Text 3. Silent movies

Talk to people who saw films for the first time when they were silent, and they will tell you the experience was magic. The silent film, with music, had extraordinary powers to draw the audience into the story, and an equal potent capacity to make their imagination work. They had to supply the voices and the sound effects, and because their minds were engaged, they appreciated the experience all the more. The audience was the final creative contributor to the process of making a film.

The films have gained a charm and other-worldliness with age but, inevitably, they have also lost something. The impression they made when there was no rival to the moving picture was more profound, more intense; compared to the easily accessible pictures of today, it was the blow of a two-handed axe, against the blunt scraping of a tableknife.

The films belong to an era considered simpler and more desirable than our own. The silent period may be known as "The Age of Innocence" but it included years unrivalled for their viciousness. The black-and-white issues were not so much a reflection of everyday life as a means of escape from it. In the publications of that time, one reads horrified reactions against films showing "life as it is".

You did not leave the problems of home merely to encounter them again in the movies. You paid your money, initially, for forgetfulness. And if the experience took you out of yourself and excited you,, you talked about it to your friends and fellow-workers, creating the precious "word of mouth" publicity that the industry depended upon.

Gradually movie-going altered from relaxation to ritual. In the big cities, you went to massive picture palaces, you paid homage to your favourite star. You wore the clothes they wore in the movies, you bought the furniture you saw on the screen. You joined a congregation composed of every strata of society. And you shared your adulation with Shanghai, Sydney and Santiago. For your favourite pastime had become the most powerful cultural influence in the world - a universal language, Esperanto for the eyes.

TASK

Answer the questions on Text 3:

1. Why did the audiences of silent movies appreciate them so much?

2. What do modern audiences find attractive about silent movies?

3. Why do modern audiences appreciate silent movies less than their original audiences did?

4. Why did people go to the cinema in the days of silent movies?

5. What did they prefer not to see in a film?

6. What was the most effective publicity for a film?

7. What influence did silent movies have on their fans' lives?

8. Which social classes did silent movies appeal to most?

9. Who is being referred to as "you" in the last paragraph? What is the effect of this stylistic device?

PRACTICE

1. MAKE A REPORT on some interesting fact from the history of cinematography. The texts below may serve as examples.

1. The first major film festival was held in Venice, Italy, in 1932. Today, hundreds of festivals are held annually. The largest and probably best-known festival is held in Cannes, France. Other important festivals take place in Venice, Berlin, London and Moscow.

The best-known movie-awards are made each spring by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These awards, called the Academy Awards, or Oscars, are presented for outstanding achievements in filmmaking during the preceding year. The award is bestowed upon winners in 24 categories. Originally the names of the award winners had been given to the press in advance with the stipulation that the information not be revealed until after the awards presentation. However, the Los Angeles Times printed the names of the 1939 winners in an early evening edition before the ceremony, draining the event of all its suspense. Thus, since then, the winners' names have been a closely guarded secret until the official announcement at the awards ceremony. The design for the award statuette - a knight standing on a reel of film and holding a sword - is credited to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer art director Cedric Gibbons. The Oscar is a gold-plated bronze statue presented for the first time in 1931. The statuette stands 13.5 inches (34.3 cm) tall and weighs 8.5 pounds (3.8 kg). The name "Oscar" has been attributed to an Academy librarian, who declared that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. The true origin of the nickname has never been determined.

2. The Lumiere brothers are French inventors and pioneer manufactures of

photographic equipment who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinematographe ("cinema" is derived from this name). Their film La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumiere (Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), shown in Paris, is considered the first motion picture. Sons of a painter, the two boys displayed brilliance in science at school in Lyon, where their father had settled. Louis worked on the problem of commercially satisfactory development of film; at 18 he had succeeded so well that with his father's financial aid he opened a factory for producing photographic plates, which gained immediate success. By 1894 the Lumieres were producing some 15,000,000 plates a year. That year, the father, Antoine, was invited to a showing of Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris; his description of the peephole machine on his return to Lyon set Louis and Auguste to work on the problem of combining animation with projection. Louis found the solution, which was patented in 1895. At that time they attached less importance to this invention than to improvements they had made simultaneously in colour photography. But on December 28, 1895, a showing at the Grand Cafe on the boulevard des Capuciners in Paris brought wide public acclaim and the beginning of cinema history. The brothers' first films (they made more than 40 during 1896) recorded everyday French life - e.g., the arrival of a train, a game of cards, a toiling blacksmith, the feeding of a baby, the activity of a city street.

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