No Academy Award this year — the formula crowns:
Composite 76.94
Composite 76.94
Dir. Buster Keaton · Buster Keaton · Kathryn McGuire · Joe Keaton · Erwin Connelly
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meager skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.
Composite 71.47
Dir. F. W. Murnau · Emil Jannings · Maly Delschaft · Max Hiller · Hans Unterkircher
An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.
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Dir. Fritz Lang · Gertrud Arnold · Margarete Schön · Hanna Ralph · Paul Richter
Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.
Composite 69.02
Dir. Erich von Stroheim · Gibson Gowland · Zasu Pitts · Jean Hersholt · Dale Fuller
When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.
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Dir. Fritz Lang · Margarete Schön · Gertrud Arnold · Theodor Loos · Hans Carl Mueller
When Kriemhild, thirsty for revenge, marries to Etzel, king of the Huns, she invites King Gunther and his court to visit them, intending to finally take the life of the man responsible of her disgrace.
Composite 67.5
Dir. Victor Sjöström · Lon Chaney · Norma Shearer · John Gilbert · Ruth King
After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.
Composite 67.48
Dir. Donald Crisp · Buster Keaton · Kathryn McGuire · Frederick Vroom · Clarence Burton
The wealthy and impulsive Rollo Treadway decides to propose to his beautiful socialite neighbor, Betsy O'Brien. Although Betsy turns Rollo down, he still opts to go on the cruise that he intended as their honeymoon. When circumstances find both Rollo and Betsy on the wrong ship, they end up having adventures on the high seas.
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Dir. Raoul Walsh · Douglas Fairbanks · Snitz Edwards · Charles Belcher · Julanne Johnston
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.
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Dir. Fred C. Newmeyer · Harold Lloyd · Jobyna Ralston · Richard Daniels · Carlton Griffin
Harold Meadows is a shy, stuttering bachelor working in a tailor shop, who is writing a guidebook, The Secret of Making Love, for other bashful young men. Fate has him meet rich girl Mary, and they fall in love. But she is about to wed an already married man, so our hero embarks upon a hair-raising daredevil ride to prevent the wedding.
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Dir. Robert Wiene · Conrad Veidt · Alexandra Sorina · Fritz Strassny · Paul Askonas
A world-famous pianist loses both hands in an accident. When new hands are grafted on, he is horrified to learn they once belonged to a murderer.
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Dir. John Ford · George O'Brien · Madge Bellamy · Charles Edward Bull · Cyril Chadwick
Brandon, a surveyor, dreams of building a railway to the west. He sets off with his son, Davy, to survey a route. They discover a new pass which will shave 200 miles off the expected distance, but they are set upon by a party of Cheyenne. One of them, a white renegade with only two fingers on his right hand, kills Brandon and scalps him. Davy is all alone now.
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Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer · Walter Slezak · Max Auzinger · Nora Gregor · Robert Garrison
A mature and visually elegant period romance that remains one of the earliest and most compassionate overtly gay-themed films in movie history. Based upon Herman Bang's 1902 novel, Dreyer's Michael refashions the classical Greek myth of Jupiter and Ganymede into a love triangle between an aging artist, Zoret, his protagonist Michael, and Princess Zamikoff, an aristocratic femme fatale as entranced by Michael’s youthful beauty as Zoret is.
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Dir. Sam Taylor · Harold Lloyd · Jobyna Ralston · Josephine Crowell · Charles Stevenson
Lloyd's look at married life and the issues of the in-law. Adventures include a ride on a crowded trolley with a live turkey; A wild spin in a new auto with the in-laws in tow. Finally, a sequence in which Hubby accidentally chloroforms his mother-in-law and becomes convinced that he's killed her!
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Dir. Ernst Lubitsch · Florence Vidor · Monte Blue · Marie Prevost · Creighton Hale
An unhappily married couple moves to Vienna, where the wife’s married best friend lives, and soon, sparks fly between the wife and the best friend’s husband.
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Dir. Mauritz Stiller · Greta Garbo · Lars Hanson · Gerda Lundequist · Karin Swanström
Gösta Berling is a young and attractive minister. Because of his alcoholism and his daring sermons, he is finally defrocked. He becomes a tutor of countess Marta's stepdaughter and they fall in love. But the countess has a plan of her own.
How scoring works: films are ranked by a composite of a weighted (Bayesian) IMDb rating — the same method as the IMDb Top 250, so a high score from few voters can't outrank a strong score from many — blended with TMDB. Box office is a tiebreaker and a badge, never part of the score. Raw IMDb ratings and vote counts are shown on each card.