A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of title cards.
Wings is a 1927 American silent film known for winning the first Academy Award for Best Picture. The film stars Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Richard Arlen. Rogers and Arlen portray World War I combat pilots in a romantic rivalry over a woman. It was produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman, and released by Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. Gary Cooper appears in a small role, which helped launch his career in Hollywood.
Robert Earl Wise was an American film director, producer, and editor. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and directed and produced The Sand Pebbles (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture.
The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film directed and co-written by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from the semi-autobiographical 1966 novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. The film's ensemble cast includes Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybill Shepherd. Set in a small town in northern Texas from November 1951 to October 1952, it is a story of two high-school seniors and long-time friends, Sonny Crawford (Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Bridges).
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.
Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the widest sense, preservation assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible.
Herbert Brenon was an Irish-born U.S. film director, actor and screenwriter during the era of silent films through the 1930s.
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection or public archive.
Rudolf "Rudi" Fehr, A.C.E. was a German-born, American film editor and studio executive. He had more than thirty credits as an editor of feature films including Key Largo (1946), Dial M for Murder (1954), and Prizzi's Honor (1985). He worked for more than forty years for the Warner Brothers film studio, where he was the Head of Post-production from 1955 through 1976. Fehr was instrumental in establishing the 1967 "sister city" connection between Los Angeles and Berlin, which he had fled in the 1930s.
Florence Lois Weber was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer and director. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films". Film historian Anthony Slide has also asserted, "Along with D. W. Griffith, Weber was the American cinema's first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies".
Charles Davenport Champlin was an American film critic and writer.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a 1973 American drama film directed by Hall Bartlett, adapted from the 1970 novella of the same name by Richard Bach. The film tells the story of a young seabird who, after being cast out by his stern flock, goes on an odyssey to discover how to break the limits of his own flying speed. The film was produced by filming actual seagulls, then superimposing human dialogue over it. The film's voice actors included James Franciscus in the title role, and Philip Ahn as his mentor, Chang.
Mel Watkins is an American critic and author. A former staff member at The New York Times, he has written extensively about comedy and African-American literature and has often appeared as a commentator in television documentaries about entertainment history and performers such as Chris Rock and Richard Pryor.
Pam Cook is Professor Emerita in Film at the University of Southampton. She was educated at Sir William Perkins's School, Chertsey, Surrey and Birmingham University, where she was taught by Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Malcolm Bradbury, and David Lodge. Along with Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston, she was a pioneer of 1970s Anglo-American feminist film theory. Her collaboration with Claire Johnston on the work of Hollywood film director Dorothy Arzner provoked debate among feminist film scholars over the following decades.
Alan Heim, ACE is an American film editor. He won an Academy Award for editing All That Jazz.
The Motion Picture Guide is a film reference work first published by Cinebooks in 1985. It was written by Jay Robert Nash, Stanley Ralph Ross, and Robert B. Connelly. It was annually updated through new volumes and had a CD-ROM version, which was eventually incorporated into Microsoft Cinemania.
Jack Murray was an American film editor with about 55 feature film credits between 1929 and 1961. Fifteen of these films were with the director John Ford. Their credited collaborations commenced with The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which was produced when both men were working at the 20th Century Fox studio. It encompassed such well-known films as The Quiet Man (1952) and The Searchers (1956), and ended only with Murray's death in 1961.
St. Elmo is a 1914 American silent drama film produced by the Balboa Amusement Producing Company and distributed by William Fox's Box Office Attractions Company. It was the first feature-length film adaptation of Augusta Jane Evans's 1866 novel of the same name. The story follows the life of the title character, who kills his cousin over the love of Agnes, falls from grace, and eventually finds redemption and love with Edna. It is disputed who directed the film; many sources credit Bertram Bracken, while others list St. Elmo as J. Gordon Edwards's directorial debut.
Milton R. Shefter is a Los Angeles-based film and media-asset archivist and preservationist. He is best known for the creation, design, and management of the extensive Paramount Pictures Asset Protection Program, and for co-authoring the 2007 report from the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Digital Dilemma, as well as its 2012 followup, The Digital Dilemma 2.
The Right to Be Happy is a 1916 American silent Christmas fantasy film directed by Rupert Julian. The film is based on the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The movie stars Rupert Julian as Ebenezer Scrooge and Claire McDowell as Mrs. Cratchit.
