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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. (The term ''silent film'' is therefore a retronym, that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively – the descriptor ''silent'' used before the late 1920s would have been a redundancy and possibly in modern times a misnomer.) After the release of ''The Jazz Singer'' in 1927, the "talkies", also known as sound film or talking pictures became more and more commonplace. Within a decade, popular widespread production of silent films had ceased, hence production moved into the sound era. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost. == Elements (1894 – 1929) == (詳細はEadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horse's gallop. The oldest surviving film (of the genera called pictorial realism) was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a two-second film of people walking in "Oakwood streets" garden, entitled ''Roundhay Garden Scene''. The development of Thomas Edison's Kinetograph, a photographic device that capture sequential images, and his Kinetoscope, a viewing device for these photos, allowed for the creation and exhibition of short films. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, which laid the foundation for widespread film production.〔 Due to Edison's lack of securing an international copyright on his film inventions, similar devices were "invented" around the world. The Lumière brothers (Louis and Auguste Lumière), for example, created the Cinématographe in France. The Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edison's as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit.〔 In contrast to Edison's "peepshow" kinetoscope, the cinematograph allowed simultaneous viewing by multiple parties. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture. The invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures (although the celluloid was highly flammable and decayed quickly).〔 This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes, which became the industry standard. This doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole.〔Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990. Print〕 From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" (1894–1929) before silent films were replaced by "talking pictures" in the late 1920s. Many film scholars and buffs argue that the aesthetic quality of cinema decreased for several years until directors, actors, and production staff adapted to the new "talkies". The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high. However, there is a widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes as a result of silent films being played back at the wrong speed and their deteriorated condition. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often copied from already damaged and neglected film stock.〔 In addition, many prints may suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, resulting in what may appear to be poor editing. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Silent film」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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