Theodore Roberts

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

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

Cecil B. DeMille's first pass at the story he would remake in 1956, and the most expensive American film up to that time. The picture is built in two halves: a biblical prologue telling the story of Moses, from the bulrushes to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, and a modern parable about two brothers, one who keeps the commandments and one who breaks them. The prologue is the part everyone remembers, with the Exodus staged on a vast scale, the parting of the Red Sea done with a clever combination of miniatures and reversed footage, and Theodore Roberts playing Moses as a bearded patriarch. The modern story, starring Richard Dix and Leatrice Joy, is a morality play about a corrupt contractor who ignores his mother's teachings. DeMille built full-scale Egyptian sets in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in California and left the buried sphinxes there for archaeologists to dig up decades later. The film was a huge hit and saved Famous Players-Lasky from a slump. Its copyright expired at the end of its first term, and it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019, along with the other 1923 works.

Drama · Religious · Silent · Epic