Silent Film Research Articles

Contemporary music improvisation for silent film

This article explores how contemporary music improvisation for silent film both evokes and challenges the jazz canon by pushing the boundaries of genre, instrumentation, techniques, and collaboration while also engaging with the narrative and cultural contexts of the films. It draws from my practice-led research over the last twenty years, which has consisted of performing free improvised music in response to the screening of silent film, as a solo performer or as part of a jazz ensemble. The corpus of films used in the research spans animated shorts by Dutch director Gerrit van Dijk, surrealist shorts by Man Ray, German expressionist feature film by Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, French feminist film by Germaine Dulac, and documentary and amateur archive film of the North West Film Archive in Manchester and the Media Archive for Central England in Lincoln. In the performances, while jazz is taken as primary influence, musicians often incorporate elements of other musics, make use of a broader range of instruments and of non-traditional sound sources beyond the typical jazz ensemble, and employ experimental techniques and unconventional playing methods that challenge and evoke the conventional improvisational norms of jazz. Musicians might opt to follow or contradict the narrative and emotional cues of the film, which can result in processes of music making that prioritize the exploration of the boundaries of storytelling over traditional jazz forms and structures. Across this research, I have observed how silent film improvisation has been attracting diverse audiences. This cross-pollination of audiences can introduce jazz to new fans and challenge preconceived notions about who jazz is for.

Musicianship Modulates Cortical Effects of Attention on Processing Musical Triads

Background: Many studies have demonstrated the benefits of long-term music training (i.e., musicianship) on the neural processing of sound, including simple tones and speech. However, the effects of musicianship on the encoding of simultaneously presented pitches, in the form of complex musical chords, is less well established. Presumably, musicians’ stronger familiarity and active experience with tonal music might enhance harmonic pitch representations, perhaps in an attention-dependent manner. Additionally, attention might influence chordal encoding differently across the auditory system. To this end, we explored the effects of long-term music training and attention on the processing of musical chords at the brainstem and cortical levels. Method: Young adult participants were separated into musician and nonmusician groups based on the extent of formal music training. While recording EEG, listeners heard isolated musical triads that differed only in the chordal third: major, minor, and detuned (4% sharper third from major). Participants were asked to correctly identify chords via key press during active stimulus blocks and watched a silent movie during passive blocks. We logged behavioral identification accuracy and reaction times and calculated information transfer based on the behavioral chord confusion patterns. EEG data were analyzed separately to distinguish between cortical (event-related potential, ERP) and subcortical (frequency-following response, FFR) evoked responses. Results: We found musicians were (expectedly) more accurate, though not faster, than nonmusicians in chordal identification. For subcortical FFRs, responses showed stimulus chord effects but no group differences. However, for cortical ERPs, whereas musicians displayed P2 (~150 ms) responses that were invariant to attention, nonmusicians displayed reduced P2 during passive listening. Listeners’ degree of behavioral information transfer (i.e., success in distinguishing chords) was also better in musicians and correlated with their neural differentiation of chords in the ERPs (but not high-frequency FFRs). Conclusions: Our preliminary results suggest long-term music training strengthens even the passive cortical processing of musical sounds, supporting more automated brain processing of musical chords with less reliance on attention. Our results also suggest that the degree to which listeners can behaviorally distinguish chordal triads is directly related to their neural specificity to musical sounds primarily at cortical rather than subcortical levels. FFR attention effects were likely not observed due to the use of high-frequency stimuli (>220 Hz), which restrict FFRs to brainstem sources.

Technologies in the History of the Movie Industry

The paper titled “Technologies in the History of the Movie Industry” examines the evolution of film technologies and their profound impact on the industry. It explores key technological advancements, from early silent films to talkies, black-and-white to colored films, and the rise of CGI and 3D technology. Each advancement not only enhanced the visual and emotional experience for audiences but also helped filmmakers convey complex ideas and create immersive worlds. The success of iconic films like Avatar, Metropolis, and Jurassic Park demonstrates how innovations in special effects, sound, and imagery have shaped the industry’s growth. The paper emphasizes that these technologies not only improved film quality but also allowed for deeper connections between audiences and the stories being told, ultimately expanding the possibilities of cinematic expression. Through historical analysis, the paper reveals how each technological milestone contributed to the artistic, cultural, and economic success of the film industry.

‘A window of the world’: itinerant silent cinemas in rural Australia

ABSTRACT Moving pictures connected even the most remote corners of the British Empire with its cultural and economic center. Between 1896 and 1916, transnational silent cinema shaped settler-colonial Australia’s relationship to the British Empire in tandem with the colonies’ move toward federation and political autonomy. Traveling exhibitors were key to this process, bringing moving pictures from the UK, Europe, and the US to Australians who lived outside major cities. This paper explores how itinerant silent cinema shows brought not just the pictures to rural Australian audiences, but also a sense of belonging to an imagined transnational community, through films from the UK, US, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Between 1896 and 1905, exhibitors like Maurice Sestier and Wybert Reeve were instrumental in introducing cinema technology, while entertainers like J. C. Williamson, T.J. West, the Marvellous Corricks, and Ettie Wilmott helped maintain the popularity of the cinema in the mid-1900s, in part by incorporating films into variety shows. From around 1910, when permanent cinemas had been established in larger Australian towns, until at least 1914 but in some cases for much longer, itinerant exhibitors and vaudeville shows like Wilmott’s Electric Pictures kept remote rural communities supplied, albeit intermittently, with cinema experiences that connected them to a wider imagined community.

Generic overlap as a mode of (social) production in Portuguese silent non-fiction film: the case of A Covilhã Industrial, Pitoresca e seus Arredores (1921)

ABSTRACT The article offers a contribution to the international debate on non-fiction film genres in the silent period by proposing a historically and socially informed analysis of ‘generic overlap’ in the Portuguese documentary A Covilhã Industrial, Pitoresca e Seus Arredores (1921) [Industrial and Picturesque Covilhã, and Its Outskirts]. Made by Artur Costa de Macedo (1894–1966) for Invicta Film, a short-lived but prolific production company based in the North of Portugal, the film is a composite of different genres, such as the travelogue, the scenic view, the actuality, the industrial process film, and the local film. While in keeping with well-established international film practices, this kind of generic overlap also reflects the specific set of constraints and opportunities that the filmmaker encountered (and, respectively, sought to overcome and take advantage of) when he took on this film commission. Local newspaper research, though selective and incomplete, was crucial for gaining a deeper knowledge of this film’s local and regional underpinnings. The article also discusses the film’s 2002 restoration in light of its generic overlap, considering how genre-bound and genre-blind decisions resulted in a ‘new version’ and a ‘new original’ that sought to address a new set of concerns and scale configuration. It concludes that filmic genre has played (and continues to play) an active role in creating and sustaining social goals and relations in both silent filmmaking and film restoration projects.

Decoding the silent language: A framework for advanced visual emotion recognition to enhance worker well-being on IIoT-enabled manufacturing

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), pivotal in the Industry 4.0 revolution, has transformed manufacturing, particularly assembly lines, by enabling real-time process monitoring and data analysis to enhance productivity. Yet, its potential impact on worker well-being has been less explored. As the National Association of Manufacturers anticipates an opening of 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, the necessity for frameworks that not only understand but also improve employee well-being becomes apparent. We introduce a novel, non-intrusive visual emotion recognition framework that incorporates facial emotion recognition (FER) and emotional body posture recognition (EBPR) to assess workers’ psychological states. This initiative aims to mitigate human errors and accidents linked to stress or high cognitive load, thereby enhancing the manufacturing environment. Strategies such as optimized break time planning, line balancing, procedure modifications, and improved training are proposed to ensure both employee well-being and stakeholder benefits. This framework indirectly supports the industry’s efforts to address the looming challenge of unfilled jobs by fostering a supportive work environment that enhances job satisfaction, potentially making positions more appealing and retaining valuable talent. By bridging the gap between technological advancements and human-centric considerations, our approach underscores the significance of integrating IIoT solutions with employee welfare initiatives to address both productivity and workforce sustainability challenges.

‘Luxuries of the mind’: Contextualising Art Photography, Eroticism and History of Medicine in the Social tableaux vivants of Lejaren à Hiller's Sutures in Ancient Surgery (1920s–1940s)

Abstract In 1927 Lejaren à Hiller (1880–1969) produced a series of black and white art photographs entitled Sutures in Ancient Surgery evoking scenes from the distant past of surgery and medicine. Commissioned and distributed in North America by Davis & Geck, Inc. to promote sales of its surgical sutures (stitches), several depictions were erotic owing to the centrality and poses of nude female models. The first series appeared as ads in professional technical journals, then as packets assembled in paper portfolios distributed to doctors who were primarily men. The creation of Hiller's oeuvre in different forms over almost a century – journal advertisement, portfolio, book, exhibit, magazine features and textbook illustration – highlights his enduring broad appeal, although his work has since been subject to criticism because of its perceived sexism. At its root, Sutures was an advertising medium that connected a seller to a potential buyer. The content and presentation of the project also connected medicine present with medicine past, which also may have helped physicians to connect with the then blossoming field of medical history. The appeal Sutures may have had for a past male medical culture would not resonate with the more gender-inclusive and less overtly sexist medical profession of today, which also prompts discussion of the associations across art, obscenity, medicine and society. My reassessment of Hiller's work based on analysis of his artwork, contemporary interviews, published critiques, Hiller's own writings and DG company records extends previous analyses as it is more comprehensive in scope and also considers more fully works by Hiller antecedent to Sutures that probably greatly influenced it, such as photopoetry books, other advertising projects and his silent movie films.

Scene Deconstruction and Plot Setting of a Silent Film

This study dissects Chaplin's method of conveying a story through visuals in his 1921 silent movie, 'The Kid,' emphasizing scene analysis and plot introduction. A detailed discussion of sequences allows the research to illustrate how Chaplin makes meaning, creates a narrative, and establishes emotion solely through visual motion without words. The study uses several theoretical approaches, including film semiotics, narrative theory, and visual composition analysis. This paper examines how Chaplin employs framing, editing, mise-en-scène, and physical comedy to construct a highly symbolic and emotionally rich picture. Special emphasis should be placed on how Chaplin uses both comic and dramatic scenes hand in hand, sometimes even in the same scenes. Key sequences analyzed include the opening scene, which efficiently introduces the main character and presents the setting; the separation scene, an emotionally charged sequence of a man being left by his wife; and the dream sequence, a fantastic sequence in which Chaplin breaks the laws of practical reality to develop character psychology and depth of themes. The paper also explores how Chaplin develops visual motifs and employs repeated actions to unify the narrative and chart the character's growth. Moreover, it discusses how the film's visual analysis and symbolism respond to early twentieth-century social concerns such as poverty and the position of children. As such, this research is pertinent to exploring the silent film narrative and its legacy through analyzing Chaplin's visual strategies. 'The Kid' illustrates that this was the pinnacle of the silent film genre and how complex narrative and character development can be conveyed without using words. Moreover, this research reveals Chaplin's creative processes. It contributes to understanding the potential of visual narrative in Cinema, proving the significance of the silent film language in developing film language.

Auditory areas are recruited for naturalistic visual meaning in early deaf people

Congenital deafness enhances responses of auditory cortices to non-auditory tasks, yet the nature of the reorganization is not well understood. Here, naturalistic stimuli are used to induce neural synchrony across early deaf and hearing individuals. Participants watch a silent animated film in an intact version and three versions with gradually distorted meaning. Differences between groups are observed in higher-order auditory cortices in all stimuli, with no statistically significant effects in the primary auditory cortex. Comparison between levels of scrambling revealed a heterogeneity of function in secondary auditory areas. Both hemispheres show greater synchrony in the deaf than in the hearing participants for the intact movie and high-level variants. However, only the right hemisphere shows an increased inter-subject synchrony in the deaf people for the low-level movie variants. An event segmentation validates these results: the dynamics of the right secondary auditory cortex in the deaf people consist of shorter-length events with more transitions than the left. Our results reveal how deaf individuals use their auditory cortex to process visual meaning.

Die Politik von Caligari: Totalitarian Anxieties in Adaptations of Robert Weine’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

Contemporary politics is filled with anxiety about the survival of democracy—particularly within a framework pitting liberal representative democracy against authoritarianism. In times of anxiety about authoritarianism, Western artists repeatedly return to a masterpiece of relatively early cinema: Robert Weine’s silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This essay examines three twenty-first century adaptations: David Lee Fisher’s 2005 remake of the film; James Morrow’s 2017 novel, The Asylum of Dr. Caligari; and Georgie Bailey’s 2022 play Caligari. I argue that while the direct politico-cultural anxieties of Weine’s film have often been overstated, the emergence of adaptations during periods of heightened concern about authoritarianism reflects a deep-seated reception of the film as anticipating autocratic governance. However, for all its fears about power, control, and the loss of self-determination, Weine’s movie also contains the seeds of liberation. Cesare ultimately sacrifices his own life rather than murdering Jane. And it is this gesture that the adaptations examined here seek—a gesture of resistance. The sleepwalker can awaken and assert a form of just resistance in the world, even if the penalties are steep.

­Soviet ‘Easterns/Osterns’ of the 1920s: Adventure Films on the Caucasian Frontier of Russia

The article elucidates the issue of representation in Soviet cinema of historical events that transpired during the formation of the Caucasian frontier and the interactions that emerged between the indigenous population and the tsarist troops. The term “Eastern” is analogous to the term “Western” which refers to films about the exploration of the Wild West. This is a useful way of conceptualizing Soviet silent films created on Caucasian material from the 19th–early 20th centuries. This article aims to examine feature films from the 1920s that depict Russia’s advance into the Caucasus. It seeks to identify similarities and differences between these films and the first Soviet “Easterns/Osterns” and “Westerns,” as well as to analyze the influence of ideological attitudes in historical science on the interpretation and depiction of events that took place on the Caucasian frontier. The visual sources utilized in this study include the silent films ‘Abrek Zaur’ (1926), ‘The Law of the Mountains’ (1927), and ‘Zelimkhan’ (1929). Additionally, published materials from the 1920s, including periodicals such as newspapers and magazines, were consulted. The study yielded insights into the stylistic similarities between classic Westerns and the first Soviet Easterns, including the portrayal of protagonists, the use of action and stunts, and the incorporation of jumps. The content of the films is correlated with real historical events, but they reflect the Bolshevik paradigm of history in the study of ethnosocial conflicts in the Caucasus. In films about highlanders, masculine culture is a dominant feature due to gender attitudes and the national cultural identity of the peoples of the Caucasus. Films about mountaineers were instrumental in shaping perceptions of the Caucasus during the early decades of the twentieth century. They illustrate the attributes of traditional culture, daily life, customs of mountain village inhabitants, the characteristics of the landscape, and architectural features. In general, films of an adventurous nature created on Caucasian material are of interest to those with an affinity for classic cinema, particularly the earliest Soviet Eastern films, as well as to researchers seeking to gain insight into significant historical and cultural information. This article is intended for those engaged in the study of the history of Soviet cinema.

Navigating ‘feel’: When hands touch sound effects

Holding and moving objects to create a sound effect requires a performer to navigate by feel, directing their listening from the solid (dried peas on a drumhead) to the imaginary (sea waves). The illusory properties of sound have long been exploited by sound effects performers for the purposes of Foley, silent cinema and theatre. While sound may provoke the imagination or emotional response of the audience, it also does its affective work on the performer operating the effect. In the moment of practice itself, sound binds to the object being manipulated, blurring the known boundaries of its physical properties. The Foley artist crosses a threshold between the tactility of the material and the dissolved representations of the intangible, as the sound itself feels like it is the material being manipulated. Simple hand actions become a gateway to the imaginary. This article considers the affective experience of creative bodily guided soundmaking, and how the successful operation of a sound effect requires the performer to deliberately navigate between modes of listening, attuning their movements and engaging with a perceptual space where things, while making sound, are no longer what they seem to be. Focusing on sound effects beyond the screen allows for an exploration of the aesthetic, dramatic and syncretic in real-world experiences of sound and movement.

British Authorship and Americanization in the Age of Silent Cinema

How did the rise of cinema affect authorship in Britain? This essay examines the question in relation to both new and established writers. Referring to manuals of authorship and fiction writing as well as to the archives of the Society of Authors, it places the rise of cinema after 1906 in the context of the wider “Americanization” of the British culture industry and illustrates the ways in which cinema drove changes to readerly expectation, advertising, and the marketing of literature. It also examines how the business of writing for the cinema came to be incorporated into the broadly professionalized concept of “authorship.” In addition to drawing from the experiences of fiction writers including W. Somerset Maugham, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Elinor Glyn, Arnold Bennet, and Edgar Jepson, it also considers cinema authors, Herbert Langford Reed and Eliot Stannard, who sought to integrate screenwriting with the other disciplines traditionally described by the term authorship, widening our sense of what that category might mean.

A surreal science: Guy Maddin’s Foley of the unconscious in Brand Upon the Brain! and Footsteps

In 2006, Canadian director Guy Maddin premiered a semi-autobiographical film at TIFF called Brand Upon the Brain!, which featured live Foley sound and orchestral accompaniment. Adopting the aesthetics of silent film, Maddin presents a warped version of his childhood traumas, filtered through the funhouse mirror of Sigmund Freud, Fritz Lang and the Brothers Grimm. Further emphasizing the discordances of recollection and actual event, Maddin’s theatrical presentation divorces sound from screen, reimagining the film’s soundscape (and by extension, that of his childhood) as an exaggerated live reproduction, mirroring the very process of replaying a memory. Two years after this film premiered, Maddin made a faux-documentary about the original Foley process called Footsteps (2008), which centres upon the sound artists themselves. Employing the same aesthetic conventions, this short film depicts the craft of Foley as a surreal science of the subconscious, an act of symbolic projection carried out by strange figures in lab coats. If watching and listening to these films is to be momentarily trapped inside ‘the fevered brain of Guy Maddin’, as one critic puts it, then this article sets out to interrogate the role of the sound artist in enabling and enacting such fantasies within the director’s singular psychodramas. Maddin’s foregrounding of the Foley artist is, I argue, analogous to the exhumation and display of unconscious material.

An Analysis of Social Values in the Silent Child Film and Its Relevance to Characteristics of a Teacher’s Social Competence

Today the presence of mass media has a great influence on society. One of the mass media that provides a function in providing entertainment to the public is film. Film is one of the communication media in conveying a message to a group of people that is audio-visual. This study aims to find out the social values contained in the film The Silent Child and to find out the relevance of social values in the film The Silent Child with the characteristics of a teacher's social competence. The approach used in this study is a qualitative approach. This research method is descriptive and included in library research, because the main source of data for this research is the silent child film. The data collection technique in this study was by means of observation, namely observing and watching every scene of the film The Silent Child carefully. The results of this study are social values of affection, namely family, loyalty, care, and there are social values of responsibility, namely possession, discipline and empathy in the film The Silent Child. The relevance of the social values in the silent child film with the characteristics of a person's social competence, namely first, empathy and polite communication, second, knowledge of human relationships, and third, mastering social psychology.

Love and duty (1931): Chinese melodrama and the “contradictions of modernity”

In 1930s Shanghai Love and Duty (Bu Wancang, Lianhua Co., 1931) resonated with Chinese viewers, launching the career of actress Ruan Lingyu. Today, in contemporary film venue screenings, this epic continues to move international viewers. Here I ask how this silent picture has effected its profound affective alignments as it crosses cultures and periods of time. Approaching Love and Duty as moving picture melodrama engages the critical tradition of film melodrama theory such as to see formal convention melded with the affective charge of Chinese society in tumultuous transition. Melodrama, with its revolutionary associations, meets the historical conditions of Chinese society undergoing massive upheaval at the time of the film’s release, coincident with the New Culture Movement in the years following the 1911 Republican Revolution. The politics informing the Neo-Marxist European tradition of mass culture analysis meets the leftist political legacy associated with Shanghai’s emergent film industry.

The world without, the world within and the space between: Amanda Dalton’s adaptation of Nosferatu for BBC Radio 3

Made for BBC Radio 3, The Midnight Cry of the Deathbird (2012) is an adaptation of F. W. Murnau’s German expressionist silent film Nosferatu (1922), which serves as both a target text (of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, 1897) and a source text (of The Midnight Cry). Thus, complex layers of adaptation and audience expectations are evoked through medium-specific qualities, such as the ability of radio to represent the immaterial or disembodied and multiple spaces at the same time, including a between-world along inside/outside worlds. Radio can exist almost entirely in the mind, effortlessly navigating between outer and inner dimensions. This article explores questions of narration, embodiment/non-corporeality and inner space. Using Scott McCloud’s concept of radio as a ‘mono-sensory medium’, it centres primarily on the characters of the Nosferatu (a bodiless essence of contagion) and Roger, a friendly Everyman who serves as the listener’s radio guide.

Japanese talking pictures: magic lanterns, silent cinema and kamishibai in the context of etoki storytelling tradition

The paper examines the relations between three different visual media with inherent oral narration which have coexisted in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century – magic lanterns, silent cinema and kamishibai (paper theater). The figures of the oral narrators present in these three media, most notably represented by the benshi, are intertwined with each other and derive from a much older, transmedial storytelling practice, which in Japan became known as etoki. The author explores different roles and modalities of these three media, highlighting their performative aspects and examining the relations of power between all of their agents, including their socio-political background. They are also treated as representatives of a performative visual spectacle. Although the paper focuses on the local context of Japan, the media under discussion come across as significant for the evolution of both the local and international media landscape, fitting the methodology of media archaeology.

Profit Margins: The American Silent Cinema and the Marginalization of Advertising, by Jeremy Groskopf

Profit Margins: The American Silent Cinema and the Marginalization of Advertising, by Jeremy Groskopf

Film, Medicine and Freemasonry: Jenő Janovics and the Transylvanian “Hollywood”

This study highlights the life and work of Jenő Janovics, a renowned Hungarian theater director in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania. Janovics was a multi-talented figure, excelling as a film director and actor, and was also a freemason. Often hailed as the creator of Transylvanian “Hollywood”, he directed a total of 66 films. One of them, “The Horror of the World” (Hu: “Világrém”, 1920), focuses on medicine and its preventive role in safeguarding societal health. Using cinematography, Janovics expressed the concerns of both the physicians and the freemasons of Cluj regarding the detrimental impact of immorality and veneral diseases on the individual and the nation. At a time of profound political, territorial and social changes, this silent movie highlights the importance of medicine in society.