In some early silent films one of the main characters will face the camera or at least what it appears they think is an audience, and will talk through the screen’s fourth wall. Makes me think of that moment in… Read More »Monologuing in Silents
Our performers convey information and emotion to us in their movement, gestures and expressions. They have to. The movement styles and techniques we see in Silent Film range from obvious gesturing that is what some assume is typical of pre-1930s… Read More »Movement in Moving Pictures
One of the ways Silent Film economizes on storytelling information is by the dropping of non-essential bits of information in a scene. Sometimes these are at the beginning of a scene. But the general idea is to keep moving, and… Read More »Trimming the Fat
Let’s start with what we are presented with, what we are literally looking at, when we view a Silent Film. Because it is a purely visual medium, although aided and abetted as needed by the music, it’s the visual cues… Read More »You Can’t Look Away
I don’t know why Walter Kerr’s discussion of Silent Film projection speeds in chapter five hadn’t sparked my fascination with them earlier. But, I don’t think anyone was as fascinated as I was with what made that speed-up work —… Read More »A Need For Speed
The silence of Silent Film is also its most misunderstood or misinterpreted aesthetic. Many people assume that Silent Film is movies with no sound, hampered by its mute form. True, the word “silent” is incredibly off-putting, and its being the… Read More »Silence Misunderstood
Chapters 4 and 5 of The Silent Clowns’ “Part One” illuminate the two most important elements of what makes silent film Silent Film, a specific entertainment medium of its own. As opposed to seeing it as regular film or video… Read More »One of the Five Senses
Chapter 3, “The Fact in the Fantasy”, reminds us that Silent Film – although silent, monochromatic and slightly faster – is still a capturing of reality on celluloid. Regardless of the aspects of the medium that are either what make… Read More »Reality, Depicted and Altered
A friend of mine once enlikened watching a silent film, especially in a theater, to being in a sort of trance state. An apt distillation of what Walter Kerr discusses in chapter two of The Silent Clowns’ Part One, “The… Read More »Reality, Minus some of the Logic and Consequence
Walter Kerr opens his book The Silent Clowns with five chapters on the core aesthetics of Silent Film itself. Perhaps not an obvious choice for a tome on comedy films from the ‘teens and ‘twenties, but I believe that understanding… Read More »More Logical The Other Way Around