“To paraphrase Norma Desmond: who needs words, when a face says it all? Such is the transcendence of silent film...then, now, and as long as we preserve them"
-- David Stenn, writer-producer and film historian
“As a lover of silent cinema, I sometimes imagine the great thrill the film pioneers must have felt as they experimented with this medium, venturing into limitless, as-yet uncharted territory, fueled by their passion and inspiration. I am profoundly grateful to these artists for both the utter magic they created and enabling the medium we have today. I also offer sincerest thanks to the wonderful folks behind Silent Movie Day, as well as to our assiduous film preservationists and restorationists, for your invaluable efforts to honor our film heritage and keep this glorious era of film history alive.”
---Sherri Snyder (Actress, Writer, and Author of Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful for Hollywood [a biography on silent screen star Barbara La Marr])
Top: https://indieplex.org/film-is-fragile/film-decomposition.
Bottom: Images Courtesy George Eastman Museum, Davide Turconi Collection.
SOME CONTEXT
significance
Early moving images are a form of time travel; they are a portal to the past that offers current audiences an opportunity to study and explore how generations before us experienced the wonder of moving images. What started as parlor entertainment evolved into a shared connection among groups of strangers gathered together in community oriented public spaces large and small. Silent movies offer variety, from the early documentation of ordinary human experience, all the way up to elaborately executed fantasies that stir excitement and intrigue—a timeline traced through four decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This was a period that proved the endless possibilities that moving images could convey—from the interpretation of rural and cosmopolitan lifestyles, to confronting provocative and controversial subject matter—the many forms and functions silent movies embodied pointed the way to what is now a dominating and influential force of entertainment, knowledge, growth, and change.
statistics
“Only 14% of American silent feature films (1,575 of 10,919 titles) survive as originally released in complete 35mm copies. Another 11% (1,174) also survive in complete form, but in less-than-ideal editions - foreign-release versions or small-gauge formats such as 16mm.” – David Pierce, The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929, page 21
“Another 5% of American silent feature films (562 of 10,919 titles) survive in incomplete form, missing at least a reel of the original footage, in formats ranging from 35mm down to abridged 9.5mm home library prints.” – David Pierce, The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929, page 23
“According to [Pierce’s] study, many of the losses happened early on. Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century-Fox lost more or less the entirety of their silent film archives in a 1930s fire. Universal-International destroyed its remaining silent film copies in 1948. And those studios who opted to keep the material around usually did so cheaply — and poorly. Once the silent era gave way to sound, most studios put their silent film reels in storage.” – The Atlantic
Nitrate film in an advanced state of decay. Photo from FilmCare.org: https://filmcare.org/vd_binder.php.
RESOURCES
LINKS
American Silent Feature Database represents the first comprehensive survey of the survival of American silent feature films. It contains information on the nearly 11,000 U.S. feature films released between 1912-1929, and holdings information about 3,300 of those titles for which elements are known to exist.
Early African-American Film: Reconstructing the History of Silent Race Films, 1909-1930 is a website and database devoted to tracking the Black filmmakers, actors and artists who contributed to the early film industry. So far, the site tracks 759 African-American people who participated in the silent film industry and documents 303 silent films, 175 film companies and dozens of resources on African-American participation in silent films. And like many good things, it was born of frustration on the part of researchers.
FIAF Treasures from the Film Archives (requires subscription) contains unique information about silent-era film holdings in international film archives. It was conceived as a tool to aid the work of preservation, research and film exchange between archives, and provides filmographic and holdings information on over 60,000 works. Included are silent shorts and features, fiction and non-fiction, from 110 of the world's major film archives.
National Day Archives has the most comprehensive list of National Days and the best search tools to find them.
National Film Preservation Foundation is a nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. They support activities nationwide that preserve American films and improve film access for study, education, and exhibition.
Silent Era is a site of information and news pertaining to the silent era.
“The silent cinema was not a primitive style of filmmaking, waiting for better technology to appear, but an alternate form of storytelling, with artistic triumphs equivalent to or greater than those of the sound films that followed.”
Quote: David Pierce, The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929, page 5
Image: Pola Negri from The Spanish Dancer (1923); Courtesy of Milestone Films.
READING
David Pierce, The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929 Council on Library and Information Resources and The Library of Congress, Library of Congress: 2013.
Harold Brown, Camille Blot-Wellens (ed), Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification: New Expanded Edition, International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF): 2020.
This is the new expanded edition of Brown’s 1990 book.
The Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Archives, Libraries and Museums, San Francisco, California, National Film Preservation Foundation: 2004.
Paolo Cherchi Usai, Silent Cinema: A Guide to Study, Research and Curatorship, British Film Institute: 2019.