A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime (US: pantomime) and title cards. 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 Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. After the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, "talkies" became more and more commonplace. Within a decade, popular widespread production of silent films had ceased.
Read more about Silent Film: Elements (1894 – 1929), Top Grossing Silent Films in The United States, Early Studios, Preservation and Lost Films
Famous quotes containing the words silent film, silent and/or film:
“Marriage isn’t a word—it’s a sentence.”
—Caption from King Vidor’s silent film. The Crowd (1926)
“Great things demand that we either remain silent about them or speak in a great manner: in a great manner, that is—cynically and with innocence.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.”
—Werner Herzog (b. 1942)