The silent cinema

The silent cinema

silent cinema

Films before the invention of sound cinema are not dubbed by their contemporaries, and for good reason, the names silent film and silent film date back to the 1930s, in English are the silent films, after that sound cinema had imposed itself. The silent cinema is characterized by the absence of dialogues recorded on a mechanical support (disc or film) which would allow their recording, their transport in a room and their hearing by a public at the same time as it would look at the images, and by the absence on the same medium of music and noises or soundscapes.

Thus, the first seventy films of Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, from 1891 to 1895, are shot without the slightest sound with the Kinetic and presented to the public in this state through the Kinetoscope, an individual viewing device. The films of the Lumière brothers, filmed and projected on the big screen thanks to the Cinématographe, from 1895, are also; their duration is identical to American films: 30 to 60 seconds.

Previously, in 1892, Émile Reynaud, who, first, organizes screenings of animated fiction on the big screen, proves that a show of animated images must be accompanied by music emphasizing the ambiances and explaining the unspoken. He commissions for his luminous Pantomimes, the first animated cartoons of the world, which last up to 5 minutes, the first music of the cinema, the first original tapes to the pianist Gaston Paulin who interprets them in each session.

The so-called "first talking films" are actually "singing films", both Don Juan in (1926) and The Singer of Jazz in 1927. The dialogues of these films are all written on "cartoons" introduced into the montage between the shots where we see the actors talking. Only a few intermediate words are recorded during the songs, between two verses. The real first talking film lasts the time of a reel, about ten minutes; this is the test piece of the singer Al Jolson for the Warner Bros: A scene in the plantation, made in 1926. Al Jolson, grimed in poor Black, sings a lullaby well rhythmic, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody, and two other songs, but suddenly, he looks straight into the camera lens, interrupts his song and starts talking. During the screenings, "the spectators are thrilled because, oh miracle! the singer speaks to the camera, so to them, and challenges them with a distributed become famous, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you've not heard nothing 'yet! "(Wait a minute ... open your ears ... you have not heard anything yet!), A must he later takes in The Jazz Singer". The public success of this short film is immense, so much so that the Warner takes the financial risk to produce in the wake of a feature film of ninety minutes, The Jazz Singer. These sound projections, which delight spectators, sound the end of silent cinema.