Picture the Answers to This Quiz on the Silent Film Era

On December 28, 1895, at the Grand Cafe in Paris, the Lumière brothers (inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière) held the first paid commercial film screening. The event charged admission for the first time, and showed several short films depicting everyday life. The brothers opened theaters the following year, and the first commercial cinema in the U.S opened in New Orleans in 1896.

The first official theater showing silent films opened in 1905 in Pittsburgh, called the Nickelodeon after the 5-cent price of admission. Before the theatre, motion pictures were more of a traveling exhibit. They were shown in between acts at vaudeville shows, or as quick shorts before other performances. Within months after the first theater opened, more than a dozen more nickelodeons opened throughout Pittsburgh; within two years, 8,000 theaters dotted the country.

In 1927, Clara Bow starred in the silent film “It,” a romantic comedy about a store assistant who impresses the wealthy owner. After starring in the film, Bow was popularly referred to by the press as the “It girl,” a phrase now commonly used to describe the most trendy and compelling women in pop culture.

1920’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” is heralded as groundbreaking in the horror space, and is also the first film ever produced in the German expressionist style. The movie featured surrealist set pieces that added to its bizarre and unsettling atmosphere, and served as a major inspiration for not only future horror films, but expressionist and film noir titles too.

Lon Chaney Sr. was one of the preeminent stars of the silent film era, and earned his nickname because he was known to drastically change his appearance with costumes and makeup from film to film. He underwent substantial physical transformations for his roles in 1923’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and 1925’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” among other movies.

The 1927 silent film “Wings” won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture (though the award was called Outstanding Picture at the time). It remains the only fully silent film to receive the honor, though the mostly silent 2011 film “The Artist” also won Best Picture. “Wings” was briefly lost for decades until being rediscovered in a Parisian film archive.

Jackie Coogan was one of Hollywood’s first child stars. He first became famous for his role as the titular 6-year-old in Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid,” though he had previously made appearances in films as an uncredited baby. Coogan appeared in several silent films, and later portrayed Uncle Fester on “The Addams Family” in the 1960s.

The highest-grossing silent film of all time was an anti-war picture featuring the popular actor Rudolph Valentino in his first starring role; he would go on to be a superstar. The film was based on Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's 1916 bestselling novel of the same name. At the time, the film brought in $9.2 million in domestic sales, or about $381.1 million today.

The first motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph, was invented in 1888 by Thomas Edison and his laboratory assistant William Dickson. Edison’s New Jersey-based film production studio, called the Black Maria, made some of the very first films.

When only-text images show up in silent movies, those images are called intertitles. They were usually handwritten cards, showing narrative information about the setting or dialogue between characters. Intertitles are inserted between filmed scenes. They were the precursor to modern-day subtitles.

Mary Pickford was a prolific silent film actress, and also played a major role in founding several long-standing cinematic organizations. Pickford, along with several others, founded United Artists, and she was also an original member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The actress won an Oscar later in life for the “talkie” film “Coquette.”

Comedic silent film star Buster Keaton earned the nickname “The Great Stone Face” thanks to his iconic deadpan facial expressions. Before he moved into acting in silent films in 1917, he was a child vaudeville performer performing with his parents as a three-person show. Some of his best-known movies include “The General” from 1926 and “Our Hospitality” from 1923, both comedies.

One of the reasons so few films have survived from the golden era of silent movies is because they were released on nitrate film, which is flammable and decays easily. As nitrate film decays, it becomes even more flammable. Estimates suggest that only about 14% of silent films survive to this day.

The first movie with its own sound, 1927’s “The Jazz Singer,” was the beginning of the end for silent films. It was the first “talking picture” or “talkie,” a feature-length movie with sound and dialogue. The story follows the relationship between a father and his son; the son is chastised for singing in a saloon as a young boy, and eventually becomes a jazz singer.

The first narrative silent film in history was 1903’s “The Great Train Robbery.” It was 12 minutes long and directed by Edwin S. Porter, a former employee of Thomas Edison. The classic Western tells the story of four bandits who (spoiler alert) rob a train, escape, and then get killed during a later shootout.

Before the 1939 version of “The Wizard of Oz” we all know and love, a silent film version of the L. Frank Baum story was released in 1925. Naturally, it lacked all of the beloved songs found in the “talkie” version. Comedian Larry Sermon not only portrayed the Scarecrow, but also directed the film.

1922’s seminal silent horror film “Nosferatu” stars Max Schreck as the spindly fingered Count Orlok. The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” which in turn led to legal action from Stoker’s widow. The movie was preceded by “Dracula’s Death,” a 1921 release that was the first, albeit loose adaptation of Stoker's novel.

The very first silent movies weren’t narrative movies at all — they were simply recordings of whatever was going on at the time the camera was out. The films showed things like a train pulling into a station, a walk in a garden, or people sharing a kiss. News events were recorded as well, including President William McKinley’s funeral.

The 1925 film “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” redefined the concept of action scenes in cinema. Its climactic chariot race was filmed at a racetrack in Culver City, California, and its naval battle scene was equally grand in scale. The film was an adaptation of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, and was later remade by MGM in 1959 with Charlton Heston.

Charlie Chaplin is one of the most famous silent film stars of all time, in part thanks to his comedic character “The Little Tramp.” The Little Tramp was kind-hearted, walked with a cane and a wobble, wore raggedy clothes and a bowler hat, and somehow always managed to get into (and then out of) awkward situations. Some of Chaplin’s best-known films featuring the character are “The Gold Rush,” “City Lights,” and the aptly named “The Tramp.”