Silent Films Quotes

Now I'm the go-to-girl for silent films. ~ Penelope Ann Miller

Do you know anything about silent films?"
"Sure," I said. "The first ones were developed in the late nineteenth century and sometimes had live musical accompaniment, though it wasn't until the 1920s that sound became truly incorporated into films, eventually making silent ones obsolete in cinema. ~ Richelle Mead

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

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

Over-the-knee socks remind me of the 1920s, silent films, and the stars of the era who wore the rolled-down stockings. They sort of referenced that in 'Cabaret,' when Liza Minnelli was singing 'Mein Herr,' and I love the way she looks in that scene. ~ Amy Heckerling

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

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

I was always the hero with no vices, reciting practically the same lines to the leading lady. The current crop of movie actors are less handicapped than the old ones. They are more human. The leading men of silent films were Adonises and Apollos. Today the hero can even take a poke at the leading lady. In my time a hero who hit the girl just once would have been out. ~ Ramon Novarro

When I couldn't speak English, I loved silent films circa 1914-1929, Abel Gance being my favorite director. ~ Kola Boof

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

This congregation of displaced persons had been brought together at a moment in time, in this room, by a few irrevocable mistakes of the past - those acts of rage, greed, lust, and revenge that ran like silent films in their heads, the actors driven by emotions that had gone cold and were now inexplicable. ~ V.S. Kemanis

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

I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true. ~ Robert Englund

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

All of the silent films had live music accompaniment, so it's actually a very rich period in music. ~ Howard Shore

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

Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle ... Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been. ~ Susan Orlean

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

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

Bryan gaped, as though that was more than he'd been expecting. "Oh. Okay. Well, um, there's a silent film festival downtown next week. Do you think you'd want to go?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. I respect it as an art form but really don't get much out of watching them."
"Huh. Okay." He smoothed his hair back again, and I could almost see him groping for thoughts. Why on earth was he asking me about silent films? "What about Starships 30? It opens Friday. Do you want to see that?"
" I don't really like sci-fi either," I said. It was true, I found it completely implausible.
Bryan looked ready to rip that shaggy hair out. "Is there any movie out there you want to see?"
I ran through a mental list of current entertainment. "No. Not really." The bell rang, and with a shake of his head, Bryan slunk back to his desk. "That was weird," I muttered. "He has bad taste in movies." Glancing beside me, I was startled to see Julia with her head down on the desk while she shook with silent laughter. "What?"
"That," she gasped. "That was hilarious."
"What?" I said again. "Why?"
"Sydney, he was asking you out! ~ Richelle Mead

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 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

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

It is commonplace to say that silent films are more "dreamlike," but what does that mean? In Nosferatu, it means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting. ~ Roger Ebert

When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself. ~ Steven Spielberg

I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing. ~ Haruki Murakami

I turned down twelve films last year ... Huge money films, but I had no respect for the writer or the work. ~ Shia Labeouf

For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent. ~ Michael Walzer

I met Tyler Perry and we did 'House of Payne' and a movie. We've done a couple other films since then, but it all boils down to the work. I'm a work-a-holic, which is why I think that I've been successful. If you tell me no, I'll work even harder! ~ Lance Gross

If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more. And there are a few flowers of love that bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers, too; within six weeks they are there, in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers that take years to come, and there are flowers that take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes. But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said. Forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once ~ Osho

The other day in the garage, I found a book report from the seventh grade that I did about silent movie stars. It's funny to look at now, because it really foretold what my future would be. ~ Mark Bridges

For me, to take a movie and travel the world and go and work with these cultures and an international cast and have this spy thriller that's not just about character but also action and suspense, they're very challenging films as a producer to make, creating stories, creating set pieces that serve this character [Ethan Hunt]. ~ Tom Cruise

She stared up at him for a long while, silent, her expression blank. Then, slowly, she walked to the wet bar and poured herself a drink.
He followed her, willing to tie her down and force her to listen to him. "I don't know why she's here or how - "
Splash.
He blinked, wiped a hand down his dripping face, and realized she'd just tossed her drink at him.
"Oh, Dane! You should see your face," she said with a hearty laugh, shocking him. "And seriously, that was so freaking fun. I don't know whether I should thank you for the opportunity to check another item off my list, or do it again. ~ Gena Showalter

Intelligent beings from other planets regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into contact with us. NASA and the American government know this and possess a great deal of evidence. Nevertheless, they remain silent in order not to alarm people. I am dedicated to forcing the authorities to end their silence. ~ Gordon Cooper

Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phonyness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with their debunking job. You went overboard. Over-debunk, that's what you did. It's moral overkill. It's like those insecticides Rachel Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice, useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. In the end, it poisons life itself, the very air we breathe. That's what you did, morally and intellectually speaking. Yours is a silent spring. You have overprotected yourselves. You are all no more than twenty, twenty-two years old, but yours is a silent spring, I'm telling you. Nothing sings for you any more. ~ Romain Gary

I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to GOD, which I may call an actual presence of GOD, or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with GOD, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them, and prevent their appearance to others. ~ Brother Lawrence

The nautilus shell was exquisite, brown and white and perfectly striped. The math that lay like a dazzling creation spell over all who lived in the sea showed clearly in the spiral, each cell as great as the sum of the two previous sections. Everything in the ocean was a thing of beauty and numbers, even in death.
Mermaids could live for a long time, but their bodies became foam that dissipated into nothing when they died.
The poor little mollusk who lived in this shell had a very short life, but his shell could last for centuries.
Ariel sighed and brushed her fingers over it, feeling strangely melancholy despite the triumph she literally held in her hands. Years of being mute could be swept away in a second. Years of frustration, years of silent crying, years of anger.
And then what?
If she destroyed it, what would it change? ~ Liz Braswell

One of the reasons I always come back to representations of loneliness in plays, films, and literature is that they give us specific examples of the powerful hold that it has on us, and yet, paradoxically, by representing what can't really be represented, so to speak, they give us ways of going forward even as we fall apart. ~ Thomas L. Dumm

The Lion King? It's just a kid's film.

Just a kid's film?!? Yeah, just a kid's film with an IMDB rating of 8.5, 2 Academy Awards and 2 Golden Globes, that's been adapted into THE most successful West-end musical of all time, generating a gross profit of 8 million pounds and counting. "But maybe it's just a kid's film because it doesn't deal with any mature films" said fucking nobody ever. The Lion King is the greatest anthropomorphic assault upon the theme of mortality that Western culture has ever produced. It is so complex that your tiny, shriveled, and scrotum of a brain wouldn't dare to fathom it. So no, it is not just a kid's film, it is Shakespear with fur! ~ Jack Whitehall

All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes."
"When I sleep I turn into a wolf." Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. "Do wolves dream?"
"All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do."
"Do dead men dream?" Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father's likeness in granite.
"Some say yes, some no," the maester answered. "The dead themselves are silent on the matter."
"Do trees dream?"
"Trees? No ... "
"They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. "If you would only spend more time with the other children - "
"I hate the other children," Bran said, meaning the Walders. "I commanded you to send them away. ~ George R R Martin

You kind of form a bond with your subjects, in a way. You're in it together. To a degree that people don't realize, documentary films - or at least the kind of documentary films I'm interested in - are a collaborative undertaking with the subjects. ~ Steve James

As V dropped the bomb, there was a momentary period of silent saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Then a shit-ton of gasps and cursing in the room, all kinds of WTF hitting the airwaves. ~ J.R. Ward

Prior to 'Tokyo Drift,' the iconic perception of Asians in Hollywood films has been either the Kung Fu guy, the Yakuza guy or some technical genius. It used to be such a joke, to be laughed at rather than with. ~ Sung Kang

My films don't have instant impact because they're dense with ideas that people have not thought about. It takes a while for the American public to wrap its head around some of the things I'm saying. ~ Michael Moore

I only really watch my own films, I don't watch any other films and I don't particularly like any other actors. ~ Martin Freeman

He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes. ~ Neil Gaiman

So, the next film won't necessarily be modern-day Albany, Georgia but we're grateful for the films we've made (with Sherwood). The church is an amazing church. We're gonna grow as filmmakers and invest in the next generation of upcoming filmmakers and try to duplicate what we're doing. ~ Alex Kendrick

You were right to end it with us," I said harshly. "And I'm not willing to do it again."

He stared at me, shocked. My words were a lie, of course. Part of me wanted to try again, to endure anything to be with him. But I couldn't stop thinking about Maddie. Couldn't stop thinking about the hurt she would go through. It was ironic, really. Last time, he'd gone out of his way to hurt me purposely because it was for the greater good. Now I was doing the same for both of them, saving her from heartache and him from more grief with me. We were in an endless cycle.

"You can't mean that. I know you can't." His face was a mixture of incredulity and pain.

I shook my head. "I do. You and me are a disaster. What we did during this stasis...it was wrong. It was disgraceful. Immoral. We betrayed someone who loves both of us, who wishes nothing but the best for us. How could we do that? What kind of precedent is that? How could we expect to have a solid relationship that was built on that sort of sordid foundation? One that was built on lies and deceit?" Saying those words hurt. It was tarnishing the beauty of these precious few days we had, but I needed to make my case.

Seth was silent for several moments as he assessed me. "You're serious."

"Yes." I was a good liar, good enough that the person who loved me most couldn't tell. "Go back to her, Seth. Go back to her and make it up to her."

"Georgina..." I could see it, see it ~ Richelle Mead

Nowadays, the work of Alfred Hitchcock is admired all over the world. Young people who are just discovering his art through the current rerelease of Rear Window and Vertigo, or through North by Northwest, may assume his prestige has always been recognized, but this is far from being the case.

In the fifties and sixties, Hitchcock was at the height of his creativity and popularity. He was, of course, famous due to the publicity masterminded by producer David O. Selznick during the six or seven years of their collaboration on such films as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case.

His fame had spread further throughout the world via the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-fifties. But American and European critics made him pay for his commercial success by reviewing his work with condescension, and by belittling each new film.
(...)
In examining his films, it was obvious that he had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues. It occurred to me that if he would, for the first time, agree to respond seriously to a systematic questionnaire, the resulting document might modify the American critics' approach to Hitchcock.
That is what this book is all about. ~ Francois Truffaut

Never judge a person, who remain silent infront of you. Because being silent have many definition. ~ Pabito Lisean

Women like silent men. They think they're listening. ~ Marcel Achard

Each time I glanced into the rearview mirror, the black around my eyes was bigger and darker. Every once in a while Tom and I would look at each other with a silent acknowledgement that we had just worked our greatest match. When I think of it now, a quote from Georges Braque comes to mind: "Art is a wound turned to light." To my mind, that is also the beauty of pro wrestling. ~ Bret Hart

I'm sick of all these knights in shining armor parts, I want to do something worthwhile like plays and films that have something to say. ~ Tyrone Power

Mr. Sparrow, you will accompany these fine men to the helm and provide us with the bearing to Isla de Muerta. You will then spend the remainder of the voyage contemplating all possible meanings of the phrase 'silent as the grave'. Do I make myself clear? ~ Rob Kidd

Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification - not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight. ~ Stephen R. Covey