You may think of silent cinema as dull or primitive. On the contrary, like today's Internet, it was an exciting new media with boundaries undefined by convention.
Such spectacles as "Men Demolishing a Wall" thrilled audiences when they were first played forwards and then - can I believe my eyes? - backwards, so that the wall miraculously rebuilt itself.
The proliferation of experiment was such it is neither possible nor useful to say who did what first and when. Lengths of film were dipped in dye or hand-tinted to provide colour, as in the fantastical cinema of Méliès ("Voyage to the Moon" 1902). Other traits we take for granted, such as editing and tracking shots (cameras placed on a moving vehicles were common in the period's notorious comedies) emerged gradually, as did genres, such as Edwin S Porter's western "Great Train Robbery" (1903) or Lang's science fiction masterpiece, "Metropolis" (1927). For cinematic excess try DW Griffith's extraordinary epics ("Intolerance" 1916) or the director recently featured in "Shadow of the Vampire", FW Murnau, whose "Sunrise" (1927) cost a fortune.
Silent cinema was utterly international, with only the intertitles requiring translation into other languages. Among the most enduring works there are as many German ("The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" (1920), "Nosferatu" 1922) or Russian ("Battleship Potemkin" 1925) films as American. In fact, there was a time when Brighton was a genuine rival for Hollywood. Those in doubt seek out Cecil Hepworth's seminal 1904 mutt movie, "Rescued By Rover".
Experiments with sound were far from infrequent. "The Jazz Singer" (1927) was neither a beginning nor an end - merely sound's first commercial success: no small thing in the film industry. Over time the profit motive shaped cinema into the product we know today. Countless companies, big and small, came and went in a short time, and those few who kept their heads above water focused increasingly on branding. Sound like any other 'new medium' you know?
