107 Silent Films Quotes
Following is our list of silent films quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about silent movie.
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Famous Silent Films Quotes
The refined simplicity should develop out of the complex. It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around. — Mary Pickford
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood. — Ginger Rogers
The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation. — Louise Brooks
Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles? — Buster Keaton
If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on. — Alfred Hitchcock
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue. — David Mamet
Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. — David Mamet
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. — Ingmar Bergman
I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language. — Ben Kingsley
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo. — Mary Pickford
All the great pleasures of life are silent. — Georges Clemenceau
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman
Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. — Charlie Chaplin
In antiquity there was only silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. — Luigi Russolo
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Short Silent Films Quotes
- Silence has many beauties. — Sophocles
- Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome. — Angela Carter
- Silence is more musical than any song. — Christina Rossetti
- Nothing at times is more expressive than silence. — George Eliot
- Silence has so much meaning. — American Indian Proverbs
- Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami. — Jean-Luc Godard
- Women like silent men. They think they're listening. — Marcel Achard
- A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. — Leopold Stokowski
- Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. — Marcel Marceau
- Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time. — Thomas Carlyle
Silent Films Image Quotes
Silent Films Quotes
The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion. — Pedro Almodovar
I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety. — Barry Levinson
When you are modelling, you are creating a picture, a still life, perhaps something like a silent film. You convey emotion but you are only using your body. — Helena Christensen
For me, each book is kind of like a silent film. If you were to remove the words and just look at the pictures, you should be able to tell what the story is about without having to read a word of text. That's what I think I brought from doing artwork for film to doing artwork for books. — Kadir Nelson
On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful German highbrow films. — Stella Gibbons
With today's movies, if we took out all the bad language, we'd go back to silent films. — Bob Hope
I like some of the early silent films because I love to watch how actors had to play then. What would interest me today is to do a silent film. — Catherine Deneuve
Horror has been a genre since the beginning of cinema, all the way back to the days of silent films. I don't think it will ever go away because it's so universal. Humor doesn't always travel to other countries, but horror does. — John Carpenter
I have a very 'theatre' face. I have what they call a wide mask. I probably would have been a big film star in the '20s with the silent films where they used a lot of key lighting, and make-up carved out your face. — Faith Prince
When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence. — Haile Gerima
Silent Movie Quotes
When I'm actually assembling a scene, I assemble it as a silent movie. Even if it's a dialog scene, I lip read what people are saying. — Walter Murch
I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive. — Lillian Gish
As an actor I'm part of a long line of character people you can take back to the silent movies. There's always the little guy who's the sidekick to the tall, good-looking guy who gets the girl. — Curtis Armstrong
When you see a silent movie, you understand everything that's going on from the images because the images are so strong. — Monica Bellucci
I was playing organ at a silent movie house at Harlem and they'd be showing some death scene on the screen. Likely as not, I'd grab a bottle and start swingin' out on 'Squeeze Me' or 'Royal Garden Blues'. The managers complained but, heck, they couldn't stop me! — Fats Waller
The movie people would have nothing to do with me until they heard me speak in a Broadway play, then they all wanted to sign me for the silent movies. — W. C. Fields
Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. — Laini Taylor
I think the approach of the character for us is the same in a silent movie as in a talking movie because we had balance, we had lines to learn. — Berenice Bejo
Right now I'm the most famous silent movie actress in the world and I want to keep that for me. So I hope there's not going to be any other silent movies. — Berenice Bejo
There was nothing to react to except wind and trees [in Cast Away]. It was like making a silent movie. — Tom Hanks
Silence Movie Quotes
Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live. — Shelley Winters
Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie. — Sam Mendes
We own our movie and are now close to breaking even, even without finishing domestic DVD deals. — Donal Logue
I go scuba diving. I ski. Watch movies. I take a week of silence every three months in the wilderness. And, besides, I have fun all the time anyway. — Deepak Chopra
In horror movies today it's lots of fast cut shot and lots of loud noises on the soundtrack. I tried to do the opposite. Playing with silence for instance. — Alejandro Amenabar
When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money! — Jonathan Demme
Sometimes I intentionally cut it off. I just want to be in silence, especially when I'm traveling. I watch movies without sound. — A. R. Rahman
Silent Movies Quotes
Today we are aware as never before of the plurality of human life-styles and possibilities, while at the same time being tied, like in an old silent movie, to a runaway locomotive rushing headlong toward a very singular catastrophe — Gary Snyder
I used to watch movies - silent movies - and stock companies and theater whenever I could. — E. G. Marshall
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know. — Michel Hazanavicius
I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people. — Marilyn Monroe
For me, I loved it. I only want to make silent movies now. — Jean Dujardin
When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural. — Michel Hazanavicius
I connected very much with all the work of Joan Crawford because she started as a flapper. She used to dance and sing and she was very cute. She had something that was so different from what she is at the end of her life and she started in the silent movies and then went into the talkies. — Berenice Bejo
For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing. — Jean Dujardin
This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story. — Michel Hazanavicius
I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business! — George Sidney
People Writing About Silent Films
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Mary Pickford |
23 | 455 |
 David Mamet |
184 | 720 |
 Ingmar Bergman |
80 | 896 |
 Ginger Rogers |
44 | 692 |
 Louise Brooks |
15 | 386 |
 Buster Keaton |
19 | 362 |
More Silent Films Quotes
It was my mustache that landed jobs for me. In those silent-film days it was the mark of a villain. When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too. I bought a pair of white spats, an ascot tie and a walking stick. — Adolphe Menjou
I like silent pictures and I always have ... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film. — Akira Kurosawa
I saw 'The Artist.' It's really beautiful and it's all done to the letter with all the silent film techniques. The costumes were amazing and the dog is so good. — Florence Welch
I love the silent era because you can see the rules being written, the grammar of film being created. Most of my films are in some way love letters to the silent era. — Dave McKean
A short film is just another storytelling medium like TV, Features, and Webisodes. I am just thrilled that Silent Cargo is getting out there for people to see. — Ellen Wong
Garrel has succeeded in filming something we have never seen before: the faces of actors in silent films during those moments when the black intertitles, with their paltry, illuminated words, filled the screen. — Serge Daney
I am astounded at my age with a 20-year-old daughter to discover that kids of her generation don't want to watch black and white movies. I understand that they gave up on silent films, but black and white? So, now movies have to be taught in academia because people don't know how to watch them, they don't know how to appreciate them. — Gary Giddins
I always found Louise Brooks interesting. She was an icon of the silent - film era, and I knew she'd grown up in Kansas, and that she was smart and rebellious and sharp - tongued. — Laura Moriarty
I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid. — Jean Dujardin
The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much. — Peter Weir
I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything. — Michel Hazanavicius
This is a universal, unique movie, it has potential to cross barriers. But we never thought about that on set, when we were doing the film. We knew that in making a silent movie, we were doing something a little bit under the wire, a bit interdit. It's a pastiche, but for the French taste, you would have thought. — Jean Dujardin
Now I'm the go-to-girl for silent films. — Penelope Ann Miller
Harvey Weinstein bought our film, and he's an animal. He's got us out there campaigning and everything because honestly it's a silent black-and-white film. — Penelope Ann Miller
I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films. — Alain Resnais
I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital. — Martin Scorsese
I got my first part in Silent Fall, 1994 - I guess I was 15 or 16 - which was really outrageous because I still knew nothing. I don't think I really learned how to land on my marks until after Empire Records in 1995, 'cause sometimes I'll see a shot in that film, and I'm like "Whoa, I just walked over to the corner." — Liv Tyler
When you decide you want to make a film, you start listening to everything that anyone has to say about filmmaking and reading everything, and there's a maxim about film being a visual medium, and so you need to make, in a sense, a silent movie and layer on dialogue. — Tom Ford
Silent films are fairytales. All stories are more or less fairytales, and removing speech makes everything more universal. It makes specific characters stand in for everybody, so actions take on fairytale significance. And the writing has to be pared down to represent people as types, too. — Guy Maddin
I love silent films. The future is unwritten. — Jim Jarmusch
The things had been made a half a dozen times from silent pictures through the '30s and '40s. In fact, I think there's a version in the '50s. And then, of course, Spielberg eventually did a version of The Lost World, but this [filming] was '91, I think. And we shot it in Zimbabwe. — Eric McCormack
The silent film, it was cut at the age of thirty. — Jean-Luc Godard
I was introducing [director and producer] Hal Roach - Mr. Roach was 100 years old, he was one of the fathers of early days in films, he put Laurel with Hardy, he created the Our Gang kids, and all these silent movies he did - he was a giant. — Billy Crystal
One of the first decisions I made, as the director of "Hide and Seek," was that our film would be silent and use underscoring of original music that I was planning on composing. The decision was mostly predicated on knowing how time consuming the editing of dialogue can be and given the various locations we shot in, I didn't want to worry about having to mix room tones in such a short amount of time. — Garth Kravits
There are very few films that I've ever seen in my life that would be as silent or vacant as something like Jeremiah Johnson, and that to me was unbelievably captivating. You can see the same about [The Outlaw] Josey Wales: there's very little dialogue, and yet it contains such a deep, rich story. I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best. — Kiefer Sutherland
While I was writing the book, I went to see Louise Brooks's most famous film, Pandora's Box, at the Tivoli in Kansas City, and it was a lovely experience. You can watch old silent films on DVD or even on YouTube, but it was a different feeling watching her up on the big screen, seeing the film the way people saw it all those years ago. — Laura Moriarty
I wasn't that familiar with silent films. I didn't know, for example, how hugely popular silent films were in the 1920s, how people would go to the movies several times a week. — Laura Moriarty
When I couldn't speak English, I loved silent films circa 1914-1929, Abel Gance being my favorite director. — Kola Boof
I intend more of a kinship with silent films than more modern film. I like the old cinema. My films are more of a hybrid - a different style of filmmaking to what I call talking head movies. Some people don't get it. Especially the more academic types. — George Lucas
I looked at a lot of photos from Hollywood in the '20s, photographs of silent movies being filmed all over the world which are very specific and very evocative. Berenice, the lead actress, is my wife. She really followed the same path with me. — Michel Hazanavicius
The military has a very long relationship with Hollywood that dates back to the silent film era. — Nick Turse
It was an honor to work with Samantha Morton on this Casablanca-esque, silent-film-esque, Americana photobooth Woolworth's hay day period piece of surrealism/ realism/ story time tell-tale-ism, black and white 35 mm film, washed in strange light, over this love hate tune, heartbreak song, life-goes-on lullaby, The Last Goodbye. It's a doorway into the future of the fatal past-tense. Get it? — Alison Mosshart
A film, since it is primarily a visual medium, should really be like a silent film. You should be able to watch something and understand what was going on and use voice when you need to communicate something you can't necessarily communicate visually. The book is the opposite. The book is an inner monologue which is beautiful. — Tom Ford
In silent films, quite complex plots are built around action, setting, and the actors gestures and facial expressions, with a very few storyboards to nail down specific plot points. — Laurie R. King
Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form. — Peter Weir
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