A wonderful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ famous work of a young orphan falling in with a man who trains children to be thieves. Jackie Coogan, at the height of his juvenile stardom, plays the titular orphan and Lon Chaney charismatically inhabits the meaty role of Fagin—an ideal part for the master of makeup!

Filled with a cast of memorable characters, this film is one of the most faithful cinematic adaptations of Charles Dickens’ original saga.

Print courtesy of Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.

A decadent feast for the eyes, this Italian silent was based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), arguably the most popular historical novel written in the nineteenth century. Bulwer-Lytton’s tale of the young dandy Glaucus in love with beautiful Ione was the canonical narrative of Pompeii’s destruction.

Glaucus’ jealous rival, the Egyptian priest Arbaces, slays Ione’s brother Apaecides, whom he has failed to convert to his mystery religion. Exploiting the love of the blind slave girl Nydia for Glaucus, her master, Arbaces proceeds to blame Glaucus for the murder. Then Mount Vesuvius strikes: the eruption kills the villain, and blind Nydia guides Ione and Glaucus through the rain of ashes to safety outside of the collapsing city.

Restored, color-tinted print courtesy of the British Film Institute.

The earliest surviving African-American directed feature film, the sole print of this superb race film was discovered in Spain and painstakingly restored by the Library of Congress in 1993.

The emotionally powerful story centers around a black schoolteacher who finds the battle against racism is everywhere when she goes North to raise money for better schools. Seen as a response to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, the film portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century—the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the “New Negro”. Shot mostly in Chicago!

Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.