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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.
Many films of the silent era have been lost. [1] The Library of Congress estimates 75% of all silent films are lost forever. About 10,919 American silent films were produced, but only 2,749 of them still exist in some complete form, either as an original American 35mm version, a foreign release, or as a lower-quality copy.
Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation claimed in 2017 that "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever". [4] Deutsche Kinemathek estimates that 80–90% of silent films are gone; [5] the film archive's own list contains over 3,500 lost films.
Originally a novelty, some early animated silents depicted magic acts or were strongly influenced by the comic strip. Later, they were distributed along with newsreels. Early animation films, like their live-action silent cousins, would come with a musical score to be played by an organist or even an orchestra in larger theatres. [2]
Feeble, flickering films of travel scenes were the usual fare." The theater remained open for two years, making it the first permanent movie theater in the world. November 7, 1897 ad for the Vitascope Theater in Buffalo, New York, one of the first theaters created especially to show motion pictures. In its first year there were 200,000 ...
List of lost films; List of lost silent films (1910–1914) List of lost silent films (1915–1919) List of lost silent films (1920–1924) List of lost silent films (1925–1929) List of incomplete or partially lost films; List of lost or unfinished animated films; List of rediscovered films; List of rediscovered film footage
They were a mainstay of silent films once the films became of sufficient length and detail to necessitate dialogue or narration to make sense of the enacted or documented events. The British Film Catalogue credits the 1898 film Our New General Servant by Robert W. Paul as the first British film to use intertitles. [3]
The great majority of films made in the silent era are now considered to be lost forever. [6] Movies of the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flammable cellulose nitrate film base, which required careful storage to slow its inevitable process of decomposition over time. [5]