Wiktionary
n. (context cinematography English) A film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue.
Wikipedia
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1894 to 1929. In silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or in large cities, even a small orchestra would often play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise; an orchestra would play from sheet music.
The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively. The early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as " talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures". Within a decade, popular widespread production of silent films had ceased and production moved into the sound era, in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects.
A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost. There are numerous reasons for the loss of so many silent films, three chief causes being: (a) intentional destruction by film studios after the silent era ended, (b) damage due to environmental degradation of the films themselves, and (c) fires in the vaults in which studios stored their films.
Usage examples of "silent film".
And of course there was no sensation of hitting anythingmy suit simply vanished as it went through the larger fieldwith the result that, because some part of me had been braced for impact, had been flinching, wincing, bracing myself, it was like reaching for that non-existent top step, and I did a comical cakewalk as if the floor was coated with banana peels and came that close to a pratfall any silent film comedian would have envied.
Frankie Davis, an animal trainer from the silent film era, dying to tell his story, just a real sweet nostalgic story.
The second dream was a newsreel I had seen of the Russian royal family, lined up by their graves, and shot so that they jerked and jumped like a silent film projection, knocked, blown away, end over end, like popped corks, into the pit.
It is as if in 1956 we had been able to watch silent film of, say, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, or the various revolutions of 1848.
Have not seen an Orgy in a movie since the days of the silent film.
There was to be no dialogue, in order that the immediacy of the early silent film might be recaptured and any taint of merely literary values avoided.
So instead we go and watch the Tuesday afternoon double-bill of ground-breaking early silent film at the Arts Cinema.
The two-part TV special was directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chain-Saw Massacre fame, and outside of a few boners - such as making my vampire Barlow look exactly like the cadaverously inhuman night stalker in the famous German silent film Nosferatu-he did a pretty good job.
Over and over they come, having no order, as if fragments of a silent film are being endlessly replayed - Smith grinning, his mother and father arguing, his mother storming out of the house, his father slumped in the armchair in his attic room, bottle in hand, Miranda talking to another man in the pub, Alison's concern so apparent in a dimly-lit restaurant as she leaned across the table and Joe sneering at Frank.
Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing.
It surprised him that a silent film with no plot could be so distracting.
It was, to Enderby, a silent film, for he had no headset as it had been called.
There was a line of crazy German expressionist houses, tilted every which way, windows painted on at random angles, like something that might have been used in the filming of the classic silent film The Cabinet of Dr.
Their lips would move meaninglessly for him, as if in an old silent film.