Lillian Gish

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

A poor tenement woman is robbed by the Snapper Kid's gang, and when a rival mob moves in on Pig Alley the two hoods collide in a shootout that Griffith films with pioneering close, mobile camerawork. Often cited as the first gangster film. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Drama

A faithful silent adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, directed by the Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjostrom (credited as Victor Seastrom) from a screenplay by Frances Marion. In 17th-century Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne is condemned to wear the scarlet letter for bearing a child out of wedlock, and she refuses to name the father, the Reverend Dimmesdale. Lillian Gish fought to make the picture at MGM and gives a restrained, dignified performance that is often cited as one of her finest. Lars Hanson plays the tortured minister, and Henry B. Walthall reprises the role of Chillingworth he had played in an earlier adaptation. Long considered the best screen version of the novel, the film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Drama · Silent

A young woman from Virginia moves to her cousin's ranch on the western prairie, where the constant wind drives her to the edge of madness. Lillian Gish conceived the project herself, chose the novel, hired her leading man Lars Hanson, and assigned Victor Sjostrom (credited as Victor Seastrom) to direct, reuniting the team from The Scarlet Letter. The film was shot in the Mojave Desert with wind machines blasting the cast for days, and Gish's performance in the climactic sandstorm is one of the most physically committed in silent cinema. MGM forced a more hopeful ending than the novel's, but the film's power is in the imagery of a woman swallowed by an empty landscape. The Wind was selected for the National Film Registry in 1993. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

Drama · Western · Silent