Silent film

A silent film is a film which has no accompanying soundtrack. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself, but before the late 1920s, most films were silent.

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 a number of film buffs believe the quality of the cinema actually decreased for a few years, before the new medium of sound was adapted to the movies.

Since silent films could not take advantage of synchronized sound for dialogue, titles were edited in to clarify the on-screen situation to the cinema audience or to add critical dialog.

Showings of silent films usually were not actually silent: they were commonly accompanied by live music, frequently improvised by a piano or organ player. Early in the development of the motion picture industry, music was recognized as an essential part of any movie, as it gave the audience emotional cues for the action taking place on the screen. Small town and neighborhood movie theaters usually had a pianist accompany the film; large city theaters would have organists or entire orchestras, who were able to provide some sound effects.

The medium of silent film required a greater emphasis on body language and facial expression, so that the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Modern-day audiences who are not used to this form of acting may be uncomfortable watching some films from the silent era, because the actors in these films may seem to be overacting to an outrageous degree. Partly because of this, silent comedies tend to be more popular in the modern era than drama, because overacting is more natural in comedy. However, some silent films are quite subtly acted, depending on the director and the skill of the actors. Overacting in silent films was often a habit that actors transferred from the stage, and directors who understood the intimacy of the new medium discouraged it.

Most silent films were also shot at slower speeds than sound films (typically 16 to 20 frames per second as opposed to 24), so that unless special techniques are used to show them at their original speeds they can appear unnaturally fast and jerky, which reinforces their unnatural appearance. However, some silent films were intentionally undercranked in order to accelerate the action; this form of stylization was done with comedies far more often than with dramas.

Literally thousands of silent films were made in the years leading through the introduction of sound, but a considerable number of those films (some historians estimate between 80 and 90 percent) 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 not preserved; over the years, their prints simply crumbled into dust. Many of them were recycled, and a sizable number were destroyed in studio fires. As a result, silent film preservation has been a high priority among movie historians.

Several filmmakers have done homage to the comedies of the silent era including Jacques Tati with his Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) and Mel Brooks who starred in Silent Movie (1976).

Table of contents

1 Some Notable Silent Films 1.1 Before 1915 1.2 1915 to 1920 1.3 1920 to 1925 1.4 1925 to 1930 1.5 1930 and beyond 2 Top grossing silent films: 3 Availability 4 See also 5 Literature 6 External link

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 Ma(s, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1913
• Cabiria, Giovanne Pastrone, 1914
• The Perils of Pauline, Louis J. Gasnier & Donald MacKenzie 1914

1915 to 1920

• Honeymoon for Three, Sir Charles Hawtrey, 1915
• The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915
• Les Vampires, Louis Feuillade, 1915-16
• Intolerance, D.W. Griffith, 1916
• Cleopatra, J. Gordon Edwards, 1917
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Marshall Neilan, 1917
• Masks and Faces, with cameo from Sir Charles Hawtrey, George Bernard Shaw and J. M. Barrie, 1918
• Broken Blossoms, D. W. Griffith, 1918

1920 to 1925

• Way Down East, D. W. Griffith, 1920
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920
• The Mark of Zorro, Fred Niblo, 1920
• Destiny, Fritz Lang, 1921
• Orphans of the Storm, D. W. Griffith, 1921
• 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
• 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
• Our Hospitality, Buster Keaton, 1926

1925 to 1930

• 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
• Napoléon, Abel Gance, 1927
• The General, Buster Keaton, 1927
• Sunrise, F.W. Murnau, 1927
• Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927
• , 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
• 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

1930 and beyond

• 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

Availability

Many silent films are now available on DVD.

See also

• Laurel and Hardy films
• Sound stage

Literature

• Kevin Brownlow Behind the Mask of Innocence ISBN 0-394-57747-7

External link

• Silent Movies on DVD

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