78 Silent Movies Quotes
Following is our list of silent movies quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about .
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Famous Silent Movies Quotes
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 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
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
Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. — Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles? — Buster Keaton
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo. — Mary Pickford
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
Chaplin made me laugh and cry without saying a word. I had an instinct. I was touched by the soul of Chaplin - Mime is not an imitator but a creator. — Marcel Marceau
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue. — David Mamet
Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome. — Angela Carter
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
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
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Short Silent Movies Quotes
- I've always considered movies evil; the day that cinema was invented was a black day for mankind. — Kenneth Anger
- Silence has many beauties. — Sophocles
- My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. — Burt Reynolds
- All the great pleasures of life are silent. — Georges Clemenceau
- Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami. — Jean-Luc Godard
- Silence is more musical than any song. — Christina Rossetti
- Silence has so much meaning. — American Indian Proverbs
- Nothing at times is more expressive than silence. — George Eliot
Silent Movies 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
People Writing About Silent Movies
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Mary Pickford |
23 | 455 |
 David Mamet |
184 | 720 |
 Ingmar Bergman |
80 | 896 |
 Ginger Rogers |
44 | 692 |
 Alfred Hitchcock |
120 | 2222 |
 Charlie Chaplin |
162 | 5515 |
More Silent Movies 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
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
Sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable. I remember at the very beginning actually, the first person I had to convince was myself really because there's a self-censorship. When everybody says 'we don't do silent movies anymore,' you agree with everybody, and you say 'yeah, you're right.' It was a fantasy. — Michel Hazanavicius
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
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
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters -- there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void. That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window. — Jean Baudrillard
For me, I loved it. I only want to make silent movies now. — Jean Dujardin
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
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling. — Michel Hazanavicius
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
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
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 watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre. — Michel Hazanavicius
I try to respect the rules of the silent movies and I tried to make signification to make sense, and also the crew were very good and the fact that we shot in LA in the real Hollywood, studios and houses. We shot in the bed of Mary Pickford, and you cannot be any more accurate than that, so that helped a lot. — 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
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
I was crazy about silent comedy - in the old days, and crazy about Japanese movies. — Keith Johnstone
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
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
Silly boys. Did you think we were making a silent movie? — Koushun Takami
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
Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen. For example, Steve McQueen, if you cut the sound, you don't know what he's acting really. He gives to the lines, to the text, something very special, and he's very good. He was a great actor. But, to do a silent movie, you have to have more expressive actors. — Michel Hazanavicius
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
First of all, I had the desire for that format [silent movie], and then when I was talking to people, I felt that people needed justification. Why are you doing a silent movie? Is it just for your own pleasure? I felt it was not enough for them so I realized I have to choose the subject that will make things easier for them and to tell the story of a silent actor makes sense for doing a silent movie. — Michel Hazanavicius
They said 'if you have a 3D movie, we'll buy it' because they want it. For maybe two weeks I really thought of a silent, black and white 3D movie and I thought it could be great. I imagined it as a very special image, a very new image, but fortunately, I didn't have to do it. — Michel Hazanavicius
I can say is usually people are slightly confused. They think that silent movies are old. But, the fact is, they are old because they have been made in the '20s. That's the thing that makes them old. Not the format. The format is just a format. It's not an old format. — Michel Hazanavicius
In silent movies, they tended to put the camera down, and everybody walked in front of it and acted, and then they all walked off. Cutting was quite infrequent. — Bruce Beresford
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that. — Michel Hazanavicius
I'm not an American actor. I'm a French actor. I'll continue in France. If I could make another silent movie in America, I'd like to! — Jean Dujardin
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