Name the oldest film you have seen

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I’ve seen a bunch of silent films. Here’s the first Western: 1903’s The Great Train Robbery.

 
Maybe The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928? It’s a French silent film.
 
I’ve seen some of the earliest surviving films available. Great Train Robbery I believe was the first movie movie.
 
I’m thinking it was probably The Wizard of Oz, which would tie with Gone with the Wind (both 1939), and I can’t recall if I’ve ever stayed awake through the entirety of the latter.

Edit: Have to throw in that I love, love the Three Stooges (among others), and some of those date back to the early 1920s, but I wouldn’t put them in the “movie” category.
 
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Not as old as most of the others mentioned here but I think mine would probably be the Wizard of Oz- 1939 I think?
 
Broken Blossoms made in 1919. It stars the great Lillian Gish along with Richard Barthlemass and Donald Crisp. Lillian is a young girl who is badly abused by her drunken father. Cheng Huan finds her one day unconscious and rescues her. They form a bond but eventually Lillian’s father finds her and drags her home to punish her.
Lillian Gish’s acting is wonderful, especially the scene where she is hiding in the closet while her father rages outside. The scenes of child abuse are hard to watch. It’s quite grim and gritty.
 
I’m rather fond of Gertie the Dinosaur, supposedly the first cartoon character with a name.

 
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For me, it is probably Snow White (1937). My next favorite old flick is Wizard of Oz (1939).
 
Did a history of film, so, I’ve seen the earliest moving pictures that we have.
 
Probably 1917 The Immigrant…a short film (30 minutes) starring Charlie Chaplin.

I’ve seen earlier film clips though.
 
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Birth of a Nation. But I didn’t search it out on my own. I saw it as part of a university course.
 
This one from 1932. Not the greatest story ever told. 🙃
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I now have it on DVD.
 
Phemie said:
This one from 1932. Not the greatest story ever told. 🙃

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This film ended director Tod Browning’s career in the movies. He had been on a trajectory to greatness after directing great films like Dracula (the Bela Lugosi version). But the public was outraged over Freaks; for decades, the film was banned, and only seen at private film festivals or in “porn” venues.

I first saw Freaks in college (late 1970s). My brother, who was in high school at the time, drove over 60 miles to get to my college to see it.

The film is based on a short story called “Spurs” by Tod Robbins. It’s about a little person who forces a big person to carry them around all the time, and uses spurs if the big person tries to slack off.

It is a valuable film because it stars some of the top carnival performers of the time, who normally would not be seen by anyone in modern times as carnivals don’t often have “freak shows.” At the time of the film, there were a lot of press conferences with these entertainers. Many of them were popular with those who didn’t attend carnivals; e.g., Johnny Eck, a man who was born with no legs. He was a twin, and he and his brother were both entertainers. Mr. Eck was an orchestra conductor, and his brother was a magician. Once they tried a magic trick where the whole twin was sawed in half. When he stood up, supposedly unharmed, he was wearing a long buttoned-up coat (think Matrix!) and Johnny was sitting on his shoulders (so it was Johnny’s head and trunk that the audience saw). As the magician walked toward the audience, Johnny jumped off and ran around the stage on his hands (which was how he always walked around, wearing “hand shoes”–thick leather gloves!). The audience thought that the magican had truly been sawed in half! There was mayhem and panic throughout the audience and many fainted!

The twins never tried that trick again!

So it might seem strange to those of us in 2020 that “freaks” could make a living being…freaks. But back then, they were highly-paid entertainers who argued in public forums that the circus was a place where they could earn an honest living without relying on charity (remember, there was no “welfare” yet in the U.S.), and where they could be accepted no matter what their appearance or physical condition was, and where they could make friends, find romance, get married, and live a fulfilling life. Many argued that without the circus, they would be in “institutions” or hidden away in their relatives’ houses, isolated and purposeless.

Freaks is a valuable work of art that gives us a glimpse into the lives of the entertainers of the past. Nowadays, many of these people are aborted before they are ever born.

If you watch Freaks today, it seems kind of funny. The litte person, Harry Doll, and his siblings (all four of them were little people) escaped from Germany before Hitler gassed “freaks”. He and his siblings had a group called “The Dancing Dolls”. Harry was a successful actor; he was one of the Lollipop Kids in The Wizard of Oz!
 
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Freaks is a great movie. It’s wonderful that the Internet allows us to easily see these movies that in the past like you said we’d have to wait for a film festival and then travel some distance to see them. I always felt bad for Tod Browning’s career but at least he went out on an up note because that movie is so famous and has a big cult following. It’s my understanding that there are several versions with different extra scenes tacked onto the end and I’d love to see those but so far haven’t found them, just read about them.
 
IIRC, it started when I read about “Freaks” in ” Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities“ by Frederick Drimmer.

I knew from that that the film was banned, which just made me want to see it more. So when it surfaced in a format accessible to me I bought it.

I’ll have to rewatch it but I didn’t think it was a great film in terms of cinematography or story. It may have been ground-breaking in the employment of this group of people but to me it felt like exploitation.
 
The oldest movie I clearly remember watching is the original Nosferatu with Max Schreck. It was shown on television in about 1979 or 1980, at the time of Werner Herzog’s remake.
 
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