Silent film

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A silent film is a film with no accompanying, synchronized recorded spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, most films were silent before the late 1920s.

Contents 1 History 2 Intertitles 3 Live music and sound 4 Acting techniques 5 Projection speed 6 Lost films 7 Later homages 8 Some notable silent films 8.1 Before 1915 8.2 1915 - 1919 8.3 1920 - 1925 8.4 1926 - 1930 8.5 1931 and later 9 Top grossing silent films 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

History

The years before sound came to the movies are known as the silent era among film scholars and historians. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity before silent films were replaced by talking pictures or talkies and many film buffs believe the esthetic quality of cinema actually decreased for several years as the new medium of sound was adapted to the movies. The visual quality of silent movies (especially those produced during the 1920s) was often extremely high but later televised presentations of poor, second or even third generation copies made from already damaged and neglected stock (usually played back at incorrect speeds and with inappropriate music) led to the widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards.

Intertitles

Since silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the cinema audience. The title writer became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Intertitles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) often became graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action of the film or enhanced its atmosphere.

Live music and sound

Showings of silent films almost always featured live music, starting with the pianist at the first public projection of movies by the Lumière Brothers on December 28, 1895 in Paris (Cook, 1990). From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing to the atmosphere and giving the audience vital emotional cues (musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons). Small town and neighborhood movie theaters usually had a pianist. From the mid-teens onward, large city theaters tended to have organists or entire orchestras. Massive theatrical organs such as the famous "mighty Wurlitzer" could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of sound effects.

The scores for silents were often more or less improvised, especially early in the medium's history, or compiled from existing music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which would send out a cue sheet with the film. Starting with Joseph Carl Breil's score for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking epic The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915) it became relatively common for films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores (Eyman, 1997).

By the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians (at least in America) and the introduction of talkies, which happened simultaneously with the onset of the Great Depression, was devastating.

Film industries in some countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silents. The early cinema of Brazil featured fitas cantatas, filmed operettas with singers lip-synching behind the screen (Parkinson, 1995, p. 69). In Japan, films had not only live music, but the benshi, a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film form, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies (Standish, 2005). Their popularity was one reason why silents persisted well into the 1930s in Japan.

Acting techniques

The medium of silent film required a greater emphasis on body language and facial expression so the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Combined with cultural differences arising from the passage of time, modern-day audiences may be disoriented watching some films from the silent era. Silent comedies tend to be more popular in the modern era than drama, partly because overacting is more natural in comedy. However, some silent films were quite subtly acted, depending on the director and the skill of the actors. Overacting in silent films was sometimes a habit actors transferred from their stage experience and directors who understood the intimacy of the new medium discouraged it.

Projection speed

Most silent films were shot at slower speeds (or "frame rates") than sound films, typically at 16 to 20 frames per second rather than 24. Unless carefully shown at their original speeds they can appear unnaturally fast and jerky, which reinforces their alien appearance to modern viewers. At the same time, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting in order to accelerate the action, particularly in the case of slapstick comedies. The intended frame rate of a silent film can be ambiguous and since they were usually hand cranked there can even be variation within one film. 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; the 2002 restoration of Metropolis (Germany, 1927) may be the most fiercely debated example.

Lost films

Thousands of silent films were made during the years before the introduction of sound but some historians estimate between 80 and 90 percent of them have been lost forever. Movies of the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flammable nitrate film stock which required careful preservation to keep it from decomposing over time. Most of these films were considered to have no commercial value after they were shown in theaters and were carelessly preserved if at all. Over the decades their prints crumbled into dust (or goo). Many were recycled and a sizable number were destroyed in both studio fires and space-saving projects. As a result, silent film preservation has been a high priority among movie historians.

Later homages

Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Jacques Tati with his Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976) and indie filmmaker Eric B. Borgman with his film The Deserter (2004). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005) is during its middle third a silent, complete with intertitles.

Some notable silent films

With director and year of release:

Before 1915

• 'La Fée au Choux', Alice Guy Blaché, 1896
• Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), George Méliès, 1902
• The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S. Porter, 1903
• La Presa di Roma, Filoteo Alberini, 1905
• The Night Before Christmas, 1905
• Ben-Hur, Sidney Olcott, 1907
• From the Manger To the Cross, Sidney Olcott, 1912
• Oliver Twist, 1912 (First American feature film made)
• Richard III, 1912 (Second American feature film made and oldest surviving complete feature film)
• A Message from Mars, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1913
• Cabiria, Giovanne Pastrone, 1914
• The Perils of Pauline, Louis J. Gasnier & Donald MacKenzie 1914

1915 - 1919

• Honeymoon for Three, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1915
• The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915
• The Awakening, William Desmond Taylor, 1915
• Les Vampires, Louis Feuillade, 1915-16
• Intolerance, D.W. Griffith, 1916
• Cleopatra, J. Gordon Edwards, 1917
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Marshall Neilan, 1917
• Father Sergius, Yakov Protazanov, 1918
• Masks and Faces, with cameo from Sir Charles Hawtrey, George Bernard Shaw and J. M. Barrie, 1918
• Broken Blossoms, D. W. Griffith, 1918
• Anne of Green Gables, William Desmond Taylor, 1919
• Within Our Gates, Oscar Micheaux, 1919

1920 - 1925

• Way Down East, D. W. Griffith, 1920
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920
• Huckleberry Finn, William Desmond Taylor, 1920
• The Mark of Zorro, Fred Niblo, 1920
• Destiny, Fritz Lang, 1921
• The Kid, Charlie Chaplin, 1921
• Orphans of the Storm, D. W. Griffith, 1921
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Rex Ingram, 1921
• The Sheik, George Melford, 1921
• Blood and Sand, Fred Niblo, 1922
• Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, 1922
• The Golem, Paul Wegener, 1922
• Beyond the Rocks, Sam Wood, 1922
• Häxan, Benjamin Christensen, 1922
• Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty, 1922
• The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. deMille, 1923
• The Thief of Bagdad, Douglas Fairbanks, 1923
• Aelita, Yakov Protazanov, 1924
• Sherlock, Jr., Buster Keaton, 1924
• Strike, Sergei Eisenstein, 1924
• The Iron Horse, John Ford, 1924
• Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
• Ben-Hur, Charles Brabin, J.J. Cohn, and Fred Niblo, 1925
• The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin, 1925
• Safety Last, Harold Lloyd, 1925
• Greed, Erich von Stroheim, 1925
• The Phantom of the Opera, Lon Chaney, Sr., 1925
• The Big Parade, King Vidor, 1925
• The Last Laugh, F.W. Murnau, 1925
• The Joyless Street, G.W. Pabst , 1925
• The Street of Forgotten Men, Herbert Brenon , 1925

1926 - 1930

• Our Hospitality, Buster Keaton, 1926
• The Lodger, Alfred Hitchcock, 1926
• Mother, Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Karl Koch, Lotte Reiniger, 1926
• The Man in the Iron Mask
• Faust, F.W. Murnau, 1926
• Brown of Harvard (Jack Conway), 1926
• The Son of the Sheik, George Fitzmaurice, 1926
• Napoléon, Abel Gance, 1927
• The General, Buster Keaton, 1927
• Sunrise, F.W. Murnau, 1927
• Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927
• October: Ten Days That Shook The World, Sergei Eisenstein, 1927
• Berlin, Die Symphonie Einer Grosstaldt, Walther Ruttman, 1927
• Wings, William Wellman, 1927
• The Cat And The Canary, Paul Leni, 1927
• Flesh and the Devil, Clarence Brown, 1927
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy, Alexander Korda, 1927
• Seventh Heaven, Frank Borzage, 1927
• Underworld, Josef von Sternberg, 1927
• The Unknown, Tod Browning, 1927
• Steamboat Bill, Jr, Buster Keaton, 1928
• The Last Command, Josef von Sternberg, 1928
• L'Argent, Marcel L'Herbier, 1928
• The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928
• The Crowd, King Vidor, 1928
• The Wind, Victor Sjöström, 1928
• Beggars of Life, William Wellman, 1928
• Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1928
• The Docks of New York, Josef von Sternberg, 1929
• Diary of a Lost Girl, GW Pabst, 1929
• Pandora's Box, GW Pabst, 1929
• Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929
• Earth, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930

1931 and later

• City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, 1931
• Tabu, F. W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, 1931
• I Was Born, But..., Ozu Yasujiro, 1932
• Passing Fancy, Ozu Yasujiro, 1933
• A Story of Floating Weeds, Ozu Yasujiro, 1934
• The Goddess, Wu Yonggang, 1934
• Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, 1936

Top grossing silent films

1. The Birth of a Nation (1915) - $10,000,000
2. The Big Parade (1925) - $6,400,000
3. Ben-Hur (1925) - $5,500,000
4. Way Down East (1920) - $5,000,000
5. The Gold Rush (1925) - $4,250,000
6. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (film) (1921) - $4,000,000
7. The Circus (1928) - $3,800,000
8. The Covered Wagon (1923) - $3,800,000
9. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) - $3,500,000
10. The Ten Commandments (1923) - $3,400,000
11. Orphans of the Storm (1921) - $3,000,000
12. For Heaven's Sake (1926) - $2,600,000
13. Seventh Heaven (1927) - $2,500,000
14. What Price Glory (1926) - $2,400,000
15. Abie's Irish Rose (1928) - $1,500,000

See also

• Wikipedia Category: Silent films
• Wikipedia Category: Silent film actors
• Laurel and Hardy films
• Sound stage

References

• Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence. New York: Knopf, 1990. ISBN 0-394-57747-7
• Bean, Jennifer M., and Diane Negra, eds. A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Camera Obscura Book). Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. ISBN 0822329999
• Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film, 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. ISBN 0-393-95553-2
• Eyman, Scott. The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-81162-6
• Parkinson, David. History of Film. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995. ISBN 0-500-20277-X
• Standish, Isolde. A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century of Narrative Film. New York: Continuum, 2005. ISBN 0-8264-1709-4

External links

• Silent Film @ Filmbug
• Silent Movies on DVD
• Overview on silent movie festivals
• The biggest silent film festival in Germany: 'Internationale Stummfilmtage'
• A list of lost films from the Silent Era