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Meanwhile, the first feature-length silent film was
made in India by Dadasaheb Phalke, considered to be the
Father of Indian cinema. The film was the period piece
Raja Harishchandra (1913), and it laid the foundation
for a series of period films. By the next decade the
output of Indian cinema was an average of 27 films per
year.
The cultural avant gardes of a number of countries
worked with experimental films, mostly shorts, that
completely abandoned linear narrative and embraced
abstraction, pure aestheticism and the irrational
subconscious, most famously in the early work of Spanish
surrealist Luis Buñuel. In some ways, in fact, this
decade marked the first serious split between
mainstream, "popular" film and "art" film.
But even within the mainstream, refinement was rapid,
bringing silent film to what would turn out to be its
aesthetic summit. The possibilities of cinematography
kept increasing as cameras became more mobile (thanks to
new booms and dollies) and film stocks more sensitive
and versatile.
Screen acting became more of a craft,
without its earlier theatrical exaggeration and
achieving greater subtlety and psychological realism. As
visual eloquence increased, reliance on intertitles
decreased; the occasional film, such as F.W. Murnau's
The Last Laugh (Germany, 1926) even eschewed them
altogether. Paradoxically, at about this time, the
silent cinema period ended.
History of film - The sound era
1919 Movie
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