1. Modern Times (1936)
City Lights did not lead to a revival in silent film, the Sound Age had taken its hold and would never let go, but Chaplin wanted one last shot and the result is in many ways his best film. A satire of the Industrial Revolution and a critique of modern society released in the middle of the Great Depression, Modern Times started Chaplin's streak of socially conscious work that continued in The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux. It was controversial both for approaching social issues and for being a silent movie ten years into the sound Age but that did not stop it from becoming one of Chaplin's biggest hits. Its influence pervaded not just the film world but the intellectual one as Jean-Paul Sarte and Simone Beauvoir named their philosophical journal after it Chaplin and the rest of Hollywood eventually gave up on silent film, Chaplin's next films were talkies and only occasionally were silent films ever made, usually as a gimmick or for an independent production. Still, with their unprecedented power to entrance, silent films were the prologue to modern filmmaking and they still live on for anyone with the patience and desire to look and appreciate.