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Silent film

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Films

   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. But
   the silent picture was a universal language through its messages. 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. 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 neighbourhood 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 early in the
   medium's history. 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. Starting with mostly original score composed by Joseph
   Carl Breil 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 theatre 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.

   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. For this reason, it is important
   to distinguish what types of score are being shown with a film. They
   can be either complete reconstructions, newly composed for the
   occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries or even
   improvised if necessary.

   Critical in the development of the silent score is the Theater Organ
   which, as a 'one man unit-orchestra' had a serious impact both on the
   configuration and size of theatre orchestras in the period (used for
   doubling parts or entire sections) and was also able to provide the
   entire score complete with foley thanks to a wide range of special
   effects, actual percussion instruments and a large battery of
   orchestrally voiced organ pipes.

   Specialists in the art of arranging and performing silent film scores
   are rare today. Steven Ball of Ann Arbor's Michigan Theatre is one such
   performer who is still employed as the Staff Organist in a silent movie
   house. Also among the ranks are Rosa Rio (organist at the Brooklyn Fox
   during the silent era and now at the Tampa Theatre), Ben Model, Neil
   Brand, Phillip C. Carli, Jon Mirsalis, Dennis James and Donald Sosin --
   creating and performing live musical scores on piano or theatre organ.
   Other composers such as Carl Davis have specialized in writing new
   orchestral scores for silent classics.

Acting techniques

   One of the most enduring images of the silent era: Lon Chaney Sr. in
   The Phantom of the Opera (USA, 1925)
   Enlarge
   One of the most enduring images of the silent era: Lon Chaney Sr. in
   The Phantom of the Opera (USA, 1925)

   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. For this reason, 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. As stated by the jaded Norma Desmond in Sunset
   Boulevard as she watches one of her silent films, "We didn't need
   voices; we had faces."

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. 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.

   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. Oftentimes
   projectionists would receive instructions from the distributors as to
   how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected on the musical
   director's cue sheet. Theaters also sometimes varied their projection
   speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film in order to
   maximize profit.

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.

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 - 1927

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; Stanley Tucci's The Impostors has an opening
   silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. The style is
   also echoed in the 1999 German film Tuvalu. 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). Werner Herzog 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
   Blvd. 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. The next few years were a race to design, implement, and
   market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats.
   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.
     * 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
     * Love Is Strength, Mikio Naruse, 1930
     * City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, 1931
     * Tabu, F. W. 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.
     * Defense d’afficher, Georges Méliès, 1896
     * X-Rays, G.A. Smith, 1897
     * Le Voyage dans la Lune, Georges Méliès, 1902
     * La Tosca, André Calmettes and Charles Le Bargy, 1909
     * Jephtah’s Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy, 1909
     * A Manly Man, Thomas H. Ince, 1911
     * At the Duke's Command, Thomas H. Ince, 1911
     * The Colleen Bawn, Thomas H. Ince, 1911
     * The Mirror, 1911
     * Maid or Man, Thomas H. Ince, 1911
     * The Sultan's Garden, Thomas H. Ince, 1911
     * Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lucius Henderson, 1912
     * A Fool and His Money, Alice Guy-Blaché, 1912
     * Under Two Flags, 1912
     * The Prisoner of Zenda, Edwin S. Porter, 1913
     * Der Hund von Baskerville (The Hound of the Baskervilles), Rudolf
       Meinert, 1914
     * Double Trouble, William Christy Cabanne, 1915
     * Youth, Harry Handworth, 1915
     * Mysteriet natten tell den 25:e, Georg al Klercker, 1916
     * Purity, Rea Burger, 1916
     * Bucking Broadway, John Ford, 1917
     * His Wedding Night, Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917
     * The Image Maker, Eugene Moore, 1917
     * Max and His Taxi, 1917
     * Max Comes Across, 1917
     * Max Wants a Divorce, 1917
     * The Rough House, Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917
     * Hell Bent, John Ford, 1918
     * Oh Baby!, 1918
     * Back Stage, Roscoe Arbuckle, 1919
     * Scarlet Days, D.W. Griffith, 1919
     * If I were King, J. Gordon Edwards, 1920
     * In the Days of St. Patrick, Norman Whitten, 1920
     * The Blue Fox, Duke Worne, 1921
     * Beyond the Rocks, Sam Wood, 1922
     * The Young Rajah, Phill Rosen, 1922
     * $20 A Week, Harmon F. 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

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 (1926) - $2,400,000
   14. Abie's Irish Rose (1928) - $1,500,000

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