Silents Are Golden

For my editors out there, the title is not in error, it was the topic of a fun evening at the Senior Center last night. Tim Lussier, silent film aficionado and Moore County Schools Information Officer was our Master of Ceremonies. As he played over 90 minutes of the greatest moments of the silent screen, he regaled us with trivia about the production, history, and stars of that era. Ever since I took classes in Radio, TV, and Motion Pictures at Chapel Hill, I've had a deeper appreciation for the art of these silent films. Actors had to be highly expressive without benefit of talking.



Tim covered every genre. Let's begin with comedy. The Keystone Kops, below, were the consummate slapstick artists. There was nothing serious in their episodes. Nevertheless, they were innovative and performed daredevil stunts for their audiences.



Harold Lloyd (no relation) brought stunts and comedy to a new "height." We were told that the actual background was live street scenes of Los Angeles.

I have seen the feature-length Buster Keaton classic "The General." Not only is it a good tale, in part it's based on the true highjacking of the locomotive of the same name in the famed Andrews Raid during the Civil War. The entire historic chase took place between Atlanta and the Tennessee state line and makes fascinating reading. There was little comedy associated with the actual event, but Keaton masterfully mixes comedy and drama. How did he get himself into some of these fixes!?

Charlie Chaplin is still my favorite of the silent comics. He has been imitated for generations by comics, and probably always will be. The following two shots are from "The Gold Rush." I have a video of this classic and most years at school I would show it for a special treat when snow was in the forecast. I didn't do it just for entertainment, but also as a historical lesson. I called it a trip back in time, and set the stage by describing how earlier generations had to watch movies differently than us. Since Viewing is one of the five language arts we teach (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Viewing) I wanted my students to be aware of how they view things. Multi-tasking may be fine for some activities, but watching silent movies took a lot more focus than watching "talkies." If you don't watch or pay attention to the sub-titles you will miss crucial points in the story line. In that sense, silent films were more active than passive, compared to modern cinema and television.

Even in the comedies, high drama began to be at a premium. There was great pathos in Charlie's secret love of "Georgia," a dance hall girl. She pretended to like him to make her brute of a boyfriend jealous, but in the end. . . .

Well, since most of you aren't likely to go out and rent "The Gold Rush", here's the spoiler:

Charlie strikes it rich and gets his girl! But it's sweet, because she realizes she loves him BEFORE she finds out he's a millionaire, so he knows she loves him for himself.

Even horror found silent films to be an effective medium. Below is Lon Chaney, "Man of 1,000 Faces," starring in the original "Phantom of the Opera." It is said that audiences were truly terrified, and sometimes went screaming from the theaters.

The characters were larger than life; admired or despised, loved or hated. One example of Tim's trivia: actress Theda Bara's name was an anagram for "Death Arab." No surprise that she was in the "Sheik" movies! (Not Shrek)

Silent films reigned for some thirty years, but were doomed by talkies, which opened up whole new possibilities. But as one star of silent films lamented, it was the end of "the universal language." For truly, with the exception of the sparse sub-titles, people of all nations could generally make sense of any silent movie. That was a tribute to the skills and diligence of these pioneers of moving pictures.

I asked Daddy if he had been to any silent movies in Atlanta as a boy. He was born in 1914 and these movies were prevalent until about 1930. He had never mentioned it before, but when I brought it up he recalled Mama and Papa Loyd taking him to downtown Atlanta on two occasions to see silent movies. He remembered the subtitles, and that one of the movies was about the Bible. Tim Lussier mentioned that years before Charlton Heston was Moses in "The Ten Commandments" there was a silent version by the same title. When I told Daddy, he was fairly sure that was the one he saw.

I'm happy to report that our local Sunrise Theater will be featuring some silent movie classics from time to time (credit Tim Lussier). You can also search the internet of course or visit http://silentsaregolden.com/ if you would like to learn more. If you'd like to come over to watch "The Gold Rush" some time, let me know.