Hacker Cinema
The Phantom of the Opera
1925 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Rupert Julian
The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Nobody's mentioned Lon Chaney yet! Of his movies, definitely watch "The Unknown" (1927), "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925), and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923). I recommend watching in that order, for reasons that are my own. :) I also remember "West of Zanzibar" (1928) as being good: Wikipedia tells me it's not strictly a "silent" film because it has a synchronized sound track... but if we're counting "Shaun the Sheep", then we can count "West of Zanzibar" too. Finally, "He Who Gets Slapped" (1924) is a real trip.
I'll also recommend "Nosferatu" (1922). And "Metropolis" (1927) — but note that "Metropolis" is, or has been, kind of a "semi-lost" film: they're still turning up bits and pieces of it from time to time. I saw what-was-then-called "Metropolis" in the 2000s, and then again in 2024, and I felt that it had radically changed for the better and more-comprehensible. After checking Wikipedia: presumably the first version I saw was the 2001 release (124 minutes) and the second was the 2010 release (148 minutes). But also note that I was 15 or 20 years older, which might have helped.
If (and, presumably, only if) you have read Dante's Inferno, then you might enjoy the film adaptation "L'Inferno" (1911). Wikipedia calls it "the first full-length Italian feature film." The full 62-minute film is available on Wikipedia [1]. Unlike all of the above films, I do not recommend "L'Inferno" as a popcorn movie, but I found it really impressive as a sort of "living tableau" shot-for-shot reenactment of Gustave Doré's famous illustrations.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dante%27s_Inferno_(1911).webm
> I suspect most of the silent movies of the time would seem quite trivial compared with much amateur YouTube content today
I can't say what constituted "most film" in 1926 (are we going by what sold the most tickets? big blockbusters versus daily newsreels & cartoons?) but if you look at the era of 1925-1927 it includes Phantom of the Opera, Battleship Potemkin, The Vanishing American, The Bat, Metropolis, and Wings. Many of this list is iconic to this day to where they continue to be referenced & emulated in pop culture that many people recognize even if they haven't seen the originals before.
Granted this discussion will be hamstrung by how much film has been "lost" with so much of that content no longer in living memory at all (to say if it was masterpieces or crappy filler).