Instead of ranking films individually by the year from the 1920s, particularly since I don’t think I’ve seen one all the way through, I’ll simply list ten that I think we all should aspire to see before drawing our final breaths.

Now, since we’re limiting it to the 1920s, we won’t be listing the landmark 1915 film, Birth Of A Nation (considered to be the first real feature film that created a spark). Nor will we be listing its less celebrated sequel, Afterbirth Of A Nation, a pro-abortion film that understandably caused a bit of a stir.

So here are 10 films from the Roaring Twenties we should all see. Or at least record them when they appear on TCM and tell yourself that you’ll watch them at a later date, which is what I do:

1. The General (1927): Buster Keaton practically invented hare-brained stunts and he performed them all himself. Born into a vaudevillian family, Keaton was an acrobat, actor, writer, director, all of it. But you have to see the gags and stunts he created to truly appreciate what he really was: a genius. Along with Charlie Chaplin, the first of the Hollywood legends.

1. 2. Metropolis (1927): A pioneering German science-fiction drama, directed by Fritz Lang, best known for its poster that hangs in 10% of liberal arts majors’ dorm rooms. Set in—get ready for this—the 21st century. Good time to see how prescient they were.

3. Wings (1927) : This has nothing to do with the airport in Nantucket and a lovable, lunk-headed mechanic named Lloyd. Although, like the sitcom, the plot does revolve around two flyboys, but not brothers. On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood (next door to where Jimmy Kimmel now tapes his show) and this was named Best Picture. Simply for that reason you should see this (also, the film was thought to have been lost for years before a print was discovered in a film archive in Paris).

4. Nosferatu (1922): Before Dracula looked suave and debonair, there was this German creature from your nightmare. Inarguably the patriarch of all horror films.

5. Safety Last (1923) : If there’s one image from the silent film era that will stand the test of time, it’s Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock 12 stories above street level. No special effects here; Lloyd did his own stunts.

6. The Jazz Singer (1927) : Another landmark film at it was the first to utilize sound throughout. Okay, so it’s Al Jolson in blackface, but that too is historically worthwhile: to show you how much times have changed.

7. Battleship Potemkin (1925) : A Soviet film that retells the story of a 1905 mutiny aboard a Russian battleship. Ordered up by Comrade Lenin for the 20th anniversary of the actual event to signify that, when duly repressed, the proletatiat can and will rise up. Considered by some to be the greatest film of the era.

8. The Gold Rush (1925): We have to include at least one Charlie Chaplin film in this list, though his greatest film, City Lights, was released in 1931 (we may have failed to include that in our list the other day; please forgive).

9. Nanook of the North (1922): The first documentary feature, a non-fiction film focusing on an Inuit hunter. In the 1920s, the ability for an audience to experience a place almost no one had ever seen and probably none would ever travel to was tantamount to visiting another planet.

10. Phantom Of The Opera (1925) : Lon Chaney in one of the first iconic film roles in Hollywood. Also vying for this recognition would be Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921).

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Lest we forget…

11. Steamboat Willie (1928): Walt Disney’s first animated feature. What was to become of that enterprise?