Visionaries of Silent Cinema

The story of Art Direction for the cinema from 1905 to 1929 has never been explored in detail. The first generation of freelance designers understood that silent cinema was primarily a visual medium offering a new international language, one dependent on a clear narrative, human emotions, actions, and reactions.

These designers embodied the very best in creativity, experience, and survival skills essential for working with the rapidly evolving medium of motion pictures. It utilized the oldest traditions and tools for visual storytelling, captured through a new small magic box with a 50mm lens.

The careers and odysseys of Henri Menéssier, Ben Carré, Wilfred Buckland, Hugo Balin, Fred Gabourie, Una Nixson Hopkins, Anton Grot, William Cameron Menzies, Charles D. Hall, and Harry Oliver are all closely interconnected. They laid the foundations for Art Direction, and their legacies must be preserved. Whatever future the cinema may have will be based solidly on its past. Time is a human conception -- very much like a motion picture. It is all there, but we have to live it. And you cannot enjoy the last reel unless you know what happened in the first.

-Kevin Brownlow: “The Parade’s Gone By”

Though a fault primarily of its own making, Art Direction now called Production Design remains an enigma to all. When attributing a motion picture’s cinematic style, especially in the silent film period, the look of the picture has often been attributed to its director, be it Griffith, Tourneur, or DeMille. The scholarship and narrative of early cinema from 1896 to 1929, is deficient both in depth and attribution to those who originated cinema. The American narrative gives Hollywood almost singular credit and influence for cinema’s creative origins. This is false and it denies recognition to many forgotten innovators and contributing countries. Through the telling of our first motion picture Art Directors stories, we have a unique opportunity to explore and celebrate the earliest pioneers of silent film. They laid the foundations for the creation of many of the most remarkable and arresting moving images we prize. They are the authors of the grammar for visual storytelling that we take for granted today. Though the motion picture and its associated technologies have advanced the fundamentals for visual storytelling remain rooted in the silent era. Our story of the pioneers of art direction has never been told and its time has come.

Gaumont Studio, founded by Léon Gaumont, the company began by selling photographic equipment before starting film production in 1897.