A farmer plans to drown his wife and falls back in love with her in the city; Murnau in Hollywood.
Murnau's unauthorised Dracula, with Max Schreck's rat-faced count climbing the stairs in shadow.
Buster Keaton chases a stolen locomotive through the Civil War, doing every stunt himself.
Chaplin eats his boot and dances with bread rolls in the Klondike.
Lang's 1927 city of the future: the Maschinenmensch, the workers below and a look every sci-fi film borrowed.
Vertov's day in a Soviet city, made of split screens, freeze frames and no story at all.
German Expressionism in painted shadows: a somnambulist, a fairground and the first twist ending.
Dreyer's trial in close-up, with a performance from Renee Falconetti that has never been matched.
The Tramp and the blind flower girl; the last close-up is the one critics call the greatest in cinema.
The Odessa Steps sequence, the pram, and the montage theory every editor still learns.
A silent, black-and-white French film about the end of silent film; and it won.
The first Best Picture: a silent Great War dogfight epic with real biplanes and Clara Bow.
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