Library: Performing Arts by Credo Reference: Silent Film

Directors

Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889 - 1968)
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Danish film director. He created a new directorial style based on extensive close-ups and the use of authentic settings.
D.W. Griffith (1875 - 1948): Topic Page
U.S. film director and producer. He introduced several cinematic techniques, including the flashback and the fade-out, in his masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Fritz Lang (1890 - 1976): Topic Page
Film director; his films include Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922, Dr Mabuse, the Gambler), the first of three Mabuse films, and the futuristic Metropolis (1926), with its nightmare vision of urban living.

Clara Bow (1905 - 1965): Topic Page
Known as the “It” Girl, was THE sex symbol of the film industry in the 1920s.
Louise Brooks (1906 - 1985): Topic Page
Louise Brooks is rarely remembered as the gifted actor she was but merely as the flapper of late 1920s films.
Lillian Gish (1893 - 1993): Topic Page
Lillian Gish, called the “First Lady of the Silent Screen,” was perhaps the finest female actor of the silent era. Her career spanned seventy-five years and over 100 productions.
Mary Pickford (1892 - 1979): Topic Page
Mary Pickford was the most popular film star in the world during the silent era. She was, in a real sense, “America's Sweetheart.”

Silent Films: Topic Page
After the novelty factor of the Lumière brothers' single-shot ‘moving pictures’ began to wear thin, cinema quickly developed a sophisticated language of its own as filmmakers experimented with camera tricks, editing theories and narrative methods.

"Fatty" Arbuckle (1887-1933)
From The Hutchinson unabridged encyclopedia with atlas and weather guide
US silent-film actor, writer and director. A successful comic actor, Arbuckle worked with the likes of Mack Sennett and Buster Keaton, and appeared in such films as The Butcher Boy (1917), Fatty at Coney Island (1917), and The Hayseed (1919).
Charlie Chaplin (1889 - 1977): Topic Page
Film actor, producer, screenwriter, director, and composer, born in London, UK. Regarded as one of the few individuals to be a true genius of motion pictures, he was knighted in 1975.
W.C. Fields (1879 -1946): Topic Page
Film actor and screenwriter, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Buster Keaton (1895 - 1966): Topic Page
Film comic actor, screenwriter, and producer. By 1923 he was exercising complete artistic control over his films and he had established his persona as a deadpan and agile Everyman undaunted by the most extreme situations.

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