Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Lang (upper right), & crew on the set of  Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang) (via)

Eheferien (1927, dir. Victor Janson) (via)

The undersea ‘Realm of Glass’ set from The Thief of Bagdad (1924, dir. Raoul Walsh) Art direction by William Cameron Menzies.

To prepare the set for the underwater world, a family of artisans spent three months hand-blowing the required glass pieces.

(via)

Constance Bennett in Sally, Irene and Mary (1925, dir. Edmund Goulding) (via)

Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925, dir. Rupert Julian) (via)

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost…”

-Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera (1911)

Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)

Buster Keaton in Go West (1925, dir. Buster Keaton) (via)

Fantômas (1913, dir. Louis Feuillade) (via)

Thérèse Raquin (1928, dir. Jacques Feyder) (via)

The Cat and the Canary (1927, dir. Paul Leni) (via)

Paul Wegener in Monna Vanna (1922, dir. Richard Eichberg) (via)

Eva May in The Count of Charolais (1922, dir. Karl Grune) (via)

Interviewer: Her performance of the blind girl in Jeanne Ney is one of her most striking. I don’t feel Brigitte Helm is acting. I feel she is in a trance. That she has the power to throw herself into a trance and to move and speak and live a life quite outside her own experience.

G.W. Pabst: Ah, you see. You have it. Do you know the scene when she walks with Jeanne Ney in the streets of Paris, she was almost killed. The actor driving the taxi was not a driver really, but had had to learn. He was not very sure of his steering.

Brigitte Helm walked right in front of him. I had to run before the camera to save her. Do you know why? She was blind. She simply did not see it.

-excerpted from Close Up magazine interview (March 1929) 

Brigitte Helm in Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang) (via)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer) (via)