By Carter Phillips

On October 16th at the Fargo Theater the halls were filled with organ music that birthed from the auditorium. Buster Keatons first feature length film ‘The Three Ages’ was depicted on the screen, but it is from 1923 meaning it has no sound. It is a silent film, a relic of a dead age.

The silent era of cinema is the most important simply because it was the Genesis of its art-form. Because there was no sound, the first auteurs discovered that to tell a story well, they have to convey the plot visually. This made for films with much stronger effort and style.

Today however the majority of silent cinema is forgotten by the general public and the small amount of people who watch them is dwindling.

Besides Mary Pickford, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin which movie stars of the time are even remembered? And more importantly, does it matter that these films are slowly becoming less and less relevant to contemporary moviegoers?

In 1996 Susan Santog wrote an essay titled: The Decay of Cinema and it brings up many points that Martin Scorsese would later vocalize.

Cinema is becoming tarnished by the people running the American film industry. It’s no longer about telling good stories, it’s about world building, marketing, merchandise and controlling the monopoly.

People stopped watching movies for stars, only famous characters. Not because they care, but because everyone else cares.

Streaming services curate what films each person watches through algorithms. Films become lost in the flow, leaving only the big-budget films recommended. Unless somebody seeks them out, there are no ways to find the next Rocky, Star Wars or Alien.

In the year 2015 I saw a silent movie for the first time, which was so old that by then everyone involved in it was dead. It was the 1925 adaption of The Phantom of the Opera, Universal Pictures first foray into the horror genre.

It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It came from a completely different world. I witnessed ghosts returned to life. I had a window into that past.

The whole cinematic grammar was different. The frame rate, aspect ratio, acting style, musical accompaniment, color tinting and visual quality all toppled together to create an enchanted, unsettling and most importantly uncanny experience.

What followed was a fascination with these films and a desire to watch as many surviving as I could.

They were made simply because they could be made. Despite limitations, people pursued. It wasn’t about theater domination to the masters of cinema, that was just a benefit.

This otherworldly atmosphere, sheer creativity and historical relevance is what attracted me.

Contrast this with the money makers of today. They’re fun and they entertain but are they lasting? How long has it been since cinema became something special!? Not just white noise to play from Netflix while you wander around on your phone.

When was the last time you went to a film at the movie theater and really felt something? The last time you got lost in a story, that you wondered, “How did they do that?”, or simply felt any emotion other than distraction from reality?

Cinema is not dead, the recent Dune film is a major step-up from most blockbusters of today, however it is an exception.

Still, where are the next franchise starters. They live only as streaming service originals.

The way we watch films is changing too. It’s loosing its social appeal. The movie theaters have been on the decline sense television but now if a film comes out, most people just wait until it is dropped on a streaming service and now people can do that on release date depending on the film.

It used to be an event to go to the cinema, like church for storytelling. They used to be grandiose and elegant. Most importantly, it was social. You were stuck in a room, with a bunch of strangers, but it didn’t matter. In the cinema everyone was equal. Everyone just sat down and watched a movie.

So what is all this rambling leading to? How do I conclude?

The main take away is that silent cinema is something I love, and it’s slowly being forgotten. Nobody notices any historical or artistic relevance to these films.

There’s a thing about films. They outlive they’re creators. They are made to be eternal, to be a statement on the person who made them and to represent humanity through the confines of plot. Yet people nowadays don’t give old films a chance just because they have a preconceived notion that all of them are boring. To deprive yourself of this is to deprive yourself of art.