F.W. Murnau's chronicle of a hotel doorman's grievous degradation, when he's demoted to lavatory attendant and has to swap his fancy drum major's uniform for a barber's plain white coat, and (for strictly commercial reasons) his sudden, miraculous redemption and exaltation. Done without a single title card, excepting the one that separates the proletarian tragedy from the fairy-tale ending, this is a tour-de-force of pure visual storytelling. Some of the camera moves, and the meanings attached to them, are a bit textbook-y and dated, but their wonderful diversity and fluidity are not. With Emil Jannings. (1924) — Duncan Shepherd
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