Norman Kerry

The most ambitious American silent production to that point, and the film that proved Universal could mount a spectacle. Lon Chaney plays Quasimodo, the deaf, deformed bell-ringer of Notre Dame, who falls in love with the kind gypsy dancer Esmeralda and tries to protect her from the forces closing in around her: a lecherous archdeacon, a treacherous captain, and the beggar king Clopin. Chaney designed his own horrific makeup, contorted his body under a 72-pound hump, and hung by a rope from the cathedral's towers for real. The Paris sets were built full-scale on the Universal lot and helped define the look of the studio for decades. The film was a huge hit and saved Universal from financial trouble. Its copyright was not renewed at the end of its first term, and it entered the public domain in the United States in 1951.

Romance · Drama · Silent

Mary Pickford plays an American girl whose ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat on the way to France — a sequence Cecil B. DeMille staged as open propaganda while the United States was still deciding whether to join the war. Rescued and sheltered in a French chateau near the front, she is caught between a French officer and a German officer who both love her, and the film builds to the occupation of the chateau and an attempted assault that American audiences in 1917 read as Germany's crimes in miniature. Released months after the US entered the war, it was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. A 1917 release, it is in the public domain.

Drama · War · Silent

A disfigured composer named Erik lives in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House and falls in love with Christine, a young soprano he secretly trains. When she lifts his mask, he kidnaps her, and her fiancé Raoul descends into the cellars to find her. Lon Chaney designed his own makeup for the role, including wires to distort his nose and a technique that has never been fully reproduced. The unmasking scene, when the audience first sees his face, is one of the most famous moments in silent film; some theaters reportedly kept smelling salts on hand for audience members who fainted. The film was Universal's first horror production and helped establish the genre as a studio staple. The famous two-strip Technicolor ball sequence is included in this print. The film is in the public domain as a pre-1930 work.

Horror · Silent

A circus knife thrower known as "Alonzo the Armless" performs with his feet and falls for the carnival girl Nanon, who cannot bear to be touched by a man. What no one knows is that Alonzo's arms are strapped to his body to hide a double thumb that marks him as a criminal on the run. When Nanon finally overcomes her fear and turns to another man, Alonzo takes a terrible step to become what he has pretended to be. Lon Chaney gives one of his most disturbing performances, and a young Joan Crawford is the love interest in her first major role. Tod Browning, who would go on to make Freaks and Dracula, sets the whole story in a circus of grotesques. The film was considered lost until a print turned up in 1968. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Horror · Thriller · Silent