Silent movies often get pigeonholed as either zany slapstick with exaggerated acting or serious, dark, depressing art films. In reality, the silent period covers vast amounts of genres, topics, sensibilities, and filmmaking styles and came from countries all around the world. From the invention of projected cinema in the 1890s to the final films shot without synchronized dialogue in the early 1930s, filmmakers found inventive ways to use a nascent art form without ever needing any synchronized dialogue.
On The Everyday Cinephile, I’ve sought to cull together a wide variety of information from throughout the silent period to highlight the artistic power and beauty of numerous filmmakers. My hope is that this collection of information related to silent movies will break down many common misconceptions in an engaging, informative fashion so that the newest newcomers and the most experienced silent movies fanatic alike will dive into something new and spectacular from the era.
Browsing through my selection of silent movies-related posts and articles, you will find everything from rankings of Harold Lloyd films to introduction guides to silent cinema to deep dives into a single silent film. Make sure to use the search bar located on the top right of the site or on the left side widget to search for silent film terms, filmmakers, and performers you’d like to learn more about. Feel free to reach out to me to suggest topics you’d like to see covered or any specific films or filmmakers you’d like to learn more about.
There may be no other sound more synonymous with the moviegoing experience than 20th Century Fox’s opening fanfare. When the Fox Film Corporation held a small stable of B-tier stars in the 1920s, it would be hard to predict that a generation of moviegoers would …
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I have a strange fascination with silent stars who never translated their careers successfully into the sound era. Last year I dove into David Stenn’s Clara Bow biography. This year I’ve already read and reviewed Tracy Gossel’s Douglas Fairbanks biography. Eve Golden’s John Gilbert: …
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Whether it’s this year’s summer blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick or the silent World War I aerial epic Wings, film always has always been a perfect medium to showcase the wonder of aviation. Over the past century, airplanes and pilots have brought movie audiences big explosions, …
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One of the first silent films I ever watched was Douglas Fairbanks’ 1924 epic The Thief of Baghdad. A lavish costume drama inspired by Arabian night tales, the film’s imaginative tale and its star’s unique and energetic charm absolutely stunned an impressable young me. …
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Aviation and film took the world by storm in the early 20th century. Just eight years after the Lumiere brothers’ famed 1895 projected screenings, Orville and Wilbur Wright took their first flight in December 1903. By the 1910s, film had exploded into an international entertainment …
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The earliest films relied heavily on other entertainment mediums such as vaudeville, theater, books, and newspapers to create short narratives for audiences. Comedy especially relied on jokes that were prevalent in late 19th and early 20th-century culture. For example, one of the earliest Lumiere films …
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