Free Classic Family Movies to Watch Together
Finding something the whole family can watch together, for free, without wading through ads for things you don’t want your kids to see, is harder than it should be. Our Family Room channel runs public-domain and openly licensed family films around the clock. Here’s a guide to the best of them, with a few notes on which ones work for which ages.
Storybook adventures
Peter Pan is the first screen version of J. M. Barrie’s story, with Betty Bronson as Peter. It’s a silent film, but it’s full of the things that make the story magic – the flight to Neverland, pirates, mermaids, the crocodile – and children who know the story will follow it easily. Bronson also stars in A Kiss for Cinderella, another Barrie fantasy.
The Wizard of Oz is not the version you know, and that’s half the fun. Larry Semon directed and starred in this loose, slapstick take on the story, and a young Oliver Hardy, before Laurel & Hardy, plays the Tin Woodman. Watching it after you know the familiar version makes for a good conversation about how stories change.
Alice in Wonderland is an early silent adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s book, with costumes clearly inspired by the book’s famous illustrations. Snow White, starring Marguerite Clark, is another early fairy-tale film, and Maurice Tourneur’s The Blue Bird, from Maurice Maeterlinck’s play about two children searching for the bird of happiness, has some lovely fantasy imagery.
For something quieter, King Vidor’s The Jack-Knife Man follows a lonely old man living on a riverboat who ends up looking after a little boy left in his care. It’s a gentle, unhurried film with real heart, and a good one for older children who are ready for a slower story – and for grown-ups who think silent films were all custard pies and chases.
Mary Pickford
In the 1910s and 1920s Mary Pickford was one of the most famous people in the world, and she often played spirited young girls even as an adult. Her films are warm, funny and still very watchable for families. Pollyanna is the story of the relentlessly cheerful orphan, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Poor Little Rich Girl are two of her best-loved roles. In Daddy-Long-Legs she plays an orphan sent to college by an anonymous benefactor, and in Little Annie Rooney she’s a tough kid on a city street. Little Lord Fauntleroy has her playing two parts: the boy who unexpectedly becomes heir to an English earldom, and his mother.
Talkies and color
For something with sound, The Little Princess stars Shirley Temple as a girl at a London boarding school whose fortunes change overnight when her father goes missing in the Boer War. It was filmed in Technicolor, and it’s a good first "old movie" for children used to color.
Tom Sawyer stars Jackie Coogan as Mark Twain’s hero. Father’s Little Dividend is a gentle comedy with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor about a man coming to terms with becoming a grandfather. And The Painted Hills gives Lassie a story set in the gold-rush West.
Little Rascals
Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies, about a group of neighborhood kids, are good for short attention spans. Pups Is Pups, Bear Shooters and When the Wind Blows are early sound shorts on the schedule.
Modern open movies
The Blender Foundation makes animated short films and releases them under Creative Commons licenses so anyone can share them. They’re a nice change of pace in the lineup: Big Buck Bunny is a comic revenge story with a big-hearted rabbit, Sprite Fright is a funny spooky short that’s good for October with older kids, and the Caminandes shorts follow a llama in Patagonia. Sintel is more serious and better for older kids.
A few tips
Silent films can be a surprisingly easy sell with young children – they’re used to following stories through pictures – but it helps to read the intertitles aloud for little ones, and our silent films play with a gentle piano score. Old films sometimes reflect attitudes of their time, so watching with your kids gives you a chance to talk about anything that comes up.
Starlite TV is scheduled television: turn on Family Room and join whatever is playing, or check a film’s page to see when it airs next in your time zone. For shorter fare, our classic cartoons guide covers Felix, early Mickey Mouse and the Fleischer studio.