film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible
dialogue
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...
). Though silent films convey
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional ( memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc ...
and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of title cards.
The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era that existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a
pianist
A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
—would often play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from
sheet music
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, ...
, or
improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to the invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as ''
City Lights
''City Lights'' is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and ...
,'' ''
Silent Movie
''Silent Movie'' is a 1976 American satirical comedy film co-written, directed by and starring Mel Brooks, released by 20th Century Fox in the summer of 1976. The ensemble cast includes Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters, and Sid ...
'' and '' The Artist'', which are accompanied by a music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue.
The term ''silent film'' is a
retronym
A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...
—a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with '' The Jazz Singer'' in 1927, were variously referred to as the " talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures". The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced the
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
in 1877), and some early experiments had the projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in the late 1920s with the perfection of the
Audion amplifier tube
The Audion was an electronic detecting or amplifying vacuum tube invented by American electrical engineer Lee de Forest in 1906.De Forest patented a number of variations of his detector tubes starting in 1906. The patent that most clearly covers ...
and the advent of the
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one ...
system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and the industry had moved fully into the sound era, in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and
sound effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
s.
Most early motion pictures are considered
lost
Lost may refer to getting lost, or to:
Geography
* Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland
*Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US
History
*Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...
because the
nitrate film
Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...
used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed because they had negligible continuing financial value in this era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in the US have been lost, though these estimates may be inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data.
Elements and beginnings (1833–1894)
Film projection mostly evolved from
magic lantern
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a si ...
shows, which utilized a glass
lens
A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements ...
, and a persistent light source (such as a powerful
lantern
A lantern is an often portable source of lighting, typically featuring a protective enclosure for the light sourcehistorically usually a candle or a oil lamp, wick in oil, and often a battery-powered light in modern timesto make it easier to ca ...
) to project images from glass slides onto a wall. These slides were originally hand-painted, but, after the advent of photography in the 19th century, still
photograph
A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...
s were sometimes used. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by about fifty years.
In 1833,
Joseph Plateau
Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repe ...
introduced the principle of stroboscopic animation with his Fantascope (better known as the
phenakistiscope
The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...
). Six years later,
Louis Daguerre
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre ( , ; 18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photog ...
introduced the first successful
photographic
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
system. Initially, the chemicals were not light-sensitive enough to properly capture moving subjects at all. Plateau suggested an early method to animate stereoscopic photographs in 1849, with a
stop motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
technique. Jules Duboscq produced a simplified device in 1852, but it was not very successful. Early successes in instantaneous photography in the late 1850s inspired new hope to develop animated (stereo)photography systems, but in the next two decades the few attempts once again used stop-motion techniques.
In 1878,
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...
used a row of a dozen cameras to record a running horse (as suggested by others much earlier) and surprised the world with the results, published as ''
The Horse in Motion
''The Horse in Motion'' is a series of cabinet cards by Eadweard Muybridge, including six cards that each show a sequential series of six to twelve "automatic electro-photographs" depicting the movement of a horse. Muybridge shot the photogr ...
'' cabinet cards with rows of small still pictures. Many others started to work with
chronophotography
Chronophotography is a photographic technique from the Victorian era which captures a number of phases of movements. The best known chronophotography works were mostly intended for the scientific study of locomotion, to discover practical informa ...
and tried to animate and project the results. Ottomar Anschutz had much success with his
Electrotachyscope
The Elektrischen Schnellseher (literally "Electrical Quick-Viewer") or Electrotachyscope was an early motion picture system developed by chronophotographer Ottomar Anschütz between 1886 and 1894. He made at least seven different versions of the ...
since 1887, with very clear animated photographic images displayed on a small milk-glass screen or inside coin-slot viewers, until he started projecting the images on a large screen in 1894. His recordings only lasted a few seconds, and inspired the
Edison Company
The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 188 ...
to compete with films that could last circa 20 seconds in their
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
peep-box movie viewers from 1893 onward.
Silent film era
The work of Muybridge, Marey, and Le Prince laid the foundation for future development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film, which lead to the development of cinema as we know it today. American inventor
George Eastman
George Eastman (July 12, 1854March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman ...
, who had first manufactured photographic dry plates in 1878, made headway on a stable type of celluloid film in 1888.
The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film). The height of the silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as
French Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
,
German Expressionism
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
, and
Soviet Montage
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing ('' montage'' is French for "assembly" or "editing"). It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and broug ...
began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in the silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the
close-up
A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium and long s ...
,
long shot
In photography, filmmaking and video production, a wide shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or long shot) is a shot that typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surro ...
continuity editing
Continuity editing is the process, in film and video creation, of combining more-or-less related shots, or different components cut from a single shot, into a sequence to direct the viewer's attention to a pre-existing consistency of story across b ...
all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by "
talking pictures
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
" or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until
film director
A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...
s, actors, and production staff adapted fully to the new "talkies" around the mid-1930s.
The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at the wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of
film tinting
Film tinting is the process of adding color to black-and-white film, usually by means of soaking the film in dye and staining the film emulsion. The effect is that all of the light shining through is filtered, so that what would be white light bec ...
or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as
Kinemacolor
Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson and, more directly, E ...
and
Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...
. Traditional colorization processes ceased with the adoption of
sound-on-film
Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...
technology. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built-in recorded sound, and were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-30s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in the silents for nearly four decades.
Inter-titles
As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen
inter-title
In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...
s were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The ''title writer'' became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the ''scenario writer'' who created the story. Inter-titles (or ''titles'' as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action".
Live music and other sound accompaniment
Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by the Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the United States at
Koster and Bial's Music Hall
Koster and Bial's Music Hall was an important vaudeville theatre in New York City, located at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth Street, where Macy's flagship store now stands. It had a seating capacity of 3,748, twice the size of many theaters. Ticket pr ...
in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on the size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a
pianist
A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
. Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have
organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ (music), organ. An organist may play organ repertoire, solo organ works, play with an musical ensemble, ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumentalist, instrumental ...
s or ensembles of musicians. Massive
theatre organ
A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films, from the 1900s to the 1920s.
Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements ...
s, which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as the famous " Mighty Wurlitzer" could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and
sound effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...
s ranging from "train and boat whistles ocar horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, ndthunder and rain".
Musical scores for early silent films were either
improvised
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from
photoplay music
Photoplay music is incidental music, soundtrack music, and themes written specifically for the accompaniment of silent films.
Early years
Early films (c. 1890-1910) merely relied on classical and popular repertory, mixed usually with improvisati ...
by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by
Joseph Carl Breil
Joseph Carl Breil (29 June 1870 – 23 January 1926) was an American lyric tenor, stage director, composer and conductor. He was one of the earliest American composers to compose specific music for motion pictures. His first film was ''Les amo ...
The Birth of a Nation
''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Cla ...
'' (1915), it became relatively common for the biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...
for ''
The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
''The Assassination of the Duke of Guise'' ( 1908) (original French title: ''La Mort du duc de Guise''; often referred to as ''L'Assassinat du duc de Guise'') is a French historical film directed by Charles le Bargy and André Calmettes, adapte ...
'', and by
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov (russian: Михаи́л Миха́йлович Ипполи́тов-Ива́нов; 28 January 1935) was a Russian and Soviet composer, conductor and teacher. His music ranged from the late-Romantic era ...
for '' Stenka Razin''.
When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten the drama on screen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect such as "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases.
At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However, the introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, was devastating to many musicians.
A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early
cinema of Brazil
Brazilian cinema was introduced early in the 20th century but took some time to consolidate itself as a popular form of entertainment. The film industry of Brazil has gone through periods of ups and downs, a reflection of its dependency on state ...
, for example, featured ''fitas cantatas'' (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, films had not only live music but also the ''
benshi
were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or .
Role
The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portray ...
'', a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The ''benshi'' became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the ''benshi'' was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as ''benshi''-narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow the plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary.
Score restorations from 1980 to the present
Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on the spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician.
Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of the time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was
Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow (born Robert Kevin Brownlow; 2 June 1938) is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become inter ...
's 1980 restoration of
Abel Gance
Abel Gance (; born Abel Eugène Alexandre Péréthon; 25 October 188910 November 1981) was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: ''J ...
's ''
Napoléon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
'' (1927), featuring a score by
Carl Davis
Carl Davis, (born October 28, 1936) is an American-born conductor and composer who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1961.
He has written music for more than 100 television programmes, but is best known for creating music to accompany si ...
. A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola, with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola.
In 1984, an edited restoration of ''
Metropolis
A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.
A big c ...
'' (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer
Giorgio Moroder
Giovanni Giorgio Moroder (, ; born 26 April 1940) is an Italian composer, songwriter, and record producer. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Father of Disco", Moroder is credited with pioneering euro disco and electronic dance mu ...
. Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury,
Pat Benatar
Patricia Mae Giraldo ('' née'' Andrzejewski, formerly Benatar; born January 10, 1953), known professionally as Pat Benatar, is an American rock singer and songwriter. In the United States, she has had two multi-platinum albums, five platinum al ...
, and Jon Anderson of Yes, was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films.
Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist
Gaylord Carter
Gaylord Carter (August 3, 1905 – November 20, 2000) was an American organist and the composer of many film scores that were added to silent movies released on video tape or disks. He died from Parkinson disease.
Early life and musical begin ...
continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of the traditional approach include organists such as
Dennis James
Dennis James (born Demie James Sposa, August 24, 1917 – June 3, 1997) was an American television personality, philanthropist, and commercial spokesman. Until 1976, he had appeared on TV more times and for a longer period than any other telev ...
and pianists such as
Neil Brand
Neil Brand (born 18 March 1958) is an English dramatist, composer and author. In addition to being a regular silent film accompanist at London's National Film Theatre, Brand has composed new scores for two restored films from the 1920s, '' The ...
, Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli,
Ben Model
Ben Model (born 1962) is an American musician, historian, publisher, and presenter of silent films. An accompanist, he composes and performs organ or piano music for silent films. He accompanies films live and records scores for home video release ...
, and William P. Perry. Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring.
Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasti ...
or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as ''
The Big Parade
''The Big Parade'' is a 1925 American silent war drama film directed by King Vidor, starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Tom O'Brien, and Karl Dane. Written by World War I veteran, Laurence Stallings, the film is about ...
'' (1925) and ''
Flesh and the Devil
''Flesh and the Devil'' is an American silent romantic drama film released in 1927 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lars Hanson, and Barbara Kent, directed by Clarence Brown, and based on the novel ''The Undying ...
'' (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the films of
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.Obituary ''Variety'', March 10, 1971, page 55.
One of the most influential film co ...
,
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
,
Charley Chase
Charles Joseph Parrott (October 20, 1893 – June 20, 1940), known professionally as Charley Chase, was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director. He worked for many pioneering comedy studios but is chiefly associated with pro ...
, and others.
Timothy Brock
Timothy Brock (born 1963) is an American-born conductor and composer specializing in concert works of the early 20th-century, orchestral performance practices of the 1920s and 1930s, and live performances to accompany silent film.
Silent film sc ...
has restored many of
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
's scores, in addition to composing new scores.
Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments, while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation, and sound design elements to enhance the viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané, Alloy Orchestra,
Club Foot Orchestra
The Club Foot Orchestra is a musical ensemble known for their silent film scores. Their influences include Eastern European folk music, impressionism, and jazz fusion; ''The New Yorker'' described their style as "music that bubbles up from the int ...
,
Silent Orchestra
Silent Orchestra was formed in 1998 to bring live music and sound design to classic and contemporary silent films. They have performed their own new compositions for classic silent films at art house theaters, film festivals and art galleries sinc ...
, Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra. Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing the actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's ''
Lady of the Pavements
''Lady of the Pavements'' (UK title: ''Lady of the Night'') is a 1929 American silent romantic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lupe Vélez, William Boyd, and Jetta Goudal. The screenplay was written by Sam Taylor, with contrib ...
'' with
Lupe Vélez
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944), known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, singer and dancer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican ...
,
Edwin Carewe
Edwin Carewe (March 3, 1883 – January 22, 1940) was an American motion picture director, actor, producer, and screenwriter. His birth name was Jay John Fox; he was born in Gainesville, Texas.
Career
After brief studies at the Universities of ...
's ''
Evangeline
''Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie'' is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in English and published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during t ...
Rupert Julian
Rupert Julian (born Thomas Percival Hayes; 25 January 1879 – 27 December 1943) was a New Zealand cinema actor, director, writer and producer. During his career, Julian directed 60 films and acted in over 90 films. He is best remembered for di ...
's ''
The Phantom of the Opera
''The Phantom of the Opera'' (french: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French author Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serial in from 23 September 1909 to 8 January 1910, and was released in volume form in late March 1910 by Pierr ...
'' with
Mary Philbin
Mary Loretta Philbin (July 16, 1902 – May 7, 1993) was an American film actress of the silent film era, who is best known for playing the roles of Christine Daaé in the 1925 film ''The Phantom of the Opera '' opposite Lon Chaney, and as Dea in ...
and
Virginia Pearson
Virginia Belle Pearson (March 7, 1886 – June 6, 1958) was an American stage and film actress. She made fifty-one films in a career which extended from 1910 until 1932.
Career
She was born on March 7, 1886, in Anchorage, Kentucky to paren ...
.
The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts.
Acting techniques
Silent-film actors emphasized
body language
Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Th ...
and
facial expression
A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are ...
so that the
audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...
could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or
campy
Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. Camp aesthetics disrupt many of modernism's notions of what art is and what can be classified as high art by inverting ae ...
. The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as
John Griffith Wray
John Griffith Wray (August 30, 1881 – July 15, 1929) was an American stage actor and director who later became a noted Hollywood silent film director. He worked on 19 films between 1913 and 1929 that included ''Anna Christie'' (1923) and ''Hum ...
required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen.
Silent films became less vaudevillian in the mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith, cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the
close up
A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium and long ...
allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing the crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as
Albert Capellani
Albert Capellani (23 August 1874 – 26 September 1931) was a French film director and screenwriter of the silent era. He directed films between 1905 and 1922. One of his brothers was the actor-sculptor Paul Capellani, and another, film dir ...
and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as ''
Metropolis
A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.
A big c ...
'', were still being released.
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragedy, ...
, who made her debut in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting.
According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses".
Projection speed
Until the standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe, but industry practice varied considerably; there was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson, an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate the action—particularly for comedies and action films.
Slow projection of a
cellulose nitrate
Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid an ...
base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for the projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot.
All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes the image to ''flicker'', and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
for his
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...
machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since the introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of per second. One reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while a 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or per second.
In the 1950s, many
telecine
Telecine ( or ) is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process.
Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on f ...
conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films, such as the case of the 2002 restoration of ''
Metropolis
A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.
A big c ...
''.
Tinting
With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of ''Butterfly Dance''. Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took a much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of
sepia
Sepia may refer to:
Biology
* ''Sepia'' (genus), a genus of cuttlefish
Color
* Sepia (color), a reddish-brown color
* Sepia tone, a photography technique
Music
* ''Sepia'', a 2001 album by Coco Mbassi
* ''Sepia'' (album) by Yu Takahashi
* " ...
-toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking.
Some films were hand-tinted, such as ''
Annabelle Serpentine Dance
''Annabelle Serpentine Dance'' is a short silent American film produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company in 1895. It is one of several released by the studio the late 19th century. Each short film depicts the popular serpentine ...
'' (1894), from Edison Studios. In it, Annabelle Whitford, a young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller, beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès. Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and the 1899 ''Cendrillion'' (Cinderella) and 1900 ''Jeanne d'Arc'' (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or ''mise en scène''; such precise tinting used the workshop of
Elisabeth Thuillier
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to:
People
* Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name)
* Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist
Ships
* HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships
* ''Elisabeth'' (sc ...
in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' '' A Trip to the Moon'', originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image.
Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...
Itala Film
Itala Film was an Italian film production company.
Silent era
It was founded during the silent era. In 1905, industrialists Carlo Rossi and William Remmert established a company in Turin, recruiting filmmakers from Pathé. Two years later, they ...
,
Ambrosio Film
Ambrosio Film was an Italian film production and distribution company which played a leading role in Italian cinema during the silent era. Established in Turin in 1906 by the pioneering filmmaker Arturo Ambrosio, assisted by cinematographers Gi ...
, and Selig. Several of the longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color.''Revised List of High-Class Original Motion Picture Films'' (1908) sales catalog of unspecified film distributor (United States, 1908), pp. 191. Internet Archive. Retrieved July 7, 2020. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release '' Ben Hur'' is offered for $120 ($ USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $270 ($) including the extra $150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although the reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908:
By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as a special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic, ''
The Birth of a Nation
''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Cla ...
'', used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color.
With the development of sound-on-film technology and the industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips.
Early studios
The early studios were located in the
New York City area
The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, at , and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. The vast metropolitan are ...
. Edison Studios were first in
West Orange, New Jersey
West Orange is a suburban township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 48,843, an increase of 2,636 (+5.7%) from the 46,207 counted in the 2010 Census.
(1892), they were moved to
the Bronx, New York
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York ...
(1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, with studios in St George,
Staten Island
Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...
. Others films were shot in
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades.
As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, t ...
. In December 1908, Edison led the formation of the
Motion Picture Patents Company
The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC, also known as the Edison Trust), founded in December 1908 and terminated seven years later in 1915 after conflicts within the industry, was a trust of all the major US film companies and local foreign-bran ...
in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios,
Kalem Company
The Kalem Company was an early American film studio founded in New York City in 1907 in film, 1907. It was one of the first companies to make films abroad and to set up winter production facilities, first in Florida and then in California. Kalem ...
Lubin Studios
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.
History
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was formed in 1 ...
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...
,
Selig Studios
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom ...
, and
Vitagraph Studios
Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, ...
, and dominated distribution through the
General Film Company
The General Film Company was a motion picture distribution company in the United States. Between 1909 and 1920, the company distributed almost 12,000 silent era motion pictures.
Formation
The General Film Company was formed by the Motion Picture ...
. This company dominated the industry as both a vertical and horizontal
monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of
antitrust
Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
violation in October 1915, and were dissolved.
The
Thanhouser
The Thanhouser Company (later the Thanhouser Film Corporation) was one of the first motion picture studios, founded in 1909 by Edwin Thanhouser, his wife Gertrude and his brother-in-law Lloyd Lonergan. It operated in New York City until 1920, ...
film studio was founded in
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state of ...
, in 1909 by American theatrical impresario
Edwin Thanhouser
Edwin Thanhouser (November 11, 1865 – March 21, 1956) was an American actor, businessman, and film producer. He was most notable as a founder of the Thanhouser Company, which was one of the first motion picture studios. His wife Gertrude Tha ...
. The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including the first
film serial
A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, gene ...
ever, ''
The Million Dollar Mystery
''The Million Dollar Mystery'' is a 23-chapter film serial released in 1914, directed by Howell Hansel, and starring Florence La Badie and James Cruze. It is presumed lost.
Plot
A prologue for ''The Million Dollar Mystery'' introduced the chara ...
'', released in 1914. The first
western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
s were filmed at Fred Scott's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as
cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquer ...
s and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as the Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of
Grasmere, Staten Island
Grasmere is the name of a neighborhood located on the East Shore of Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City.
Grasmere although crossed by major roads has retained its quiet suburban character. The area and adjoining Concord ...
The Exploits of Elaine
''The Exploits of Elaine'' is a 1914 American film serial in the damsel in distress genre of '' The Perils of Pauline'' (1914).
''The Exploits of Elaine'' tells the story of a young woman named Elaine who, with the help of a detective, tries to ...
'' were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster ''Life of a Cowboy'', by Edwin S. Porter Company and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912.
Top-grossing silent films in the United States
The following are American films from the silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are
gross rental
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is fre ...
s (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Cited in
During the sound era
Transition
Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw a race to design, implement, and market several rival
sound-on-disc Sound-on-disc is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Early sound-on-disc systems used a mechanical interlock with the movie projector, while more recent syste ...
and
sound-on-film
Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...
sound formats, such as
Photokinema
''Photo-Kinema'' (some sources say ''Phono-Kinema'') was a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures invented by Orlando Kellum.
1921 introduction
The system was first used for a small number of short films, mostly made in 1921. These films presen ...
(1921),
Phonofilm
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
Introduction
In 1919 and 1920, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound-on-film proce ...
(1923),
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one ...
(1926),
Fox Movietone
Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States. Under the name British Movietone News, it also ran in the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1986, in France also produced by Fox-Europa, in Australia and New Zealand until 197 ...
(1927) and
RCA Photophone
RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was an opt ...
(1928).
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released '' The Jazz Singer'' in 1927, which marked the first commercially successful
sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
, but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929.
For a listing of notable silent era films, see ''
List of years in film
This page indexes the individual ''year in film'' pages. Each year is annotated with its significant events.
__NOTOC__
* 19th century in film
* 20th century in film:
** 1900s – 1910s – 1920s – 1930s – 1940s – 1950s – 1960s – 1970s ...
'' for the years between the beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent.
* '' City Girl'',
F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at th ...
, 1930
* ''
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
'',
Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko or Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko ( uk, Олександр Петрович Довженко, ''Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko''; russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Довже́нко, ''Aleksandr Petro ...
Kenneth Macpherson
Kenneth Macpherson (27 March 1902 – 14 June 1971) was a Scottish-born novelist, photographer, critic, and film-maker, the son of Scottish painter John 'Pop' Macpherson and Clara Macpherson, and descended from six generations of artists. It i ...
, 1930
* ''
City Lights
''City Lights'' is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and ...
'',
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
, 1931
* ''
Tabu
Tabu may refer to:
Cultural and legal concepts
*Taboo (spelled ''tabu'' in earlier historical records), something that is unacceptable in society
*Tapu (Polynesian culture) (also spelled ''tabu''), a Polynesian cultural concept from which the wor ...
Yasujirō Ozu
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
Wu Yonggang
Wu Yonggang (November 1, 1907 – December 18, 1982) was a prominent Chinese film director during the 1930s. Today Wu is best known for his directorial debut, '' The Goddess''. Wu had a long career with the Lianhua Film Company in the 1930s, in ...
Kenji Mizoguchi
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Ugets ...
, 1935
* ''
Legong
Legong ( Balinese: ) is a form of Balinese dance. It is a refined dance form characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions.
Origins
Legong probably originated in the 19th centu ...
'',
Henri de la Falaise
Henry de La Falaise, Marquis de La Coudraye (born James Henry Le Bailly de La Falaise, February 11, 1898 – April 10, 1972), was a French nobleman, translator, film director, film producer, sometime actor, and war hero who was best known for his ...
, 1935
* ''
An Inn in Tokyo
is a 1935 silent film directed by Yasujirō Ozu. The film is Ozu's last extant silent film.
The screenplay is credited to Uinzato Mone or Winthat Monnet ("Without Money"). In fact, the screenplay was written by Ozu, Masao Arata and Tadao Iked ...
'', Yasujirō Ozu, 1935
* ''
Happiness
Happiness, in the context of Mental health, mental or emotional states, is positive or Pleasure, pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Other forms include life satisfaction, well-being, subjective well-being, flourishin ...
'',
Aleksandr Medvedkin
Aleksandr Ivanovich Medvedkin (russian: Александр Иванович Медведкин; 24 February 1900 – 20 February 1989) was a Soviet Russian film director, best known for his 1935 film ''Happiness''. His life and art are the subjec ...
Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
with ''
Too Much Johnson
''Too Much Johnson'' is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, it was made three years before Welles directed ''Citizen Kane'', but it was never publicly screen ...
'' (1938),
Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, film-maker, actor and screenwriter. In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted the 46th greatest of all time ...
with ''
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
''Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot'' (french: Les Vacances de M. Hulot; released as ''Monsieur Hulot's Holiday'' in the US) is a 1953 French comedy film starring and directed by Jacques Tati. It introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy ...
'' (1953),
Pierre Etaix
Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...
with ''
The Suitor
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'' (1962), and
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. He began ...
with ''
Silent Movie
''Silent Movie'' is a 1976 American satirical comedy film co-written, directed by and starring Mel Brooks, released by 20th Century Fox in the summer of 1976. The ensemble cast includes Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters, and Sid ...
'' (1976). Taiwanese director
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Hou Hsiao-hsien (; born 8 April 1947) is a Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice ...
's acclaimed drama ''
Three Times
''Three Times'' ( Chinese: 最好的時光; ''Zuìhǎo de shíguāng''; lit. 'Best of Times') is a 2005 Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It consists of three separate stories of romance, set in different eras, using the same lead actors ...
'' (2005) is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles;
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci Jr. ( ; born November 11, 1960) is an American actor and filmmaker. Involved in acting from a young age, he made his film debut in John Huston's '' Prizzi's Honor'' (1985), and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in fil ...
's ''
The Impostors
''The Impostors'' is a 1998 American farce motion picture directed, written and produced by Stanley Tucci, starring Oliver Platt, Tucci, Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, and Billy Connolly.
The film, in which Oliver Platt and Stanley ...
'' has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's ''Margarette's Feast'' (2003) is silent. Writer / Director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with ''Silent'' (2007). While not silent, the ''
Mr. Bean
''Mr. Bean'' is a British sitcom created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, produced by Tiger Aspect and starring Atkinson as the title character. The sitcom consists of 15 episodes that were co-written by Atkinson alongside Curtis and R ...
'' television series and movies have used the title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is
Jérôme Savary
Jérôme Savary (27 June 1942 – 4 March 2013) was an Argentinian-French theater director and actor. His work has democratized and widened the appeal of musical theater in France, drawing together and blending such genres as opera, operetta, and ...
's ''
La fille du garde-barrière
''The Gatekeeper's Daughter'' (French: ''La fille du garde-barrière'') is a 1975 French comedy film directed by Jérôme Savary and starring Mona Heftre, Michel Dussarat and Annick Berger.Rège p.388
Main cast
* Mona Heftre as Mona
* Michel ...
'' (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...
).
In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in '' Sidewalk Stories'', a low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
's ''
The Kid The Kid or The Kids may refer to:
Fictional characters
* The kid (''Blood Meridian''), a character in Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel ''Blood Meridian''
* The Kid (''The Matrix''), a character in the ''Matrix'' film series
* The Kid (''The Stand'' ...
''.
The German film ''
Tuvalu
Tuvalu ( or ; formerly known as the Ellice Islands) is an island country and microstate in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. Its islands are situated about midway between Hawaii and Australia. They lie east-northeast ...
'' (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality.
Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin (born February 28, 1956) is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer, and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Since completing his first film i ...
won awards for his homage to Soviet era silent films with his short ''
The Heart of the World
''The Heart of the World'' is a short film written and directed by Guy Maddin, produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. Maddin was one of a number of directors (including Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg) commissioned to make four ...
'' after which he made a feature-length silent, '' Brand Upon the Brain!'' (2006), incorporating live
Foley artist
In filmmaking, Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. These reproduced sounds, named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley, can be anythi ...
s, narration and orchestra at select showings. ''
Shadow of the Vampire
''Shadow of the Vampire'' is a 2000 independent
meta period horror comedy film directed by E. Elias Merhige, written by Steven Katz, and starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. It is a fictionalized account of the making of the classi ...
'' (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at th ...
's classic silent
vampire
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...
movie ''
Nosferatu
''Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror'' (German: ''Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens'') is a 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife ...
'' (1922).
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...
honored the same film in his own version, '' Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht'' (1979).
Some films draw a direct contrast between the silent film era and the era of talkies. ''
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a boulevard in the central and western part of Los Angeles, California, that stretches from the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades east to Figueroa Street in Downtown Los Angeles. It is a major thoroughfare in t ...
'' shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of
Norma Desmond
''Sunset Boulevard'' (styled in the main title on-screen as ''SUNSET BLVD.'') is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after a major street ...
, played by silent film star
Gloria Swanson
Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most f ...
, and ''
Singin' in the Rain
''Singin' in the Rain'' is a 1952 American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds and featuring Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charis ...
'' deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies.
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.
One of the "New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on R ...
's 1976 film ''
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...
'' deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to the release of D. W. Griffith's epic ''
The Birth of a Nation
''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Cla ...
'' (1915).
In 1999, the
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
Juha
Juha is a masculine given name of Finnish origin derived from Johannes (or John in English language contexts). Notable people with the name include:
* Juha Alén
* Juha Gustafsson
* Juha Hakola
* Juha Harju
* Juha Haukkala
* Juha Hautamäki
* J ...
'' in black-and-white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special
release print
A release print is a copy of a film that is provided to a movie theater for exhibition.
Definitions
Release prints are not to be confused with other types of prints used in the photochemical post-production process:
* Rush prints, or dailies, ...
s with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film ''
Pushpak
''Pushpaka Vimana'' (; a reference to ) is a 1987 Indian black comedy film written and directed by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, who co-produced it with Shringar Nagaraj. The film, which has no dialogue, stars Kamal Haasan leading an ensemble cas ...
'' (1988), starring
Kamal Haasan
Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali l ...
, was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film '' Doctor Plonk'' (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer. Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy ''Silent Laughter'' as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in ''All Wear Bowlers'' (2004), which started as an homage to
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were a British-American Double act, comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood cinema, Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, consisting of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892–19 ...
then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and the silver screen. The animated film ''
Fantasia
Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...
'' (1940), which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The espionage film '' The Thief'' (1952) has music and sound effects, but no dialogue, as do
Thierry Zéno
Thierry Zéno (born Thierry Jonard; 22 April 1950 – 7 June 2017) , retrieved 10 May 2009. was a
Vase de Noces
''Vase de Noces'' (also known as ''Wedding Trough'' and ''The Pig Fucking Movie'') is a 1974 Belgian avant-garde art exploitation horror film directed by Thierry Zéno and starring Dominique Garny.
The film deals openly, and sometimes graphic ...
'' and
Patrick Bokanowski
Patrick Bokanowski (born 23 June 1943 in Algiers, French Algeria) is a French filmmaker who makes experimental and animated films.
Career
The film '' The Angel'' (1982) is his most prominent work. It is accompanied by a soundtrack made by his wi ...
The Call of Cthulhu
"The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in February 1928.
Inspiration
The first seed of the story's first chapter '' ...
''. This film maintained a period-accurate filming style, and was received as both "the best HPL adaptation to date" and, referring to the decision to make it as a silent movie, "a brilliant conceit".
The French film '' The Artist'' (2011), written and directed by
Michel Hazanavicius
Michel Hazanavicius ( lt, Hazanavičius; born 29 March 1967) is a French film director, screenwriter, editor, and producer. He is best known for his 2011 film, '' The Artist'', which won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Aw ...
, plays as a silent film and is set in Hollywood during the silent era. It also includes segments of fictitious silent films starring its protagonists. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The Japanese
vampire film
Vampire films have been a staple in world cinema since the era of silent films, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in films throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptat ...
'' Sanguivorous'' (2011) is not only done in the style of a silent film, but even toured with live orchestral accompiment.
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne (born January 4, 1954) is an American banjoist, guitarist and music critic.
Life and career
Chadbourne was born in Mount Vernon, New York, but grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He started playing guitar when he was eleven or twel ...
has been among those who have played live music for the film.
''
Blancanieves
''Blancanieves'' (known as ''Blancaneu'' in Catalan) is a 2012 Spanish black-and-white silent drama film written and directed by Pablo Berger. Based on the 1812 fairy tale ''Snow White'' by the Brothers Grimm, the story is set in a romantic vis ...
'' is a 2012 Spanish black-and-white silent fantasy drama film written and directed by
Pablo Berger
Pablo Berger Uranga (born 1963) is a Spanish film director born in Bilbao, Spain.
Life and work
Pablo Berger attended primary and secondary school in Artxanda Trueba, located on the outskirts of Bilbao, Spain. In 1988 he directed his first sho ...
.
The American feature-length silent film ''
Silent Life
Silent may mean any of the following:
People with the name
* Silent George, George Stone (outfielder) (1876–1945), American Major League Baseball outfielder and batting champion
* Brandon Silent (born 1973), South African former footballer
* ...
'' started in 2006, features performances by
Isabella Rossellini
Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini (born 18 June 1952) is an Italian-American actress, author, philanthropist, and model. The daughter of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she is noted ...
and Galina Jovovich, mother of Milla Jovovich, will premiere in 2013. The film is based on the life of the silent screen icon Rudolph Valentino, known as the Hollywood's first "Great Lover". After the emergency surgery, Valentino loses his grip of reality and begins to see the recollection of his life in Hollywood from a perspective of a coma – as a silent film shown at a movie palace, the magical portal between life and eternity, between reality and illusion.
'' The Picnic'' is a 2012 short film made in the style of two-reel silent melodramas and comedies. It was part of the exhibit, ''No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man,'' a 2018-2019 exhibit curated by the
Renwick Gallery
The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...
of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...
. The film was shown inside a miniature 12-seat
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
movie palace on wheels called ''The Capitol Theater'', created by Oakland, Ca. art collective Five Ton Crane.
'' Right There'' is a 2013 short film that is an homage to silent film comedies.
The 2015 British animated film ''
Shaun the Sheep Movie
''Shaun the Sheep Movie'' is a 2015 stop-motion animated adventure comedy film based on the 2007 British television series ''Shaun the Sheep'', created by Nick Park, in turn a spin-off of the ''Wallace and Gromit'' film, ''A Close Shave'' (1995) ...
'' based on
Shaun the Sheep
''Shaun the Sheep'' is a British stop-motion television series and a spin-off of the ''Wallace and Gromit'' franchise. The title character is Shaun (previously featured as the sheep named "Shaun" in the 1995 short film ''A Close Shave'' and t ...
was released to positive reviews and was a box office success.
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations Limited (also known as Aardman Studios, simply Aardman or Aardman Animation and stylised as AARDMAN as of 2022) is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films made using stop-motion and clay ani ...
also produced
Morph
Morph may refer to:
Biology
* Morph (zoology), a visual or behavioral difference between organisms of distinct populations in a species
* Muller's morphs, a classification scheme for genetic mutations
* "-morph", a suffix commonly used in tax ...
and
Timmy Time
''Timmy Time'' is a British preschool stop-motion clay animated television programme created and produced by Jackie Cockle for the BBC's CBeebies and produced by Aardman Animations. It started broadcasting in the United Kingdom on 6 April 20 ...
as well as many other silent short films.
The
American Theatre Organ Society
The American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS) is an American non-profit organization, dedicated to preserving and promoting the theatre pipe organ and its musical art form.
ATOS consists of regional member-chapters, and is led by democratically e ...
pays homage to the music of silent films, as well as the
theatre organ
A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films, from the 1900s to the 1920s.
Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements ...
s that played such music. With over 75 local chapters, the organization seeks to preserve and promote theater organs and music, as an art form.
The Globe International Silent Film Festival (GISFF) is an annual event focusing on image and atmosphere in cinema which takes place in a reputable university or academic environment every year and is a platform for showcasing and judging films from filmmakers who are active in this field. In 2018 film director Christopher Annino shot the now internationally award-winning feature silent film of its kind ''Silent Times''. The film gives homage to many of the characters from the 1920s including Officer Keystone played by David Blair, and Enzio Marchello who portrays a Charlie Chaplin character. ''Silent Times'' has won best silent film at the Oniros Film Festival. Set in a small New England town, the story centers on Oliver Henry III (played by Westerly native Geoff Blanchette), a small-time crook turned vaudeville theater owner. From humble beginnings in England, he immigrates to the US in search of happiness and fast cash. He becomes acquainted with people from all walks of life, from burlesque performers, mimes, hobos to classy flapper girls, as his fortunes rise and his life spins ever more out of control.
Preservation and lost films
The vast majority of the silent films produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are considered lost. According to a September 2013 report published by the United States
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
, some 70 percent of American silent feature films fall into this category. There are numerous reasons for this number being so high. Some films have been lost unintentionally, but most silent films were destroyed on purpose. Between the end of the silent era and the rise of home video, film studios would often discard large numbers of silent films out of a desire to free up storage in their archives, assuming that they had lost the cultural relevance and economic value to justify the amount of space they occupied. Additionally, due to the fragile nature of the nitrate film stock which was used to shoot and distribute silent films, many motion pictures have irretrievably deteriorated or have been lost in accidents, including fires (because nitrate is highly flammable and can spontaneously combust when stored improperly). Examples of such incidents include the 1965 MGM vault fire and the 1937 Fox vault fire, both of which incited catastrophic losses of films. Many such films not completely destroyed survive only partially, or in badly damaged prints. Some lost films, such as '' London After Midnight'' (1927), lost in the MGM fire, have been the subject of considerable interest by film collectors and historians.
Major silent films presumed lost include:
* ''
Saved from the Titanic
''Saved from the Titanic'' is a 1912 American silent motion picture short starring Dorothy Gibson, an American film actress who survived the sinking of the RMS ''Titanic'' on April 15, 1912. Premiering in the United States just 31 days after ...
'' (1912), which featured survivors of the disaster;
* ''
The Life of General Villa
''The Life of General Villa'' (1914) is a silent biographical action–drama film starring Pancho Villa as himself, shot on location during a civil war. The film incorporated both staged scenes and authentic live footage from real battles d ...
'', starring
Pancho Villa
Francisco "Pancho" Villa (,"Villa" ''Collins English Dictionary''. ; ;
himself
* ''
The Apostle
''The Apostle'' is a 1997 American drama film written and directed by Robert Duvall, who stars in the title role. John Beasley, Farrah Fawcett, Walton Goggins, Billy Bob Thornton, June Carter Cash, Miranda Richardson, and Billy Joe Shaver also a ...
'', the first
animated feature film
These lists of animated feature films compiles animated feature films from around the world and is organized alphabetically under the year of release (the year the completed film was first released to the public). Theatrical releases as well as ...
(1917)
* ''
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...
Arirang
"Arirang" (; ) is a Korean folk song. There are about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions of the song, all of which include a refrain similar to "''Arirang, arirang, arariyo'' ()". It is estimated the song is more than 600 years old. ...
'' (1926)
* ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...
Best Picture
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
nominee, but only the trailer survives
* '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1928)
Though most lost silent films will never be recovered, some have been discovered in film archives or private collections. Discovered and preserved versions may be editions made for the home rental market of the 1920s and 1930s that are discovered in estate sales, etc. The degradation of old film stock can be slowed through proper archiving, and films can be transferred to safety film stock or to digital media for preservation. The
preservation
Preservation may refer to:
Heritage and conservation
* Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible
* ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
of silent films has been a high priority for historians and archivists.
Dawson Film Find
The Dawson Film Find (DFF) was the accidental discovery in 1978 of 372 film titles preserved in 533 reels of silent-era nitrate films in the Klondike Gold Rush town of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. The reels had been buried under an abandoned hoc ...
Dawson City
Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yuko ...
, in the
Yukon
Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...
territory of Canada, was once the end of the distribution line for many films. In 1978, a cache of more than 500 reels of nitrate film was discovered during the excavation of a vacant lot formerly the site of the Dawson Amateur Athletic Association, which had started showing films at their recreation center in 1903. Works by
Pearl White
Pearl Fay White (March 4, 1889 – August 4, 1938) was an American stage and film actress. She began her career on the stage at the age of six, and later moved on to silent films appearing in a number of popular serials.
Dubbed the "Queen of ...
Grace Cunard
Grace Cunard (born Harriet Mildred Jeffries; April 8, 1893 – January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. During the silent era, she starred in over 100 films, wrote or co-wrote at least 44 of those production ...
,
Lois Weber
Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer and director. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the e ...
,
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.Obituary ''Variety'', March 10, 1971, page 55.
One of the most influential film co ...
,
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including '' The Thi ...
, and
Lon Chaney
Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor. He is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and affli ...
, among others, were included, as well as many newsreels. The titles were stored at the local library until 1929 when the flammable nitrate was used as landfill in a condemned swimming pool. Having spent 50 years under the permafrost of the Yukon, the reels turned out to be extremely well preserved. Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility, the historical find was moved by military transport to
Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is th ...
and the US
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
for storage (and transfer to
safety film
Cellulose acetate film, or safety film, is used in photography as a base material for photographic emulsions. It was introduced in the early 20th century by film manufacturers and intended as a safe film base replacement for unstable and highly ...
African American women in the silent film era African American cinema evolved at just about the same pace as white cinema, and although the role of Black women in early silent film has only recently begun to receive popular and academic attention, Black women were involved in Black cinema from ...
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Classic Images
''Classic Images'' is a monthly American mail-subscription newspaper in tabloid format, founded in 1962 by film collector Samuel K. Rubin, dedicated to film and television of the "Golden Age". Its offices are located in Muscatine, Iowa and it is ...
List of film formats
This list of motion picture film formats catalogues formats developed for shooting or viewing motion pictures, ranging from the Chronophotographe format from 1888, to mid-20th century Film format, formats such as the 1953 CinemaScope format, to m ...
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German Expressionism
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
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Kammerspielfilm
''Kammerspielfilm'' is a type of German film that offers an intimate, cinematic portrait of lower middle class life.
History
The name derives from a theater, the '' Kammerspiele'', opened in 1906 by a major stage director Max Reinhardt to stage i ...
Lost films
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress.
Conditions
During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy o ...
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
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Sound stage
A sound stage (also written soundstage) is a soundproof, large structure, building, or room with large doors and high ceilings, used for the production of theatrical film-making and television productions, usually located on a secured movie or ...
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Tab show A tab show was a short, or tabloid version, of various popular musical comedies performed in the United States in the early 20th century.
History
The shows were about an hour in length but could be as short as 25 minutes, either way being well sui ...
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At the Moving Picture Ball "At the Moving Picture Ball" is a popular song composed by Joseph H. Santly ''(né'' Joseph Harry Santly; 1886–1962) and recorded by many artists during the silent film era. Today the song is best remembered for its unusually topical lyrics, which ...
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References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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External links
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
Film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...