A century ago, all Hollywood knew was silent films. People flocked to the cinemas. Dressed in gowns and tuxes, they treated a night at the movies like a night at the opera. Of course, they had nothing to which to compare it. Perhaps to our bleary, overstimulated eyes, the silent film is as much a quaint relic as the rotary phone or a children’s toy fashioned out of sticks. To the moviegoer of 1925, though, going to the theater to see static photographs transformed into moving images must have seemed as mystical as the thought of flying to the moon. Recently, I experienced a form of this magic for myself with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I wanted to watch it out of obligation. Could I call myself a cinephile if I skipped over this colossus of cinema history? But I was not expecting much. How could a film without words sustain my attention or stimulate my curiosity? Well, it did. Swells and silences in the score, monumental production design, the expressive faces of talented thespians — all of it coalesced into a stirring depiction of greed, industrialization, and class.