Happy National Silent Movie Day! This day is dedicated to celebrating, preserving and creating access to any and all silent films, a vastly misunderstood and neglected cinematic art form.
Those at NSMD believe that silent motion pictures are a vital, beautiful, and often powerful part of film history, and they are united in the goal to advocate for their presentation and preservation.
Bottom: Images Courtesy George Eastman Museum, Davide Turconi Collection
SIGNIFICANCE
Early moving images are a form of time travel; they are a portal to the past that offers current audiences an opportunity to study and explore how generations before us experienced the wonder of moving images.
What started as parlor entertainment evolved into a shared connection among groups of strangers gathered together in community oriented public spaces large and small.
Silent movies offer variety, from the early documentation of ordinary human experience, all the way up to elaborately executed fantasies that stir excitement and intrigue—a timeline traced through four decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
This was a period that proved the endless possibilities that moving images could convey—from the interpretation of rural and cosmopolitan lifestyles, to confronting provocative and controversial subject matter—the many forms and functions silent movies embodied pointed the way to what is now a dominating and influential force of entertainment, knowledge, growth, and change.
STATISTICS
They believe that silent film is a vital, beautiful, and often overlooked part of film history. Their goal is to advocate for its presentation and preservation.
This day provides an opportunity for academics, aficionados, programmers, archivists and enthusiasts to gather around their shared appreciation of this unique period in visual arts and culture.
It is also a time to rally around silent film initiatives for preservation and access, as well as raise awareness of the small percentage of film that remains from this period of the motion picture industry.
GOALS
• Promoting silent film access through virtual and theatrical screenings.
• Growing the event so international collaborations and partnerships are possible.
• Possible funding ideas that promote and preserve silent film.
• Promote research into silent cinema and the persons/studios/technology that nourished and developed it.
Q: Why is this day celebrated and observed?
A: Motion picture film was first commercially produced in 1889, but the innovation of adding a pre-recorded soundtrack directly onto the film did not become standard until around 1930. This roughly four-decade period marks the silent film era.
Instead of soundtracks, silent movies had intertitles, which displayed character dialog or text that helped describe the events occurring up on the screen.
The greatest directors of the period recognized the power of the image to convey story elements, and used intertitles only when necessary.
Yet silent pictures were never truly “silent” as they regularly included live musical accompaniment on piano, theater organ or by a small orchestra.
Movies from the silent period were printed on unstable flammable nitrocellulose film stock, which can deteriorate until the film is no longer viewable; it was also common practice for studios to destroy or reclaim the silver content from prints after their theatrical runs were completed.
Many more films vanished when a number of studios had disastrous vault fires or simply destroyed prints and negatives when it became too expensive to store them.
Approximately eighty percent of all silent pictures made in the silent era are lost forever.
However, thousands of silent movies still survive. Archives across the world work diligently to preserve and restore these remaining treasures and share them with annual film festivals, local arthouses, and film societies as they become newly available.
Specialty distributors then expand their accessibility through releases on disc, streaming platforms, and cable networks.
Q: Why watch silent movies?
A: History hasn’t been kind to films from the silent era. More often than not, these films are saddled with all types of negative stereotypes: actors’ wild gesticulations, scratchy images, fast and spastic movement, and perhaps most heinous of all—that there is no sound accompaniment.
Contrary to popular belief, silent filmmaking was very sophisticated (especially by the 1920s), and many of the great directors of this era used the format to their advantage.
Since the plot was primarily expressed through the use of pictorial elements, those images needed to be visually fantastic and memorable. In fact, screenwriting students study silent films for this very reason.
The hope for National Silent Movie Day is to inspire new audiences by presenting silent pictures as they were intended to be seen: at the appropriate speed and with a musical accompaniment (piano or otherwise).
In so doing, the grandeur that the silent movie going experience brings can be transcendent and inspiring.
“The silent cinema was not a primitive style of filmmaking, waiting for better technology to appear, but an alternate form of storytelling, with artistic triumphs equivalent to or greater than those of the sound films that followed.”
–David Pierce, The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929, page 5
What is your favorite silent movie(s)?
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