Expert: DM - 9/29/2008

Question
Hey David,

I am taking a film studies class and I was given a question in regards to the movie The Gold Rush. However, this question might be regarding silent films in general versus movies today.

What would you say are the differences and/or similarities between acting in the silent era and acting today? I was wondering if there was anything you could tell me besides the obvious facts: sound, silent films are black and white etc. if you have any info. that could help me, please let me know, the assignment is due on Wednesday at 2PM.

Thank you for your time.

Alicia

Answer
Dear Alicia,

    Thank you for asking such an interesting question.

    Silent films were a blend of the vocal art of stage acting and pantomime and the art of ballet, which was entirely physical in its expression of a story line. In silent films, most actors and actresses spoke their lines full out, even though the camera did not record their words.

    Talking films were done in the same manner (as they are today), but for a difference, camera equipment actually records the words spoken by an actor or actress.   

    To define what film acting is, we need look no further than the experiences of two of the greatest actresses of the early American stage, both of whom were highly influential in transferring their art to early silent motion pictures.

    Here is a description of how the world's greatest actress, Sarah Bernhardt, taught acting during the silent era. In an article in Movie Magazine, January 1926 (Volume I, No. 5) titled “Sarah Bernhardt, A Memory,” her godson, Gaston Glass wrote:

    “A little slave boy bore in his brown hands a basket which held a snake. Cleopatra waited, her great eyes like jade in her white face—all the audience held their breathing for a moment when she would take the asp and its green jeweled length would writhe as though it were alive. It looked alive in her hands, so that always the little boy, in his costume that was hardly more than his own brown skin, would catch his own breath and his eyes would grow big. I know, for I was that boy when Sarah Bernhardt was the greatest Cleopatra the world had ever seen.

    “She was my godmother. Her ear was wonderful, the least inflection off the perfect tone of a word and she would cry, ‘Stop! Stop! Try again. It must sound as . . . . ’ and she would repeat the offending word with her own inflection, that perfect diction that made music of the slightest phrase. Purity was one of the first requisites of great acting. Madame demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing less. ‘You will have dialect roles,’ she would tell us of the company, ‘and when you have to play in dialect, that is the time to use it. But at no other time. Your foundation must be on the purest of sound, and then you are free to put on what dialect you need for any part. And it will be untainted by your natural pronunciation,’ she admonished.

    “Many actors and actresses have wondered where lay the secret of her great acting, as if it were something miraculous. In a way, perhaps, it was miraculous. But it was not a secret. It was simply that in each of her roles she was not acting—she was living. She was Camille, frail and passion-torn; she was the fate-laden boy, L’Aiglon, son of Napoleon; she was Jeanne, the maid of Orleans.

    “That was how she taught me. “You must feel everything—everything that you play. You cannot pretend. It must be real. Not only in the gesture or the voice, but all, the heart, the body, the words, everything!’ she would say.”

    Around the same time, another veteran stage actress, Laurette Taylor, was making her film debut in Peg O' My Heart. Director, King Vidor, later recalled how her first day on a movie set went. It was a disaster.

    "Bright tin reflectors surrounded the exterior where the camera was set-up. Hot, searing sunlight blasted from them onto Laurette as she posed for the camera. One of the actors, deviating from the prescribed wording of the script, said some flippant line instead of what he had been rehearsed to say, and Laurette, thrown by the transgression, got very angry. Vidor agonized when the actress announced her angry frustration with the blinding  reflectors. She also was stymied by the peculiar demands of shooting the story out of sequence and the requirement forcing her to turn on hot and cold emotions at the moment when the director yelled, “Action!”  Within minutes, her emotional upset aggravated by the stifling heat caused her to finally pass out. The horrified crew carried her unconscious into the house and laid her down on the floor. When she came to, she was dumbstruck by the outrageous sight of all the goats and geese leaping around the room. Laurette saw the unplanned pandemonium and jumped up, screaming,‘It’s impossible. I’ll never be able to do it.” She rushed out the door and down the hill with her maid, Michael the dog trailing faithfully behind."

     Despite the initial set-back, the film was finished, and it was a triumph for Laurette, who had learned the subtle art of silent film acting during the film's production.

    A review in Film Daily, December 17, 1922, said, “A very valuable piece of stage property has at last reached the screen and the much enjoined J. Hartley Manners play, made famous by Laurette Taylor several years ago, has been recorded in pictures with Miss Taylor as Peg. The picture is a very delightful entertainment and an unusually amusing and wholesome one. There has been so much controversy regarding the rights of the play and its production that the result has been anticipated with a little more than the usual interest.”

    “Both Miss Taylor, and King Vidor, who directed, have fulfilled the hopes of those who have been waiting to see Peg O’ My Heart in pictures. The star, to begin with photographs surprisingly well and proves that she knows the art of pantomime. Her facial expressions are delightful and she can say a lot with her eyes. They are going to love that frolicking left eye wink and the pensive expression when she finds herself in love with Jerry. Miss Taylor is a real trouper and her charming characterization of Peg, her first film role, will certainly gain many admirers for her.”

    Gardiner Carroll wrote in Photoplay about his discussion with Laurette in 1924. “When asked which she like better and thought the higher art – the screen or stage – Laurette laughed and gave the Irish answer: ‘Both!’

    “I believe a thorough actress should be effective on screen or stage," Laurette said. "If the screen is incomplete, the stage is not yet perfect, but the art of acting might be made complete by the actress at her best in spoken and silent drama too. While I have had far more experience on the stage, I cannot agree that the stage requires greater physical effort. The waits and the rests necessitated in screen work convince me that patience is indeed a virtue.”

    “The films appeal to me because they are permanent. What would the world give today to see Duse in her youth or Bernhardt at the height of her power on the screen? The picture I made of Peg will be treasured as long as I live, and by my children’s children long after I’m gone, I hope.”

    “That’s vanity, but I’m human, and I believe that the same feeling may inspire the preference of many actresses for the screen.”

    “On the stage, we can see our audience, it’s true, but never ourselves. On the screen, we can see ourselves and be part of our own audiences as well.”

    “An important advantage that the screen possesses is the ability of the camera to reveal one’s soul. The lens strikes below the surface and reveals nuances of emotion that cannot be shown on the stage.”

    “Those who scoff that motion pictures lack depth should beware the camera or they’ll find their souls exposed when they may least desire it!”

    “The variety of the screen appeals strongly to me, and the thrill of seeing rushes is something like that of a first night – but I am sustaining the screen when I’m a stage actress! Doesn’t it sound like heresy?” Laurette concluded.

      Even today, an actor or actress is most effective when expressing thoughts through the look in his or her eyes. It has been said that the eyes are the mirror of a person's soul, and if that is true, it certainly explains why an actor's most telling moments in any film are those in which they are shown thinking rather than gesturing, or looking rather than talking.

    To this day, one need only study any new, effective film, and what stays in the memory long after sitting in the darkness of a theater are those sublime, secret moments when upon faces enlarged we see thoughts that are personal to us.

Sincerely,
David Menefee
Author
Sarah Bernhardt in the Theater of Films and Sound Recordings
The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era
The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era
Richard Barthelmess: A Life in Pictures
George O'Brien: A Man's Man in Hollywood

P.S. Please contact my publisher and reserve a copy of my next book, published exclusively at Bear Manor Media. Their web site is:

www.bearmanormedia.com

Richard Barthelmess:
A Life in Pictures

Richard’s struggle to survive against all odds took place in real life as well as on motion picture screens. No one will ever forget how he rescued Lillian Gish from certain death on an ice floe as it was about to plummet over a waterfall in Way Down East, a stunt that went terribly wrong and nearly cost both actors their lives when it was captured on film, but his effort to fight back and live on became more than the stuff of Hollywood legend. Richard went on to be nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor for The Noose and won an Oscar for one of the last silent films, The Patent Leather Kid. His signature roles are in many of D. W. Griffith’s silent films including Way Down East and Broken Blossoms, but few people are aware that he nearly fell victim to the chaos of Hollywood’s transition from silent to talking pictures when he used a voice double to sing for him in Weary River. Despite the minor setback, his later work in The Dawn Patrol, Cabin in the Cotton, and Only Angel’s Have Wings secured his position in talking films, and they have proven to be popular favorites to this day.

For the first time, the story is fully told how Alla Nazimova, a famous Russian star, plucked him from obscurity to play in her first film, and how his worldwide fame was nearly snuffed out when he followed America’s call to arms and gave up his movie career to fight Nazi aggression in World War Two. By the time the honored veteran returned, his career had taken a nearly tragic turn, but his determination to succeed against all odds regained his status as one of Warner Bros. top stars and proved that his appeal was enduring. Richard appeared in more than 80 films, and this book reveals them with a richly researched biography, an extensive Filmography, and hundreds of rare portraits, posters, and lobby cards that capture the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Era.

To read more about David W. Menefee, look up the entry that is found at www.wikipedia.com
             





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Bibliography

“Laurette Taylor a Delight in Adaptation of Her Stage Success.” Film Daily, 17 December, 1922.

Glass, Gaston. Movie Magazine: Sarah Bernhardt, a Memory. New York: Movie Weekly Publishing Corp., January, 1926.

Carroll, Gardiner. “Why Jane Cowl Avoids the Screen, Norma Talmadge Avoids the Stage, Laurette Taylor Appears on Both.” Photoplay,  July, 1924, 72-73.