Film

The Midnight Express

A 1924 silent action film where a wealthy railroad magnate's wastrel son proves himself by working the yard, gets tangled up with an escaped convict, a speeding train, and the engineer's daughter. It's pure kinetic joy: chases, stunts, and romantic entanglement moving at silent-film velocity. For anyone curious about early cinema's confidence in pure spectacle.

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Safety Last!1923

Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock on a skyscraper is cinema's most iconic stunt, but the whole film is a masterclass in physical comedy timing and escalating chaos. Silent comedy at its most inventive.

But Lloyd's character is somewhat passive and the gags can feel mechanical if you're not attuned to silent rhythm. Some dated attitudes toward women.

Safety Last! poster

The General1926

Buster Keaton in an action-adventure built around a runaway train, with stunts so audacious they still look impossible. Comedy and spectacle fused into something genuinely thrilling and funny.

But The humour is deadpan to the point of invisibility if you're not watching intently. A Confederate protagonist makes the politics uncomfortable, though it's not endorsing them.

The General poster

The Phantom Carriage1921

Swedish supernatural drama that moves like a thriller, with one of cinema's most innovative uses of double exposure. Ghostly, eerie, and structurally brilliant—it influenced everything after.

But It's slower than action films, more morality play than adventure. The sentiment about redemption through suffering is heavy-handed by modern standards.

The Phantom Carriage poster

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Berlin: Symphony of a Great City1927

Both are 1920s action built from movement and rhythm rather than dialogue or plot. The Midnight Express achieves drama through chases; Berlin achieves cinema through pure visual editing.

No plot, no actors—just a camera moving through Berlin in 1927, edited to rhythmic precision. It's a city symphony in real time, pure cinema language, utterly hypnotic if you let it work on you.

But It's experimental and demands active watching. No narrative to hang onto, so restlessness is a real risk.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City poster
More like this (8)

The Thief of Bagdad1924

Douglas Fairbanks performing impossible acrobatics across fantastical sets—part action film, part fairy tale. The ambition of the production design is staggering, and Fairbanks' physicality is genuinely astounding.

But The plot is thin and the pacing meanders. The Orientalist framing is dated and uncomfortable in places.

The Thief of Bagdad poster

Nosferatu1922

German Expressionist horror that feels genuinely unsettling, with a vampire that's creepy rather than seductive. Visual storytelling at its most atmospheric—every frame is composed like a painting.

But It's slow, visually dark, and offers no comfort. The original story has antisemitic elements, and this adaptation doesn't transcend them.

Nosferatu poster

Greed1924

Erich von Stroheim's epic about how a lottery win destroys a marriage, told with unflinching naturalism. It's a silent film that feels utterly modern in its cynicism and psychological depth.

But It's nearly ten hours in most restorations and deliberately bleak. Stroheim's pacing is glacial and his view of humanity is unrelentingly dark.

Greed poster

Metropolis1927

Fritz Lang's vision of a futuristic dystopia with production design that defined sci-fi cinema. It's a love story, a class-warfare drama, and a technical marvel all at once.

But The restored versions vary wildly in completeness and quality. The plot becomes muddled and the politics are simplistic in the second half.

Metropolis poster

The Mark of Zorro1920

Fairbanks again, but as a masked vigilante doing sword work and roof-running with genuine style. It's lighter than his Bagdad film, faster-paced, and essentially invented the superhero template.

But The plot is straightforward and the characterization thin. Some of the racial caricatures are cringe-inducing by any standard.

The Mark of Zorro poster

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans1927

F.W. Murnau's tragic romance about a marriage nearly destroyed by infidelity, shot with expressionist precision and emotional rawness. It won the first Academy Award and deserved it.

But It's emotionally punishing and the ending might feel sentimental depending on your tolerance for melodrama. The pacing is deliberate rather than gripping.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans poster

Sherlock Jr.1924

Same year as Midnight Express, same medium, same commitment to spectacle over story—but Keaton uses the form to interrogate cinema itself while The Midnight Express just wants to thrill you.

Buster Keaton as a projectionist who dreams himself into a film within his film. The meta-cinema gimmick could be clever-clever, but instead it's an excuse for genuinely inventive stunt sequences and visual gags.

But The conceit is whimsical and the emotional stakes are nil. If you need character development or drama, this offers almost nothing.

Sherlock Jr. poster

Pandora's Box1929

Both feature an escaped criminal as a plot driver, but where Midnight Express treats the convict as an obstacle to overcome, Pandora's Box treats morality itself as a luxury nobody in the story can afford.

Louise Brooks in a German silent about desire and social decay, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. It's smoky, sexual, and morally grey in ways that make 1924 America look prudish. Genuinely modern filmmaking.

But It's bleak, slow, and the content—including murder and exploitation—is presented without judgment or comfort. The ending is grim.

Pandora's Box poster

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