Silence is Golden

In our second episode, we delved into our favorite Pioneer and Silent films. The Pioneer Era began in 1895 with initial film makers starting to exploring with film technology by documenting news, and recording stage plays. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that we start to see the first examples of purposeful narration with George Méliès “A Trip to the Moon”.

Rocket landing on the moon in A Trip to the Moon

The Pioneer Era gave way to the Silent Era in in 1911. This time period is characterized by film makers starting to make longer films, with formal production, minimal editing, and slight sound effects and musical sound tracks to help tell the story. Arguable, the Silent Era is the birth of professional made narrative drama and showcased starts such as Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks, and Buster Keaton.

Silent Era films marked an important turn in entertainment history. With the birth of these feature films, and the wide distribution via the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), the middle class who for the first time post WWI had disposable income to spend on leisure activities-such as going to the pictures. Films as an extension of theater, were respectable for the middle-class to attend. The middle class were often more demanding than the working class, and producers soon started to increase their production costs in order to meet consumer expectation. As production values rose, so too did the cost of attending film theaters, and we start to see the rise of Industrial Hollywood as a corporation.

Union Square Theatre circa. 1916.

By 1916 there were over 21,000 movie theaters in the United States.