6. Sunrise (1927)
Rarely has a movie worked on so many different levels as does F.W Murnau's Sunrise. In 1927, the year it was released, the film was a technological wonder due to the marvelous cinematography. At the time, cameras were directly attached to the cameraman who had to crank them by hand while shooting, making them difficult to move around on set. Simple tracking shots were accomplished by placing the camera on a rail system but for Sunrise, Murnau and his cinematographer Karl Struss came up with an ingenious method of shooting outdoor scenes inside, and then hanging the camera from a platform from the ceiling. By doing this, the camera had near absolute freedom and the resulting effect made it appear as if the camera could go anywhere, leading to contemporary critics comparing the camerawork to "flying." The universality of Sunrise helped make it one of the big successes of the silent age and even today it still holds up very well. The characters are unnamed, there is very little dialogue, and the story is told almost entirely in images making it one of the most purely cinematic of all films. In 2012, Sight & Sound's critics poll of the greatest films of all time placed Sunrise number five, the highest of all silent films.