he learns the burden of sending men to their deaths. Hawks, a former flight instructor, flew in the film himself as a German pilot. The aerial sequences, shot by Ernest Haller, were considered state of the art and were later re-edited into the 1938 remake. The film won the Academy Award for Best Story. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

War · Drama · Action

Umberto Scalli (Timothy Farrell) runs an illegal drug ring out of a women's health spa, peddling "bennies" and sleeping pills to teenagers and socialites alike while keeping one step ahead of the judge determined to shut him down. A classic post-war exploitation picture, The Devil's Sleep was directed by W. Merle Connell and produced by George Weiss, who later financed Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. It is the first of Farrell's three turns as the shady Scalli, and features Lita Grey, Charlie Chaplin's former wife, as the crusading judge. The film was never registered for copyright and is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

A landmark pre-Code drama about marriage and infidelity, based on Ursula Parrott's 1929 novel Ex-Wife. Norma Shearer plays Jerry, a Manhattan advertising writer who, after learning of her husband Ted's (Chester Morris) affair, decides to even the score with a one-night stand of her own. When Ted cannot forgive her for what he himself committed, the marriage breaks apart and Jerry embarks on a series of affairs, taking what the film calls "a man's point of view." The film's frank treatment of the sexual double standard was controversial at the time, and Shearer won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role. Published in 1930, the film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Drama · Romance

A roughneck stoker on a coal-fired ship comes ashore for a single night in New York and falls for a dance-hall girl who is trying to kill herself. Josef von Sternberg's fog-shrouded portrait of the waterfront is one of the most exquisitely photographed films of the silent era, with Harold Rosson's cinematography and Hans Dreier's expressionist sets creating a world of smoke, steam, and shadow. George Bancroft is the brawling stoker and Betty Compson the weary dance-hall girl, and the film follows their brief, doomed romance through a single shore leave. The Docks of New York was selected for the National Film Registry in 1999. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

Drama · Romance · Silent

A college football hero is expelled after a scandal involving a vampish society woman and must redeem himself in the big game. Richard Barthelmess stars, with a young John Wayne among the gridiron extras, in this silent collegiate drama. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Sport