A list of the most influential silents is not the same as a list of the best silents. In the days when I used to hang out at New York’s Museum of Modern Art to watch movies (an annual membership bought unlimited movies), I was fairly indiscriminate in my viewing. As long as it was the show I could catch right after work, that was the show I watched. I would watch festivals with names like “Obscure films that should be even more obscure,” few of which were in English and none of which were in color. But I would also watch great classics of Hollywood on the big screen where they belonged, including plenty of silent films, again on the big screen where they belonged. It was educational to realize that silent movies were not herky-jerky flickery affairs without sound; they were gorgeously filmed, accompanied by excellent music to set the moods. If movies were supposed to move, silent films were movies in the purest sense. When sound came in, with big heavy microphones and noisy cameras that had to be muffled, everybody just stood there. It took a long time for talkies to become as cinematic as the silents had been.

Now The Artist has revived interest in silents, at least on the interwebs. I hope that the interest is real. There are wonderful movies that are part of our cultural legacy that shouldn’t be missed. When you see that the experience of these movies is every bit as mesmerizing as the experience of modern films, as you can with The Artist, you are indeed tempted to watch more of them. TCM, also inspired by that movie, have put together a list of the top ten most influential silents, and I think it’s a pretty good one. But as I said above, influential isn’t necessarily the best, although it would be hard to argue that some of these aren’t indeed the best. I think it’s missing a little bit of fun, though. Raoul Walsh’s The Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks, for instance, shouldn’t be missed, even if it didn’t influence anyone (and didn’t spell Baghdad correctly). The same could be said of a lot of Fairbanks’s films—they’re great entertainment from start to finish. I prefer Intolerance to Birth of a Nation when it comes to D. W. Griffith. And if you want epic, stars, love, death, war and peace—the full cinematic package—look no further than King Vidor’s The Big Parade.

Then again, you can’t argue with the influential nature of TCM’s list. Check it out: TCM Celebrates The Artist with List of 10 Most Influential Silent Films.