I'm a moderate fan of silent films. I'm looking for some essentials and also some rare under-appreciated gems.

The ones I've seen:

All of Chaplin's silents
The Birth of a Nation
Buster Keaton's short silents
Diary of a Lost Girl
Faust
Haxan
The Holy Mountain
The Last Laugh
Metropolis
Nanook of the North
Nosferatu
Pandora's Box
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Sunrise
Tabu
Vampyr
W.C. Field's short silents
The Woman in the Moon

Any recommendations?

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
The Unknown
Asphalt
Man with a Movie Camera
Berlin: Symphony of a City
Battleship Potemkin
Strike
The Unholy Three
A Cottage on Dartmoor
The Dragon Painter
Fantomas
Warning Shadows
Spies
Hindle Wakes
It
Michael
Phantom
People on Sunday
The Phantom Carriage
La Terre
Broken Blossoms
Blind Husbands
Foolish Wives
J'Accuse!
Piccadilly
La Roue
A Throw of Dice
Borderline

Also, definitely check out the films of Evgeni Bauer and Wladyslaw Starewicz, as well as the Unseen Cinema box set.

Definitely Battleship Potemkin. I would put "Man Who Laughs" as a must-see as well as "The Golem" especially if you enjoy German Expressionism.

Wow, that's quite a list Noirfan. I've got my work cut out for me.

I also want to get The Man Who Laughs, hoping for a Kino sale.

Greed
Napoleon
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Un Chien Andalou
Les Vampires
Flesh and the Devil
L'age D'or
The Lodger

King Vidor's The Big Parade and The Crowd don't get enough love.

If you haven't seen Buster Keaton's features, you should. At least check out Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The General.

Anything starring Harold Lloyd.

Ben-Hur

I can't believe I forgot those. Hopefully we'll see DVD releases soon, along with Wings.

I just saw The General (for the first time) this weekend. Holy shit what a masterpiece.

Nice to see someone mention 'Dr Caligari'.

'Die Nibelungen' is amazing. Anyone who loves cinema should at least watch, but in truth should own that.

A measure of Douglas Fairbanks is good for the soul:

The Mark of Zorro (1920)
The Three Musketeers (1921)
Robin Hood (1922)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925)
The Black Pirate (1926)
The Gaucho (1927)
The Iron Mask (1929)

I'll second The Battleship Potemkin and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. What about the original Lon Chaney version of The Phantom of the Opera? I haven't seen that mentioned. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's certainly essential viewing for any horror fan.

I like the suggestions here, I'll check out some of the ones I haven't yet seen.

I just got the first disc from Greecine and watched the first act. This looks like something I will have to watch more then once.

Besson's Le Dernier Combat - Although not technically a silent film(?), there are less than a few minutes of spoken French the entire duration.

On tonight on TCM.

For $13.00 more, you can get the American Silent Horror Collection, which also includes The Penalty, The Cat and the Canary, the 1920 version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and a 70 min documentary on silent horror films.

Cool. I have it on DVD so I hadn't made note of that. I'd urge anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out. Even if you have seen it, check it out.

If we're including silent films from the sound era, than Daughter of Horror/Dementia and The Thief get my hearty recommendations as well.

The same goes for Cocteau's Blood of a Poet

Made well after most of the above, but a couple of great short-ish "silent" funny films are:

The Plank (1967)

Futtocks End (1970)

Obtainable fairly cheaply (although not sure about P&P charges for non-Brits) via various e-tailers shown in a "find-dvd.co.uk" search.

I always wondered… what made silent films superior to this sound era.

What made silent films superior to the modern era? Not much. Great modern films are as good or better than most silent films. The best silent films are as good as the best sound films. Of course I'm not saying a film is great just because it's modern. I'll take The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari over any Transformers movie any day.

Now, if you want to ask why silent films were superior to early sound films, that is easy. Early sound technology put lots of limitations on filmmakers that made early sound films visually dull, as well as early sound technologies often being unreliable and of poor fidelity.

Once sound technology improved, there was nothing stopping filmmakers from realizing their vision in full.

They somehow had more imagination even if they lacked everything technically.

Early sound films had more imagination? Whatever you say there duffy boy.