Category: Language of Silent Film

Silent Film’s visual shorthand can also ask us to conjure up an event or physical act by not showing it at all. Films in the 1930s, or earlier, might avoid depicting something particularly nasty by cutting to a shot showing a wall silhouette. Silent Film, because of its absence of recorded synch-sound, has the ability…

The visual shorthand of Silent Film also functions with physical objects. Often, by connecting them with other objects or between shots of people, an impression is intended to be made on we viewers, rather than spelling the point out blatantly. The Soviet filmmakers had a field day with this. The iconography of the items or…

This visual shorthand employed in Silent Film helps us know immediately what sort of behavior to expect of the person we see on screen. It invites us to make assumptions about their needs or wants or fears etc, and assumes we all have a shared expectation of a character who has a certain look or…

We know who on the train with us is a conductor by their uniform. When I see a film crew in my neighborhood, I know which of the people standing around drinking coffee is going to stop me from walking because they’re holding a walkie-talkie and because they’re in the middle of the sidewalk or…

Another way Silent Film engages us is by telling us very little about our story’s players and events. It’s similar to the way these same kinds of story elements are presented in young children’s books. In Silent Film it doesn’t come off like we’re being told a child’s fairy tale, though. It feels like its…

A ventriloquist isn’t actually throwing their voice, although that’s often how the skill is referred to. The ventriloquist’s voice appears to be coming from the dummy because the artist is creating an illusion. She or he is paying attention to the dummy or puppet as if it were actually the one speaking. A similar misdirection…

What did this aberration of the presence of sound mean to people making Silent Film? While it’s not known who or when this was figured out or came into regular use, it was clearly a known entity of the world of silent movies. I’ll bet that, if you weren’t aware of it yourself, you may…

One of my favorite natural laws of the universe of Silent Film involves, of all things, sound. That is, sound that happens in a scene, and whether or not it exists. The acceptance of the sound that should be heard is selective, regardless of whether or not we see what or who is making that…

The unique combination of the delivering of reality and the elisions of it that we process in that quasi dream-state of experiencing Silent Film is what allows for an altered version of reality. There are several facets of what gets created in our minds through the leavings-out or disregard of elements of logic, consequence and…

I’d initially planned for this last series of posts about sub-titles (intertitles) to be about the use of art and drawings as well as the use of textured backgrounds. It has occurred to me that these usages may be more of one used in silent films as opposed to Silent Film itself. Meaning that —…