Best Documentary Movies of 1924

The official record of Mallory and Irvine's 1924 expedition. When George Mallory and Sandy Irvine attempted to reach the summit of Everest in 1924 they came closer than any previous attempt. Inspired by the work of Herbert Ponting (The Great White Silence) Captain Noel filmed in the harshest of conditions, with specially adapted equipment, to capture the drama of the fateful expedition.

A round-up of free events in London, including street entertainers, a puppet show, pavement artists, road menders, a daring demonstration by the fire brigade, an abduction staged by a film company and a military parade.

A travelogue set in the jungles of Borneo.

16mm black-and-white home movies from the collection of the Butler Family, depicting the family in the winter of 1923-1924. Made available through the Chicago Film Archives.

Documentary shots showing, among other things, the Pontarlier Mountains, Niort, Quercy and Salins-les-Bains.

Joseph Cornell's original compilation from his own film collection is based on the low-budget slapstick cartoons produced in the 1920s and 1930s by the Weiss Brothers, which Cornell turns into a parody of newsreels through subtle textual intervention.

In the 1920s the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to explore filmmaking as part of its educational program, and in 1924 it released two films about Arms and Armor. In preparation for this new undertaking, Bashford Dean, the head of the Arms and Armor department, sought the advice of Hollywood professionals D. W. Griffith and John Barrymore. "A Visit..." was especially popular and includes memorable scenes: a Gothic armor steps out of its vitrine to answer visitors' questions about the collection, a seesaw with a small child on one end and a medieval mail shirt on the other demonstrates the relatively modest weight of armor, and a fully armored knight on horseback gallops through Central Park, with Belvedere Castle (the park's weather station) rising picturesquely in the background. When actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. viewed the film at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he pronounced it "bully."