Silent film - Wikipedia. A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. En manhattan-melodram; I timi tou gangster; Istories tis nyktas; Kuolemaantuomittu; L'ennemi public n. Manhattan Melodrama (1934) Release Info. Date de sortie : 1934. Drame social de Richard Fleischer. Van Dyke, George Cukor avec Clark Gable, William Powell, Leo Carrillo, Nat Pendleton. The silent film era lasted from 1. In silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1. Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or in large cities, even a small orchestra would often play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise; an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym. The early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1. Within a decade, popular widespread production of silent films had ceased and production moved into the sound era, in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects. A September 2. 01. Liste (non exhaustive) de films am. Drame: Manhattan Melodrama: George Cukor: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy: Drame, romance: Maniac.United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 7. American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost. The elderly lady in black was filmmaker Louis Le Prince's mother- in- law and she died a week after this scene was taken. The earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern, to project images from glass slides onto a wall. These slides were originally hand- painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1. Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called . Roget showed that when a series of still images are shown at a considerable speed in front of a viewer's eye, the images merge into one registered image that appears to show movement, an optical illusion, since the image is not actually moving. This experience was further demonstrated through Roget's introduction of the thaumatrope, a device which spun a disk with an image on its surface at a fairly high rate of speed. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horse's gallop. The oldest surviving film (of the genera called . It was a two- second film of people walking in . Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, which laid the foundation for widespread film production. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumi. This doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. In artistic innovation alone, the height of the silent era from the early 1. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film- making of the 2. The silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view. Lighting techniques such as three point lighting, visual techniques such as the close- up, long shot, panning, and continuity editing became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by . Film scholars and movie buffs claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1. However, there is a widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well- preserved films are often played back at the wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, resulting in what may appear to be poor editing. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silents than in sound films for decades. By the early 1. 92. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built- in recorded sound, and thus were abandoned. The innovative three- strip technicolor process introduced in the mid- 3. Intertitles. Because 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 decoration that commented on the action. This was furthered in 1. United States at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. Beginning in the mid- 1. Massive theater organs were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra. Theatre organs had a wide range of special effects; theatrical organs such as the famous . Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. Griffith's groundbreaking epic The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect, such as a . But the introduction of talkies, which happened simultaneously with the onset of the Great Depression, was devastating to many musicians. Some countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil featured fitas cantatas: filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be: A) complete reconstructions of composed scores, B) scores newly composed for the occasion, C) scores assembled from already existing music libraries, or D) scores improvised on the spot in the manner of the silent era theater pianist or organist. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of the time. Since around 1. 98. An early effort in this context was Kevin Brownlow's 1. Abel Gance's Napol. A slightly re- edited and sped- up version of Brownlow's restoration was later distributed in America by Francis Ford Coppola, with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola. In 1. 98. 4, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1. Giorgio Moroder. Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury of Queen, Pat Benatar, and Jon Anderson of Yes was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to presentation of classic silent films. Currently, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. Other purveyors of the traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand, G. Carli, Ben Model, and William P. Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring. Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on Turner Classic Movies or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as The Big Parade (1. Flesh and the Devil (1. Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring films of Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase and others. Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin's scores, in addition to composing new scores. Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation and sound design elements to enhance the viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantan. Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing the actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Velez, Edwin Carewe's Evangeline with Dolores del Rio, and Rupert Julian's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern- day audiences as simplistic or campy. The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. As early as 1. 91. American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in the mid 1. Due to the work of directors such as D W Griffith, cinematography became less stage- like, and the then- revolutionary close up allowed subtle and naturalistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's .
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