Silent Film Meets the Talkies: A Brief History
A gambling man, Governor Leland Stanford of California needed visual proof to win a bet he had eagerly placed. Governor Stanford firmly believed that at some point in their stride, horses had all four hooves off the ground at the same time. After hiring a photographer who was to no avail, the Governor brought in John D. Isaacs, the chief engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, to have a look at the situation. Isaacs decided to rig up a system of magnetic releases to trigger a series of cameras, twelve total, as the horse ran down the track (Everson, 17). Mounting these images on a rotating disk and projecting them on a screen through a special lantern, they produced a moving picture of the horse at full gallop as it had occurred in real life (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1211).
American cinema's next big break came with beginning of World War I. Until this period, the industry had been dominated by France, Italy, and Germany, particularly in the area of feature length presentations and the construction of permanent theaters. However, when the war broke out in Europe, film production abroad nearly ceased due to the overlap of chemicals used in film and the manufacturing of gunpowder (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1213). Simultaneously, American Cinema experienced a period on unprecedented prosperity and growth. By the end of the war, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, 90 percent of all films screened in Europe, Africa, and Asia were American (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1213). Germany however, was the exception, because it had been cut off from America since 1914.
When the Germans did finally reconnect with the world, the United States benefited greatly from their techn...
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...me box office hits, regardless of the acting or recording quality.
As talkies became more refined and commonplace, silent films started to dwindle. A backlash occurred and these pantomimed movies were labeled as the true art (Geduld, 253). Yet, nothing could be done to slow down the continual development of cinema as sound poured out of studios on a daily basis. In fact, this new cinematic style was so popular, the film industry turned out to be one of the few prosperous enterprises during the Depression (Geduld, 253).
Works Cited
Ellis, Jack C. A History of Film. eedham Heights, Mass: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britanica Inc.; vol. 24, 15th ed. Chicago, IL: 1995.
Everson, William K. American Silent Film. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.
Geduld, Harry M. The Birth of the Talkies. London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1975.
During this decade, the film industry went through massive changes that would completely change what movies were or stood for. After the Great War, more people began considering movies as a form of entertainment. This increased attention caused change in the industry, allowing the experience of the movie goer to massively change for the better. Many new genres, ideas and technologies emerged in the 1920s that would later dominate the industry. The 1920s saw massive changes happening in the movie industry that would help it to get one step closer to what it is today.
With the loss of its centralized structure, the film industry produced filmmakers with radical new ideas. The unique nature of these films was a product of the loss of unified identity.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
The cameras used to film “The Talkies” as they where known, had to be kept in enormous soundproof casing. This immediately hindered directors creativity and made movies such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) much more rigid. Because of the fascination with the lip-syncing that this new technology achieved less attention was played to other attributes that silent films used such as the comedic elements in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931.)
The Great Depression is when the film industry boomed with new types of movies like: gangster films and musicals. They were both born in the Great Depression. Most films show the hardships of the time period. Some of the films display this very well for example Modern Times staring Charlie Chaplin. One of the more well-known gangster films was The Public Enemy.. These films have very different views of the time period but still have things in common. This paper will compare Modern Times and The Public Enemy.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
However, the U.S. did participate in the Eight Nation Alliance in the Boxer Rebellion, as well as invade other sovereign nations, such as the Philippines and Cuba, at the turn of the 19th century. However, in the United States, there was a large ethnic group of German-Americans that was beginning to be perceived as a threat to American culture due to the rise of German nationalism. For instance, the problem of German nationalism had become a problem due to the conflicting ethnic identity of German-Americans: “ A Philadelphia woman later recalled how, before the war, the beer wagons of German-American brewers in her city had an American flag on one side and German one on the other” (Boemke et al, 1999, p.117). In this ethnic and nationalist conflict, many Americans became suspicious of German loyalties to the Kaiser, which was part of the expanded nationalist and militaristic growth of the United States as a competing imperial power. In this climate of nationalism, many Americans became suspicious of Germans, which led to increased political support for overturning Woodrow Wilson’s promises of neutrality when the war broke out in Europe in July of 1914. The sinking of the Lusitania in 1914 was a major event that defined a rationale for Americas entering the war, since the Germans were creating major disruptions in American trade routes by sinking civilian and merchant ships in the Atlantic. In this hostile act, the Kaiser had broken international rules of law, which forced President Wilson and the United States to enter the war to stop the threat of German military power from taking complete control of Europe. Certainly, the Kaiser had awoken the “sleeping giant” of American industrial and military power, which allowed the Allied Powers to eventual defat Germany in 1918.
Watching a movie in the 1920s was a cheap and easy way to be transported into a world of glitz and glamour, a world of crime, or a world of magic and mystery. Some of these worlds included aspects of current events, like war, crime, and advances in technology; while others were completely fictional mysteries, romances, and comedies. Heartbreakers, heartthrobs, comedians and beautiful women dominated movie screens across the country in theaters, called Nickelodeons. Nickelodeons were very basic and small theaters which later transformed into opulent and monumental palaces. When sound was introduced into film by Warner Bros. Pictures, “talkies” took top rank over silent films. “Movies were an art form that had universal appeal. Their essence was entertainment; their success, financial and otherwise, was huge” (1920-30, 3/19/11). Films offered an escape from the troubles of everyday life in the 20s, and moviegoers across the country all shared a universal language: watching movies.
It is true that movies have a certain connection to the time period in which they were created. For example, during the Depression, movies like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) were a way for people to escape worry from everyday life surrounding the economy. In this way, silent films in
Released September 29, 1950, Sunset Boulevard is a film noir of a forgotten silent film star, Norma Desmond, that dreams of a comeback and an unsuccessful screenwriter, Joe Gillis, working together. Ultimately an uncomfortable relationship evolves between Norma and Joe that Joe does not want a part of. Sunset Boulevard starts off with an establishing shot from a high angle shot with a narrative leading to a crime scene from a long shot (a dead body is found floating in a pool), this narrative throughout the film establishes a formalist film.
American cinema has marveled audiences for over a century and during that timeframe there have been several advancements worthwhile of mentioning. The creation, introduction, and development of the camera is clearly one of the advancements which set the stage for films, beginning with the basic image to those utilizing multiple images in order to create movement. Then came the addition of sound into films which added another element for viewers to enjoy and finally the use of light to enhance the movement being displayed. For the most part, these techniques were rudimentary in nature until 1941 when the film Citizen Kane was released and forever changed the film industry. The remainder of this paper will analyze how Citizen Kane challenged traditional filmmaking techniques to revolutionize and benchmark the film industry for all production studios.
Film was not always as it is today due to the digital sounds and graphic picture enhancements of George Lucas's THX digital sound in the late 1970s to enhance the audience's perceptions. Sound was first discovered in 1928 and the first films before that were silent. There is a social need to heighten an audience's film going experience and it allows each person to color their own views of what they see and presents either directly or indirectly society's moral values.
...o settle a bet of whether all for hooves of a horse were in the air as they ran. This was impossible to be seen by just the human eye alone. So, Muybridge was asked to help by Stanford in which he agreed. Muybridge was never able to perfect the method of motion photography at the time because there was noting for him to work off of, by using 12 cameras to take photographs of the horse running in a sequence shot was able to make the assumption that Stanford’s prediction was correct that all hooves left the ground and were in the air at the same time while galloping. Muybridge went on to have a remarkable academic career which included teaching at the University of Pennsylvania from 1883-1886, publishing several books that explained the processes to capturing motion photographs, then shared the process of a projection device that he invented called the Zoopraxiscope.
It is no doubt that Martin Scorsese has heavily influenced the emulating of American film making from European influences. He is a prime example of a ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ director, not only from his ethnicity and background, but from his sheer interest in this form
...n able to reach otherwise. With unlimited possibilities and the creative minds in the world, the film industry is likely to consider seeing drastic changes. Like the world has in the past, peoples’ likes and dislikes will change with the ever-changing technological world. What we enjoy as a society in 2005 is likely to be considered as bland as we consider the black and white silent films, in the years to come.