5. Faust
F.W. Murnau was one of the most illustrious filmmakers of the silent era, cementing his reputation in German expressionism before being lured away to Hollywood for his last few films (his career was cut tragically short as he died in a car crash in 1931, only five years after Faust was made). In his competent hands, Faust could hardly be anything but a classic. He wove a complicated tale, basing his film on Goethe's Faust, but also using elements from the older legends. It was a massive undertaking with a huge budget, unprecedented in German filmmaking and only surpassed in the silent era by Metropolis a year later. Faust, as we know, is the story of a bet that takes place between an angel and a demon over a righteous man's soul. The stakes are high, and there's a tremendous amount of imaginative filmmaking that had to be utilized to tell the story credibly. Murnau doesn't disappoint. His shots are complex yet elegant, and he deftly combines the grim humor of the devil with the high drama of Faust, even managing to wring genuine human emotion out of the sometimes overwhelming epic.