1929 Movies
Take a nostalgic look back at the top movies of 1929, celebrating the films, directors and actors that defined the year and left a lasting legacy in the world of entertainment.
The Broadway Melody
Directed by: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Bessie Love, Anita Page, Charles King, The Angeles Twins
Country: United States of America
Outline: A pair of sisters from the vaudeville circuit try to make it big time on Broadway, but matters of the heart complicate the attempt.
Say It with Songs
Directed by: Lloyd Bacon
Starring: Al Jolson, Davey Lee, Marian Nixon, Holmes Herbert
Outline: Joe Lane kills another man in a fistfight after learning that the man has made improper advances towards his wife. Joe goes to prison for the murder. When Joe gets out of prison, he visits ...
Diary of a Lost Girl
Directed by: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Starring: Louise Brooks, Josef Rovenský, Fritz Rasp, André Roanne
Country: United States of America
Outline: After falling pregnant to a pharmacist and refusing to marry, a young woman is thrown from her home and sent to a scrict girls' reform school.
Navy Blues
Directed by: Clarence Brown
Starring: William Haines, Anita Page, Karl Dane, J.C. Nugent
Outline: On shore leave, a young sailor meets and falls in love with a pretty young blonde. He goes home with her to meet her parents, but they don't approve of him at all. Their daughter takes ...
The Iron Mask
Directed by: Allan Dwan
Starring: Belle Bennett, Marguerite De La Motte, Dorothy Revier, Vera Lewis
Country: United States of America
Outline: King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son - an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees the second son as a potential for ...
Asphalt
Directed by: Joe May
Starring: Albert Steinrück, Else Heller, Gustav Fröhlich, Betty Amann
Country: United States of America
Outline: Joe May's sensual drama of life in the Berlin underworld is in many ways the perfect summation of German filmmaking in the silent era: a dazzling visual style, a psychological approach to ...
Arsenal
Directed by: Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Starring: Semyon Svashenko, Georgi Khorkov, Amvrosi Buchma, Dmitri Erdman
Country: United States of America
Outline: Set in the bleak aftermath and devastation of the World War I, a recently demobbed soldier, Timosh, returns to his hometown Kiev, after having survived a train wreck. His arrival coincides ...
The Wrecker
Directed by: Géza von Bolváry
Starring: Carlyle Blackwell, Benita Hume, Joseph Striker, Winter Hall
Outline: A director's nephew unmasks a manager as a wrecker of trains.
It's a Great Life
Directed by: Sam Wood
Starring: Rosetta Duncan, Vivian Duncan, Lawrence Gray, Jed Prouty
Outline: Casey and Babe are sisters who work in a department store and each year the store puts on a show. As expected, things are going wrong with every act until Casey comes out to help Babe with ...
Applause
Directed by: Rouben Mamoulian
Starring: Helen Morgan, Joan Peers, Fuller Mellish Jr., Jack Cameron
Country: United States of America
Outline: A burlesque star seeks to keep her convent-raised daughter away from her low-down life and abusive lover/stage manager.
Finis terrae
Directed by: Jean Epstein
Starring: Gibois, Jean-Marie Laot, Malgorn, François Morin
Outline: Finis Terræ is a 1929 French silent drama film written and directed by Jean Epstein. The story centres on a small group of men harvesting seaweed off the coast of Brittany, and the problems...
Laila
Directed by: George Schnéevoigt
Starring: Mona Mårtenson, Tryggve Larssen, Harald Schwenzen, Peter Malberg
Outline: A spirited Norwegian Lass is torn between two suitors and two cultures.
Piccadilly
Directed by: Ewald André Dupont
Starring: Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, Jameson Thomas, Cyril Ritchard
Country: United States of America
Outline: A young Chinese woman, working in the kitchen at a London dance club, is given the chance to become the club's main act which soon leads to a plot of betrayal, forbidden love and murder.
The Charlatan
Directed by: George Melford
Starring: Holmes Herbert, Margaret Livingston, Rockliffe Fellowes, Philo McCullough
Outline: A woman goes to a sideshow fortune-teller to have her fortune told, and is astonished when the man looks into his crystal ball and goes into great detail about events in her past that few ...
Eternal Love
Directed by: Ernst Lubitsch
Starring: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn, Victor Varconi, Hobart Bosworth
Outline: In the Swiss Alps of the early 19th century, a couple forced into loveless marriages struggle to find happiness with one another.
Evangeline
Directed by: Edwin Carewe
Starring: Dolores del Rio, Roland Drew, Alec B. Francis, Donald Reed
Outline: In Acadia, now part of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, young Evangeline is betrothed to Gabriel. But before their wedding can take place, the British imprison the men and send them ...
Blackmail
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Anny Ondra, John Longden, Sara Allgood, Charles Paton
Country: United States of America
Outline: After killing a man in self-defence, a young woman is blackmailed by a witness to the killing.
The Virginian
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Starring: Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Mary Brian, Richard Arlen
Country: United States of America
Outline: A good-natured cowboy who is romancing the new schoolmarm has a crisis of conscience when he discovers his best friend is engaged in cattle rustling.
The Kiss
Directed by: Jacques Feyder
Starring: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Anders Randolf, Holmes Herbert
Country: United States of America
Outline: An unhappily married woman is caught up in scandal and murder when her affection toward a young man is misinterpreted.
The Pagan
Directed by: W.S. Van Dyke
Starring: Ramon Novarro, Renée Adorée, Donald Crisp, Dorothy Janis
Outline: A carefree South Seas native falls for the half-caste ward of a religious white man who desires her for himself.
She Goes to War
Directed by: Henry King
Starring: Eleanor Boardman, John Holland, Edmund Burns, Alma Rubens
Outline: A young woman disguises herself as a man and follows her fiancéé into the trenches during World War I to find out what war is really like.
The Informer
Directed by: Arthur Robison
Starring: Lya De Putti, Lars Hanson, Warwick Ward, Carl Harbord
Outline: In Ireland, an IRA man betrays a killer to the police, thinking he is his mistress's lover.
Glorifying the American Girl
Directed by: Millard Webb
Starring: Mary Eaton, Eddie Cantor, Helen Morgan, Rudy Vallee
Country: United States of America
Outline: The rise of a showgirl, Gloria Hughes, culminating in a Ziegfeld extravaganza "Glorifying the American Girl".
The Single Standard
Directed by: John S. Robertson
Starring: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian
Outline: The wealthy Arden Stuart is bored in a party; after refusing the wedding proposal of Tommy Hewlett, she drives her car with her driver to a lonely place. She has one night stand with him ...
Wild Orchids
Directed by: Sidney Franklin
Starring: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Nils Asther, Dick Sutherland
Country: United States of America
Outline: A prince in Java tries to seduce his visitor's wife, but he's discovered.
What happened in 1929?
Discover what the world looked like in 1929: