Have you ever seen a silent movie from the great “Silent Era” of Cinema? There is a great possibility that you haven’t done it yet and also a great chance that you don’t even love the idea of doing it. Well my friend, I get your point, but I assure you that it is worth to give it a shot. The key to appreciate the original silent movies, which were the ancestors of our modern movies and, as such, they laied the foundations of the art of cinema, is to understand the historical and technical background where this movies were made and keep in mind that we cannot compare them to the “talkies” (the sound movies), especially to the modern ones. However, I bet that you will find your way to really appreciate them. Now, let’s start pointing out the main features of this peculiar and forgot way to tell stories!
- ACTING: Except for the lack of sound, which of course is the main feature of silent movies, the acting technique is very different. Actors are not natural in their miming and they really exagerate every facial expression and movement. This comes as the direct result of the lack of words. Mime and physical acting is the only way not only to express emotions, but even to tell the story and make the audience understand what is happening on screen.
- CAPTIONS: The only way to provide the movie with some dialogue was to write it down and insert captions in the movie. Naturally, the editing technique was not advanced enough to captions the scenes with synchronised subtitles. So, title cards were inserted, with specific shots, in between the acting sequences. Subsequently, the action is often interrupted and the expressive result could feel a little unusual, since everything is delayed.
- PACING: The consequence of physical acting and title cards is a slower pacing. We are used to movies which go faster than real action. Well, silent movies are the exact contrary: they are way slower than real. Imagine if you had to communicate without words: the first thing you would do would be to slow down to let others understand you.
- MASTERS OF THE CRAFTS: Do you know that all the main movie genres were already born in the first two decades of cinema history. This includes science fiction, fantasy and horror. Actually, one of the very first movies, a milestone of motion picture history, was a science fiction. It is called Le Voyage dans la lune – A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. As I already mentioned in a previous article (Basic vocabulary for aspiring filmmakers), Méliès is considered the first director, since he is the inventor of film editing. The original word for “editing” is “decoupage”. As a matter of fact, the only way to edit the movie at that time was to actually cut and paste pieces of movie film, in order to create special effects. This is how he invented the double exposure, the very first editing technique, which consisted precisley in pasting together, and thus overlap, two pieces of film in order to combine together two pictures taken with different shots. Since than, directors never stopped experimenting and finding out new ways to realize their ideas. We can truly considered them skillful artisans who had to deal with crafts. Everything in silent movies is relayed visually and, as the audience, we must appreciate the mastery in creating a very clever visual storytelling.
- MAKE-UP: If you have ever seen a silent movie or at least just a sequence or picture of it, well you probably thought that the actors looked very weird! The make-up used in the first silent movies was really outlandish: pale faces, thin eyebrows, red lips, white eyes. There are many reasons of this and the first one is that the type of film used in the first movies (which was called orthochromatic), besides showing only grey nuances instead of the real colours, twisted the warm hues into very dark shades of grey, and the cold hues into very bright nuances instead. So, an actor with blue eyes and a olive-colour skin would have appeared with white eyes and a dirtied skin. To overcome this problem, they used to apply white greasepaint on actors faces. But it was not the only reason to do it. In fact, it was also a legacy of drama tradition. Theatrical actors used to wear an heavy make-up, such as red lipstick and white greasepaint, to make the important facial trates more visible for the distant audience.
Do you feel more eager to watch a silent movie now? I think it is worth a try!
SOURCES: https://www.donnaedintorni.com/il-trucco-nel-cinema-muto-6-fatti-interessantissimi/
https://artandmakeup.com/la-storia-del-trucco-cinematografico-le-origini/
