Silence

What is silence?

Silence is the relative or total lack of sound. Silence may also refer to any absence of communication, even in media other than speech.


Silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. In entertainment silent films the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the audio amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vita-phone system. After The Jazz Singer in 1927, "talkies" became more and more commonplace and within a decade silent films essentially disappeared.