10 Highest Grossing Silent Films of All-time

One of the favorites for the Best Picture category at this year's Academy Awards is "The Artist". "The Artist" is a black and white silent film that has gotten rave reviews from critics. Obviously there aren't too many silent films these days and the "The Artist" is doing well at the box office for a movie of this genre. That begs the question, "what is the highest grossing silent film of all-time?"

10. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923)
$3.5 million
The famous story by Victor Hugo has been made several times but few have been better than than the performance that turned Lon Chaney into a star in Hollywood and allowed him to land the role of another deformed figure as the lead in Phantom of the Opera.

9. "The Covered Wagon" (1923)
$3.8 million
Comedies and Horror flicks are usually the most successful genres when it comes to silent films but "The Covered Wagon" is the most successful western silent film.

8. "The Circus" (1928)
$3.8 million
Charlie Chaplin is the most famous silent film actor so naturally he makes a few appearances on this list. "The Circus" stars his famous Tramp character as he's being chased by the police and a crook when he accidentally becomes a popular performer in the circus.

7. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (1921)
$4 million
"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" has a lot in common with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" on the list earlier. This silent film was also based on a novel-this one by Vicente Blasco Ibanez-and it also made a star out of the lead actor, Rudolph Valentino.

6. "The Gold Rush" (1925)
$4.25 million
Charlie Chaplin said that "The Gold Rush" was the movie that he wanted to be remembered for the most. In my opinion that is a wise choice because it is the best film of Chaplin's excellent career.

5. "Way Down East" (1920)
$5 million
There were actually three different silent film adaptations of "Way Down East". This was the third of the three-directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish-and is considered the best.

4. "Ben-Hur" (1925)
$5.5 million
The 1925 version of "Ben-Hur" is not as famous as the Charleton Heston version but it was a blockbuster hit by 1925 standards and was was selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry.

3 ." The Big Parade" (1925)
$6.4 million
"The Big Parade" was a silent film with World War I as its setting. The film was about a young man in the US Army that experiences trench warfare and falls in love with a French woman. "The Big Parade" was said to inspire many war movies over the next several decades, especially "All Quiet on the Western Front".

2. "The Birth of a Nation" (1915)
$10 million
"The Birth of a Nation" was not only the most successful silent film of all-time for quite some time but it was also the most controversial. The film featured black men that were sexually aggressive towards white women. The actors that played these black men were actually white actors in blackface. The Ku Klux Klan is also portrayed as the hero of the film.

1 . "The Artist" (2011)
$12.1 million
Up through the week of New Year's "The Artist" was sitting at #2 on the all-time grossing silent film but the following week it pulled into pretty much a tie with "The Birth of a Nation" and then just this past week "The Artist" took over the number one spot.

Sources:
All box office numbers were found at Box Office Mojo