These are the films of the early era that were without synchronized sound, from the earliest film (around 1891), until 1927, when the first 'talkie', The Jazz Singer (1927) was produced, although there were a few other 'silent' later on, such as City Lights (1931).
Calling them silent films is something of a misnomer - movie theatres and other dream palaces provided pianists, wurlitzers, and other sound machines, and some films were produced with complete musical scores. Most early silent were accompanied with a full-fledged orchestra, organist or pianist to provide musical background and to underscore the narrative on the screen. Some even had live actors or narrators. Unfortunately, many of the early classics have been lost to decomposing nitrate film bases and outright destruction.
Many early silent films were dramas, epics, romances, or comedies (often slapstick). One-reelers (10-12 minutes) soon gave way to four-reel feature-length films.
Early masters of cinema during the silent years included Cecil B. De Mille, known for his epics such as The Ten Commandments (1923), Erich Von Stroheim's dramatic tale of the degenerative effects of avarice in Greed (1924), King Vidor's war drama The Big Parade (1925) and his simple yet dramatic story The Crowd (1928) of a young couple in the city experiencing the plight of Everyman. In addition, F. W. Murnau is most famous for his silent melodramatic masterpiece Sunrise (1927).
Early pioneering director D. W. Griffith was often identified with epics including:
- Broken Blossoms (1919), the melodramatic story of an abused girl (Lillian Gish) who is cared for by a young Chinese man
- Orphans of the Storm (1921) - a tale set during the French Revolution
The most-remembered films from the silent years are the visual comedies from the Mack Sennett Keystone Kops series, starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, and slapstick from the 'silent clowns.' Tragi-comic superstar Charlie Chaplin is most noted for The Kid (1921), his classics including The Gold Rush (1925), the exquisite City Lights (1931), and his first mute "silent film" with sound Modern Times (1936) - a satire on the machine age.
Physically-daring comedian Buster Keaton ("Old or Great Stone face") appeared in many other classic comedies, including Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1927), and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Harold Lloyd's most famous silent film found him dangling from a clock on the side of a city building in Safety Last (1923).
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1894 to 1929. 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 1920s with the perfection of the Audio 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, that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively. The early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures". 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 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost.[1] There are numerous reasons for the loss of so many silent films, three chief causes being: (a) intentional destruction by film studios after the silent era ended, (b) damage due to environmental degradation of the films themselves, and (c) fires in the vaults in which studios stored their films.
Fonte : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_film