The Silent Cinema - 872 Words

As Richard Abel observes, â€Å"The materiality of silent cinema†¦has become so unfamiliar to us, so different from that of our own cinema in the late twentieth century† that it is difficult to view silent film as anything but anachronistic (4). However, with 2011’s The Artist—an homage to silent film—winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, it may be worthwhile to examine the nature and appeal of silent film. In a way, silent film does something that the modern day special effects spectaculars do not do: it leaves more to the imagination and calls upon the viewer to use his or her own mind in correspondence with the moving pictures. This paper will analyze what it is that makes silent film unique and show how the nature of silent film†¦show more content†¦Even such a simple, ordinary event produced a visceral thrill because it played upon the imaginations of the audience—and the audience was encouraged to fill in the gaps betwe en what it was seeing and what the real thing was like. Therefore, it is likely that the Lumieres’ audience in 1895 could hear the sound of the train and the rush of the crowd and the noises of the station in its mind—even though in reality all it was seeing was the silent flashing image of the train on a screen. The ability of film to produce such a trick has always been its main selling point. When Szaloky states that â€Å"Rick Altman’s claim that ‘silence was in fact a regular practice of silent film exhibition’ appears†¦to challenge the historical accuracy of the received opinion that ‘the silent film never existed’† (109), she suggests that silent film did not necessarily need the live musical accompaniment that modern audiences so often associate with the silent film showing. On the contrary, it is likely that the silent films themselves often ran silently. In fact, Szaloky makes the point â€Å"that the term ‘silent film’ came to denote early cinema only after the coming of sound had turned presound films into ‘silents’† (109). What this means is that silent film as it has been conceived since the introduction of talkies is not the way it was conceivedShow MoreRelatedThe Great Train Robbery And The Narra tive Structure Of Silent Cinema1168 Words   |  5 PagesThis essay will analyse and discuss The Great Train Robbery (1903) in relation to the narrative structure of silent cinema. The Edison Manufacturing Co, with the estimated budget of $150, produced The Great Train Robbery. Directed by Edwin S. Porter the film has a runtime of 11 minutes, with an aspect ratio of 1:33:1. The film was printed on 35mm hand coloured film and ran at 18 (FPS). The film was later released on December 1st 1903; the majority of the film was shot in New Jersey, USA. A fantasticRead MoreThe Great Train Robbery And The Narrative Structure Of Silent Cinema1182 Words   |  5 PagesJoshua Cragg - Film History and Theory 1 Assessment Task 1 (Word count: 1053) This essay will analyse and discuss The Great Train Robbery (1903) in relation to the narrative structure of silent cinema. The Edison Manufacturing Co, with the estimated budget of $150, produced The Great Train Robbery. Directed by Edwin S. Porter the film has a runtime of 11 minutes, with an aspect ratio of 1:33:1. The film was printed on 35mm hand coloured film and ran at 18 (FPS). The film was later released on DecemberRead MoreThe Impact Of Sound On The World Of Sound Cinema965 Words   |  4 Pages Sound is obviously an essential part of cinema, and most couldn’t imagine watching any sort of entertainment without sound. Although how did sounds start and what were some major advancements in the world of sound cinema? The introduction of sound to cinema began by a process known as Phonofilm, created by a man named Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in 1923. The Phonofilm, which recorded synchronized sound directly onto film, was used to record a variety of entertainment including vaudevilleRead MoreFilm Analysis : Sunrise 1527 Words   |  7 Pagesadd the sound†¦ At this moment, I tremble.† (Akira Kurosawa) Sound is arguably the most important concept in cinema studies, being there ever since the beginnings. It can radically change the way a motion picture is looked at and it can render what the director may sometimes find hard to depict using only his camera. Looking upon silent cinema one discovers an era which wasn’t at all silent, but rich in sound of different forms, from the simple narration of the images shown on screen, accompaniedRead MoreThe Western Genre: An Analysis of its History and Rise and Fall as a Genre1403 Words   |  6 Pageswith a sense of nostalgia because they know it was a genre that happened in the past that is now dead. These Westerns have been bent to the point where filmmakers have done every kind of story they could do in the Western structure of cinema. If the pleasure of cinema comes from only predictability, then Classic Westerns should be still premiering in theaters. However this is not true. Barrie Hanfling suggests a reason for the lack of Classic Westerns is because times have changed. When the filmmakersRead MoreHistory of Cinema1477 Words   |  6 PagesKatrina Farmer Pd.2 History Of Cinema What is cinema? Cinema is a film, a story captured as a set of moving pictures to be shown on a screen in a movie theatre or on television. It is a passage of expression and modern science. Cinema is the most tried and true form of storytelling. Cinema is a sequence of moments captured in time, to make you feel, to make you see and to make you understand. Cinema is theatre made more intimate, passion in motion. Cinema built everything that we see on televisionsRead More100 Years of Indian Cinema - 11448 Words   |  6 Pages100 YEARS OF INDIAN CINEMA Indian Cinema has now completed 100 years on April 21, 2012, a country where over 1,000 films are made every year, in several languages. During these long years Indian cinema has broken many new grounds and established several milestones. The Times of India, Indias major newspaper then, hailed it as the marvel of the century. As writer and essayist Mukul Kesavan wrote, The art of the cinema was fashioned in India at the same time as it was developed in the West. TheRead MoreEssay about Andrà © Bazin: Film Critic Extraordinaire977 Words   |  4 Pagessurroundings through artificial means. We can go through time and see this process evolve from engraving, to painting, to photography, and to its most convincing form to date: cinema. In the task of duplicating reality cinema has surpassed all other forms of representation. Looking at the other means which are mentioned above we see cinema is the first mean that is able to capture movement, and nowadays even sound. Andrà © Bazin may w ell be the most influential critic ever to have written about this processRead MoreCritical Review of Andre Bazin Rudolf Arnheim Articles1331 Words   |  5 Pagesof Andre Bazin [What is cinema?] (1945) and Rudolf Arnheim [From Film as Art: the complete film] (1933). Through a close reading of both articles, I intend to evaluate and compare the different concepts of cinematography based on the two different film critics’ articles from a critical point of view. These two articles highlight the same topic from different perspectives with regards to cinema and art, what they have in common and how each writer keeps the ideology of cinema being a piece of art. DoRead MoreThe Indian Film Industry Of India1380 Words   |  6 Pageslargest centers of film production in the world. However, the first films India watched were not made in Bollywood. The various stages of evolution of bollywood can be categorized as follows: Silent Era to Talkies (1930-1940): Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian Cinema was a man with vision and courage. In the silent era, he pioneered the revolution and released his path breaking film, Raja Harishchandra, based on a mythological character on 21st April, 1913 in Olympia theatre. It was India’s first full-length