Stream 4,000+ Public Domain Movies on WikiFlix: Silent Classics, Academy Award-Winners, Hitchcock Films & More

Human­i­ty was already enjoy­ing motion pic­tures a cen­tu­ry ago. But the abil­i­ty to do so at home still lay a few decades in the future, and the abil­i­ty to pull up a movie on demand through a stream­ing ser­vice much fur­ther still. Young peo­ple in the twen­ty-twen­ties may be unable to fath­om how pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions got by with­out Net­flix and the like, but all of us, what­ev­er our age, may be curi­ous about what such plat­forms would have offered in the nine­teen-twen­ties. Now we can see for our­selves on Wik­i­Flix, a free stream­ing site that offers more than 4,000 pub­lic-domain films for our enjoy­ment. Cur­rent­ly hot on its front page: Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, Sergei Eisen­stein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, and F. W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu.

Even casu­al film-lovers will know those impor­tant titles, even if they have yet to watch the pic­tures them­selves. Reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­ers may also spot more than a few movies pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here: Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon; Lotte Reiniger’s The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed; William Cameron Men­zies’ (H. G. Wells-script­ed) Things to Come; Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hik­er.

There’s also Stan­ley Donen’s Cha­rade, the best film Alfred Hitch­cock nev­er made — as well as some of the films he did make, like The Lodger, Jamaica Inn, and Noto­ri­ous. Hitch­cock­’s Mur­der! was one of the works from 1930 that just came avail­able on Pub­lic Domain Day at the begin­ning of this month, along with the likes of the Marx Broth­ers-star­ring Ani­mal Crack­ers and the Best Pic­ture-win­ning All Qui­et on the West­ern Front.

Not all the movies on Wik­i­Flix are at least 95 years old. Some have fall­en into the pub­lic domain for rea­sons oth­er than sheer age. Oth­ers, like Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues, were made freely avail­able by their cre­ators upon release; browse the site by year, and you can find plen­ty of oth­er recent pro­duc­tions. On the list of sec­tions, you can also orga­nize your view­ing options by coun­try, fre­quen­cy of cita­tion on Wikipedia (whose vol­un­teer com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed Wik­i­Flix), or genre. How about a film noir tonight? A bud­dy pic­ture? Some form of exploita­tion? Per­haps a B west­ern? As TechCrunch’s Aman­da Sil­ber­ling writes, “Why not watch a Sovi­et musi­cal inspired by Cin­derel­la, a silent film about swash­buck­ling pirates, or a Japan­ese post-apoc­a­lyp­tic film that fea­tures a guy who some­how played for both the Boston Celtics and the Chica­go Cubs?” With It’s a Won­der­ful Life on there, you at least know you’re set for next Christ­mas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load 9,200+ Free Films from the Prelinger Archives: Doc­u­men­taries, Car­toons & More

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Includ­ing Clas­sics by John Hus­ton, Orson Welles & Fritz Lang

Watch 70+ Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Films Free Online: The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro, Gulliver’s Trav­els, Jane Eyre, and More

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2026: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Bet­ty Boop & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.