Silent Film Era
Most often, the viewing of the film was accompanied live by an organist or piano player. Sometimes, dialogue was conveyed by inserting black frames with white printing on them between shots or scenes. All silent films of this era are also black and white films, as inexpensive color film was not invented until the late 1930s.
Mack Sennett (creator of the Keystone Cops) and Hal Roach were two of the most famous producers of silent comedies. Famous actors from this era are now legendary: Ben Turpin, Mabel Normand, Edna Purviance, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy (the duo of Laurel & Hardy were among those who made a commercially successful transition into talking pictures), and many others.
Read more about this topic: Silent Comedy
Famous quotes containing the words silent, film and/or era:
“They mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I’m showing off; when I’m silent they think I’m ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I’m tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance.”
—François Truffaut (1932–1984)
“...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)