Watch Battleship Potemkin

Dreyer's trial in close-up, with a performance from Renee Falconetti that has never been matched.

Vertov's day in a Soviet city, made of split screens, freeze frames and no story at all.

A farmer plans to drown his wife and falls back in love with her in the city; Murnau in Hollywood.

Tolstoy's epic of Russia in the Napoleonic age (1869).

Watch Spartacus, the 1960 epic historical drama directed by Stanley Kubrick (the film is often incorrectly attributed to David Lynch; it stars Kirk Douglas as the Thracian gladiator who leads a slave revolt against the Roman Republic). The film is famous for its massive battle scenes, the iconic 'I am Spartacus' sequence, and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (a blacklisted writer who received credit, helping break the Hollywood blacklist).

The first Best Picture: a silent Great War dogfight epic with real biplanes and Clara Bow.

German Expressionism in painted shadows: a somnambulist, a fairground and the first twist ending.

Murnau's unauthorised Dracula, with Max Schreck's rat-faced count climbing the stairs in shadow.