When Movies Were Silent Music
by Spencer Warren

Frequent use of visual imagery and metaphor is a major difference between vintage pre-sixties movies and contemporary films. Vintage films also were different in their generally conservative themes and allusive, indirect treatment of violence and sex. By comparison, films of the past few decades tend to be quite literalistic, even hamhanded. The newer ones have lots of talking in tight shots with frequent close-ups bouncing back and forth between characters (as in the quickly filmed TV shows), but they don’t leave the audience with much to remember as they leave the theater – other than graphic violence and sex, or pounding special effects.

Visual imagery and metaphor in film is used to heighten expression, just as they were employed in Western art from the time of the ancient Greeks. Likewise, literature has long employed devices such as allegory, parable and irony, as well as metaphor, in order to make its expression more vivid and memorable (e.g. Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage”). The essence of film, its poetry, is what we see, not what we hear. The common employment of visual poetry in older films helps to explain why, in my view, they are so much more memorable than contemporary films.

There are a number of explanations for this difference. Films initially were a silent medium, so directors had to learn to express themselves visually. Many of the greatest directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930’s into the 1950’s, were veterans of silent cinema: John Ford, King Vidor, Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, to name only a few. Further, the use of figurative language, written or visual, to heighten and intensify expression was part of the Western tradition and necessary to any artist who felt deeply about his material and wanted to make his point as powerfully and memorably as possible: it defined artistic creativity. In addition, this was a period when transcendent religious truth still governed moral society, as it had for two millennia. Transcendence is expressed by figurative language. The filmmakers today who are products of the radical left, nihilistic Hollywood do not believe in anything higher than their own human selves, so they have no need to express anything over and above earthbound literalism.

Let us examine some illustrations of how visual expression used to govern the better Hollywood movies. We start with the visual poet of the movies, John Ford. In an earlier essay http://acuf.org/issues/issue87/070707med.asp , we posted the famous final shot of Ford’s Western classic The Searchers (1956): the carefully framed image of John Wayne, now standing alone outdoors, holding one arm as if forlorn, filmed from inside the cabin which the reunited families have just happily entered with the young girl he rescued, sums up the broad theme of the film -- that the warrior on whose talent for violence society depends for protection against the barbaric wilderness can find no place in that society.

The classic Western through the 1950’s often glorified our settlement of this vast continent by heroic pioneers – a central element of the American ethos that has come under incessant assault by the left since the 1960’s. Ford’s Wagon Master (1950) is a modest work dramatizing a small wagon train of Mormon settlers setting out for their promised land, overcoming the ritual obstacles along the journey. The final shot is vintage Ford: after the wagons have crossed a stream and reached their destination, Ford shows a fawn gingerly crossing the stream – a lovely metaphor for our then young country on its journey to maturity.

Such Ford visuals could fill a large volume. In his World War II film They Were Expendable (1945), an account of a PT boat crew in the Philippines (commanded by Robert Montgomery, who in real life did exactly that, as is evident in his powerful performance), Ford has a scene in the sailors’ club, which has just heard the broadcast announcing the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ford gives us a carefully framed, noble composition, in close-up, of a young sailor drinking down a big glass of milk, then slowly wiping off his mouth with his arm: Ford’s tribute to the boys, many aged 18-22, who did much of the fighting, as he personally witnessed at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. (See http://acuf.org/issues/issue85/070603med.asp .) Again, mere words can barely suggest the artistry of this shot.

Our final Ford illustration comes from another lesser known Ford work, The Sun Shines Bright (1953). This film was a throwback even in 1953; its loving depiction of a late nineteenth century Southern small town was the same setting for Will Rogers movies of the thirties, several of which Ford directed (e.g. Judge Priest (1934)). The garrulous mayor, also named Judge William Pittman Priest (Charles Winninger), is facing a tough race for re-election. What gets in the way is the unexpected return after many years of a mysterious woman who had fled in disgrace; she was a lady, as they used to say (when shame existed in society) “with a past.” She had borne a child out of wedlock. The lady dies, and her coffin is being carried by the horse-drawn hearse through the empty streets toward the church, as the scandalized and shocked townspeople look on. Only one true Christian is accompanying the deceased. As they pass Judge Priest, his conscience impels him, against the desperate pleas of his friends, to join the procession. Whereupon, slowly, all the townsfolk fall in behind the Judge; they silently walk behind the hearse to the church, which is filled to the rafters for the funeral service. Mere words cannot suggest how Ford’s pacing and rhythm make this scene so beautiful. With no dialogue, he has crafted an unforgettable scene of Christian charity.

A good illustration of visual artistry and religious transcendence is the final shot of the 1961 story of Jesus, King of Kings (1961). One of the many wide-screen religious spectacles of the later 1950s-early 1960s, this film is noteworthy for the understated, intimate direction of Nicholas Ray. The voice of the risen Christ gives His instructions to the Apostles, who have been tending to their fishing net on a beach. With the camera high above, looking down on them, the Apostles stop what they are doing, look upward, and then begin to go off on their appointed mission, as a huge shadow of the cross fills the wide vertical screen and Miklos Rosza’s grand, symphonic score reaches its climax. This film opened in Radio City Music Hall and has to be seen in a large theater in order to appreciate its arresting finale. (In fact, all these films need to be seen in real theaters, whereas most contemporary films lose nothing – except their pounding Dolby sound -- being seen only on the television screen at home.)

Perhaps the most ambitious finale in film history is the end of Intolerance (1916), directed by the father of filmmaking, D.W. Griffith. He interweaves four stories through the ages: ancient Babylon, Christ’s Passion, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 70,000 French Huguenots in 1572, and a modern labor versus capital story. With amazing skill, Griffith gradually increases the tempo of inter-cutting between each story as they build up toward their climaxes. Finally, the screen is filled with a tableau of mankind seemingly forever at war, whereupon the angels descend from the heavens to bring peace to the world. After almost a century, there has never been a more ambitious film or scene, this coming from the dawn of cinema, in the silent age. If you are to have large themes, you need visual creativity. (Note that the few religious films of the past few decades, in their literalistic realism, have tended to eschew or minimize visual imagery.)

Alfred Hitchcock is not commonly identified with religious themes, but his Catholicism subtly pervades much of his work. Many critics justifiably regard Vertigo (1958) as his greatest film. (Readers who have not seen the film and don’t wish to know the ending should skip to the next paragraph.) The shattering final shot, taken from on high, looking down (as in King of Kings), shows James Stewart, arms spread out helplessly, looking down from the convent’s bell tower upon the body of his beloved (Kim Novak), who has just plunged accidentally to her death, right after he had finally found her following a tormenting search: An unforgettable metaphor of the Fall.

Another subject that used to be depicted in transcendent, lofty terms, and thus challenged the creativity of the Old Master directors, was romance. The Clock (1945) dramatizes the whirlwind wartime romance of a New York secretary (Judy Garland) and a G.I. on leave (Robert Walker), who meet by chance in Penn Station. They decide to wed just before he is to go overseas, but the “ceremony” in the city registrar’s office, with the registrar hurrying through the ceremony so he doesn’t miss his train home, the cleaning staff serving as witnesses and repeated interruption by passing subway trains, could not be drearier. The newlyweds’ “dinner” at the automat makes them feel even worse. But as they dejectedly walk down the street, they come upon a formal wedding party exiting a church. They walk inside the now empty sanctuary and sit alone in a pew. Director Vincente Minnelli perfectly frames a distant shot of the couple as they take out the wedding service and quietly recite the holy vows. This beautiful shot, and a comparable close-up of the couple softly reciting the service (seen in the shot together, not head-to-head as we would see today), leaves the audience with an indelible image of the precious sanctity of the wedding vows.

Another lovely image of loving union is the final shot of the 1945 drama Leave Her to Heaven (1945). One of the most evil women ever to star in a film, played by the beautiful Gene Tierney (shortly thereafter to become a girlfriend of Lieutenant John F. Kennedy), has gone so far as to kill herself; out of pathological spite, she tries to make it appear the man she has lost (Cornel Wilde) to another woman (Jeanne Crain) has murdered her. Finally cleared after much suffering, he is returning in a motor boat across a long lake in the north woods, as his love awaits him, standing alone on a pier. This is truly one of the most gorgeous color films ever made (the great cinematographer Leon Shamroy won the Oscar). Filmed from a long distance in a glowing sunset by director John M. Stahl, the boat reaches the pier and in the same long shot, the couple are united forever in each other’s arms, in silhouette, as Alfred Newman’s orchestral score reaches its grand climax. This typically understated scene is the apotheosis of Hollywood romance. Are there any scenes in contemporary films that merit the term “apotheosis”?

The empress of romance was the most enigmatic of movie stars, Greta Garbo. In one of her later silents, A Woman of Affairs (1929), her Diana Merrick is hospitalized in a French convent, having suffered a nervous breakdown from the loss of her beloved (John Gilbert). Learning of her condition, he has traveled from England with his wife. Told he has come to visit her, Diana is roused from her depression. She rises from her bed and enters the hallway, where she sees the large bouquet of flowers he has sent her. Not knowing of the couple’s presence, she passionately embraces the flowers, in that way making love to her man as the shocked couple look on. Such scenes were specially created for the unique Garbo, and this one represents silent cinema at its best. Again, do contemporary films dramatize intense passion with such artistry – with the actors remaining clothed? One of the most intense romantic dramas ever filmed, the movie was directed by Clarence Brown.

Such brilliant silent film technique is evident throughout the sound films of the great King Vidor, who was one of the most admired silent film directors for his World War I epic, The Big Parade (1925), the biggest hit of its era, and for his drama of urban isolation, The Crowd (1928). Vidor creates the greatest screen tribute to free enterprise in his 1944 masterpiece An American Romance (Vidor wanted the title to be just America). The film, made in color, dramatizes the American Dream through the story of an immigrant who rises from the bottom to the top as a great industrialist. Our hero, Steve Dangos (Brian Donlevy), has come out of retirement to convert automobile plants into wartime aircraft production. (His character is based on the life of William Knudsen, president of General Motors). In the climactic scene, Vidor shows an actual B-17 assembly line – men joined by women, busy at their crucial work. His editing gradually picks up the pace as the giant bombers near completion and move down the line. Then they move out of the plant, one by one, faster and faster. Then we see them taking off, one by one, faster and faster. (Note the similarity to Griffith’s editing technique; Vidor idolized Griffith.) Here Vidor inserts a noble composition of Dangos, his son and his long-time partner looking proudly on their creation – a wonderful image of the individual basis, the source and genius, of free enterprise and the industrial power that crushed our enemies. Finally, Vidor’s camera looks up at the sky, filled with B-17s flying in V formation, as the soundtrack plays My Country ‘ Tis of Thee. Truly, they don’t make movies like this any more!

Vidor once described his view of film as “silent music.” Our doughboys’ Belleau Wood attack in The Big Parade is similarly choreographed. Vidor personally financed his 1934 film Our Daily Bread, in which he advocated voluntary rural communes as an answer to the Depression. His sequence of the men desperately digging a long irrigation ditch to save their crop – to dramatize the power of voluntary cooperation – is one of the most admired in film history. It builds as a crescendo to a triumphant climax as the water begins to gush through. (Naturally, the mostly left-wing movie historians cite this scene and ignore An American Romance.) Perhaps the greatest demonstration of Vidor’s visual genius is his direction of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1949). His imagination is so brilliant that this epic of ideas could be viewed without the sound and one would still be immersed in the drama.

Some contemporary films do employ visual imagery on occasion. The Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love (1998) ends with a long shot of our hero’s lost ideal woman (Gwyneth Paltrow), seen from behind, slowly walking ashore on the beach in America where her husband has transported her, thousands of miles from England. The Chronicles of Narnia (2005) has a long shot of the lion, Aslan, departing the drama, his heroic work done. In each film, the shot is accompanied by a spoken loving tribute. Surely it is no coincidence that these two films stand out among current fare because they are about ideals and transcendence.

Spencer Warren is ConservativeBattleline’s movie critic.