100 Silent Films provides an authoritative and accessible history of silent cinema through one hundred of its most interesting and significant films. As Bryony Dixon contends, silent cinema is not a genre; it is the first 35 years of film history, a complex negotiation between art and commerce and a union of creativity and technology. At its most grand - on the big screen with a full orchestral accompaniment - it is magnificent, permitting a depth of emotional engagement rarely found in other fields of cinema. Silent film was hugely popular in its day, and its success enabled the development of large-scale film production in the United States and Europe. It was the start of our fascination with the moving image as a disseminator of information and as mass entertainment with its consequent celebrity culture.
The digital revolution in the last few years and the restoration and reissue of archival treasures have contributed to a huge resurgence of interest in silent cinema. Bryony Dixon's illuminating guide introduces a wide range of films of the silent period (1895-1930), including classics such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), The General (1926), Metropolis (1927), Sunrise (1927) and Pandora's Box (1928), alongside more unexpected choices, and represents major genres and directors of the period - Griffith, Keaton, Chaplin, Murnau, Sjöström, Dovzhenko and Eisenstein - together with an introductory overview and useful filmographic and bibliographic information.

Bryony Dixon is curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive. She is the author of 100 Silent Films (BFI Screen Guides, 2011) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on silent cinema and archiving. She is co-director of the British Silent Film Festival and has programmed films for many international festivals. She has been lead curator on a number of the BFI's recent film restorations, including Underground (1928), Shooting Stars (1927), Epic of Everest (1924), The Great White Silence (1924), all nine surviving Hitchcock silent films and the BFI's large format Victorian films.

Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- The Adventures of Dollie, D. W. Griffith, 1908.- Alfred Butterworth & Sons, Leaving the Works, Glebe Mills, Hollinford, 1901, Mitchell and Kenyon, 1901.- Alice in Wonderland, Percy Snow, 1903.- Ballet Mécanique, 1924.- The Battle of the Somme, 1916.- The Battles of the Coronel and Falkland Islands, Walter Summers, 1928.- The Battleship Potemkin.- Bronenosets Potyomkin, Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925.- Beggars of Life, William Wellman, 1928.- Berlin, Symphony of a City, Walter Ruttmann, 1927.- The Big Swallow, James Williamson, 1901.- The Birth of a Flower, F. Percy Smith, 1910.- The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915.- Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock, 1929.- Body and Soul, Oscar Micheaux, 1925.- The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.- Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919.- Cabiria, Giovanne Pastrone, 1914.- The Cameraman's Revenge.- Mest' kinematografi?eskogo operatora, Ladislas Starewicz, 1912.- Casanova, Alexandre Volkoff, 1928.- The Cheat, Cecil B. DeMille, 1916.- Un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1928.- A Cottage on Dartmoor, Anthony Asquith, 1929.- Daybreak.- Tianming, Sun Yu, 1933.- The Derby, Topical Film Company, 1913.- Les Deux Timides, Réne Clair, 1928.- Douro, faina fluvial.- Labour on the Douro River, Manoel de Oliveira, 1931.- Drifters, John Grierson, 1929.- Earth/Zemlya, Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930.- En Dirigeable sur les Champs de Bataille, Lucien Le Sainte, 1918.- The Fall of the House of Usher.- La chute de la maison Usher, Jean Epstein, 1928.- Finis Terrae, Jean Epstein, 1928.- Flesh and the Devil, Clarence Brown, 1926.- The General, Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, 1926.- The Gold Rush, Charles Chaplin, 1925.- The Golem, How He Came into the World.- Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam, Paul Wegener, Carl Boese, 1920.- Gösta Berlings Saga, Mauritz Stiller, 1924.- The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S. Porter, 1903.- The Great White Silence, Herbert Ponting, 1924.- Greed, Erich von Stroheim, 1925.- Heart of the World, Guy Maddin, 2000.- Hell's Hinges, Charles Swickard, 1916.- Hôtes de l'air, Oliver Pike, 1910.- How a Mosquito Operates, Winsor McCay, 1912.- L'Inferno, Giuseppe Beradi, Arturo Busnego, 1911.- The Informer, Arthur Robison, 1929.- It, Clarence Badger, 1927.- I Was Born, But..., Yasujiro Ozu, 1932.- Japonaiserie, Gaston Velle, 1904.- The Kid, Charles Chaplin, 1921.- Lenin Kino-Pravda No. 21.- Leninskaia Kino Pravda, Dziga Vertov, 1925.- Liberty, Leo McCarey, 1929.- The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Alfred Hitchcock, 1926.- The Lure of Crooning Water, A. H. Rooke, 1920.- Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1928.- Manhatta, Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand, 1921.- La Mariée du château maudit, Albert Capellani, 1910.- The Marriage Circle, Ernst Lubitsch, 1926.- Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927.- Monte Cristo, Henri Fescourt, 1929.- Nanook of the North: A Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic, Robert J. Flaherty, 1922.- Napoleon, Abel Gance, 1927.- The Nibelungen Saga.- Die Nibelungen Saga, Fritz Lang, 1924.- Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors.- Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens, F. W. Murnau, 1922.- The Oyster Princess, Ernst Lubitsch, 1919.- Page of Madness.- Kurutta Ippeiji, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926.- Pandora's Box.- Die Buchse der Pandora, G. W. Pabst, 192.