The legacy of silent cinema
Perhaps one of the main reasons many of us, including myself, do not "have" certain movies or certain aspects of the film as a whole, we have not spent enough time in the study of the beginnings of the art form. We have not looked into the past. This, then, a look the first decades of cinematic arts, and influence of these early films you see on the screen today.
When Louis and Auguste Lumière first showed his short film, "The arrival of a train" in 1895, which certainly had no idea that almost 100 years later, the film would within a movie in 1992 Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker. Carl Theodor Dreyer also could not have suspected that his role in 1928's passion Joan of Arc, who would one day be the great source of inspiration for great success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004). But no matter where these and filmmakers other principles laid down in the middle of 100 years, or if he still thought it would last so long, the movies we see today are undoubtedly the legacy of the pioneers an emerging form of art.
In addition to the Lumiere brothers, who basically invented the scene with their principles of reels, the first major influence on Today's film was the French magician turned filmmaker Georges Méliès. His films sleight of hand in short films like "Journey to the Moon" (1902) led to the innovation of stop-motion photography, a precursor of today's animated films, as well as a notable influence on the special effects Ray Assistant Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans in 1981) and the Czech puppet animator Jan Svankmajer (1988 to Alice). "A Trip to the Moon" was also the first film science fiction, which led to movies like Alien scientific basis (1979) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
American Filmmaker Edwin S. Porter also contributed greatly to the progress of the new art form. Originally a sailor and electrician, Porter became one of the most important films the first 20 years of cinema with 1903, "The Great Train Robbery," a prototype of the popular westerns of decades later. It also introduced many techniques film that had not been used, including dyed, flat pan shots, the films have been mostly single, static shot set-ups so far. Another new feature "The Great Train Robbery" mate vaccine was introduced, a kind of overlap in which a series of shooting images in front of a screen, which previously photographed a "background" projects, this technique was subsequently used well into the decade 1960, and sometimes even used today, as in 1994's film Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Furthermore, "The Great Train Robbery" arguably which is the first example of the film's violence, a concept that became very controversial in the 1960's and early 1970, eventually leading to system movement MPAA Rating image still in place today.
"The Great Train Robbery" Porter made the most famous and influential manager of his time, but eventually was displaced by one of their own writers, David Wark Griffith. DW Griffith, as he is known, found success as a director in 1908, working for the company Biograph. In 1909, he made "a corner in wheat," a short anti-capitalist based on the work of Frank Norris, whose novel McTeague was later the inspiration for the greed of Erich von Stroheim (1924).
Griffith went to make the birth of a nation, the United States first feature film in 1915. The film was a breakthrough in cinematic storytelling, and is still recognized today as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, but his portrait of emancipation slaves after the civil war it was offensive to many, even in 1915, and much of the film is laughable today. According to Griffith (or, to be fair, the Rev. Thomas Dixon, whose novel is based birth) at the end of the war, the wealthy plantation owners were not only displaced from their lands, which were also persecuted tirelessly for the ex-slaves and poor adventurers. Who knew white rich people had so much trouble? Fortunately, a heroic white man Ku Klux Klan founded a organization apparently misunderstood the film raises is El Salvador of America as we know it.
Despite the controversy, or perhaps because of her birth was a blockbuster Griffith never be the same. His next film, Intolerance, was a spectacular failure. With a budget of more than 400,000 dollars, was the most expensive American film until its release in 1916. It was also years ahead of its time in terms of scenery and other elements technicians, including the use of a crane to capture all the multiple layers of Babylon created by Walter Hall.
Unfortunately, due in part to poor synchronization, the film never made its budget back and placed Griffith on the life of the debt. He did not, however, end his career. Probably his most successful and accomplished film after the birth of a nation was in 1919 in Broken Blossoms, a sad and beautiful story of forbidden love and parental brutality. In this regard, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1992) is an interesting parallel: the two films share themes of interracial romance and shocking incidents a father killing his son.
On a lighter note, Griffith was also a great influence on other filmmakers of his time, including Mack Sennett, who later founded the Keystone studios. Although Sennett humor was broad, crude, and not really fun for today's standards, many great comic talents are started in his study, as Charles Chaplin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd and WC Fields.
Arbuckle soon overcame and began directing Keystone their own short films. Some, like "cook", was Buster Keaton, who became one of the greatest American silent film talent. "Buster" was actually a nickname given him as a child by the great magician, Harry Houdini, and the love of magic tricks and acrobatics is evident in Keaton's films. In fact, the modern actor, director and expert Jackie Chan incredible can be seen as a descendant of Labor Keaton, using the same time incredible strength and film resistance to create joy. Both suffered for their art as well, regularly breaking bones and other injuries keep while doing all his own stunts. In fact, all the comedians of the silent era did their own stunts, but Keaton was probably the most dangerous. His neck was broken by its function 1926, the General, which involves many spectacular stunts aboard a steam engine in motion, in one scene, Keaton falls off the train by a deluge of water, landing the back of his neck through the rail. He did not learn until years after a fracture had occurred.
Keaton 1924 film Sherlock, Jr., was very innovative in that it introduced the now standard convention of the dream sequence out of the body, double exposure to the impression of Keaton's spirit leave his body physically. Another interesting technique Keaton for the first time later this film was an inspiration for 1985 Woody Allen, The Purple Rose of Cairo. It is a scene in which Keaton actually goes into a movie screen and becomes part of the action. According to Keaton – quoted in Film Quarterly, Fall 1958 – this is how the effect took place: "We have built something like a movie screen and came build a stage in that frame … so I could get out of the shadows in the bright screen on the front row of the theater right in the picture. "When the scene the "movie" of the changes, then, an astonishing precision had to be used to ensure that Keaton was in the same position of having to take. The illusion is perfect, and how are you Keaton innovations that make one of the first filmmakers of all time.
In 2004, Bernardo Bertolucci, The Dreamers, two of the main characters arguing about who was the greatest filmmaker, Chaplin or Keaton. It is clear that Keaton was a great benefit for the advancement technique, but Chaplin is, of course, most popular and widely known, partly because it was more prolific. Like Keaton, Chaplin began in vaudeville and its action scenes, though not as spectacular as Keaton. As pointed out by André Bazin in 1967, film critic Andrew Sarris of collectionInterviews with Directors Film, Chaplin's films was "a comedy of space, man's relationship with objects and with the outside world." This is certainly evident in 1916 Chaplin short, "One AM", which is drunk with a variety of objects in your home, as well as its role in 1925, The Gold Rush. His iconic dance with two rolls on forks, creating the impression of two feet comic supporting his massive head, has been imitated many times, especially in Benny and Joon (1993), starring Johnny Depp, and an episode of The Simpsons, in which Chaplin's grandfather holders making immortal.
The antithesis of the style of Chaplin, according to Sarris in the book mentioned, is the fitting formula originally developed by Lev Kuleshov and later extended by Sergei Eisenstein. Famous Kuleshov experiment in assembly showed that the essence of cinema is editing: cut together a single plane of the face of an actor with three different images, which made the audience with three different expressions on the face of actor, which, of course, remains the same everywhere. The impact of this experience comes through the history of cinema, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, filmmakers such as David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky today.
1925 Eisenstein film, Battleship Potemkin is a perfect example of the power assembly. In a scene toward the end of the film, static shots of the three stone lions are cut together in succession so it seems as if the lion is increasing its feet in solidarity with the rebel sailors. However, the ofPotemkin greatness is not at all on the issue. Early in the film is a brilliant illumination technique in which a priest on board a crucifix and firmly rebukes of the sailors, the light exploded behind him suggests that the fires of hell. Of course, the sequence more famous film is the confrontation on the steps of Odessa. As fire Cossacks Odessa citizens who support the revolution, a baby carriage hits dangerously down the stairs. This scene was quoted in the 1987 Brian De Palma, The Untouchables, which in turn was supplanted in The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear (1991).
Potemkin is a film overtly political on the use of technology in order to take power. In his essay, "Politics and the silent film," published in the book Visions 1988 and Blueprints: Avant-Garde Culture and radical politics of the early twentieth century Europe, Michael Minden, contrasting with the masterpiece of expressionist Robert Wiener German, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), a film that Eisenstein "regarded as negative healthy, and the representative of introspection without a future, which offended vibrant young medium of film. "It has been called" a kind of impasse "because" the artificiality and narration limited potential race as expressionism restricted its use, "said Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman in his 2001 book Flashback: A brief history of cinema, but has influenced modern cinema more than it seems at first sight. His staging is geometrically impossible a clear influence on directors like Tim Burton and David Lynch, the sleepwalker Cesare, could easily be one of the zombies in Night of George A. Romero 's Living Dead (1968), and is also notable as perhaps the first film with a final twist, a clear precursor of the supernatural later films Carnival of Souls (1962) The Sixth Sense (1999).
Another important film the time of German Expressionism is Murnau'sNosferatu FW (1922). Loosely based on the novel by Bram Stoker, Dracula (but not loosely enough to prevent Stoker's widow to sue Murnau), the film stars Max Shreck as Orlock rat-like Count, and was from a very popular genre, the vampire movie. Use stop-motion photography (when Orlock's coffin is loaded into a car with him inside) and double exposure (when it disintegrates Orlock in sunlight at the climax of the film) to evoke the supernatural. It was also a great influence on directors like Werner Herzog, who remade the film in 1979 the inimitable Klaus Kinski as Orlock, and Coppola, who managed to get a similar environment in the first act of Bram Stoker. Shreck in Nosferatu performance was so convincing inspired by a legend that Shreck was actually a vampire, Murnau excavated for authenticity, this legend was the basis for the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, starring John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Shreck.
Probably the most influential film movement out of German Expressionism, however, Metropolis Fritz Lang (1925). The film, which opens with a series of dissolves between the various machines that make the city thrive, is a masterpiece of science fiction policy and a clear intermediate step between the early Melies films and special effects of images of today. Metropolis is one of the first films make extensive use of miniatures, paving the way for such films as King Kong (1933) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It was also the first feature film a humanoid machine or a robot, and the theme of the interdependence of man and machine has been a great influence on science fiction literature and film, especially in films like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and the Wachowski brothers' Matrix (1999). He was also an inspiration for the Japanese artist / writer and classical Osamu Tezuka manga of the same title, which later became an animated film in 2001. Another Japanese animation film that owes much toMetropolis Spirit is in the Shell Mamoru Oshii (1992), based on Masamune Shirow's graphic novel.
Interestingly, the comparison between the Metropolis and Battleship Potemkin, which were released the same year in different countries, which are stories of rebellions by workers. Perhaps the most interesting difference is that in the Potemkin, the workers take control of machines, while inMetropolis, a machine (disguised as Mary, the daughter of a worker) shows the control workers.
Like all Expressionism, the German was a great influence on black American cinema of the 1940s and '50s, several of which were directed by Lang. This movement gave birth to the French New Wave film directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Jacques Tati. Today, filmmakers like David Lynch, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have created their own new vision of this great tradition.
Arguably the best film of the silent era is Dreyer'sThe Passion of Joan of Arc, a starkly beautiful masterpiece composed mainly of close-ups. Melle Falconetti as Joan, an absolutely delivery chilling performance, the scene that includes the withdrawal of his mission from God to end his suffering is particularly effective. It's a shame that this film is not more widely seen now in the wake of Gibson's The Passion of Christ, which is almost like a tribute to the Dreyer film, as is Jesus. Besides the structure Gibson's movie, two scenes in particular are clearly influenced by Joan: one in which the Roman guards torment Jesus is virtually identical a (but bloody) torment, until you reach the crown of thorns Juana (although Joan is a symbol). The other has to do with the climax of each film have striking similarities too. The Passion of Joan of Arc is rich in religious symbolism everywhere, the most obvious is the shadow of a crucifix on the floor of the cell Jane, which is several times deleted by their pursuers.
A French film director from the others in silence was noteworthy is Luis Buñuel, who spent making films of acclaimed and influential for decades after the arrival of sound. His most famous early films of 1928 is a collaboration with Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, entitled "Un Chien Andalou" (for a complete analysis of this incredible film, see the most http://moviesididntget.com/2011/01/17/un-chien-andalou-kill-your-symbols / -1420). The film deliberately lacks a coherent story, but full of unforgettable images, especially the eyes of a woman being cut with a knife shaving, interspersed with an injection of a dark cloud drifting across a full moon – one of many perfect examples of graphic editing in the film. Perhaps the best known example of the visual influence of "Andalusian" in later films are in the silence forThe famous poster art of the Lambs (1991), incorporating the "skull" moth in combination with another famous image from the short film with excellent results. Buñuel's surrealist film has left its mark in many other modern filmmakers, Lynch Alex Cox (1986 Sid and Nancy) and Whit Stillman (1990 Metropolitan), to name a few.
Stanley Kubrick once said, "silent film has far more right things talkies" (in flashback). While there has undoubtedly been major innovations in the art of film from the time silent film (with Kubrick at the forefront), the analysis of these and many other great silent films proves that almost all the groundwork was laid for the first 30 years. The most Wise managers today are sure to be well versed in the silent film. With innovators such as Lars von Trier (Dogville, 2003), Gaspar Noé (2002 is irreversible) and Michel Gondry (2004'sEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), we are witnessing the legacy of an art form that began to claw its way to the respect and recognition of nearly a century ago.
About the Author
Ezra Stead is the Head Editor for www.moviesididntget.com. Ezra is also a screenwriter, actor, filmmaker, rapper and poet who has been previously published in print and online, as well as writing, directing and acting in numerous short films and two features. A Minneapolis native, Ezra currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.