Silent film's unique appeal to viewer imagination and participation

Silent Film And Its Effect on the Imagination

As Richard Abel observes, "The materiality of silent cinema…has become so unfamiliar to us, so different from that of our own cinema in the late twentieth century" that it is difficult to view silent film as anything but anachronistic (4). However, with 2011's the Artist -- an homage to silent film -- winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, it may be worthwhile to examine the nature and appeal of silent film. In a way, silent film does something that the modern day special effects spectaculars do not do: it leaves more to the imagination and calls upon the viewer to use his or her own mind in correspondence with the moving pictures. This paper will analyze what it is that makes silent film unique and show how the nature of silent film allows viewers to envision for themselves those aspects of the drama that are left out (voice, dialogue) while emphasizing others (action, place, physical humor) in much the same way that an audience participates with a live performance in the theater.

The Nature and Beginning of Silent Film

Film is a visual medium. Yet, this does not mean that there are not other elements to film. The silent film era, for some, recalls a time when movies were silent and simply visually expressive. But as Melinda Szaloky states, it is a "truism that 'silent cinema was never silent'" (109). Indeed, Szaloky notes that "the sounds of the silent have been conceived of as something external, an accompaniment to the visual universe of the film" (109). Silent film, from its very beginnings in the basement of the Grand Cafe in Paris in 1895, was ever a medium that relied solely on the visual power of its moving pictures. Indeed, the Lumiere brothers' early films were simply brief clips or photographs of simple actions -- a train pulling into station, a gardener at work, workers leaving a factory. These films were visually exciting for the audience because they reflected life as it is witnessed in motion. However, there was more to the experience than simply seeing. On the contrary, the experience was felt. In fact, the Lumieres provoked panic in their theater upon showing the train pulling into station: "the audience is said to have shrieked and ducked when it saw the train" (Mast 33). Even such a simple, ordinary event produced a visceral thrill because it played upon the imaginations of the audience -- and the audience was encouraged to fill in the gaps between what it was seeing and what the real thing was like. Therefore, it is likely that the Lumieres' audience in 1895 could hear the sound of the train and the rush of the crowd and the noises of the station in its mind -- even though in reality all it was seeing was the silent flashing image of the train on a screen.

The ability of film to produce such a trick has always been its main selling point. When Szaloky states that "Rick Altman's claim that 'silence was in fact a regular practice of silent film exhibition' appears…to challenge the historical accuracy of the received opinion that 'the silent film never existed'" (109), she suggests that silent film did not necessarily need the live musical accompaniment that modern audiences so often associate with the silent film showing. On the contrary, it is likely that the silent films themselves often ran silently. In fact, Szaloky makes the point "that the term 'silent film' came to denote early cinema only after the coming of sound had turned presound films into 'silents'" (109). What this means is that silent film as it has been conceived since the introduction of talkies is not the way it was conceived before sound was introduced into the filmmaking process. Films in the early twentieth century were simply conceived as a photographic art, in which information was conveyed via sight. This had, then, two effects: 1) it forced actors of that era to hone their craft in a much more expressive manner; 2) it allowed audiences to use their imaginations in much the same way that a book encourages the reader to imagine scenes of dialogue, action, climax, etc.

The Apex of the Silent Film Era

For these reasons, the silent film era was able to produce some of the greatest film directors and actors in film history. They worked with the photographic image to give the viewer a visceral and intellectual experience -- not only provoking the emotions of the viewer (whether to laughter, fear, or sorrow) but also the mind. By 1927, when the first talkie was released (the Jazz Singer), news magazines like Film Daily were running reviews of all the latest silent films. The arrival of talking pictures changed the way films were forever produced, but prior to October 1927, pictures were still "silent" and the reviews that accompanied their release to the public are particularly informative of what an audience could expect to experience by going to one.

For example, the review for the Popular Sin starring Florence Vidor ran under the headline: "Done in Malcolm St. Clair's Best Style and Certain to Interest His Followers. An Exceptionally Fine Cast. Story Perhaps a Trifle Sophisticated for the Average Audience" (8). What the headline indicates is that by 1927, audiences were looking for quick cinematic narratives that did not strive to demand too much from them in the way of attention: "story perhaps a trifle sophisticated for the average audience" points to both the nature of silent film by the end of the silent film era and the nature of audiences in the decade also known as the Roaring Twenties. The review begins by analyzing the star of the film: "Star….Charming at all times. There is one profile close-up of her (one where she wears long, brilliantly studded earrings) that is the best ever" (8). Again, the emphasis is on visuals -- but the visuals are pivotal in spurring the imagination: the star of the film, Florence Vidor, is decked out in fine jewels and looks stellar on screen -- a selling point for a 1920s audience, captivated by glamour and riches. That the film's selling point would be a single scene in which Vidor's profile is depicted in gorgeous detail is telling. What it suggests is that silent film, like a storybook with pictures, was meant to be seen and felt -- not heard or read.

Buster Keaton: Silent Film Visionary -- Too Much Imagination

Yet, that sort of nightmare world of industrialization both inspired and was depicted in silent film. The Lumiere brothers were innovative geniuses who devised a portable camera, better equipped for transfer than Edison's bulky machine, and photographed technological marvels (like that train engine) to entertain audiences. One of the great comics of the silent film era, Buster Keaton, would explore the fascinating technological world of the railway in his greatest cinematic work, the General. The General debuted in 1927, again, the same year as the first talkie, and served as a kind of farewell to the marvelous world of the silent film era. Described as a "Civil War farce" by New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall, Buster Keaton's portrayal of Johnnie Gray is viewed as "hardly the person who would be trusted with a locomotive" (Hall). The fact is, however, that not only is Keaton's Gray an engineering genius, he also manages feats of acrobatic skill and strategic cunning that allow him to single-handedly retrieve his stolen locomotive from a group of Unionists; destroy a bridge, several sections of railway, wreck an enemy train; and warn the Secessionists of a looming advance just in time to save the day for the South.

However, Keaton's methods were so imaginative that by 1927, the movie-going audience was too bored and over-stuffed with unimaginative silent films to really take notice. It took talkies to bring them back. As Hall slightingly observes in his 1927 review of Keaton's silent film magnum opus, "The production itself is singularly well mounted, but the fun is not exactly plentiful." Roger Ebert, writing decades later, and looking back over several eras of film, notes on the other hand that Keaton's General is "one of the supreme masterpieces of silent filmmaking" (Ebert), a point which should be carefully considered. After all, if silent film was meant to stimulate the minds and emotions of the audience, Buster Keaton is noted today as being a master of silent filmmaking -- and yet the General bombed at the box office and Keaton was compelled to give up his independence by signing on to do studio talkies -- a move that is now credited with destroying his career, which was founded on his creative abilities (Dardis 196).

The silent films of Keaton -- or of Chaplin, or Lloyd -- were not only comedic masterpieces, producing laughs with slapstick gags and tricks of physical humor; they were also (sometimes subtly) full of a kind of social commentary. Chaplin, of course, was the most blatant in his commentary -- but Keaton provided some of the most insightful looks into the human condition. As Ebert states, Keaton's "films avoid the pathos and sentiment of the Chaplin pictures, and usually feature a jaunty young man who sees an objective and goes after it in the face of the most daunting obstacles." Indeed, Keaton's films depict him in all sorts of wild predicaments, having to face "tornadoes, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders and falls from great heights" (Ebert). Keaton's silent films required more from the audience than perhaps the audience, according to the New York Times at least, was prepared to give. It is no wonder then that talkies replaced the "silent film" era: the audience had lost the ability to be affected by greatness in film -- and now needed more spectacle and more noise to fill the void in its own empty head. Times' reviewer Hall says as much when he writes of the General in 1927 that "this is by no means so good as Mr. Keaton's previous efforts. Here he is more the acrobat than the clown, and his vehicle might be described as a mixture of cast iron and jelly" (Hall). Truly, no one was ever further off base about a film than Hall in his New York Times review.

The fact is that by 1927, audiences had tired of the kind of fare delivered by studios -- the kind of films in which Florence Vidor turned ever so slightly and gave the audience a momentarily thrill, a glimpse of neck, of sparkling jewelry and the like. The same medium that once inspired panic in the basement of a French cafe in 1895 now failed to produce any effect whatsoever when the same subject (a train) was taken to new soaring heights (by Keaton in the General) and splashed on the big screen. The only problem was that in the intervening decades, a generation had gotten wise to the nature of the cinema and no longer cared to be inspired by the same old, same old: it wanted more -- and the Jazz Singer provided more: it provided noise. If Keaton could wreak havoc on an entire town and give thrills (without ever once showing the natural disaster that was doing the mischief) in Steamboat Bill, Jr., the audience did not care. Imagination was, in a sense, dead -- and when it died, so too did the silent film era, for it depended on the audience's ability to bridge the gap between the visuals on the screen and the reality that it meant to depict. The audience could no longer do so, and instead it opted for noise as a stop-gap -- the talkies were introduced and no one ever looked back -- except for a few movie lovers, like Ebert, who could still appreciate the imaginative powers of the silent film gems of men like Buster Keaton.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the silent film era was an era in film that not only triggered the imagination of the public and allowed them to bridge the gap between moving photographic images and real-life experience (as the Lumiere brothers in Paris in 1895 demonstrated with their short film of a train pulling into a station), it also was an era in film that depended on the public's ability to use its imagination. When the public finally abandoned this practice en masse, the talkies were introduced, and a new era of filmmaking got underway. The result was that it left genius filmmakers like Keaton no option but to pursue their careers making second-rate films where dialogue and sound replaced audience participation through the use of the imagination. Mindless spectacle displaced mindful contribution.