People have asked for movies that showcase the innovations of the early to mid-1910s but aren't you-know-what.

Easy. SUSPENSE. 1912. Lois Weber. Boom. Done.

Feature?

THE WISHING RING. 1914. Maurice Tourneur. (Cinematography and performances.)

Epic feature?

THE JUGGERNAUT. 1915. Ralph Ince. Partially lost but the ginormous train crash climax survives.

And those are just American titles. 1910s filmmaking was wild and dynamic. The studio system was on the rise but there were plenty of wildcat operations and innovations within the studio framework.

My main advice is to just watch more movies. You cannot detect the subtler shifts in technique if you only watch a handful of films representing each decade.

That's a big issue I have with the way the silent era is presented in documentaries and some historical texts:

If you show THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY and then follow it up with a 1910s or 1920s feature, of course the feature will look like a quantum leap.

I get that there are time and length constraints but seeing proper evolution is essential if you want to understand how movies developed. We didn't go from Melies to Eisenstein overnight but that's the impression that comes across sometimes.