Misplaced Pages

#236763

147-537: Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen (11 September 1881 – 24 May 1972) was a Danish silent film actress who was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international movie stars. Seventy of Nielsen's 74 films were made in Germany where she was known simply as Die Asta ( The Asta ). Known for her large dark eyes, mask-like face and boyish figure, Nielsen most often portrayed strong-willed passionate women trapped by tragic circumstances. Due to

294-554: A suicide pact . On 24 February 1924, they were both found unconscious at a hotel in Vienna, though this was explained as an accidental overdose of "sleeping powder." In late October 1925, Max and Hélène reportedly attended a Paris screening of Quo Vadis (in which two characters, Petronius and his slave Eunice, as a reporter put it, "bleed themselves to death"), and died in a similar manner. They drank Veronal , injected morphine and slashed their wrists. Peters died first, while Linder

441-445: A 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 304 millimetres (12.0 in) per second. In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films , such as

588-489: A Bath and the autobiographical Max Linder's Film Debut , which fictitiously recreates the legend of Linder's early film career and includes Charles Pathé as himself. By the end of the year, Linder had become the most popular film actor in the world. Although actress Florence Lawrence is often referred to as " The First Movie Star " in the United States, Linder appears to be the very first worldwide movie star with

735-584: A Divorce were complete failures, but the third film, Max and his Taxi was moderately successful. The financially troubled studio may have been counting on Linder to restore its flagging fortunes and cancelled production of the remaining films on Linder's contract. Max and his Taxi had been shot in Hollywood and while there Linder had developed a close friendship with Charlie Chaplin. They would often attend events such as boxing matches or car races together, and according to writer Jack Spears, "while working on

882-529: A German patrol in icy water for several hours. After being dismissed from his duties, Linder spent the remainder of the war entertaining the troops and making films. It was also during this period that Linder had his first serious bout with chronic depression . In 1916, Linder was approached by American film producer George K. Spoor , the president of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company , to make twelve short films for him in

1029-514: A Max Linder festival. The relative merits of Linder and Chaplin are then discussed by the German soldier, Frederick Zoller, who argues that Linder is superior to Chaplin while also admitting that Linder never made anything as good as The Kid . The documentary film The Mystery of the King of Kinema portraits Linder and his impact through interviews (including Maud Linder), silent film excerpts and

1176-547: A Max Linder movie theater had opened in Paris. At the height of his fame, Linder ended 1910 with a serious illness. He was forced to stop making films when appendicitis left him bedridden, and some newspapers reported that he had died. He eventually recovered the following spring and began making films again in May 1911. In 1911, Linder returned to filmmaking and began co-directing his own films (with René LePrince) as well as writing

1323-494: A Russian popularity poll of 1911, Nielsen was voted the world's top female movie star, behind Linder and ahead of her Danish compatriot Valdemar Psilander . Her film ' A Militant Suffragette ' was disrupted at a showing in the Queen's Cinema, Aberdeen , Scotland on 4 February 1914, by local suffragists objecting to the portrayal of force-feeding . However she remained popular on both sides through World War I and in 1915 (before

1470-477: A Trophy) in 1929. Silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue ). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards . The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During

1617-627: A collage artist and an author. Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen was born in the Vesterbro district of Copenhagen, Denmark, the daughter of Jens Christian Nielsen (1847–1895), an often unemployed blacksmith, and Ida Frederikke Petersen (1843–1912), a washerwoman. She had an older sister, Johanne, who suffered from rheumatic fever throughout her life. Nielsen's family moved several times during her childhood while her father sought employment. They lived for several years in Malmö , Sweden, where her father worked at

SECTION 10

#1732791926237

1764-573: A confusion with her now-lost film Die Tänzerin Navarro (1922), which features a plot similar to the story of Mata Hari's life. In 1925, she starred in the German film Die freudlose Gasse ( The Joyless Street or The Street of Sorrow ), directed by G.W. Pabst and co-starring Greta Garbo , months before Garbo left for Hollywood and MGM. She worked in German films until the start of sound movies. Nielsen made only one feature movie with sound, Unmögliche Liebe ( Crown of Thorns ) in 1932. However,

1911-550: A corn mill and then a factory. After he lost those jobs, they returned to live in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Nørrebro. Nielsen's father died when she was fourteen years old. At the age of 18, Nielsen was accepted into the acting school of the Royal Danish Theatre . During her time there, she studied closely with Royal Danish Actor Peter Jerndorff . In 1901, 21-year-old Nielsen became pregnant and gave birth to

2058-654: A daughter, Jesta. Nielsen never revealed the father's identity, but chose to raise her child alone with the help of her mother and older sister. Jesta committed suicide in 1964. Nielsen graduated from the Theater school in 1902. For the next three years she worked at the Dagmar Theatre, then toured in Norway and Sweden from 1905 to 1907 with De Otte and the Peter Fjelstrup companies. Returning to Denmark, she

2205-471: A dispatch driver between Paris and the front lines. Many conflicting stories about the reasons behind his dismissal from the army exist, including that he was shot through the lung, and seriously wounded. Initially, it was reported by one newspaper that he had been killed; Linder actually phoned the offending publishers, leading them to run the headline "Max Linder Not Killed". However, others have asserted that he became infected with pneumonia after hiding from

2352-617: A fortune. Come and act in front of my cameras, and I will help make it." From 1905 to 1907, Linder appeared in dozens of short comedy films for Pathé, usually in a supporting role. His first noticeably larger film role was in The Young Man's First Outing in 1905. He also appeared in Georges Méliès -like fantasy films such as Serpentine Dances and The Legend of Punching , his first leading role. His rise to stardom commenced in 1907 when Pathé's slapstick star René Gréhan left

2499-634: A garden. Max Linder had been relegated to little more than a footnote in film history until a compilation film titled Laugh with Max Linder premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was theatrically released. The film was a compilation of Linder's last three films made in Hollywood and its release was supervised by Maud Linder . In 1983, Maud Linder made a documentary film, The Man in the Silk Hat , about Linder's life and career. It

2646-571: A head injury. He was arrested in Nice later that month for "kidnapping a minor", who happened to be his future wife, the seventeen-year-old Hélène "Ninette" Peters. They had planned to run away to Monte Carlo . Upon Linder and Peters' first encounter at a hotel in Chamonix , Linder was entranced by her, exclaiming to a friend, "I spent the whole night in a hotel lounge talking to the most extraordinary girl I could ever imagine. Instantly I knew this to be

2793-413: A key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Inter-titles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action". Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by

2940-469: A low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid . The German film Tuvalu (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet-era silent films with his short The Heart of the World after which he made a feature-length silent, Brand Upon

3087-669: A major following. In Russia, he was voted the most popular film actor, ahead of Asta Nielsen . He also had a Russian impersonator, Zozlov, and a devoted fan in Czar Nicholas II . Another professed fan was British playwright George Bernard Shaw . The first feature film ever made in Bulgaria was a remake of one of Linder's earlier movies. He was offered $ 12,000 to spend a month in Berlin making public appearances with his film screenings, but had to decline for health reasons. In France,

SECTION 20

#1732791926237

3234-521: A manageable level. In the spring of 1888, the Leuvielle family's plantation was attacked by grape phylloxera . Jean and Suzanne heavily considered emigrating to America, and embarked on a trip to New York in search for propitious offers. During their trip, Max and Maurice remained in France with their grandmother Jeanne. Nothing became of Jean and Suzanne's plans to emigrate, as it was discovered that

3381-645: A much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia -toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking. Some films were hand-tinted, such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894), from Edison Studios . In it, Annabelle Whitford ,

3528-614: A passion for theater and enrolled in the Conservatoire de Bordeaux in 1899. He soon received awards for his performances and continued to pursue a career in the legitimate theater. He became a contract player with the Bordeaux Théâtre des Arts from 1901 to 1904, performing in plays by Molière , Pierre Corneille , and Alfred de Musset . From the summer of 1905, Linder appeared in short comedy films for Pathé , at first usually in supporting roles. His first major film role

3675-414: A passion for theater, and was enthralled by the traveling theater and circus performances that occasionally visited his town. He later wrote that "nothing was more distasteful to me than the thought of a life among the grapes." As a child, Linder fell victim to a severe case of cholera . He survived by resting in the oven of the village baker. The heat from the oven supposedly brought down the infection to

3822-467: A picture Linder would go next door to Chaplin's home and discuss the day's shooting. The two often sat until dawn, developing and refining the gags. Chaplin's suggestions were invaluable, Linder said." Linder returned to France in 1917 and opened a movie theater, the Ciné Max Linder. However, due to his depression and anxiety about the still ongoing war, he was unable to continue making films on

3969-427: A purported suicide pact with his wife in Paris. Max Linder was born Gabriel Leuvielle near Saint-Loubès , Gironde . He was called "Max" from a young age. His parents, Jean and Suzanne (née Baron), were wealthy vineyard owners and expected Linder to take over the family business; his older brother Maurice (28 June 1881 – 14 December 1959) had become a celebrated national rugby player. But Linder grew up with

4116-503: A race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927) and RCA Photophone (1928). Warner Bros. was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released The Jazz Singer in 1927, which marked

4263-458: A regular basis, and was often quoted by journalists about the horrors of the front lines. After the Armistice in 1918, Linder was able to regain his enthusiasm and agreed to make a film with director Raymond Bernard , the feature length The Little Café in 1919. In the film, Linder plays a waiter who suddenly becomes a millionaire, but simultaneously is tricked into a twenty-year contract to be

4410-450: A salary of one million francs a year, and Charles Pathé used the huge sum to generate publicity, with an ad reading "We understand that the shackles which bind Max Linder have attained the value of one million francs a year...the imagination boggles at such a figure!" This set a precedent in the entertainment industry for actors' salaries that would become a staple of the Hollywood system, but privately Pathé nicknamed Linder "The Napoleon of

4557-416: A series of "Léonce" slapstick shorts that were popular but nowhere near the stature of Linder's films. Charles Prince, on the other hand, was gaining popularity during his career and was nearly equal to Linder by the beginning of World War I . Prince's screen persona was "Rigadin", who like "Max" was a bumbling bourgeois socialite who always got into trouble. Both Linder and Prince were employed by Pathé in

Asta Nielsen - Misplaced Pages Continue

4704-498: A special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color. With the development of sound-on-film technology and

4851-665: A studio in Tempelhof, and set up a big production staff around her. This woman can carry it ... Let the films cost whatever they cost. I used every available means – and devised many new ones – in order to bring the Asta Nielsen films to the world. Nielsen contracted for $ 80,000 a year, then the highest salary for a film star. Nielsen is called the first international movie star, challenged only by French comic Max Linder , also famous throughout Europe and in America by that time. In

4998-534: A suicide pact, and sometimes as a murder-suicide." In addition, Maud Linder reported in her memoir that the head of the workmen at Linder's house in Neuilly overheard Max tell a friend, probably Armand Massard, that he planned to kill his wife along with himself, as he could not bear the thought of her belonging to another after he was gone. Linder was buried at the Catholique cimetière de Saint-Loubès. His wife

5145-551: A waiter by the cafe owner. The film made over a million francs in Europe and briefly revived his career, but was financially unsuccessful in the US. Four years after failing to become a major star in the U.S., Linder made another attempt at filmmaking in Hollywood and formed his own production company there in 1921. His first film back in the U.S. was Seven Years Bad Luck , considered by some to be his best film. The film contains one of

5292-521: A wealthy and dapper man-about-town frequently in hot water because of his penchant for beautiful women and the good life. With this character, he had created one of the first identifiable motion-picture characters who appeared in successive situation comedies. Linder's first appearance as "Max" was in The Skater's Debut in 1907. Lake Daumesnil in Paris had frozen over and director Louis Gasnier filmed Linder in his new attire, with Linder improvising

5439-494: A young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller , beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès . Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and

5586-437: Is a retronym —a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were variously referred to as the "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures" . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced the phonograph in 1877), and some early experiments had

5733-453: Is a satire of swashbuckling films made by Douglas Fairbanks and is loosely based on the plot of Alexander Dumas ' The Three Musketeers . The film was praised by Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, but again failed at the box office. At the films premiere, Linder had said to director Robert Florey "You see, Bob, I sense that I'm no longer funny; I have so many preoccupations that I can no longer concentrate on my film character ... The public

5880-479: Is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Upon receiving the news of Linder's death, Chaplin is reported to have closed his studio for one day out of respect. In the ensuing years, his jealous and alcoholic elder brother won custody of sixteen-month-old heiress Maud Linder to get the girl's fortune, before her grandmother (Hélène's mother) legally fought back and took over. Meanwhile, many of his films were lost because most reels had been buried unprotected in

6027-617: Is essentially a horror film set in a haunted house , with occasional moments of comedy by Linder. The film was released in England in 1924 and was critically praised, however the legal copyright of the film prevented it from being released in France or the US for several years. Linder's last film was The King of the Circus directed by Édouard-Émile Violet (with pre-production collaboration from Jacques Feyder ) and filmed in Vienna in 1925. In

Asta Nielsen - Misplaced Pages Continue

6174-427: Is mildly amused by my situations, but this evening where were the explosions of laughter that we hear when Charlie's on the screen?...Make people laugh, its easy to say make people laugh, but I don't feel funny anymore." With his depression making it difficult for him to work, Linder returned to France in 1922 and shortly afterwards made a semi-serious film: Au Secours! ( Help! ) for director Abel Gance . The film

6321-492: Is mistaken and that the man who is approaching, far from spelling disaster, is the answer to her prayers. The expression of horror on her face is gradually modulated through the entire scale of feelings from hesitant doubt, anxious hope and cautious joy, right through to exultant happiness. We watch her face in closeup for some twenty metres of film. We see every hint of expression around her eyes and mouth and watch them relax one by one and slowly change. For minutes on end we witness

6468-451: Is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci 's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's Margarette's Feast (2003) is silent. Writer/director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with Silent (2007). While not silent, the Mr. Bean television series and movies have used

6615-465: Is that the genre shifted from the "knockabout" comedies made by such people as Mack Sennett and André Deed to a more subtle, refined and character driven medium that would later be dominated by Chaplin, Buster Keaton , Harold Lloyd , and others. Linder's influence on Chaplin is apparent both from Chaplin's sometimes borrowing gags or entire plot-lines from Linder's films, as well as from a famous signed photo that Chaplin sent Linder which read: "To Max,

6762-544: The benshi , a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the benshi was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as benshi -narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow

6909-670: The Comédie-Française . Le Bargy encouraged Linder to audition for the Conservatoire de Paris in 1904. Linder was rejected and began appearing in less prestigious theaters such as the Olympia Theater and the Théâtre de l'Ambigu . By 1905, he had adopted his stage name of Max Linder and used it in several theatrical performances. Also during this period, Linder applied for work at Pathé Frères in Vincennes at

7056-430: The Conservatoire de Bordeaux and quickly won awards for first prize in comedy and second prize in tragedy. He continued to pursue a career in the theater and became a contract player with the Bordeaux Théâtre des Arts from 1901 to 1904, performing in plays by Molière , Pierre Corneille and Alfred de Musset . At the same time that he was performing in serious dramatic theater, he became friends with Charles le Bargy of

7203-421: The audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy . The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film

7350-474: The 1899 Cendrillion (Cinderella) and 1900 Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or mise-en-scène ; such precise tinting used the workshop of Elisabeth Thuillier in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' A Trip to

7497-519: The Brain! (2006), incorporating live Foley artists , narration and orchestra at select showings. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Some films draw a direct contrast between

SECTION 50

#1732791926237

7644-622: The Cinema". The high point of Linder's career was from 1912 to 1914. His films were made with increased skill and "Max" was at his funniest. He made such films as Max Virtuoso , Max Does Not Speak English , Max and His Dog , Max's Hat and Max and the Jealous Husband . His ensemble of actors included Stacia Napierkowska , Jane Renouardt, Gaby Morlay , and occasional performances from the young actors Abel Gance and Maurice Chevalier . Linder had given Chevalier his start in movies, but

7791-646: The Devil (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the films of Harold Lloyd , Buster Keaton , Charley Chase , and others. Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin 's scores, in addition to composing new scores. Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments, while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation, and sound design elements to enhance

7938-701: The French vines could be replaced with American plants, which were sturdier and resistant to phylloxera. While in New York, Suzanne gave birth to Max's younger brother, Gérard. They returned to France, and, two years later, a sister, Marcelle, was born. Max developed a particular affection for her. Marcelle, along with Suzanne and Jean, appeared in Max's film Max Is Convalescent (1911) and Marcelle starred alongside Max in Max, The Heartbreaker (1917). In 1899, Linder enrolled in

8085-488: The Italian film company Itala , leaving Linder as the company's leading comedic actor. Later in 1909, Gasnier returned from Italy and immediately began working with Linder again. The team made several shorts in 1909 with Linder in various roles, such as a blind elderly man and a coquettish young woman. But they soon discovered that the character of "Max" was the most popular with audiences and stuck with him from then on. Among

8232-635: The Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the United States at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on

8379-488: The Minister of War, an ambassador and the police commissioner, all of whom challenge him to a duel and present him with their business cards. Eventually "Max" is apprehended by the police, who attempt to return him to his residence, but end up mistakenly taking him to the homes of the various men whom he had previously fought with. The universality of silent films brought Linder fame and fortune throughout Europe, making him

8526-540: The Moon , originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image. Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by Pathé , Urban-Eclipse , Gaumont , Kalem , Itala Film , Ambrosio Film , and Selig . Several of

8673-569: The Professor, from his disciple, Charlie Chaplin." Mack Sennett and King Vidor also singled out Linder as a great influence on their directing careers. His high society characterizations as "Max" also influenced such actors as Adolphe Menjou and Raymond Griffith . In his heyday, Linder had two major rivals in France: Léonce Perret and Charles Prince . Perret later became a successful director, but his early career included

8820-515: The Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island . The Perils of Pauline and its even more popular sequel The Exploits of Elaine were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster Life of a Cowboy , by Edwin S. Porter Company , and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912. The following are American films from

8967-598: The US at a salary of $ 5,000 a week. Earlier that year, Charlie Chaplin , then the most popular comedian in the world, had left Essanay for more money and independence at Mutual Film and Spoor wanted to replace Chaplin with Max Linder, whose pantomime skills were arguably equally accomplished. Linder was offered a new contract from Charles Pathé, but accepted Spoor's offer and moved to the United States to work for Essanay later that year. Unfortunately his first few American-made "Max" films were unpopular both critically and financially. The first two, Max Comes Across and Max Wants

SECTION 60

#1732791926237

9114-426: The US have been lost, though these estimates are inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Film projection mostly evolved from magic lantern shows, in which images from handpainted glass slides were projected onto a wall or screen. After the advent of photography in the 19th century, still photographs were sometimes used. Narration of the showman was important in spectacular entertainment screenings and vital in

9261-504: The Ukrainian actor Gregori Chmara whom she met through their mutual friend Georg Brandes . They began a long-term common-law marriage that lasted from 1923 until 1936. Nielsen began a relationship in the late 1960s with Danish art collector Christian Theede, whom she had met through dealings of her own artwork. In 1970, at the age of 88, Nielsen married the 70-year-old Theede. Nielsen and Theede's happiness at marrying at an advanced age

9408-562: The United States' entry into it) she visited New York City to study American film techniques. However, she departed Germany after a mob on the Unter den Linden mistook her for a Russian at the beginning of the war. In 1921, Nielsen, through her own film distribution company of Asta Films, appeared in the Svend Gade and Heinz Schall directed Hamlet . The film was a radical interpretation of William Shakespeare 's play, with Nielsen playing

9555-402: The United States. In view of the enormous amount of labor involved which calls for individual hand painting of every one of sixteen pictures to the foot or 16,000 separate pictures for each 1,000 feet of film very few American colorists will undertake the work at any price. As film coloring has progressed much more rapidly in France than in any other country, all of our coloring is done for us by

9702-547: The action—particularly for comedies and action films. Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for

9849-687: The actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Vélez , Edwin Carewe 's Evangeline with Dolores del Río , and Rupert Julian 's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson . The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that

9996-412: The adoption of sound-on-film technology. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built-in recorded sound, and were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-1930s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in

10143-562: The beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin , with Modern Times (1936), Orson Welles with Too Much Johnson (1938), Jacques Tati with Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Pierre Etaix with The Suitor (1962), and Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien 's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005)

10290-458: The best coloring establishment in Paris and we have found that we obtain better quality, cheaper prices and quicker deliveries, even in coloring American made films, than if the work were done elsewhere. By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as

10437-476: The biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by Camille Saint-Saëns for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise , and by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for Stenka Razin . When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten

10584-461: The case of the 2002 restoration of Metropolis . With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of Butterfly Dance . Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took

10731-552: The company to join Éclair . Gréhan's screen character was Gontran, whose persona included high-society clothing and a dandy -ish demeanor. Linder was chosen to take over the characterization for Pathé, and the style of dress and personality of Gréhan's character became his trademark. Film critic David Robinson described Linder's screen persona as "no grotesque: he was young, handsome, debonair, immaculate...in silk hat, jock coat, cravat, spats, patent shoes, and swagger cane." Linder made more than one hundred short films portraying "Max",

10878-498: The crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis , were still being released. Greta Garbo , whose first American film

11025-436: The decisive factor for his move to film productions: I had not been thinking about film production. But then I saw the first Asta Nielsen film. I realised that the age of short film was past. And above all I realised that this woman was the first artist in the medium of film. Asta Nielsen, I instantly felt could be a global success. It was international film sales that provided Union with eight Nielsen films per year. I built her

11172-459: The development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film. Although Thomas Edison was keen to develop a film system that would be synchronised with his phonograph , he eventually introduced the kinetoscope as a silent motion picture viewer in 1893 and later "kinetophone" versions remained unsuccessful. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film ). The height of

11319-401: The drama on screen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect such as "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases. At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However,

11466-520: The earliest (though not the first ) examples on film of the "human mirror" gag best known in the scene between Groucho and Harpo Marx in Duck Soup twelve years later. Linder next made Be My Wife later that year, but again neither films were able to find a major audience in the U.S. Linder then decided to dispense with the "Max" character and try something different for his third (and final) attempt: The Three Must-Get-Theres in 1922. The film

11613-527: The early 1910s and they often used the same story lines, sets and directors. Years after both comedians' careers were long over, Linder has received several revivals in interest while Charles Prince remains mostly forgotten. Linder is referenced in Quentin Tarantino 's Inglourious Basterds where the owner of a cinema in Nazi occupied Paris in 1944, Shosanna Dreyfus, says that she will be having

11760-450: The erotic nature of her performances, Nielsen's films were censored in the United States, and her work remained relatively obscure to American audiences. She is credited with transforming movie acting from overt theatricality to a more subtle naturalistic style. Nielsen founded her own film studio in Berlin during the 1920s, but returned to Denmark in 1937 after the rise of Nazism in Germany. A private figure in her later years, Nielsen became

11907-555: The famous " Mighty Wurlitzer " could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and sound effects ranging from "train and boat whistles [to] car horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, [and] thunder and rain". Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music

12054-411: The film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to the invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as City Lights , Modern Times and Silent Movie which are accompanied by a music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue. The term silent film

12201-631: The film, "Max" joins a circus in order to be closer to the woman that he loves. The film includes such gags as a hungover "Max" waking up in a department store and the film's plot is similar to the Charlie Chaplin film The Circus (1928). In late 1925, Linder was working on pre-production for his next film Barkas le fol , which would never be made. As a consequence of his war service, Linder had continuing health problems, including bouts of severe depression and several mental breakdowns. It has been said that he evoked "tantrum-like appearances at

12348-481: The first film serial , The Million Dollar Mystery , released in 1914. The first westerns were filmed at Fred Scott 's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as cowboys and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as

12495-411: The first commercially successful sound film , but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929. For a listing of notable silent era films, see List of years in film for the years between

12642-648: The formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison , Biograph , Essanay Studios , Kalem Company , George Kleine Productions , Lubin Studios , Georges Méliès , Pathé , Selig Studios , and Vitagraph Studios , and dominated distribution through the General Film Company . This company dominated

12789-492: The highest paid entertainer of the day, with a salary increase of 150,000 francs (the average monthly salary in France was 100 francs at the time). He began touring Europe with his films from 1911 to 1912, including Spain, where he entertained thousands of fans at the Barcelona railway station, Austria, and Russia, where he was accompanied on piano by a young Dimitri Tiomkin . In 1912 after the tour, Linder demanded and received

12936-465: The image to flicker , and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by Thomas Edison for his Kinetoscope machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this

13083-715: The industry as both a vertical and horizontal monopoly and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York , in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including

13230-535: The industry had moved fully into the sound era , in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects . Most early motion pictures are considered lost owing to their physical decay, as the nitrate filmstock used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed, because they had negligible remaining immediate financial value in that era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in

13377-860: The industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips. The early studios were located in the New York City area . Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan , with studios in St George, Staten Island . Other films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey . In December 1908, Edison led

13524-532: The introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. One 1,000-foot (300 m) reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while

13671-478: The introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the Great Depression , was devastating to many musicians. A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil , for example, featured fitas cantatas (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan , films had not only live music but also

13818-615: The lecturing circuit. The principle of stroboscopic animation was well-known since the introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833, a popular optical toy , but the development of cinematography was hampered by long exposure times for photographic emulsions , until Eadweard Muybridge managed to record a chronophotographic sequence in 1878. After others had animated his pictures in zoetropes , Muybridge started lecturing with his own zoopraxiscope animation projector in 1880. The work of other pioneering chronophotographers, including Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz , furthered

13965-426: The longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release Ben Hur is offered for $ 120 ($ 4,069 USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $ 270 ($ 9,156) including the extra $ 150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although

14112-401: The mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith , cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the close up allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing

14259-520: The new "talkies" around the mid-1930s. The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at

14406-438: The new technical developments in cinema were not suitable to Nielsen's style, nor could her maturity compete with the young American ingenues, so she retired from the screen. Thereafter, Nielsen acted only on stage. After the rise of Nazism she was offered her own studio by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels . Nielsen later described being invited to tea with Adolf Hitler , who tried to convince her to return to film and explained

14553-571: The organic development of her feelings, and nothing beyond. In terms of expression and versatility, I am nothing to her. Belgian Paul van Ostaijen included the expressionistic poem "Asta Nielsen", a paean to Nielsen's sensuousness, in his 1921 collection Bezette Stad (Occupied City). Joachim Ringelnatz , who was a frequent guest at Nielsens' home, wrote the poems "Über Asta Nielsen" (About Asta Nielsen) - for his 1928 collection Reisebriefe eines Artisten (An Artist's Travel Letters) - and "Asta Nielsen weiht einen Pokal" (Asta Nielsen Dedicates

14700-450: The plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary. Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on

14847-401: The political power of her on-screen presence. Understanding the implications, Nielsen declined and left Germany in 1936. She returned home to Denmark where she wrote articles on art and politics and a two-volume autobiography. She is considered to be a great movie actress because of her natural performing style, adapting to the demands of the film media and avoiding theatrical dramatization. She

14994-425: The popular "Max" films made by Linder and Grasnier in 1909 are A Young Lady Killer and The Cure for Cowardice . By 1910, Linder had proved himself to Pathé and was quickly becoming one of the most popular film actors in the world. When Gasnier was sent to the United States later that year to oversee Pathé's productions there, Lucien Nonguet took over as Linder's director. Together they made such films as Max Takes

15141-507: The projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the advent of the Vitaphone system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and

15288-438: The projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot. All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes

15435-424: The reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908: The coloring of moving picture films is a line of work which cannot be satisfactorily performed in

15582-491: The release of D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced Juha in black and white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special release prints with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film Pushpak (1988), starring Kamal Haasan ,

15729-569: The rest. In the film, "Max" falls about and does a rendition of "the windmill routine" by spinning his cane around, predating Charlie Chaplin 's version in The Rink by nine years. Pathé was unimpressed with the film and re-shot parts of it, and it was not popular with audiences when released. Soon afterwards, Gasnier left Pathé and moved to Italy, leaving Linder without a supporter at Pathé; he made few films in 1908. His luck began to change when Pathé's top comedy star, André Deed , left to work with

15876-449: The role of Hamlet as a woman who disguises herself as a man. Several sources, including IMDb, state that Nielsen played Mata Hari in an early-1920s film variously titled Mata Hari , Die Spionin ('The Spy'). However, scholarly works such as the authoritative filmography published by Filmarchiv Austria in 2010 make no mention of such a film. Film scholar Ivo Blom has concluded that the idea of Nielsen playing Mata Hari on film arose from

16023-421: The scripts. By 1912, he was the solo director of his films. Gaining complete control over his own films brought positive results both critically and commercially; the films Linder made during this period are generally considered to be his best. Max, Victim of Quinine is considered by film critic Jean Mitry to be "his masterpiece." In the film, an intoxicated "Max" gets into numerous fights with such dignitaries as

16170-440: The silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as French Impressionism , German Expressionism , and Soviet Montage began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in

16317-401: The silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist , theater organist —or even, in larger cities, an orchestra —would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with

16464-470: The silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the close-up , long shot , panning , and continuity editing all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by " talking pictures " or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until film directors , actors, and production staff adapted fully to

16611-467: The silent film era and the era of talkies. Sunset Boulevard shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond , played by silent film star Gloria Swanson , and Singin' in the Rain deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies. Peter Bogdanovich 's 1976 film Nickelodeon deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to

16758-483: The silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are gross rentals (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw

16905-414: The silent medium did not suit Chevalier, who stuck to the stage until the all-singing all-dancing features came in, many years later. The outbreak of World War I brought a temporary end to Linder's film career in 1914, but not before he made the short patriotic film The Second of August that year. Linder attempted to enlist in the French army, but was physically unfit for combat duty. Instead he worked as

17052-427: The silents for nearly four decades. As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The title writer became

17199-519: The silver screen. The animated film Fantasia (1940), which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The espionage film The Thief (1952) has music and sound effects, but no dialogue, as do Thierry Zéno 's 1974 Vase de Noces and Patrick Bokanowski 's 1982 The Angel . Max Linder Born in Cavernes, France to Catholic parents, Linder grew up with

17346-438: The size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small-town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist . Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theatre organs , which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as

17493-438: The spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of

17640-467: The standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates ") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe , but industry practice varied considerably; there

17787-483: The studio". Director Édouard-Émile Violet recalled that Linder seemed invariably "unstable, worried..." Linder also became a heavy user of opium in the 1920s, which could have further harrowed his mind. During his war service, Linder was involved in a car accident; he was thrown out of the vehicle and badly injured. In early April 1923, Linder was involved in a second near fatal car accident in Nice , which resulted in

17934-430: The suggestion of film director Louis Gasnier and began appearing in small bit parts, mostly in slapstick comedies. Linder continued to appear on the stage for the next two years and was not a significant film star at first. However, an often-told legend about the origins of Linder's film career is that French film producer Charles Pathé personally saw Linder on the stage and wrote him a note that read "In your eyes lies

18081-489: The time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was Kevin Brownlow 's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance 's Napoléon (1927), featuring a score by Carl Davis . A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration

18228-562: The title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is Jérôme Savary 's La fille du garde-barrière (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the British Board of Film Classification ). In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in Sidewalk Stories ,

18375-629: The traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand , Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli, Ben Model , and William P. Perry . Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring. Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on Turner Classic Movies or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as The Big Parade (1925) and Flesh and

18522-475: The viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané , Alloy Orchestra , Club Foot Orchestra , Silent Orchestra , Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra . Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing

18669-546: The woman in my life." They married on 2 August 1923 at the Parisian church of St. Honoré d'Eylau. The two lived in an apartment at 11 Bis Avenue Émile Deschanel. Linder is said to have been a fiercely jealous and mentally abusive husband. He would often accuse his young wife of being unfaithful and threaten to "end her". Whenever he went to town alone in the evenings, he would call her to make sure that she had not gone out without his consent. Linder and his wife may have made

18816-409: The wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Many early screening were plagued by flicker on the screen, when the stroboscopic interruptions between frames lay below the critical flicker frequency . This

18963-688: Was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film Doctor Plonk (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer . Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy Silent Laughter as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in All Wear Bowlers (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and

19110-614: Was also adept at portraying women from varying social strata as well as of different psychologies. During the Second World War, she provided money for Allan O. Hagedorff, a young Dane living in Germany, to assist Jews. Using money provided by Nielsen, Hagedorff sent so many food parcels to the Theresienstadt Ghetto that he was warned by the Gestapo . Among others, Victor Klemperer , the diarist and philologist,

19257-463: Was celebrated in the world press. Nielsen died at the age of 90 on 25 May 1972 at Frederiksberg Hospital. "Asta Nielsen" means the power to speak of pathos, to see pain, and to find the middle path between Baudelaire's flower of evil and the sick rose of which Blake sang. There is a film in which Asta Nielsen is looking out of the window and sees someone coming. A mortal fear, a petrified horror, appears on her face. But she gradually realizes that she

19404-493: Was co-directing his own films (with René LePrince) as well as writing the scripts. Linder enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War, and worked at first as a dispatch driver and entertainer. During his service, he was injured several times, and the experiences reportedly had a devastating effect on him both physically and mentally. Linder later moved to the U.S. but was unable to achieve success. He died in 1925 in

19551-415: Was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), it became relatively common for

19698-478: Was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films. Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist Gaylord Carter continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of

19845-475: Was employed at Det Ny Theater from 1907 to 1910. Although she worked steadily as a stage actress, her performances remained unremarkable. Danish historian Robert Neiiendam wrote that Nielsen's unique physical attraction, which was of great value on the screen, was limited on stage by her deep and uneven speaking voice. Nielsen began her film career in 1909, starring in director Urban Gad 's 1910 tragedy Afgrunden ("The Abyss"). Nielsen's minimalist acting style

19992-463: Was evidenced in her successful portrayal of a naive young woman lured into a tragic life. Her overt sexuality in the film's "gaucho dance" scene established the erotic quality for which Nielsen became known. Because of the film's success, Nielsen continued to act in cinema rather than on stage. Nielsen and Gad married, then made four more films together. The explosion of Nielsen's popularity propelled Gad and Nielsen to move from Denmark to Germany where she

20139-451: Was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since

20286-468: Was in the Georges Méliès -like fantasy film The Legend of Punching . During the following years, Linder made several hundred short films portraying "Max", a wealthy and dapper man-about-town frequently in hot water because of his penchant for beautiful women and the good life. Starting with The Skater's Debut in 1907, the character became one of the first identifiable motion-picture characters who appeared in successive situation comedies. By 1911, Linder

20433-403: Was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola , with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola . In 1984, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer Giorgio Moroder . Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury , Pat Benatar , and Jon Anderson of Yes ,

20580-514: Was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson , an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate

20727-514: Was offered money by Hagedorff. Nielsen had four extended relationships and was divorced twice. In 1912, she married the Danish film director Urban Gad following their move together to Germany in 1911 to build their own film studio. They were divorced by 1919 when Nielsen married the Swedish shipbuilder Freddy Windgårdh. This marriage was shorter, ending in divorce in 1923. Nielsen fell in love with

20874-645: Was provided her own film studio and the opportunity for greater profits. In Germany, Nielsen formed a contract with German producer Paul Davidson , who founded the Internationale Film-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft in conjunction with Nielsen and Gad. The company held the European rights on all Nielsen films and Nielsen became a "scintillating international film star", known simply as Die Asta (The Asta), with an annual fee of 85,000 marks in 1914 alone. Davidson described Nielsen as

21021-633: Was released in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting. According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic , "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses". Until

21168-605: Was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival . In 1992, Maud Linder published a book about Linder in France, Max Linder was my father and in 2008 she received the Prix Henri Langlois for her work to promote her father's legacy. In his honor, Lycée Max Linder , a public school in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département near his birthplace was given his name in 1981. Linder's influence on film comedy and particularly on slapstick films

21315-575: Was solved with the introduction of a three-bladed shutter (since 1902), causing two more interruptions per frame. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of film tinting or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as Kinemacolor and Technicolor . Traditional colorization processes ceased with

21462-454: Was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in

21609-631: Was unconscious throughout 31 October, with doctors fighting to keep him alive. He died after midnight on 1 November. There is still some question, however, as to whether the deaths were really a result of a suicide pact, or whether Max murdered his much-younger wife or pressured her into killing herself. On 2 November 1925, The New York Times reported that Hélène Linder had told her mother by letter that, "He will kill me." The article also claims that "no one believes she herself opened her veins." Critic Vincent Canby acknowledged in 1988 that "Linder died with his young wife in what has sometimes been described as

#236763