116-537: Pearl Fay White (March 4, 1889 – August 4, 1938) was an American stage and film actress. She began her career on the stage at age 6, and later moved on to silent films appearing in a number of popular serials . Dubbed the "Queen of the Serials", White was noted for doing the majority of her own stunts, most notably in The Perils of Pauline . Often cast as a plucky onscreen heroine, White's roles directly contrasted those of
232-555: A monopoly on the creation and distribution of motion pictures. Fox refused to sell out to the monopoly, and sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act , eventually receiving a $ 370,000 settlement, and ending restrictions on the length of films and the prices that could be paid for screenplays. In 1914, reflecting the broader scope of his business, he renamed it the Box Office Attraction Company He entered into
348-445: A 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 304 millimetres (12.0 in) per second. In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films , such as
464-553: A Fox film storage facility destroyed over 40,000 reels of negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Fox feature produced prior to 1932; although copies located elsewhere allowed many to survive in some form, over 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost . In 1919, Fox began a series of silent newsreels , competing with existing series such as Hearst Metrotone News , International Newsreel , and Pathé News . Fox News premiered on October 11, 1919, with subsequent issues released on
580-480: A bus on 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue onto an elevated girder. He missed the girder and struck his head. Stevenson died of a fractured skull. After the filming of Plunder was complete, White traveled to Europe for another vacation. By 1919, White had grown tired of film serials and signed with Fox Film Corporation with the ambition to appear in dramatic roles. Over the next two years, White appeared in 10 drama films for Fox but her popularity had begun to wane. At
696-706: A comeback and mused that acting in silent films was more difficult than acting in sound films. By this time, White had gained a substantial amount of weight. She told reporters she did not like to be photographed as she felt that photos made her face look fat, adding "Why should I have my picture taken when I can get paid for it?" White was married twice and had no children. She married actor Victor Sutherland on October 10, 1907. They divorced in 1914. In 1913 she lived with Jane Fearnley , an early film actress. In 1919, she married actor Wallace McCutcheon Jr., son of pioneering cinematographer and director Wallace McCutcheon Sr. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1921. By 1937, White
812-564: A contract with the Balboa Amusement Producing Company film studio, purchasing all of their films for showing in his New York area theaters and renting the prints to other exhibitors nationwide. He also continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCay 's early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur . Later that year, Fox concluded that it was unwise to be so dependent on other companies, so he purchased
928-470: A home near Cairo. According to published reports after her death, White's friends claimed that she intended to make a comeback in sound films. White later told friends that after she made a test for sound films in 1929, she was told that her voice was unsuitable. White made occasional visits to the United States in 1924, 1927, and 1937. On her last visit, White told reporters she was not interested in making
1044-413: A key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Inter-titles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action". Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by
1160-465: A low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid . The German film Tuvalu (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet-era silent films with his short The Heart of the World after which he made a feature-length silent, Brand Upon
1276-645: A much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia -toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking. Some films were hand-tinted, such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894), from Edison Studios . In it, Annabelle Whitford ,
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#17328560560281392-450: A music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue. The term silent film is a retronym —a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were variously referred to as the "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures" . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced
1508-489: A number of slapstick comedy shorts from 1912 to 1914. White then took a vacation in Europe. Upon her return, she signed with Eclectic Film Company, a subsidiary of Pathé in 1914. Pathé director Louis J. Gasnier offered her the starring role in film serial The Perils of Pauline , based on a story by playwright Charles W. Goddard . The film features the central character Pauline in a story involving considerable action, for which
1624-728: A popular player with the company and caught the attention of Pathé Frères . In 1910, White was offered a role by Pathé Frères in The Girl from Arizona , the French company's first American film produced at their studio in Bound Brook, New Jersey . She then worked at Lubin Studios in 1911 and several other of the independent studios, until the Crystal Film Company in Manhattan gave her top billing in
1740-498: A race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927) and RCA Photophone (1928). Warner Bros. was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released The Jazz Singer in 1927, which marked
1856-492: A special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color. With the development of sound-on-film technology and
1972-513: A time under the name Miss Mazee, singing American songs in a dance hall. Her travels as a singer also took her to South America. In 1910, White had trouble with her throat, and her voice began to fail from the nightly theatrical performances. She made her debut in films that year, starring in a series of one-reel dramas and comedies for Pat Powers in the Bronx. It was at Powers Films that White honed her skills at physical comedy and stunt work. She became
2088-494: A young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller , beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès . Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and
2204-406: Is a fictionalized biography of Pearl White. Silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue ). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards . The term "silent film"
2320-484: Is important in both the evolution of cinema genres and the role of women. Like many silent films, many of White's films are now considered lost . The Perils of Pauline only is known to exist in a reduced nine-reel version released in Europe in 1916, but The Exploits of Elaine survives in its entirety and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994. In 2008,
2436-448: Is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci 's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's Margarette's Feast (2003) is silent. Writer/director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with Silent (2007). While not silent, the Mr. Bean television series and movies have used
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#17328560560282552-424: Is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist , theater organist —or even, in larger cities, an orchestra —would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for
2668-535: The benshi , a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the benshi was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as benshi -narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow
2784-738: The Fox News and Fox Movietone News libraries have largely survived. The earlier series and some parts of its sound successor are now held by the University of South Carolina , with the remaining Fox Movietone News still held by the company. Fox Film briefly experimented with serial films , releasing the 15-episode Bride 13 and the 20-episode Fantômas in 1920. William Fox was unwilling to compromise on production quality in order to make serials profitable, however, and none were produced subsequently. Hundreds of one- and two-reel short films of various types were also produced by Fox. Beginning in 1916,
2900-563: The Pathé movie studio, she met Blanche Rubenstein (later married Claude Auzello) and both travelled to France where White hoped to reboot her acting career. Influenced by her French friends from Pathé, White was drawn to the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris. While living there, she made her last film for her friend, Belgian-born director Edward José , who had directed her in several serials. Silent films could be made in any country, and as White
3016-577: The Sunshine Comedy division created two-reel comedy shorts. Many of these, beginning with 1917's Roaring Lions and Wedding Bliss , starring Lloyd Hamilton , were slapstick , intended to compete with Mack Sennett 's popular offerings. Sunshine releases continued until the introduction of sound. Other short film series included Imperial Comedies , Van Bibber Comedies (with Earle Foxe ), O'Henry , Married Life of Helen and Warren , and Fox Varieties . Fox's expansion into Spanish-language films in
3132-421: The audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. 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. The pervading presence of stage actors in film
3248-556: The phonograph in 1877), and some early experiments had the projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the advent of the Vitaphone system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and
3364-706: The Éclair studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey , along with property in Staten Island , and arranged for actors and crew. The company became a film studio , using the name Box Office Attraction Company; its first release was Life's Shop Window . Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Fox concentrated on acquiring and building theaters; pictures were secondary. The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee where it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based at
3480-522: The 1899 Cendrillion (Cinderella) and 1900 Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or mise-en-scène ; such precise tinting used the workshop of Elisabeth Thuillier in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' A Trip to
3596-519: The Army (1916–1917), The Fatal Ring (1917), The House of Hate (1918), The Lightning Raider (1919) and The Black Secret (1919–1920). In these serials, White flew airplanes, raced cars, swam across rivers, and did other similar feats. She did much of her own stunt work until Pathé decided that it could not risk injuring one of its popular stars. (She had already injured her spine during the filming of The Perils of Pauline , an injury that caused her pain for
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3712-510: The Brain! (2006), incorporating live Foley artists , narration and orchestra at select showings. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Some films draw a direct contrast between
3828-642: The Devil (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the 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
3944-475: The Justice Department's objections. Overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox was stripped of his empire in 1930 and later ended up in jail on bribery and perjury charges. Fox Film, with more than 500 theatres, was placed in receivership. A bank-mandated reorganization propped the company up for a time, but it soon became apparent that despite its size, Fox could not stand on its own. William Fox resented
4060-623: The Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the 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. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on
4176-536: The Moon , originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image. Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by Pathé , Urban-Eclipse , Gaumont , Kalem , Itala Film , Ambrosio Film , and Selig . Several of
4292-505: The Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island . The Perils of Pauline and its even more popular sequel The Exploits of Elaine were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster Life of a Cowboy , by Edwin S. Porter Company , and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912. The following are American films from
4408-471: The US have been lost, though these estimates are inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Film projection mostly evolved from magic lantern shows, in which images from handpainted glass slides were projected onto a wall or screen. After the advent of photography in the 19th century, still photographs were sometimes used. Narration of the showman was important in spectacular entertainment screenings and vital in
4524-451: The United States. In view of the enormous amount of labor involved which calls for individual hand painting of every one of sixteen pictures to the foot or 16,000 separate pictures for each 1,000 feet of film very few American colorists will undertake the work at any price. As film coloring has progressed much more rapidly in France than in any other country, all of our coloring is done for us by
4640-504: The Wednesday and Sunday of each week. Fox News gained an advantage over its more established competitors when President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the newsreel in a letter, in what may have been the first time an American president commented on a film. In subsequent years, Fox News remained one of the major names in the newsreel industry by providing often-exclusive coverage of major international events, including reporting on Pancho Villa ,
4756-547: The action—particularly for comedies and action films. Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for
Pearl White - Misplaced Pages Continue
4872-674: The actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Vélez , Edwin Carewe 's Evangeline with Dolores del Río , and Rupert Julian 's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson . The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that
4988-412: The adoption of sound-on-film technology. 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 were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-1930s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in
5104-513: The airship Roma , the Ku Klux Klan , and a 1922 eruption of Mount Vesuvius . The silent newsreel series continued until 1930. In 1926, a subsidiary, Fox Movietone Corporation, was created, tasked with producing newsreels using Fox's recently acquired sound-on-film technology. The first of these newsreels debuted on January 21, 1927. Four months later, the May 25 release of a sound recording of Charles Lindbergh 's departure on his transatlantic flight
5220-519: The athletic Pearl White proved ideally suited. The Perils of Pauline consisted of 20 two-reel episodes that were released weekly. The serial proved to be a hit with audiences and made White a major celebrity; she soon was earning $ 1,750 per week. She followed this serial with an even bigger box-office hit: The Exploits of Elaine (1914–1915). Over the next five years, White appeared in the popular serials The New Exploits of Elaine (1915), The Romance of Elaine (1915), The Iron Claw (1916), Pearl of
5336-415: The audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to the invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as City Lights , Modern Times and Silent Movie which are accompanied by
5452-562: The beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin , with Modern Times (1936), Orson Welles with Too Much Johnson (1938), Jacques Tati with Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Pierre Etaix with The Suitor (1962), and Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien 's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005)
5568-600: The beginning of the 20th century. That same year, in 1914, Fox Film began making motion pictures in California, and in 1915 decided to build its own permanent studio. The company leased the Los Angeles Edendale studio of the Selig Polyscope Company until its own studio, located at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, was completed in 1916. In 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood to oversee
5684-458: The best coloring establishment in Paris and we have found that we obtain better quality, cheaper prices and quicker deliveries, even in coloring American made films, than if the work were done elsewhere. By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as
5800-472: The biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by Camille Saint-Saëns for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise , and by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for Stenka Razin . When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten
5916-461: The case of the 2002 restoration of Metropolis . With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of Butterfly Dance . Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took
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#17328560560286032-614: The company with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century-Fox in 1935. William Fox entered the film industry in 1904 when he purchased a one-third share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon for $ 1,667. He reinvested his profits from that initial location, expanding to fifteen similar venues in the city, and purchasing prints from the major studios of the time: Biograph , Essanay , Kalem , Lubin , Pathé , Selig , and Vitagraph . After experiencing further success presenting live vaudeville routines along with motion pictures, he expanded into larger venues beginning with his purchase of
6148-522: The company's most prominent stars by the late 1920s. When rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew family's holdings. Loew's Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters, as well as the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. The Loew family agreed to the sale, and the merger of Fox and Loew's Inc. was announced in 1929; MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were not included in
6264-585: The condensed version of Perils of Pauline was inducted into the Nation Film Registry. All of her films were made at studios on the East Coast because White reportedly never visited Hollywood. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Pearl White has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6838 Hollywood Blvd. The 1947 Paramount Pictures film The Perils of Pauline , starring Betty Hutton ,
6380-498: The crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis , were still being released. Greta Garbo , whose first American film
6496-522: The deal, and fought back. Using powerful political connections, Mayer called upon the Justice Department 's antitrust unit to delay giving final approval to the merger. William Fox was badly injured in a car crash in the summer of 1929, and by the time he recovered, he had lost most of his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929 , ending any chance of the Fox/Loew's merger being approved, even without
6612-459: The development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film. Although Thomas Edison was keen to develop a film system that would be synchronised with his phonograph , he eventually introduced the kinetoscope as a silent motion picture viewer in 1893 and later "kinetophone" versions remained unsuccessful. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film ). The height of
6728-674: The disused Gaiety theater, and continuing with acquisitions throughout New York City and New Jersey, including the Academy of Music . Fox invested further in the film industry by founding the Greater New York Film Rental Company as a film distributor . The major film studios responded by forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 and the General Film Company in 1910, in an effort to create
6844-401: The drama on screen. 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 "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases. At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However,
6960-555: The famous " Mighty Wurlitzer " could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and sound effects ranging from "train and boat whistles [to] car horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, [and] thunder and rain". Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music
7076-475: The first film serial , The Million Dollar Mystery , released in 1914. The first westerns were filmed at Fred Scott 's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as cowboys and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as
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#17328560560287192-411: The first commercially successful sound film , but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929. For a listing of notable silent era films, see List of years in film for the years between
7308-438: The formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison , Biograph , Essanay Studios , Kalem Company , George Kleine Productions , Lubin Studios , Georges Méliès , Pathé , Selig Studios , and Vitagraph Studios , and dominated distribution through the General Film Company . This company dominated
7424-459: The image to flicker , and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by Thomas Edison for his Kinetoscope machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this
7540-691: The industry as both a vertical and horizontal monopoly and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York , in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including
7656-535: The industry had moved fully into the sound era , in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects . Most early motion pictures are considered lost owing to their physical decay, as the nitrate filmstock used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed, because they had negligible remaining immediate financial value in that era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in
7772-730: The industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips. The early studios were located in the New York City area . Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan , with studios in St George, Staten Island . Other films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey . In December 1908, Edison led
7888-532: The introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. One 1,000-foot (300 m) reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while
8004-470: The introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the Great Depression , was devastating to many musicians. A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil , for example, featured fitas cantatas (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan , films had not only live music but also
8120-615: The lecturing circuit. The principle of stroboscopic animation was well-known since the introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833, a popular optical toy , but the development of cinematography was hampered by long exposure times for photographic emulsions , until Eadweard Muybridge managed to record a chronophotographic sequence in 1878. After others had animated his pictures in zoetropes , Muybridge started lecturing with his own zoopraxiscope animation projector in 1880. The work of other pioneering chronophotographers, including Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz , furthered
8236-426: The longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release Ben Hur is offered for $ 120 ($ 4,069 USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $ 270 ($ 9,156) including the extra $ 150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although
8352-401: The mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith , cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the close up allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing
8468-520: The new "talkies" around the mid-1930s. The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at
8584-450: The plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary. Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on
8700-524: The popularized archetypal ingénue. White was born in Green Ridge, Missouri to Edgar White, a farmer, and Lizzie G. House. She had four brothers and sisters. The family later moved to Springfield, Missouri. At age 6, she made her stage debut as "Little Eva" in Uncle Tom's Cabin . When she was 13, White worked as a bareback rider for the circus. " The Perils of Pauline was not the first serial ever made, nor
8816-438: The projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot. All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes
8932-424: The reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908: The coloring of moving picture films is a line of work which cannot be satisfactorily performed in
9048-486: The release of D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced Juha in black and white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special release prints with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film Pushpak (1988), starring Kamal Haasan ,
9164-498: The rest of her life.) A male stunt double wearing a wig performed the majority of the more dangerous stunts in White's later films. The public was largely unaware that White and other actors used stunt doubles, but in August 1922, the truth was revealed. During the filming of White's final serial Plunder , John Stevenson, an actor who was doubling for White, was supposed to leap from the top of
9280-440: The silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as French Impressionism , German Expressionism , and Soviet Montage began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in
9396-470: The silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the close-up , long shot , panning , and continuity editing all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by " talking pictures " or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until film directors , actors, and production staff adapted fully to
9512-515: The silent film era and the era of talkies. Sunset Boulevard shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond , played by silent film star Gloria Swanson , and Singin' in the Rain deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies. Peter Bogdanovich 's 1976 film Nickelodeon deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to
9628-479: The silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are gross rentals (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw
9744-427: The silents for nearly four decades. As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The title writer became
9860-464: The silver screen. The animated film Fantasia (1940), which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The espionage film The Thief (1952) has music and sound effects, but no dialogue, as do Thierry Zéno 's 1974 Vase de Noces and Patrick Bokanowski 's 1982 The Angel . Fox Film Corporation The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios )
9976-438: The size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small-town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist . Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theatre organs , which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as
10092-438: The spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. 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
10208-462: The standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates ") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe , but industry practice varied considerably; there
10324-399: The studio's West Coast production facilities where a more hospitable and cost-effective climate existed for filmmaking. Between 1915 and 1919, Fox Films earned millions of dollars through films featuring Theda Bara , known as "The Vamp" due to her unique ability to display exoticism. With the introduction of sound technology, Fox moved to acquire the rights to a sound-on-film process. In
10440-509: The studio's new West Coast production facilities, where the climate was more hospitable for filmmaking. On July 23, 1926, Fox Studios bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film . After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 , William Fox lost control of the company in 1930, during a hostile takeover . Under new president Sidney R. Kent, the new owners merged
10556-612: The suburb of Neuilly due to issues with her liver. She slipped into a coma on August 3, 1938, and died the following day of what was identified in her obituaries as a "liver ailment" (likely cirrhosis due to years of heavy drinking). She was 49. White was buried in Cimetière de Passy after a small, private funeral. White left the majority of her fortune, including jewelry and property, to Theodore Cossika. She also bequeathed money to her father, nieces, and nephews, and her will provided $ 73,000 to charities. Pearl White's place in film history
10672-513: The time she retired from films in 1924, White had amassed a fortune of $ 2 million ($ 36 million in 2023). A shrewd businesswoman, she invested in a successful Parisian nightclub, a Biarritz resort hotel/casino, and a stable of 10 race horses. White divided her time between her townhouse in Passy and a 54-acre estate near Rambouillet . She became involved with Theodore Cossika, a Greek businessman, who shared her love of travel. Together, they purchased
10788-484: The time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was Kevin Brownlow 's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance 's Napoléon (1927), featuring a score by Carl Davis . A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration
10904-547: The title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is Jérôme Savary 's La fille du garde-barrière (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the British Board of Film Classification ). In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in Sidewalk Stories ,
11020-629: The traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand , Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli, Ben Model , and William P. Perry . 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 (1925) and Flesh and
11136-468: The viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané , Alloy Orchestra , Club Foot Orchestra , Silent Orchestra , Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra . Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing
11252-595: The way he was forced out of his company and portrayed it as an active conspiracy against him in the 1933 book Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox . Under new president Sidney Kent, the new owners began negotiating with the upstart, but powerful independent Twentieth Century Pictures in the early spring of 1935. Twentieth Century had begun in the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in 1932 under founders Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck . The two companies merged that spring of 1935 and became 20th Century-Fox. The company
11368-576: The weekly Fox Movietone News feature, that ran until 1963. The growing company needed space, and in 1926 Fox acquired 300 acres (1.2 km ) in the open country west of Beverly Hills and built "Movietone City", the best-equipped studio of its time. Because William Fox opted to remain in New York, much of the Hollywood filmmaking at the Fox Film Corporation was instead managed by Fox's movie makers. Janet Gaynor would also become one of
11484-663: The wishes of her father, White dropped out of school, and in 1907, she went on the road with the Trousedale Stock Company, working evening shows while keeping her day job to help support her family. She soon joined the company full-time, touring through the American Midwest . White played minor roles for several years, when she was spotted by the Powers Film Company in New York. She claimed she had performed in Cuba for
11600-409: The wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Many early screening were plagued by flicker on the screen, when the stroboscopic interruptions between frames lay below the critical flicker frequency . This
11716-533: The years 1925–26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens , the U.S. rights to the Tri-Ergon system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Theodore Case . This resulted in the Movietone sound system later known as "Fox Movietone" developed at the Movietone Studio . Later that year, the company began offering films with a music-and-effects track, and the following year Fox began
11832-680: Was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film Doctor Plonk (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer . Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy Silent Laughter as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in All Wear Bowlers (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and
11948-618: Was a recognizable star worldwide, she was offered many roles in France. She made Terreur (released as The Perils of Paris in the United States), her final film, in France in 1924. White returned to the stage in a Montmartre production Tu Perds la Boule . In 1925, she accepted an offer to star with comedian Max Wall in the "London Review" at the Lyceum Theatre in London, where she earned $ 3,000 per week. She then retired from performing. By
12064-428: Was an American independent company that produced motion pictures and was formed in 1915 by the theater "chain" pioneer William Fox . It was the corporate successor to his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attraction Company (founded 1913). The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee, New Jersey , but in 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood, California to oversee
12180-415: 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. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), it became relatively common for
12296-478: Was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films. Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist Gaylord Carter continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of
12412-415: Was described by film historian Raymond Fielding as the "first sound news film of consequence". Movietone News was launched as a regular newsreel feature December 3 of that year. Production of the series continued after the merger with Twentieth Century Pictures, until 1963, and continued to serve 20th Century Fox after that, as a source for film industry stock footage. Unlike Fox's early feature films,
12528-477: Was dying of liver failure. The injury she sustained to her spine while filming The Perils of Pauline had continued to cause her pain, which she eased with drugs and alcohol. A year before her death, White got her affairs in order, purchased a plot in Cimetière de Passy ( Passy Cemetery ) near her home and arranged her own funeral. In early July 1938, she checked herself into the American Hospital of Paris in
12644-451: Was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since
12760-593: Was it the best. It has the reputation of having been poorly directed, crudely edited and ungrammatically captioned. Still, it is far and away the most famous of all silent serials. The reason for this is its dynamic star."– Biographer Lon Davis in Silent Lives: 100 Biographies of the Silent Film Era. (2008). She began performing with the Diemer Theater Company while in her second year of high school. Against
12876-403: Was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola , with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola . In 1984, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer Giorgio Moroder . Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury , Pat Benatar , and Jon Anderson of Yes ,
12992-514: Was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson , an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate
13108-458: Was purchased by News Corporation in 1985, becoming " 20th Century Fox " without the hyphen, and in 2020 was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and renamed 20th Century Studios. For many years, 20th Century-Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915; for instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, marking its 75th rather than 95th anniversary in 2010. A 1937 fire in
13224-669: Was released in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting. According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic , "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses". Until
13340-575: Was solved with the introduction of a three-bladed shutter (since 1902), causing two more interruptions per frame. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of film tinting or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as Kinemacolor and Technicolor . Traditional colorization processes ceased with
13456-454: Was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in
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