frankie's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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Manic stunt work, elaborate sight gags and mind-boggling mechanical comedy are just some of Keaton's work featured in these movies.

Known the world round as the 'Stone' face comedy actor, with charming moments of intimate humour flavoured with rich pathos, uniquely graceful and characteristically hilarious. That's Buster Keaton'

Our Hospitality
Keaton plays a New Yorker who returns to his roots in the South and finds himself involved in a feud between his family and those of the woman he loves. Packed with superb visuals and sight gags including a train journey, which has to be seen to be believed.

Sherlock Junior
A mild mannered theatre projectionist dreams of becoming a great detective when he enters the film he is projecting! This is one of Keaton's finest masterpieces which within its fourty-four minutes manages to present a dazzling display of cinematic inventiveness, non-stop comedy and dare-devil stunts.

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Taken to its bare bones, the story deals with Sisif (Séverin-Mars), a locomotive engineer who saves Norma (Ivy Close), an infant girl from a train wreck and raises her as his adopted daughter.

Norma thinks Sisif’s son Elie (Gabriel de Gravone) is her brother, and when the two fall in love, she leaves to marry a virtual stranger. Sisif is also obsessed with her and the plot elaborates this triangular relationship. German director G. W. Pabst, an ardent admirer of La Roue, was encouraged by Gance’s example to undertake his own remarkable explorations of human psychology in such silent films as 'Secrets of a Soul', 'Pandora’s Box' and 'Diary of a Lost Girl'. Yet 'La Roue' is even more remarkable for its cinematic accomplishment than for its story. The film was taken almost entirely on location. Sets were built along the railroad tracks in the yard at St. Roch, near Nice, and at an elevation of 13,000 feet on Mount Blanc...

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The actor stars as the impious thief Ahmed who has made a reputation as Baghdad's premiere plunderer. When he falls in love with a beautiful princess (Julanne Johnston) and the two determine to marry, her father the caliph intervenes, forbidding the union.

Thus erupts a chain of circumstances involving a crystal ball, a magic apple, a pegasus, an invisibility cloak... and, of course, a flying carpet.

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Taking an historical event from 1912, Eisenstein marries the new Soviet propaganda ideals of the heroic worker with his own theories of avant garde art. Following the suicide of a sacked factory worker, his colleagues hold a peaceful strike, but their bosses retaliate with savage force.

Capturing the brutality with power and immediacy, Eisenstein's visuals move from the slaughter of cattle to the butchery of the Cossack army, simultaneously inventing and breaking cinematic rules.

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John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) was a simple slow man who became a dentist after working at the Big Dipper Gold Mine. He is now being hunted in Death Valley by his ex-best friend Marcus (Jean Hersholt) and the law.

His lot was cast the day that he meet his future wife Trina (Zasu Pitts) in his office. She was with Marcus and she bought a lottery ticket. Well Mac fell for her and Marcus stepped aside. When Mac and Trina married, she won the Lottery for $5000 and became obsessive about the money in gold. Marcus is steamed as he stepped aside and now she is rich so he has the law shut down Mac as he has no official schooling for his dentistry. Trina fearful that they will take her gold away sells everything and takes all Mac earns when he is working. She adds to her stash of gold as they both live as paupers. When Mac has no job and no money, he leaves and Trina moves. Driven to desperation at being poor and hungry he finds Trina and demands the gold.

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A landmark work in the history of the cinema, Der letzte Mann represents a breakthrough on a number of fronts.

Firstly, it introduced a method of purely visual storytelling in which all intertitles and dialogue were jettisoned, setting the stage for a seamless interaction between film-world and viewer. Secondly, it put to use a panoply of technical innovations that continue to point distinct ways forward for cinematic expression nearly a century later. The lesson in all this? That a film can be anything it wants to be... but only Der letzte Mann (and a few unforgettable others) were lucky enough to issue forth into the world under the brilliant command of master director F. W. Murnau. His film depicts the tale of an elderly hotel doorman (Emil Jannings) whose superiors have come to deem his station as transitory as the revolving doors through which he has ushered guests in and out, day upon day, decade after decade. Reduced to polishing tiles beneath a sink in the gents' lavatory and towelling the hands of Berlin's most vulgar barons, the doorman soon uncovers the ironical underside of old-world hospitality. And then - one day - his fate suddenly changes...

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Jimmy Shannon (Buster Keaton) learns he is to inherit seven million dollars, with a catch.

He will only get the money if he is married by 7pm on his 27th birthday, which happens to be that same day! What follows is an incredible series of escalating set-pieces that could only have come from the genius of Buster Keaton.

Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces, stars in this, the original adaptation of Gaston Leroux's celebrated novel. When the Phantom falls in love with the voice of a young opera singer (Mary Philbin) he drags her to the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House and forces her to sing only for him.

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Planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Russian Revolution, this film was developed by the 27 year-old Sergei Eisenstein from less than one page of script from a planned eight-part epic that was intended to

chronicle a large number of revolutionary actions. Starting with the Potemkin's crew's refusal to eat maggot-infested meat, the mutiny develops and their leader Vakulinchuk is shot by a senior officer. The officers are overthrown and when the Potemkin docks at Odessa, crowds appear from all directions to take up the cause of the dead sailor and open rebellion ensues. What became the most celebrated sequence in world cinema history follows as the Czarist soldiers fire on the crowds thronging down the Odessa steps; the broad newsreel-like sequences being inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details. Returning to sea, the Potemkin's crew prepares the guns for action as the ship, flying the flag of freedom, steams to confront the squadron. When they finally meet their worst fears are allayed as, with relief coupled with joy, they are universally acclaimed. This film, which was destined to become such an influential landmark in cinematographic history, opened in Moscow in January 1926. It ran for only four weeks.

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'The Gold Rush' is widely reported to be the film that Chaplin most wanted to be remembered for. It sees The Tramp as a lone prospector venturing to Alaska looking for gold.

He gets mixed up with some burly characters, falls in love with the beautiful Georgia (Georgia Hale) and tries to win her heart with his singular charm.

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Shortly after that 1927 release, an entire quarter of Lang's original version was cut by Paramount for the US release, and by Ufa in Germany, an act of butchery very much against the director's wishes.

The excised footage was believed lost, irretrievably so - that is, until one of the most remarkable finds in all of cinema history, as several dusty reels were discovered in a small museum in Buenos Aires. Argentina in 2008. Since then, an expert team of film archivists has been working at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in Germany to painstakingly reconstruct and restore Lang's film.

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F. W. Murnau, Germany's finest director, was imported to Hollywood in July 1926. William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation promised and gave him complete artistic freedom. Fox told Murnau to take his time, spend whatever he had to, and make any film he wished to make.

The film that resulted was Sunrise, made entirely without studio interference. Sunrise, a psychological thriller from the silent movie era, begins when the pleasant and peaceful life of a naive country Man (George O'Brien) is turned upside down when he falls for a cold-blooded yet seductive Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston). She persuades him to drown his virtuous Wife (Janet Gaynor) in order to be with her. This is one of the most moving stories ever told on screen - a tale of temptation, reconciliation, reconsecration, and redemption, told with a lyrical simplicity that gives it the timeless universality of a fable.

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Train engineer Johnny Gray (Buster Keaton) is turned down when he tries to enlist in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War as his occupation is deemed too important.

When his train (The General) is stolen by Union soldiers so that it can be used to attack Confederate forces, only Johnny and his girl Annabelle Lee can save the train and warn the Confederates about an impending attack.

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Alonzo the Armless (Lon Chaney) is a circus freak who uses his feet to toss knives and fire a rifle at his partner, Nanon (Joan Crawford). However, he is an impostor and fugitive. He has arms, but keeps them tightly bound to his torso, a secret known only to his friend Cojo (John George), a midget.

Alonzo's left hand has a double thumb, which would identify him as the perpetrator of various crimes. Alonzo is secretly in love with Nanon. Malabar, the circus strongman, is devoted to her as well, but she has a strong fear of men's arms and cannot stand being pawed by them, so she shuns him. She only feels comfortable around the armless Alonzo. When she embraces and kisses him, he is given hope, but Cojo warns him that he cannot let it happen again. If she holds him, she might feel his arms.

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With art being used by the Soviet state for propaganda, Eisenstein was commissioned by the authorities to celebrate the tenth anniversary of 1917's October Revolution.

However, his presentation of the events through experiments in editing and camera angles, rather than by using traditional narrative, managed to link religious leaders with pagan idols and the army. It won international praise, except back home where Eisenstein once again fell foul of the Soviet authorities, accused of not using the language of the masses.