Silent Cinema Will Make You A Better Writer

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Image from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I wrote this post back in January 2012 for Fuel Your Writing but the more I've been watching silent cinema for my PhD, the more I think the principles are still applicable. I first wrote the post following the phenomenal success of The Artist, a modern day silent film set in the late 1920s, although I've now expanded it to include a few other films. I’m a firm believer in applying film theories or techniques to writing, and it seemed an ideal time to examine five principles of silent cinema that can enrich the work of a writer.

Why would I do that? I know some might say that film and literature are separate disciplines and naturally have different requirements (for example, an establishing shot is essentially in film, but if a writer takes too long to ’set the scene’, it can make for very dull reading) but I’d argue that writers can still learn new things from different sources. Writers shouldn’t fall into the trap of assuming that only studying writing can help their work. I’m not saying that you should cut all dialogue from your work, but let’s have a look at the bigger picture…

1) Show, Don’t Tell

This is probably the king of all silent cinema techniques that the writer should use, and is arguably advice you’ve heard before. Without dialogue, the actors have to display every emotion either on their face, or through their body language. It is indeed true that a picture tells a thousand words, and we don’t need reams of exposition when faced with a faltering smile or a pouting femme fatale with her arms tightly folded across her chest. We don't need someone to tell us that Dr Caligari is a nutjob when he's depicted with a crazed stance, a wild facial expression and melodramatic gesticulations - we can see it for ourselves. Show us what’s going on with your characters, let their facial expressions and body language do the talking. We’re aware of it all the time in real life, so why not try it in your writing?

2) No Info Dumps!

It’s an attractive tendency of fiction to allow your characters to dole out back story through so-called ‘info dumps’, usually within lengthy passages of dialogue. The brevity of the silent film cue card doesn’t allow for masses of text, so key visuals are chosen instead to fill in the back story. Just as film fans were trusted to be able to understand the implications of specific shots, trust your readers to pick up on the small details and fill in the rest themselves. For example, you don’t need to waste paragraphs describing a character’s reliance on alcohol – just show them putting yet another empty bottle into a crate full of other empty bottles.

Do You Really Need Back Story?

If you’ve seen The Artist, you’ll realise that neither George Valentin nor Peppy Miller have in depth backstories. George is a successful silent film star and Peppy is a girl who comes to Hollywood looking for fame. We never learn much more than that, but nor do we need to. The performances and actions of both characters make it easy to like them and root for them, without time needing to be taken to explain how past events have coloured or shaped their present decision-making. Charlie Chaplin gave his Little Tramp very little backstory because the films were set in the 'here and now' - we didn't need to know what he did for a living before working in the factory in Modern Times because it's irrelevant. I know writers are counselled to know the entire biographies of their characters but you don’t have to communicate that to the reader – just pertinent details so we understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Courtesy of The Hitchcock Project

Be Inventive

In 1926, Alfred Hitchcock directed Ivor Novello in The Lodger, a gripping thriller about a serial killer loose in London. One notable scene has Novello pacing back and forth in his room while the family with whom he is lodging listen in the room below, convinced he is the twisted killer. How on earth do you communicate the sound of someone pacing if you can’t hear it? You do what Hitchcock did and film Novello pacing on sheet glass, then superimpose it over the ceiling so it looks as though we can see through the ceiling to the room above. No sound required.

It is this inventive spirit that marks the silent filmmakers as true pioneers, and also a good source of inspiration for writers. Think about what you’re trying to communicate, and how you’re going to communicate it, and ask yourself… is there a more inventive way of doing so?

Check Your Pacing

Without dialogue to puncture the silence, early films couldn’t rely on lengthy speeches or conversations to pass the time. Films had to be short due to the technical capabilities of the equipment, but few viewers would sit through a film rife with pacing problems. D W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ran at just over three hours long, but his tendency to focus on imagery for imagery’s sake left the film feeling tedious and self-indulgent. Writers can fall into the same trap, either by rattling off reams of purple prose, or by getting bogged down in dialogue and “witty” exchanges that soon become staid. A balance between the two should always be sought, and always ensure that your pacing remains even – try passing your work to a trusted reader, and if they find some passages too fast or slow, then double check to the balance between dialogue and prose.

Do you find that cinema principles can help enrich your writing? 

How to use smell when writing scenes

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I found a rather useful entry about composing scenes on the Write It Sideways blog, and it got me thinking. Scenes are incredibly important to fiction, as they tell us about location and setting, introduce us to characters, and move the plot along. Think about cinema - everyone can always think of favourite scenes. One of mine is from The 39 Steps (1935). The fugitive Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is handcuffed to the glacial blonde Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), and they're forced to spend a night together in an inn. Our hapless pair may not belong in their surroundings (rural Scotland), but they certainly belong with each other.

Another favourite scene is in Watchmen - Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre have gone to bust Rorschach out of prison, and when they find him, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom. The swinging door allows us to see him advance towards a cowering Big Figure, but we can only guess what Rorschach does after he leaves the bathroom and blood begins to flow beneath the door. We've already seen how resourceful Rorschach is when it comes to weapons, and leaving this to the imagination is a masterstroke.

So scenes are crucial - you can't really have a piece of storytelling, in any form, without one. If you're writing a scene based on something that happened to you, then answering the questions in the Write It Sideways list should be easy. You've got a point of reference to work to. However, if you're inventing the scene, then you need to work a bit harder at making it feel as real for your readers as it does inside your head. Clearly there is something to be said for the age-old maxim of "less is more", but you can easily create the scene using sparse, but vital, details.

It is at this point that I want to highlight points 14, and 15, regarding smell. Using smell, you can quickly and easily evoke a whole host of emotions, as well as locales, and you can do so in a way that is different, and original. Human beings might rely heavily on visuals, but your problem with describing how a scene looks is that a lot of readers want basic details, so their imagination can sketch in the rest. Using sounds can help, but smell activates a different part of the brain, one located near the memory centre. Sure, you can't exactly introduce scratch-n-sniff to your work, but by describing smells well, your reader can know exactly what kind of scene has been set up without you having to force-feed them visual details.

For example; if you describe a rotting/musty smell, or a 'stench', people aren't going to visualise a sunny breakfast room filled with flowers, are they? Yet too many flowers (particularly certain kinds of lillies) can end up making even the most pretty room seem a tad funereal. Unpleasant smells in an otherwise nice setting lend an air of menace, while particular smells can let you hint at the time of the day, or time of year, without you having to spell it out. Or should that be 'smell it out'?

When writing scenes, how often do you include smell?

The Cinema of Spectacle - Or Pure Escapism

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I went to see Clash of the Titans on Saturday night, and I'm pleased to tell you that I actually really enjoyed it. Sure, it's hardly Hamlet in terms of dialogue, and Sam Worthington proves yet again that his acting talents don't stretch far beyond "thug with a heart" (but he's so watchable, I'll forgive him for the time being), but it's just fun to watch. Besides, every so often Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson pop up to truly ham it up as Greek gods. What more could you want from a film?

The thing is, as a former film student, I know that films like this are often looked down on as being trash or simply not worth the study. I can't begin to describe how much this annoys me, because it is so incredibly reductivist to assume that only 'serious' or 'weighty' films that put social commentary or aesthetic value above plot are worth looking at. I managed to write university essays on Attack of the 50ft Woman as a feminist text, Deep Red as a gender study, and the use of narrative in The Lion King, for God's sake! Right there, you have a 1950s B-movie, a 1970s Italian slasher and a Disney cartoon up for discussion. I even did my undergrad dissertation on a comparison between Hitchcock's representation of the serial killer, and that of contemporary cinema. My point is, you can find something of worth in such a broad range of films, and I think even the Academy are beginning to be swayed on this point (Pixar winning Oscars, Avatar being nominated, etc.)

When cinema first began to capture the public's imagination, it very soon split into two branches. The Lumière brothers focussed on narrative cinema, showing the awestruck public, what to our eyes is incredibly mundane, footage of real life. This trend can be seen surfacing again in Italy (Italian Neo Realism), France (the New Wave) and also Britain (the so-called 'kitchen sink' dramas of the 1950s). While these movements didn't report the truth, they did ground their films in reality, focussing on everyday issues and often casting real people instead of actors.

The second branch followed the visionary Georges Méliès, whose often surreal cinematic experiments gave us such iconic images as a train crashing into the moon (see above - from A Trip to the Moon in 1902). He made the use of multiple exposures, dissolves, substitution, time lapse photography and hand-painted films commonplace, and his 'special effects' cinema, or Cinema of Spectacle, has influenced many movements and directors ever since. Indeed, many of the effects in the work of the French Surrealists would not have been possible without Méliès, and his latterday descendants include the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Tim Burton and even Zack Snyder.

The problem is that many people still see the Cinema of Spectacle as being a purely visual experience, and therefore assume that narrative cinema is somehow the more intelligent or sophisticated of the two. The reasoning appears to run that anyone can make a pretty film (stand up, Tim Burton) but not everyone can make a film "with something to say". (Although, as I've stated before, sci-fi can tell us more about the world in which we live than any four-hour long Oscar contender that no doubt tackled 'difficult issues' or depressed the three people that actually went to see it.) I would argue that as real life grows increasingly bleak and depressing, we need the Cinema of Spectacle more than ever. It's little wonder that the fantasy genres do better during times of economic hardship (witness the sudden boom in sci-fi last year, during the world's economic downturn) since people don't want to be reminded of the crushing reality of their mundane little existence.

Call me a Philistine if you want, but I vote for escapism every time.

To CGI, or not CGI...don't make the Phantom Menace mistake

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Celebrated sci-fi author China Mieville has written this post for The Wall Street Journal to explain just why CGI is rotting sci fi cinema from the inside. For the most part, I'm only too happy to agree with him. If you ever read my post about Pixar, you'll know that I like CGI only if it adds something to a film.

Back in the good old days of Ray Harryhausen (see the photo that accompanies this entry), the effects looked ropey, but at least you knew that somewhere on the planet, those models existed. They had a sense of tangibility, and concrete 'realness' that CGI still can't replicate. Even look at a film like Jurassic Park, and compare it to Titanic. Jurassic Park is older, but it doesn't look quite as dated since a lot of the dinosaurs are animatronic. The actors are working alongside something that exists in the real world. The dinosaurs have weight, texture, and above all, believeability. Titanic, on the other hand, looks laughable. Move further forward to the 1980s, and matte paintings were de rigueur, instead of the contemporary crap that gets splashed across green screen.

We all know why CGI is there. In today's society, where everything has to be faster, shinier and altogether more 'wow' than what came before, CGI is cinema's way of twirling about going "Look at me! Look at me! I'm AMAZING!" It's almost being so fake because it wants you to notice it and admit how pretty it is. But unfortunately it ends up feeling like you're being followed around by an obnoxious six-year-old in a princess costume singing a Les Miserables medley while you're trying to read Wuthering Heights.

I love cinema. I really, really do, and I love big explosive action movies or giant set pieces as much as the next person...but you know what? You can actually do a lot of that without CGI. Just watch the 'making of' feature on the DVD for the latest Star Trek film to see that visual trickery is still possible even when you're using CGI. J.J. Abrams utilised everything from models and miniatures to mirrors and special lighting, and while he also used some CGI, I think the film feels a lot more organic as a result of the more hands-on approach.

It's true that special effects have been part of cinema since its inception (check out the work of Georges Melies for a good example, or the famous 'see through floor' shot from Hitchcock's The Lodger in 1929) but I don't think that an entire film should be one long special effect - they're called 'special' and should be used sparingly, otherwise they're not so special any more, are they?