Film Glossary

It is generally agreed that cinema as we now know it was born in 1895, courtesy of the Lumière brothers’ film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, the first of many old films now available on DVD. An immediate success, this film swiftly lead to an industry that would capture the imaginations of audiences across the world and that would create works which are still admired over a century later. Old films from the silent era can still provoke fierce debate today, such as the naked racism of D.W. Griffiths’ The Birth of a Nation, while political silent movies such as The Battleship Potemkin and Metropolis still rouse passions, proving that images can be far more powerful than dialogue. The art of slapstick is brilliantly shown in old films by Charlie Chaplin, and other comedy greats from the silent era such as Buster Keaton still hold up brilliantly well.

Many stars, such as Clara Bow and Emil Jannings, both actors with strong accents, failed to make the transition to ‘talkies’, and there is a sad irony that Britain was producing some of its best silent cinema just when sound became ubiquitous - old films such as Piccadilly and A Cottage on Dartmoor are both remarkable works that feel fresh to contemporary audiences.

The cliché “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” is often applied to old films, and while this does a disservice to the new, boundary-breaking cinema of recent years, there is an undeniable aura around movies from the past that one does not see nowadays. The beautiful scores of 1940s melodrama would seem hokey and manipulative in current cinema, while the primitve special effects of old films such as King Kong and The Thief of Bagdad add a degree of charm that new technology cannot emulate. The acting styles of old films from Hollywood are also vastly different - compare the emotional, bravura performances of Bette Davis and the stylised cool of Humphrey Bogart with the naturalistic (though no less skilled) work of Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro.

A wonderful quirk of contemporary cinema has been the resurrection of genres often associated with old films - Far From Heaven brilliantly used the motifs of 1950s melodrama, Brick pays homage to film noir and the musical has enjoyed a triumphant comeback in the last few years. As exciting as it is to witness the progress of cinema into the new millennium, the history and prestige of old films will continue to fascinate and delight, and as the sheer volume of titles released on DVD continues, archive film and old, forgotten gems are more accessible than ever before.