In 1925:
Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first female governor in the United States;
The New Yorker was first published;
Calvin Coolidge was inaugurated as US President;
Tennessee passed the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the state’s public schools;
F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby;
Adolf Hitler published volume one of Mein Kampf;
Mount Rushmore was dedicated;
The first Surrealist art exhibition opened in Paris;
The Grand Ole Opry debuted;
New York City passed London to become the most populous city in the world;
John DeLorean, Lee Van Cleef, Paul Newman, Dorothy Malone, Elaine Stritch, Jack Lemmon, Hal Holbrook, George Kennedy, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, Flannery O’Connor, Rod Steiger, Yogi Berra, Malcolm X, Pol Pot, Tony Curtis, Barbara Bush, William Styron, Maureen Stapleton, Audie Murphy, Farley Granger, Medgar Evers, Merv Griffin, Bill Haley, Mike Douglas, Donald O’Connor, Peter Sellers, Mel Tormé, B.B. King, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Thatcher, Lenny Bruce, Angela Lansbury, Johnny Carson, Richard Burton, Doris Roberts, Jonathan Winters, Rock Hudson, Robert F. Kennedy, William F. Buckley Jr., Julie Harris, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dick Van Dyke were born;
While Louis Feuillade, Walter Camp, John Singer Sargent, Pancho Villa, William Jennings Bryan, Christy Matthewson, and Eugen Sandow died.
The following is a list of my top ten favorite films released in 1925:
Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Weber, the story of The Phantom is well-known. Erik, a disfigured musical genius who lives underneath the Paris Opera House, falls in love with Christine, an understudy at the opera. Christine plans to marry Raoul, but the Phantom offers to make her a star in exchange for her love. When Christine rejects these advances, Erik kidnaps her and threatens to kill her lover.
The story is haunting, but this film has stayed in the public consciousness for almost a century because of the incredible look of Lon Chaney’s Phantom. For the first half of the film, a mask obscures his disfigured face, but when Christine removes it, the character instantly became one of the most recognizable images in film history. Lon Chaney Sr., the “Man of a Thousand Faces” was adept at creating a distinctive look for his characters, but few have been more influential and implanted themselves more firmly in our collective consciousness.
Eschewing an origin story explaining how Erik came to live in the catacombs or acquired his disfigurement, this film maintains a mystery which keeps it fresh in its 10th decade.
9) The Freshman
College freshman Harold Lamb (Harold Lloyd) thinks the path to popularity is to emulate the College Hero. His efforts backfire, and he’s mercilessly harassed by the College Cad.
To prove himself, Harold joins the football team. His athletic ineptitude doesn’t endear him to the coach, but his enthusiasm wins a spot on the bench. After numerous injuries in the big game, Harold gets his chance.
I prefer Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, but Harold Lloyd made several really good comedies in the silent era including this film which cemented many of the tropes and expectations of football movies. Capturing the nervous anxiety inherent in establishing yourself at school away from the comfort and reassurance of your family, this is one of Lloyd’s best films.
On his 27th birthday, Jimmy Shannon (Buster Keaton) learns he will inherit seven million dollars from his grandfather’s estate as long as he’s married by 7 PM.
Jimmy proposes to his longtime girlfriend, but when he tells her about the inheritance, she rejects his proposal. Because the large sum would save his law firm from financial ruin, his partners convince Jimmy to propose to any available woman and place an ad in the newspaper detailing the inheritance and its unusual conditions. The response is, to put it mildly, overwhelming. Hundreds of women chase Jimmy through the town, each desperate to become Mrs. Shannon and claim a share of the money.
It’s a heavily contrived story, but Keaton running down the street with hundreds of women chasing him is an indelible image and the energy and physicality of the final act is incredible. Few other filmmakers are capable of channeling this sort of frantic energy.
7) Go West
Homeless drifter Friendless (Buster Keaton) finds temporary work at a cattle ranch where he befriends a cow, Brown Eyes.
When the down-on-his-luck rancher sends his cattle (including Brown Eyes) to a slaughterhouse, Friendless stows away to save his friend. When they arrive rival ranchers attempt to poach the cattle, but Friendless fends them off. In lieu of a large reward, the lonely drifter asks to have Brown Eyes.
This is a sweet movie about friendship and the relationship of people to animals. The scenes with the rampaging cattle in Los Angeles aptly showcase Keaton’s frenetic flare and, in an inspired sequence, he dons a red devil costume to attract the stray animals.
I’m enamored with Keaton, and this is among his best films.
Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) leads an expedition to a remote Venezuelan plateau to investigate the claims of Paula White, daughter of explorer Maple White who allegedly discovered numerous species previously thought to be extinct, including dinosaurs.
Based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the stop-motion work for the dinosaurs in the film is impeccable, and strikes the right balance between human and scientific elements.
You can easily trace the birth of such disparate films as King Kong and Jurassic Park from the images and boundless imagination of this film.
An escaped prisoner (Paul Robeson) poses as a Reverend to swindle the people of a small black town. He falls in love with a young congregant, but her mother has a premonition and warns her away. Oddly, the prisoner’s estranged identical twin Sylvester (also played by Robeson) is the girl’s true love.
Directed by the pioneering Oscar Micheaux, this race film is a wonderful melodrama and the insights it offers into the black experience of 1920s America are fascinating.
Robeson’s film debut proves him to be an electric presence. Sadly, dead for forty five years, he’s on the verge of being forgotten by the general public, relegated to a trivia question about “Ol Man River.” I haven’t seen a lot of his work, but this makes me want to see a lot more.
4) Variety
Retired trapeze artist Boss Huller (Emil Jannings) abandons his wife and young child for the immigrant Bertha. The new lovers join Artinelli’s carnival as a high wire act. When Huller discovers Artinelli is having an affair with Bertha, he kills him. The movie is told via flashback as Huller awaits his parole.
Emil Jannings was a silent film superstar, specializing in expressive, brooding characters who skirted moral lines. He’s captivating as the hulking Huller.
With its depictions of adultery and murder, the film caused a sensation when imported to the US and was drastically cut to make Huller a more sympathetic figure.
Common for German films of the era, the daring cinematography is wonderful, especially the inventive work following the acrobatics.
The Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin) tries his fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. Inept and clumsy, he’s not successful, but fellow prospector Big Jim McKay takes him under his wing.
When they’re separated, Big Jim loses his memory after surviving an avalanche, while The Prospector arrives in one of the surrounding boom towns and falls in love with Georgia, a dance hall entertainer. The awkward Prospector is the butt of jokes around town until Big Jim returns with his memory partially restored. He needs the Prospector’s help to locate a large gold deposit.
After a series of misadventures and close calls, the pair find the gold. Despite his new-found enormous wealth, the Prospector is unhappy because he’s not with his beloved.
Although I prefer Keaton, I understand why everyone loves Chaplin. He was unrivaled in his ability to stretch a concept. He could build a film around a funny scene or character because he understood relationships and the human condition in a way few storytellers do; the more interesting story is not what we do, but who we do it with.
2) Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Ben-Hur (Ramon Novarro) is a wealthy Jewish prince and childhood friend of the powerful Roman, Messala (Francis X. Bushman). When Ben-Hur is arrested, Messala betrays him and separates him from his family. During his travail, he encounters Jesus, and earns the respect of an important Roman admiral.
He eventually becomes a famous chariot racer and is surprised to find his former friend among his competitors. After his victory, he’s reunited with his family and encounters Jesus once more.
After the death of Rudolph Valentino, the studio pushed Novarro as the next Latin sex symbol, but he was a homosexual and refused a lavender marriage. Sadly, he was murdered in 1968 by two brothers he contracted for sex.
Unfortunately most of the films featuring Francis X. Bushman have been lost, but his performance here is excellent.
The movie lost money for MGM, but it transformed them into the premiere studio during Hollywood’s Golden Age. This adaptation of Lew Wallace’s novel is better than the more celebrated 1959 version.
After enlisting in the war effort, blue blood Jim Apperson (John Gilbert) befriends working class Slim and Bull during boot camp and falls in love with a French peasant girl, Melisande.
During the difficult trench warfare, Bull and Slim are killed and Jim is severely injured. He returns home with only one leg to learn his fiancée has fallen in love with his brother. Elated, he returns to France to reunite with Melisande.
Excellent as Jim, John Gilbert was a huge star in the silent era but his career faded during the transition to sound and now he’s all but forgotten.
Director King Vidor also directed the seminal silent film The Crowd (1928). His later sound films were solid, but not as spectacular.
During the 1940s, there was a glut of Hollywood films romanticizing American involvement in Europe’s wars, but this incredibly prescient film, focusing on the human cost of war, more closely mirrors contemporary attitudes.