Silent filmmaking continued to grow in popularity, and by the 1920s, it had become the dominant form of filmmaking. At this time, there were many different types of silent films, including comedies, dramas, Westerns, and musicals.
Made from the 1890s through the late 1920s, silent films are movies without synchronized sound and dialogue. Instead, music was often played live in theaters to accompany and punctuate the action that took place on the screen, and dialogue was conveyed through intertitles, or shots of printed text.
And film directors were skeptical of sound decreasing film creativity. In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first feature length film to include sound. By the early 1930s, the silent film era was over as “talkies” became a theatre sensation.
Phonographs and other prototypes of speakers were used to accompany silent films during the late 1920s, yet before this, all films were silent due to the fact that sound recording capabilities within the film itself were not yet developed and wouldn't be until the 1930s.
Over that time period, movies evolved from a novelty to an art form. In addition, silent film also became a big business in this era. Silent movies provided cheap entertainment that overcame the language barrier for the millions of immigrants coming to America in the early 20th century.
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In what era were silent films most popular?
The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" (1894 in film – 1929 in film). The height of the silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation.
The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology.
People of all ages attended the movies with far more regularity than today, often going more than once per week. By the end of the decade, weekly movie attendance swelled to 90 million people. The silent movies of the early 1920s gave rise to the first generation of movie stars.
Silent movies were made from the late 1880s to the early 1930s. They used early cameras that could not record sound. Either the movie was being made before sound cameras were invented, or the movie makers could not afford the expensive new equipment.
During the 1920s, movie attendance soared. By the middle of the decade, 50 million people a week went to the movies - the equivalent of half the nation's population. In Chicago, in 1929, theaters had enough seats for half the city's population to attend a movie each day.
Similarly, silent films were perceived as worthless after the end of the silent era. Film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said, "Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films.
During the highpoint of the silent era, between 1926 and 1930, the form reached a zenith of poetic expression and subtlety before the coming of sound swept it all away.
Even in comparison to major releases seen today, hundreds of more films were made and released in the 1930s. Genre films were big hits, especially westerns, gangster and crime movies, and musicals. The Golden Age of Hollywood began to falter by 1948 and fully came to an end by the 1960s.
What are talkies? Talkies get their name from the recorded dialogue that played in sync with the images on screen. Movies from the Silent Film Era (1894-1929), were largely recorded and played without sound.
The classic Hollywood film style was perfected and significant film genres were established: the melodrama, western, historical epic, and romantic comedy, along with slapstick, science fiction, and fantasy.
On October 6, 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film to incorporate synchronized sound for sequences of dialogue. Though these sequences were limited and brief, hearing the voices of the film's stars was a revelation for audiences.
In Old California is a 1910 American silent Western film. It was the first film shot in Hollywood, California. It was directed by D. W. Griffith of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (then based in New York City).
Many early silent films were either dramas, epics, romances, or comedies (often slapstick). One-reelers (10-12 minutes) soon gave way to four-reel feature-length films.
By the early 1920's, many American towns had a movie theater. Most Americans went to see the movies at least once a week. The movie industry became a big business. People might not know the names of government officials, but they knew the names of every leading actor and actress.
These opulently appointed theaters were constructed in the exotic styles of French Baroque, Italian Renaissance, Egyptian Revival, as well as Aztec and Oriental imagery. The majority of these theaters could seat audiences of 1,000 to 3,000 people. Others, like the Roxy in New York City, could seat over 6,000 people.
The rise of "talkies" from the late 1920s onwards led to a radical shake-up of the entertainment industry. Live entertainment went into decline and variety theatres became movie palaces, where eager punters could see exactly the same entertainment as their fellows in Los Angeles, Berlin or Bombay.
The gradual transition from silent films to talkies took place between 1926 and 1930 and included many small steps — both technological developments and adjustments to audience expectations — before it was complete.
The first film with recorded sound was The Dickson Experimental Sound Film released around 1894. Lee de Forest and Theodore Case invented phonofilm, and recordings of singing and talking that predate The Jazz Singer have been discovered. Don Juan was released — and heavily promoted — by a studio in 1926.
Under The Edison Company in the 1890s, inventor W.K.L. Dickson invented the Kineto-phonograph, which combined Edison's kinetoscope and phonograph innovations into one apparatus that played film and sound concurrently. In 1913, Dickson further developed a version of the device that could project the image on screen.
