10 Amazing Silent Films You Should Watch

7. Falling Leaves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_cYhqVblLc Alright, everyone needs to do themselves a favor and take twelve minutes to watch this early silent film from 1914. Falling Leaves was a film made by one of the pioneering female directors in France, Alice Guy Blaché, who is generally credited as being the first to develop a system for narrative filmmaking. It's a lovely domestic picture that demonstrates the medium's innate ability to illicit emotions from audiences, even with rudimentary camera work and primitive film techniques. Falling Leaves is the story of a girl who is diagnosed with consumption, and her mother is told that she will be dead by the time the rest of the autumn leaves fall. But the girl's little sister overhears this pronouncement, and with a childish innocence decides that it's up to her to save her sister's life -- so she goes out into the yard and begins tying leaves to the trees with string, so that they might never fall. You have to have a heart of stone not to be emotionally affected by that.