(Photo by courtesy Everett Collection)

Discover Lost Movies: Read Reviews of Incomplete and Lost Films

In an era of nearly limitless streaming options, it seems inconceivable that thousands of films from the early days of cinema are either incomplete or totally lost because of destruction or neglect. In fact, it’s estimated that between 75 and 90 percent of films made before 1929 have experienced this fate. But while you won’t be able to see any of these movies anytime soon, you can get an idea of what they were like, and how audiences reacted to them at the time, by reading reviews from contemporaneous critics. You also get a picture of film criticism finding its feet, with writers finding ways to engage with a relatively new medium as they had been with books and plays for centuries.

• Read how critics and audiences reacted to the world’s first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang
• Meet Annette Kellermann, the movies’ first action hero
• The terrifying lost film that inspired the look of the Babadook

Working with libraries and digital archives, we’ve added reviews for more than 100 lost films from dozens of newspapers and magazines across the world. Some of these movies may have been masterpieces, and some may have been duds, but all of them are part of a forgotten piece of film history that we hope to shed some light upon. And because we’re always unearthing more archival reviews, we’ll update this guide as these old movies get brand-new Tomatometers – which happens when a film gets at least five reviews in our system. Now, step back in time and discover lost films through critics’ reviews, ordered chronologically. Click on the films to go to their movie pages and read full reviews.