Walter Long

Shadows is a silent drama starring Lon Chaney as Yen Sin, a gentle Chinese immigrant who settles in a small New England town and quietly befriends the community while operating a laundry. When he discovers a plot to blackmail the local minister (Harrison Ford) and his wife (Marguerite De La Motte), Yen Sin devises a plan to expose the scheme. Chaney's nuanced portrayal of a sympathetic Chinese character was notable for its era, spending hours each morning applying his makeup. Directed by Tom Forman and produced by B.P. Schulberg through Preferred Pictures, the film was praised by critics upon release. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Drama · 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

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