Silent Film Sayings

#1. Like the he-man movie stars who turn out to be queer ... or the silent-film actors whose voices sound terrible recorded
the audience only wants a limited amount of honesty. [ellipses original]

Chuck Palahniuk

#2. Ballet for a rainy day Silent film of melting miracle play Dancing out there through my window To the backdrop of a slow descending grey

Andy Partridge

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. With this silent film, I wanted to hide what was going on in the clinic. I wanted to cover it up in the best cinematic way and in an entertaining manner.

Pedro Almodovar

#6. 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

#7. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films. I don't think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don't say, 'I read an old book by Flaubert,' or 'I saw an old play by Moliere.'

Alain Resnais

#8. The military has a very long relationship with Hollywood that dates back to the silent film era.

Nick Turse

#9. In a silent film, you speak but the audience does not hear you.

Max Von Sydow

#10. Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add important intonation to dialogue, or subtly convey information.

Howard Mittelmark

#11. I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.

Lenny Abrahamson

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. I'm obsessed with those old romance films. I also would love to venture into the silent film world. I think that's extremely compelling and interesting and really relies on the acting, even more so than when you have an actor speaking.

Sami Gayle

#16. Cats act with their eyes. They are the small, silent film actors of their time, and they are vastly underrated.

Jenny Lawson

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. I enjoy my work, no matter who I am working with. Even if you give me a solo silent film, I will enjoy it.

Sonakshi Sinha

#21. 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

#22. I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.

George Lucas

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. My father is a silent cinema freak, so he took me to 1925 silent films that took forever, like 5-hour movies, but I've seen a lot of that stuff since I was young. And then I saw the film 'Annie,' and I just wanted to be Annie; I just wanted to be that orphan kid and wanted to sing and dance.

Carice Van Houten

#27. It's the demand of all demands to do a car chase that's unique because there are so many ... really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, 'The Keystone Cops.'

James Gray

#28. I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.

Michel Hazanavicius

#29. 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

#30. It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'

Kevin Brownlow

#31. Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.

Walter Murch

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. in its early days the film industry made more than four hundred silent movies exploiting the nation's fascination with Appalachian feuds and moonshine making.

Dwight B. Billings

#35. 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