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What are Silent movies?
A silent movie is a motion picture with no accompanying, synchronized
recorded sound, especially 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 movies were silent before the late 1920s. The silent movie era
is sometimes referred to as the "Age of the Silver Screen". Scenery
art from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (Germany, 1927) The technology for
silent movies was invented around 1860, but remained a novelty until
around 1880-1900, when movies on a single reel became easily produced.
The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era"
before silent movies were replaced by "talking pictures" in the late
1920s. Many film scholars and buffs argue that the aesthetic quality
of cinema decreased for several years until directors, actors and
production staff adapted to the new "talkies."
Some of the greatest masterpieces in Silent movies are:
The Docks of New York (1928) [Silent Movies] Movie starring George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova, Clyde Cook and Mitchell Lewis which tells the story of a prostitute who tries to rise above her life on the docks by finding love. The story involves a freakishly strong ship stoker (George Bancroft) and the beautiful prostitute (Betty Compson) he saves from drowning. Directed by Josef von Sternberg, The Docks of New York remains frequently cited by critics as one of the greatest silent films. The dark, gritty beer-hall ambience remains a startling visual treat for modern audiences and the superb acting was acclaimed as a benchmark. The movie was adapted by Jules Furthman from the John Monk Saunders story The Dock Walloper. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Modern Times (1936) [Silent Movies] A Movie by Charlie Chaplin that has his famous Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin. It was written and directed by Chaplin. Silent Movie (1976) [Silent Movies] Comedy film directed by and starring Mel Brooks. The ensemble cast includes Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters, Sid Caesar, Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, and Paul Newman. As its title suggests, the film is a parody of the silent film genre, particularly the slapstick comedies of Hal Roach, Mack Sennett and Buster Keaton. Among the film's many jokes is the fact that the only audible line in the movie is spoken by Marcel Marceau, the famous mime. Sound is also used for a scene that shows New York City and the score begins to play "San Francisco", only to have it come to a sudden stop as if the orchestra realizes they are playing the wrong music. They then go into "I'll Take Manhattan" instead. The Heart of the World [Silent Movies] Written and directed by Guy Maddin, produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. It is a homage to silent movies, and as such, it is black and white, grainy, and without dialogue, and contains many references to styles and movies of the silent era. Only 6 minutes long, it runs at a very fast pace, at an average rate of two shots per second, which is intensified by the background music, Time, forward!, by Georgy Vasilevich Sviridov. Tuvalu (1999) [Silent Movies] Experimental comic movie from Germany. The style evokes early 20th Century Silent movies and what little dialog is contained is in a mix of European languages. The film stars Denis Lavant as Anton and Chulpan Khamatova as Eva. The film charts the characters' comic efforts to escape across the sea to the island of Tuvalu.
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