Silent Movie

A film with no spoken dialogue. Until the late 1920s, this was a technological limitation, though filmmakers certainly made the most of it. Almost from the beginning of the medium, people attempted to combine moving pictures with prerecorded audio, but none of these technologies achieved commercial acceptance and success until Warner Bros./First National Pictures introduced its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system in 1926. After the early-to-mid 1930s, it was as much an artistic decision as Deliberately Monochrome became after the introduction of color.

Note that we said "no spoken dialogue"; these films were not meant to be exhibited in actual silence. Many silent movies (especially the big-budget ones) did have a soundtrack in the form of a custom musical score either for the entire movie or just a few key scenes, intended to be performed by live musicians in the theatre. In the grand movie palaces of big cities there might be an orchestra providing music. Even if the filmmakers didn't prepare custom scores or recommended musical cues, exhibitors usually screened these films with atmospheric live organ, piano, or other musical accompaniment.

Some scores even called for sound effects, also performed live, and a few called for important bits of dialog to be read out by live actors. Unfortunately, most of the scores have been lost.

The Rise of the Talkies came more or less out of nowhere. The first film to have a synchronized soundtrack was 1926 film Don Juan, but that consisted only of a musical score. 1927 film The Jazz Singer upped the ante, by putting all of Al Jolson's songs on the soundtrack, as well as a single four-minute dialogue scene. (The rest of the movie was a conventional silent.). The film created a sensation. 1928 saw the release of Lights of New York, the first all-talking film. By 1929 silent film production had ended in Hollywood; the last silent produced by one of the major studios was MGM's The Kiss in November 1929.

As the talkies came in many studios accommodated theaters that hadn't rushed to invest in talkie technology by offering some of their features in both silent and sound versions (e.g., Hitchcock's Blackmail [1929]). Other late silent films were offered with optional recorded soundtracks (synchronized music and sound effects, but no dialogue).

See also: Early Films, Films of the 1920s

See also Mime and Music-Only Cartoon, which are basically animated silent films. And then there are Music Videos. Any video that attempts to tell a story (for example, the famous "Take On Me" video by a-ha) is basically a short silent film with musical accompaniment.

A bit of trivia: Did you know that the first four Academy Awards for Best Cinematography all went to silent films? Because of the cumbersome sound-synchronization cameras and recording equipment of the early talkie era, they were rarely shot on location, giving silent film cinematographers a distinct advantage. Those first four winners were

• Sunrise (1927/28) — Charles Rosher and Karl Struss
• White Shadows in the South Seas (1928/29) — Clyde De Vinna
• With Byrd at the South Pole (1929/30) — Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van Der Veer
• Tabu (1930/31) — Floyd Crosby

Lee Garmes won the first Best Cinematography Oscar to go to a talkie for Shanghai Express (1931/32).

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Notable silent films

• Most of the movies listed in Early Films
  • Shorts

• The Adventurer
• Big Business
• The Blacksmith
• Blue Beard
• The Boat
• Coney Island
• Convict 13
• Cops
• The Country Doctor
• The Cure (1917)
• The Dancing Pig
• A Dog's Life
• Easy Street
• The Fireman
• The Frozen North
• The Goat
• The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• The Haunted House
• Hard Luck
• The High Sign
• The Idle Class
• The Immigrant
• An Interesting Story
• The Kiss
• The Lonely Villa
• The Love Nest
• Mabel's Strange Predicament
• The New York Hat
• My Wife's Relations
• Neighbors
• One Week
• The Paleface
• Pass the Gravy
• The Pilgrim
• The Rink
• Roundhay Garden Scene
• Sadie Thompson
• The Scarecrow
• Shoulder Arms
• The Tramp
• A Trip to the Moon
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

• Features
  • America
  • The Battleship Potemkin
  • Battling Butler
  • Ben-Hur (1925)
  • The Big Parade
  • The Birth of a Nation (1915)
  • The Blackbird
  • The Black Pirate
  • The Black Stork
  • The Boob
  • Broken Blossoms
  • The Burning of Red Lotus Temple
  • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • The Cameraman
  • The Cat and the Canary
  • Chang
  • The Cheat
  • Un Chien Andalou
  • The Circle (1925)
  • The Circus
  • College (1927)
  • The Cossacks
  • The Crowd
  • Desert Nights
  • Diary of a Lost Girl
  • The Docks Of New York
  • Ella Cinders
  • The Family Secret
  • Faust
  • Filibus
  • Flesh and the Devil
  • Foolish Wives
  • The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
  • The Freshman (1925)
  • The General
  • Get Your Man
  • Girl Shy
  • The Golem
  • The Gold Rush
  • Go West
  • Grandma's Boy (1922)
  • Grass
  • Greed
  • The Hands of Orlac
  • Häxan
  • He Who Gets Slapped
  • Hearts of the World
  • Hot Water
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Intolerance
  • The Iron Horse
  • It
  • The Jazz Singer (Contrary to popular belief, most of the movie was silent)
  • The Kid Brother
  • The King of Kings
  • The Kid (1921)
  • Little Old New York
  • The Lodger
  • The Lost World
  • The Magician
  • The Man from Kangaroo
  • Man with a Movie Camera
  • The Mark of Zorro
  • The Merry Widow
  • Metropolis
  • Miss Lulu Bett
  • The Monster
  • The Mysterious Lady
  • Nanook of the North
  • Napoleon
  • The Navigator
  • Never Weaken
  • Die Nibelungen
  • Nosferatu
  • October
  • Orphans of the Storm
  • Our Dancing Daughters
  • Our Hospitality
  • Pandora's Box
  • The Passion of Joan of Arc
  • The Patchwork Girl of Oz
  • The Patsy
  • The Phantom Carriage
  • The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
  • The Power of the Press
  • Robin Hood 1912
  • Robin Hood (1922)
  • Rosita
  • Safety Last!
  • A Sailor-Made Man
  • Seven Chances
  • The Sheik
  • Sherlock, Jr.
  • The Show
  • Show People
  • Snow White (1916)
  • The Son of the Sheik
  • Speedy
  • Steamboat Bill, Jr.
  • Stella Maris
  • Strike
  • The Strong Man
  • The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
  • Sunrise
  • Tell It to the Marines
  • The Temptress
  • The Ten Commandments (1923)
  • The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
  • Three Ages
  • The Three Musketeers (1921)
  • Tillie's Punctured Romance
  • The Toll of the Sea
  • Torrent
  • Underworld (1927)
  • The Unholy Three
  • The Unknown
  • Way Down East
  • The Wedding March
  • West of Zanzibar
  • When Knighthood Was in Flower
  • The White Sister
  • Why Be Good?
  • Why Worry?
  • Wild and Woolly
  • The Wind (1928)
  • Within Our Gates
  • The Wizard of Oz (1925)
  • A Woman of Paris
  • Zaza

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Notable silents from the talkie era:

• City Girl (1930) — F.W. Murnau film that was released in both silent and talking versions; the talking version is lost
• City Lights (1931) — Charlie Chaplin's first refusal to acknowledge talkies
• Limite (1931) — experimental Brazilian film
• Tabu (1931) — the last film of F.W. Murnau, about a forbidden romance between two Pacific Islanders
• Silent film production lasted quite a bit longer in Asia. Silent movies from China or Japan^note In Japan silent films were produced into the early 1940s produced in the 1930s include:
  • Walk Cheerfully (1930)
  • Peach Blossom Weeps Tears of Blood (1931)
  • Tokyo Chorus (1931)
  • I Was Born, But... (1932)
  • Wild Rose (1932)
  • Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (1932)
  • Dragnet Girl (1933)
  • Passing Fancy (1933)
  • The Goddess (1934)
  • A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)
• Modern Times (1936) — Charlie Chaplin's second refusal to acknowledge talkies
• The Thief (1952) — spy thriller starring Ray Milland, told without any dialogue
• Dementia — horror film with no dialogue
• Silent Movie (1976) — Mel Brooks makes a tribute to silent slapstick; marketed as "the first silent movie in 40 years" (i.e. since Modern Times)^note Technically there is one line — one word, in fact — of synchronized spoken dialogue.
• Le Bal (1983) — History of France 1936-83, told by the dancers in a nightclub, without any dialogue
• Koyaanisqatsi (1983) — Kind of a documentary, but really more of a film collage portraying the state of modern civilization, told without any dialogue or narration
• Sidewalk Stories (1989) — remake of Chaplin's The Kid, set amongst the homeless of Greenwich Village, without any dialogue or any title cards
• Cowards Bend the Knee (2003) — by avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin
• The Call of Cthulhu (2005) — Adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, made to look like it has been produced at the time the original story was written (H. P. Lovecraft wrote The Call of Cthulhu in 1926 and published it in 1928).
• Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) — Le Film Artistique from Guy Maddin, accompanied by narration from Isabella Rossellini
• Daft Punk's Electroma (2006) — film about two robots trying to become human; no dialogue, lots of desert trekking
• Tejut (2007) — Hungarian film composed of multiple silent static Oners.
• The Artist (2011) — A deliberately Retraux romantic comedy about, appropriately enough, a silent movie star who struggles to adjust to talkies
• Blancanieves (2012) — Similar to The Artist above, done as a Deliberately Monochrome silent movie in 1920s style, a take on Snow White set in 1920s Spain
• All Is Lost (2013) — Robert Redford as a sailor alone on his yacht who struggles to survive when the yacht founders. Almost completely dialogue-free.
• Moebius (2013) — Korean film about a wife who takes violent revenge on her cheating husband, told without any dialogue or written words.
• Wonderstruck (2017) — Todd Haynes period piece, based on the YA novel from Brian Selznick (of Hugo fame, below) with two storylines, one of which is set in the 1920s, in black-and-white and silent.
• Hundreds of Beavers (2022) — Black and white comedy about a trapper who attempts to win the blessing of his would-be father-in-law by bringing him hundreds of beavers.

Notable talkies about the silent film era:

• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Singin' in the Rain (1952)
• The Comic (1969)
• Nickelodeon (1976)
• Hugo (2011)

See also

• The Silent Age of Animation
• Notable Silent Movie Actors

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