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Sound and music in film has been in use almost as long as the medium itself, but the synchronization of sound-on-disc (later to be replaced by sound-on-film) would not come till decades later. By the end of the 1920s the cinema underwent a revolution, but the transition from silent to sound film marked a period of grave instability as well as great creativity in the history of cinema. It is a period with specific features that differentiate it from the years before and after. To understand the impact of sound, it should not be forgotten that silent cinema was not silent at all. Silent film had utilized plenty of methods to bring sound accompaniment to its audience.

While General Electric and Western Electric struggled to compete with each other on audio synchronization through technology, innovative filmmakers had long since mastered simulated sound through phonograph and other experiments. Moreover, these films were presented in a cinema with live music performed by a pianist or an orchestra, and often the musicians would add sound effects to the action on the screen. In Japanese cinemas a voice was even added to the images by a lecturer or benshi, who actually dominated the film show with his verbal interpretations. Finally, the real breakthrough came when Warners Brothers released a film featuring lip-sync recordings of music and dialogue, successfully creating the most iconic phrase in film history.

This October we will celebrate the anniversary of this monumentous transition in the history of film (and make up for a little downtime ) by offering a weekend free leech of all our films in the Silent Category. (Silent Film free leech ends Monday at 11pm GMT, give or take an hour.)



Selected Highlights for Important and/or Underrated Silent Films

Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers (1895-1910)
Fritz Lang's Spione
Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc



For those who have a Bibliotik account, below are links to relevant reading material on the subject.

The Oxford History of World Cinema by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Film History: An Introduction by Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell
Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches by James Chapman, Mark Glancy, Sue Harper
Cinema Before Cinema: The Origins of Scientific Cinematography by Virgilio Tosi
The Social History of Art: Naturalism, Impressionism, the Film Age Vol IV by Arnold Hauser
The Sounds of Early Cinema by Richard Abel, Rick R. Altman
The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition) by Nanna Verhoeff
History of The American Cinema, vol 1-10. by Charles Harpole
Film History: An International Journal



If you have any suggestions for further reading, links to films, or just shout-outs for your favorite silent films, please use this forum thread to continue the discussion.





A very special thank you to primolandia for orchestrating this event!