August 12, 2000
Almost sheer silence - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- One of the things that gets neglected in all the talk about film, entertainment, show business and stuff of the sort is the facet of silent films. Therein, was where film, at least the form we know it as - talking pictures - was born.
It comes to my attention today, as in the last couple of days I’ve run into references to silent movies that it’s hard to ignore. Thus, it’s compelled me to write about it. I borrowed a video from the public library that was about Lillian Gish. And then on an idle Saturday afternoon, I tuned into the last half of the CBC’s Life and Times bio on Mary Pickford.
Unless you happen to be some sort of Rain Man, the average Joe would not know who the heck Lillian Gish or Mary Pickford were. Both were pioneers of the motion picture industry and were stars in the early days of filmdom, when films were silent.
Those were the days, as Norma Desmond, the fictional character of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard would have said. Portrayed by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 film, Ms. Swanson, herself a silent film star, acted out the weaving tale of Desmond, a fading silent film star. A recluse, and unknowing of the fact that her 15 minutes of fame were up. Desmond was asked by younger film writer (Bill Holden), “Hey aren’t you Norma Desmond? You used to be in pictures. You used to be big.”
She retorted in true divaesque form, “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”
Silent film professionals both in front of and behind the screen, fell by the wayside, with the advent of talking pictures. That was reality for so many, that it became fodder for melodrama like Billy Wilder’s much quoted work above. (Lord Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, used the classic film noir for their own musical adaptation.)
Gish and Pickford were lucky. They emerged from their careers and adapted to the supply of talent and their demand thereof. Gish moved into the world of stage acting, playing parts written by Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Odets, O’Neill and Chayefsky. While Pickford spearheaded the development of the Motion Picture Fund, an organisation that became a nursing home and relief agency for performers that became destitute and poor in their later years. (Not to mention her much lamented marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, which spawned the legendary estate, Pickfair.)
Ms. Gish who, as an aside, was actually a good pal of our own impresario Hugh Pickett, received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1984. In her acceptance speech, following tributes by Mary Martin, Jennifer Jones, John Houseman, Robert Mitchum, Sally Field and Eva Marie Saint, among others; she lamented the lost art of silent films. How stories were told, not with fancy use of hyperbole or alliteration, but by images that evoke the sheer effervescence of human frailty and human emotion.
I guess, the essence of my rant, today is that if we can bring back the musical (Evita, the upcoming Phantom of the Opera, Everybody Says I Love You,) or stories like Life Is Beautiful, Judy Berlin or Boys Don’t Cry, which fail to pander to the scale of over-budgeting and incessant haemorrhaging of quality, as is the custom in filmdom today; silence can go a long way.
To return to Wilder’s legendary, Norma Desmond: “With one look, I put words to shame. Just one look sets the screen a flame. Silent music starts to play, one tear in my eye makes the whole world cry.”
In the age of silent films, surprisingly that’s all it took.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .