Before the use of sound film, motion pictures which relied entirely on visual performance, the words of any spoken dialogue appearing on the screen only as occasional subtitles between picture scenes. Silent films were often presented with musical accompaniment performed live, ranging from a large orchestra in major theatres down to continuous piano in smaller halls. Silent films featured extensive slapstick comedy, trick pictures, short romances, and five-minute dramas. Sound films evolved in the late 1920s.
For the Mel Brooks film, see Silent Movie.A silent film is a film with no accompanying, synchronized recorded spoken dialogue. The technology for silent films was invented around 1860, but remained a novelty until around 1880 - 1900, when films on a single reel became easily produced.
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. The silent film era is sometimes referred to as the "Age of the Silver Screen".
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 aesthetic quality of cinema 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.
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). Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from Photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which would send out a cue sheet with the film. 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).
Film industries in some countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silents.
Few film scores have survived intact from this period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions in attempting a precise reconstruction of those which remain.
Specialists in the art of arranging and performing silent film scores are rare today.
Acting techniques
The medium of silent film required a great emphasis on body language and facial expression so the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. The gesticulations common to much silent film acting are apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy. 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. As stated by the jaded Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard as she watches one of her silent films, "We didn't need voices;
Projection speed
Up until around 1925, most silent films were shot at slower speeds (or "frame rates") than sound films, typically at 16 to 23 frames per second depending on the year and studio, rather than 24 frames per second. 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;
Projectionists frequently showed silent films at speeds which were slightly faster than the rate at which they were shot. Most films seem to have been shown at 18 fps or higher - some even faster than what would become sound film speed (24 fps). Even if shot at 16 fps (often cited as "silent speed"), the projection of a nitrate base 35mm film at such a slow speed carried a considerable risk of fire.
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. As a result, silent film preservation has been a high priority among movie historians.
Major Silent Films Presumed to be Lost
The Apostle - 1917 (world's first animated feature film) Cleopatra - 1917 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - 1927 The Great Gatsby - 1927 London After Midnight - 1927Later 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). Stanley Tucci's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet era silent films for his short The Heart of the World. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Some films draw a direct contrast between the silent film era and the era of talkies. shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond, played by silent film star Gloria Swanson.
Silent films in the sound era
Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, the technology only became well-developed in the early 1920's. Although The Jazz Singer's release in 1927 marked the first commercially successful sound film, silent films formed the majority of features produced in both 1927 and 1928. 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 for the years between the beginning of film and 1928. The following list only includes films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, 1931 I Was Born, But...,Yasujiro Ozu, 1932 A Story of Floating Weeds,Yasujiro Ozu, 1934 Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, 1936 Silent Movie, Mel Brooks, 1976 Sidewalk Stories, Charles Lane, 1989 Juha, Aki Kaurismäki, 1999 The Heart of the World, Guy Maddin, 2000 Claire, Milford Thomas, 2001 Tuvalu, Veit Helmer, 2001 Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary, Guy Maddin, 2002 Cowards Bend the Knee, Guy Maddin, 2003 The Call of Cthulhu, Andrew Leman, 2005 The Brand Upon the Brain, Guy Maddin, 2006
Recovered and found silent films
These films have survived in film archives or have been found in private collections. Weight, 1924 The Breaking Point, Herbert Brenon, 1924 Pied Piper Malone, 1924 The Boob, William Wellman, 1926 The Exquisite Sinner, Josef von Sternberg, 1926 The Flaming Frontier, Edward Sedgwick, 1926 You Never Know Women, William Wellman, 1926 A Page of Madness, Kinugasa Teinosuke, 1926 The Ridin' Rowdy, Richard Thorpe, 1927 The Rough Riders, Victor Fleming, 1927 Senorita, Alfred E. Green, 1927 Sorrell and Son, Herbert Brenon, 1927 The Constant Nymph, Adrian Brunel, 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928 Drag, Frank Lloyd, 1929 Why Be Good?, William Seiter, 1929 Wonder of Women, Clarence Brown, 1929
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