In the silent era of film, marrying the image with synchronous sound was not possible for inventors and producers, since no practical method was devised until 1923. For the first thirty years of their history, films were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist.
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Film history from 1895 to 1906
The first eleven years of motion pictures show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films represent a movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions.
Bellow you have a list of some well-known silent movies of this time. Click on them to watch the films and discover more things about them.
The Astronomer’s Dream (French: Le Reve D’un Astronome, original title: La lune à un mètre) is a 1898 French short black-and-white silent film, directed by Georges Méliès.
Synopsis.
In the observatory, the astronomer is studying at his desk. Satan appears, then a woman appears and makes Satan vanish. Then she disappears. The astronomer draws a globe on a blackboard. The globe develops a sun-like head and limbs and starts to move on the blackboard. The astronomer looks through a small telescope.
The moon appears in a building as a large face. It has eaten the astronomer’s telescope. Men tumble from its mouth. Then the moon is in the sky. The astronomer, in different dress, stands on a table, which disappears. He falls.
The moon becomes a crescent. A spirit, in the form of a lady, appears from it. The astronomer chases her, but she eludes him. Now another figure stands in the crescent of the moon, before reclining into its C shape.
The moon appears as a large face again, and the astronomer jumps into its mouth. a woman and Satan appears. The astronomer appears again. Then, in the observatory, the astronomer is sitting asleep in his chair.
A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: Jules Verne‘s From the Earth to the Moon and H. G. Wells’The First Men in the Moon.
The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. The film runs 14 minutes if projected at 16 frames per second, which was the standard frame rate at the time the film was produced. It was extremely popular at the time of its release, and is the best-known of the hundreds of fantasy films made by Méliès. A Trip to the Moon is the first known science fiction film, and uses innovative animation and special effects, including the well-known image of the spaceship landing in the Moon’s eye.
Plot.
At a meeting of astronomers, their president proposes a trip to the Moon. After addressing some dissent, six brave astronomers agree to the plan. They build a space capsule in the shape of a bullet, and a huge cannon to shoot it into space. The astronomers embark and their capsule is fired from the cannon with the help of “marines“, most of whom are portrayed as a bevy of beautiful women in sailors’ outfits, while the rest are men. The Man in the Moon watches the capsule as it approaches, and it hits him in the eye.
Well-known frame of A Trip to the Moon.
Landing safely on the Moon, the astronomers get out of the capsule and watch the Earth rise in the distance. Exhausted by their journey, the astronomers unroll their blankets and sleep. As they sleep, a comet passes, the Big Dipper appears with human faces peering out of each star, old Saturn leans out of a window in his ringed planet, and Phoebe, goddess of the Moon, appears seated in a crescent-moon swing. Phoebe calls down a snowfall that awakens the astronomers. They seek shelter in a cavern and discover giant mushrooms. One astronomer opens his umbrella; it promptly takes root and turns into a giant mushroom itself.
At this point, a Selenite (an insectoid alien inhabitant of the Moon, named after one of the Greek moon goddesses, Selene) appears, but it is killed easily by an astronomer, as the creatures explode if they are hit with a hard force. More Selenites appear and it becomes increasingly difficult for the astronomers to destroy them as they are surrounded. The Selenites arrest the astronomers and bring them to their commander at the Selenite palace. An astronomer lifts the Chief Selenite off his throne and dashes him to the ground, exploding him.
Explorers in the Selenites Palace.
The astronomers run back to their capsule while continuing to hit the pursuing Selenites, and five get inside. The sixth uses a rope to tip the capsule over a ledge on the Moon and into space. A Selenite tries to seize the capsule at the last minute. Astronomer, capsule, and Selenite fall through space and land in an ocean on Earth. The Selenite falls off and the capsule floats back to the surface, where they are rescued by a ship and towed ashore.
Hand-colored version.
Like many of Méliès’s films, A Trip to the Moon was sold in both black-and-white and hand-colored versions. A hand-colored print, the only one known to survive, was rediscovered in 1993 by the Filmoteca de Catalunya. It was in a state of almost total decomposition, but a frame-by-frame restoration was launched in 1999 and completed in 2010 at the Technicolor Lab of Los Angeles- and after West Wing Digital Studios matched the original hand tinting by colorizing the damaged areas of the newly restored black and white.
L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc (The Man With The Rubber Head) is a 1902 silent French fantasy film directed by Georges Méliès. It was filmed in 1901 and released in 1902.
Synopsis.
A chemist in his laboratory places upon a table his own head, alive; then fixing upon his head a rubber tube with a pair of bellows, he begins to blow with all his might. Immediately the head increases in size and continues to enlarge until it becomes truly colossal while making faces. The chemist, fearing to burst it, opens a cock in the tube. The head immediately contracts and resumes its original size. He then calls his assistant and informs him of his discovery. The assistant, wishing to experiment for himself, seizes the bellows and blows into the head with all his might. The head swells until it bursts with a crash, knocking over the two experimenters. The chemist then literally kicks his assistant from the lab in anger.
The film was made after A Trip to the Moon. To create the illusion of an expanding head, Melies “zoomed” in on his own head with a camera and superimposed this onto the film. He received the idea from Albert A. Hopkins‘ ‘Magic – Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions‘.
Safety Last! is a 1923 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd’s status as a major figure in early motion pictures. It is still popular at revivals, and it is viewed today as one of the great film comedies.
Harold Lloyd’s iconic scene in the silent film “Safety Last” (1923). One of the most famous images from the silent film era with Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock from the outside of a skyscraper.
The film’s title is a play on the common expression, “safety first,” which places safety as the primary priority to avoid accidents. Lloyd performed some of his climbing stunts despite losing a thumb and forefinger in an accident while making a film four years earlier.
Synopsis.
The film opens in 1922 with Harold Lloyd (the character has the same name as the actor) behind bars. His mother and his girlfriend, Mildred, consoling him as a somber official and priest show up. The three of them walk toward what looks like a noose. It then becomes obvious they are at a train station and the “noose” is actually a track-side pickup hoop used by train crews to receive orders without stopping, and the bars are merely the ticket barrier. He promises to send for his girlfriend so they can get married once he has “made good” in the big city. Then he is off.
He gets a job as a salesclerk at the De Vore Department Store, where he has to pull various stunts to get out of trouble with the picky head floorwalker, Mr. Stubbs. He shares a rented room with his pal “Limpy” Bill, a construction worker.
When Harold finishes his shift, he sees an old friend from his hometown who is now a policeman walking the beat. After he leaves, Bill shows up. Bragging to Bill about his influence with the police department, he persuades Bill to knock the policeman backwards over him while the man is using a call-box. When Bill does so, he knocks over the wrong policeman. To escape, he climbs up the facade of a building. The policeman tries to follow, but cannot get past the first floor; in frustration, he shouts at Bill, “YOU’LL DO TIME FOR THIS! THE FIRST TIME I LAY EYES ON YOU AGAIN, I’LL PINCH YOU!”
Meanwhile, Harold has been hiding his lack of success by sending his girlfriend expensive presents he cannot really afford. She mistakenly thinks he is successful enough to support a family and, with his mother’s encouragement, takes a train to join him. In his embarrassment, he has to pretend to be the general manager, even succeeding in impersonating him to get back at Stubbs. While going to retrieve her purse (which Mildred left in the manager’s office), he overhears the real general manager say he would give $1,000 to anyone who could attract people to the store. He remembers Bill’s talent and pitches the idea of having a man climb the “12-story Bolton building”, which De Vore’s occupies. He gets Bill to agree to do it by offering him $500. The stunt is highly publicized and a large crowd gathers the next day.
When a drunkard shows “The Law” (the policeman who was pushed over) a newspaper story about the event, the lawman suspects Bill is going to be the climber. He waits at the starting point despite Harold’s frantic efforts to get him to leave. Finally, unable to wait any longer, Bill suggests Harold climb the first story himself and then switch his hat and coat with Bill, who will continue on from there. After Harold starts up, the policeman spots Bill and chases him into the building. Every time Harold tries to switch places with Bill, the policeman appears and chases Bill away. Each time, Bill tells his friend he will meet him on the next floor up. Eventually, Harold reaches the top, despite his troubles with a clock and some hungry pigeons, and kisses his girl. She continues to believe that he’s general manager of De Vore.
Life of an American Fireman is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903. One of the earliest American narrative films, it depicts the rescue of a woman and child from a burning building.
Historical significance.
Life of an American Fireman is notable for its synthesis of numerous innovations in film technique that had occurred around the turn of the century. Specifically, Porter builds a continuous narrative over seven scenes, rendered in a total of nine shots:
The Fireman’s Vision of an Imperilled Woman and Child.
A Close View of a New York Fire Alarm Box.
The Interior of the Sleeping Quarters in the Fire House.
Interior of the Engine House.
The Apparatus Leaving the Engine House.
Off to the Fire.
The Arrival at the Fire.
This particular construction of time and space was not invented by Porter, but he did maximize its use and further develop it in his more famous film of 1903, The Great Train Robbery.
Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (also known as La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (original title) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince‘s 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years.
The film consists of a single scene in which workers leave the Lumiere factory. The workers are mostly female who exit the large building 25 rue St. Victor, Montplaisir on the outskirts of Lyon, France, as if they had just finished a day’s work.
Three separate versions of this film exist. There are a number of differences between these, for example the clothing style changes demonstrating the different seasons in which they were filmed. They are often referred to as the “one horse“, “two horses“, and “no horse” versions, in reference to a horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first two versions (pulled by one horse in the original and two horses in the first remake).
Production.
This 46-second movie was filmed in Lyon, France, by Louis Lumière. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. This film was shown in 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, along with nine other short movies.
As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (translated from French into English as The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Contrary to myth, it was not shown at the Lumières’ first public film screening on 28 December 1895 in Paris, France: the programme of ten films shown that day makes no mention of it. Its first public showing took place in January 1896.
This 50-second silent film shows the entry of a train pulled by a steam locomotive into a train station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. Like most of the early Lumière films, L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat consists of a single, unedited view illustrating an aspect of everyday life. There is no apparent intentional camera movement, and the film consists of one continuous real-time shot.
Production
This 50-second movie was filmed in La Ciotat, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
Contemporary reaction.
The film is associated with an urban legend well known in the world of cinema. The story goes that when the film was first shown, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room. Hellmuth Karasek in the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote that the film “had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic.” However, some have doubted the veracity of this incident such as film scholar and historian Martin Loiperdinger in his essay, “Lumiere’s Arrival of the Train: Cinema’s Founding Myth“. Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people in the audience who were unaccustomed to the amazingly realistic illusions created by moving pictures.
The Lumière brothers clearly knew that the effect would be dramatic if they placed the camera on the platform very close to the arriving train. Another significant aspect of the film is that it illustrates the use of the long shot to establish the setting of the film, followed by a medium shot, and close-up. (As the camera is static for the entire film, the effect of these various “shots” is affected by the movement of the subject alone.) The train arrives from a distant point and bears down on the viewer, finally crossing the lower edge of the screen.
Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 short film directed by inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second, runs for 2.11 seconds and is the oldest surviving film.
According to Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, it was filmed at Oakwood Grange, the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom on October 14, 1888.
It features Adolphe Le Prince, Sarah Whitley, Joseph Whitley and Harriet Hartley in the garden, walking around and laughing. Note that Sarah is walking backwards as she turns around, and that Joseph’s coat tails are flying as he also is turning. Continue reading →
THE SILENT ERA OF FILM
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