Milton Sills

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

Frank Lloyd's lavish silent adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's pirate novel, one of the most expensive films of its day. Four full-scale sixteenth-century ships were built for the production, and the action ranges from Cornish manors to slave galleys to the deck of a Moorish pirate fleet. Milton Sills plays an English nobleman betrayed by his half-brother, sold into slavery, and reborn as the pirate captain known as the Sea Hawk, who returns to harry the Spanish and avenge himself. The film was a huge hit and set the visual template for Hollywood swashbucklers that the later Errol Flynn version would build on. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2020.

Adventure · Romance · Silent