SILENT FILMS []
Because this is the main category page for SILENT Films!
The concept of silent films is actually a popular misnomer; before the late 1920s however the technology did not exist for a synchronized recorded soundtrack of audio dialogue, music, and sound effects. For reason, the films made in the decades beforehand were often accompanied with sheet music and allowed for the theater to have individuals who would play instruments such as the piano with more expensive theaters had a theater pipe organ which could not only play music but also sound effects. Large cities would have an entire orchestra for full musical accompaniment and even announcers who would narrate the inter-title cards.
The vast majority of silent films from this era are considered lost; either by the studios which discarded them in order to make room for storage for more modern era films with soundtracks or in a vast majority of these cases―because the film making techniques of the silent era rendered these prints extremely fragile and tended to deteriorate; not to mention were extremely flammable and chemically volatile and highly combustible. There were no less than two major fires in 1937 and 1965 in the film vaults of 20th Century Fox and MGM respectively which destroyed hundreds of films and it is estimated that perhaps 70% of silent films of this era were irrevocably destroyed.
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