Silent Films

Silent film is where the HibingeTV catalog begins. Every film here was made before synchronized sound became standard in the late 1920s, and every one is in the public domain. Silent cinema is not a single style. It covers expressionist horror from Germany, slapstick comedy from Hollywood, epic spectacles from France and Italy, and the first wave of documentary and educational filmmaking. Because these films have no language barrier, they were distributed worldwide, and many survived only in fragmentary form in foreign archives. The prints streaming here range from pristine restorations to scratchy transfers that are still the best available copies.