An
Ode To Film | The Silent Film Era: 1904-1928
Written by: Marianne
Moro
To most moviegoers, silent films remain an enigma, a blip in the
history of cinema before "real" thing, i.e.
"talkies" emerged. In examining the beginnings of film as a
popular medium, it is important to note how precisely the foundations
for all aspects of the film business were imprinted by the first
studios, actors, directors, producers and exhibitors.
From the ground up, the cinema or "photoplay" industry as it
was first called, totally reinvented the way Americans spent their
leisure time. Film studios sprouted across the country in New York
State and Chicago as well as California. Not surprisingly, due to the
weather and the influence of a few big players, the industry moved
westward. Among the first notable studios, most of the names have
endured as today's major players. World and Triangle (circa
1915), Famous Players-Lasky (Astoria, NY), Warner Brothers in
Hollywood (produced their first film in 1920), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Fox, & Universal produced the majority of silent film features.
Director, producer, writer, and starmaker Cecil Demille (as in Mr.
Demille I'm ready for my close-up) ruled Hollywood with an iron fist.
Among his famous comments to employees: "You are here to please
me. Nothing else earth matters."
The first movie to make the rounds of theatres around the country was
The Great American Train Robbery. A ten-minute film based on a train
robbery committed by the Butch Cassidy gang; the film was the
brainchild of Edwin Porter who had worked with Thomas Edison. The film
was shown to audiences around the country, who were mesmerized by this
depiction. The first Nickelodeon showing of The Great Train
Robbery was in Pittsburgh in 1906. With the popularity of the Train
Robbery, the silent film industry exploded. Soon enough the small
nickelodeon theatres were replaced by grand movie palaces that
featured anything from piano accompaniment to full orchestra to
supplement films.
Extravagant roadshows with full orchestras soon followed in many
theatres, though they were pioneered by New York's Roxy. Exhibitors
would sometimes even speed up the film to get paying customers in and
out faster.
Buy Your Own Cherries made in 1904 by Richard Paul showed how even the
earliest, briefest film conveyed emotion, character and substance.
This film told the story of a domineering father who relinquishes his
stern authority after seeing his children cower in fear underneath the
kitchen table and examines the class divide between a working class
and upper class. Even in the first days of film narrative, even before
films were produced for public viewing the narrative structure of
modern film was set in motion.
As the film industry grew, a myriad of stars were born and they set
the archetypes for the various genres of stars we have today - comedy,
drama and romance.
Comedies provided the best initial "box office" with Buster
Keaton and Charlie Chaplin as the most visible stars. Slapstick antics
of the Keystone Kops and Harold Lloyd. Buster Keaton is favored cited
as a favorite by many film historians. Among his classics are The
General and Sherlock Jr. Born into a vaudeville family, he began
performing onstage as a child, garnering rave reviews from practically
his first show. Known as "Stone Face", his style influenced
generations of comedians to follow. Chaplin's films and characters,
including the Great Dictator and the Little Tramp are among the most
recognizable performances in film even today. The third major star in
this trilogy was Harold Lloyd. Lloyd got his start working with Hal
Roach. The studio originally wanted him to be a Chaplin clone; however
he subsequently developed his own character - a bespectacled lion in
ships clothing character. The most famous image of Lloyd is from his
film Safety Last, featuring Lloyd hanging precariously from a huge
clock on an office building.
Some of the most successful comedians of the early '30s such as W.C.
Fields and the Little Rascals, got their start in silent films. Female
comedians were much more scarce. Mabel Desmond, playing a schoolmarm,
was the only well-known comedienne at this point.
Mary Pickford was the most revered and successful of silent film
females, starring in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Broken Blossoms.
No shrinking violet, despite her legion of winsome All-American roles,
Pickford formed United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks. She and
Fairbanks were the first Hollywood power couple. They even testified
at one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of the day. Testifying in
front of the Motion Picture Commission in 1923, she and husband
Douglas Fairbanks revealed that motion picture exhibitors block
bookings prohibited independently produced films from being shown and
that studio czar Adolph Zukor had tried to "bribe" Pickford
to retire from the picture business.
The first American dramas dealt almost solely with historical context. D.W.
Griffith's Birth of A Nation, Intolerance, and Biblical epics such as
Demille's King of Kings, sated both the artist and audience's needs
for lavish productions.
Lon Chaney was the first horror film star in America, his most famous
role being The Phantom Of The Opera. Foreign directors
brought the genre a refined edge, most notably Germany's F.W. Murnau
in Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula. The myth
surrounding the film's star Max Schreck, provided fodder for Shadow of
the Vampire, the Academy Award nominated film with Williem Dafoe and
John Malkovich. Waegner's Der Golem, another example of the German
Expressionist movement, along with Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, influenced the legions of horror filmmakers. Though free of
the intricacies of the fledging U.S. movie system, foreign filmmakers
explored mostly dramatic subjects and pioneered horror imagery.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis has some of the most copied silent film images in
modern lexicon, with Madonna videos to TV commercials gleaning some of
its look. With its huge, surrealistic sets, and The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari visually stunning and the character of look eerily similar to
Edward Scissorhands.
Many of the images and scenes from silent films have been adapted for
use in modern film, such as the Odessa Steps sequence in Russian
director's Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, called by many
critics the most famous sequence ever filmed.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so to
counter the sweet auras of Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish, vamps like
Theda Bara and Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. Scandal (or rumored
scandals) ended Brook’s career, but not before she appeared in the
first film ever to win an academy award. In a sexy but sassy mold,
Louise Brooks co-starred in films with WC Fields, Wallace Beery and
William Powell, but gained notoriety as a temptress in G.W. Pabst's
Pandora’s Box. With her black Dutch boy bob and dark
“come-hither” eyes, she was the penultimate flapper.
Douglas Fairbanks, John Barrymore, and Rudolf Valentino exemplified
the dashing, handsome hero of the first films. Valentino, nicknamed
“The Sheik” and the “Great Lover”, has appeared in 14 films
before his untimely death at the age of 31. His dashing, gigolo moves
made him the screen's first Lothario in such films as Blood and Sand
(1921) and Son of the Sheik, although his debut was in The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse. John Barrymore's performances ran the
gamut, from hero to villain to comedian, in such classics as Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Beau Brummel.
Conditions were rough, and of course filmmakers had no past record to
examine. They had to play it by improvising solutions quickly. In one
eyewitness account, a motion picture engineer remembered the
circumstances surrounding filming in both the Arctic and the South
Seas. Dealing with problems as diverse as preserving film under trying
weather conditions, transporting of equipment and props, as well as
actors.
The film business did not start out pristine and turn scandalous.
Rather, in many ways without mass media to keep the powers that be in
check, scandals were rampant and even "stars" had no power
over the directors and moneymen. Scandals could derail an actor's
career in the years that followed, (or simply become another form of
publicity). However, in the early days of cinema, the slightest hint
of impropriety could damage an actor's reputation beyond repair.
Scandal ended the careers of stars Fatty Arbuckle and Clara Bow.
As The Jazz Singer and the advent of
"talkies" some silent film stars disappeared overnight,
others made the transition to speaking roles with varying degrees of
success. Greta Garbo, W.C. Fields, were among the most prosperous
stars of the '30s, '40s and '50s. Even today, the stark cinematography
and emotional intensity of many silent films remains unrivaled.
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