Channel 01

The Silent Signal

Cinema before it spoke.

The first grammar of the medium, transmitted whole. These films had no dialogue to lean on, so they solved everything — dread, longing, comedy, revolution — with light, faces, and cutting. A century later the solutions still work on you. That is not nostalgia; that is engineering.

The rotation 21 films · 82 screenings a week

1. Sherlock Jr. 1924 · Buster Keaton 44 min
2. The General 1926 · Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman 79 min
3. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927 · F. W. Murnau 95 min
4. Metropolis 1927 · Fritz Lang 145 min
5. Tol'able David 1921 · Henry King 93 min
6. Stella Maris 1918 · Marshall Neilan 83 min
7. Way Down East 1920 · D. W. Griffith 148 min
8. Show People 1928 · King Vidor 78 min
9. Lady Windermere's Fan 1925 · Ernst Lubitsch 86 min
10. Orphans of the Storm 1921 · D. W. Griffith 150 min
11. Intolerance 1916 · D. W. Griffith 197 min
12. He Who Gets Slapped 1924 · Victor Sjöström 96 min
13. Greed 1924 · Erich von Stroheim 130 min
14. The Unholy Three 1925 · Tod Browning 86 min
15. The Mark of Zorro 1920 · Fred Niblo 107 min
16. The Navigator 1924 · Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp 60 min
17. Street Angel 1928 · Frank Borzage 101 min
18. Wings 1927 · William A. Wellman 140 min
19. Don Q, Son of Zorro 1925 · Donald Crisp 111 min
20. The Big Parade 1925 · King Vidor 150 min
21. The Plastic Age 1925 · Wesley Ruggles 73 min

Every film starts on the hour or the half hour, and the station break — test card and countdown — runs until it does. The week repeats: what is on at nine this Tuesday is on at nine next Tuesday. It has been running, notionally, since the epoch, and is at the same frame for everyone who tunes in. See what's coming in the Guide.