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Why were there no subtitles in the beginning of cinematography in silent movies?

I know about intertitles but why were subtitles not common then? Were people not able to read that fast or did creating subtitles cost too much?

I don't understand why the moviemakers in silent film didn't want to show everything that actors say.

Catija
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Volz
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    Because this. –  Dec 13 '15 at 20:58
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    You must understand that subtitles are a product of our times. They make sense to us, but would not have been applicable in the early 1900s. – Walt Dec 13 '15 at 21:13
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    Because they didn't have photoshop :D – slebetman Dec 14 '15 at 02:18
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    @Walt, they would have made perfect sense in the 1900s -- movie subtitles aren't too different from the subtitling of political cartoons that's been in use since the 1600s. – Mark Dec 14 '15 at 02:23
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    @Mark I mean the technology behind them. – Walt Dec 14 '15 at 08:55
  • @Walt - what's so special about subtitles? They would have been pretty trivial to implement even in the 1900s. – Davor Dec 14 '15 at 12:08
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    What makes you say that? Trivial to superimpose, to synchronize? In the days of primitive cinema? – Walt Dec 14 '15 at 13:09
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    Compositiing isn't so easy or cheap, or at least it wasn't for a long time: http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/hollywoods-history-of-faking-it-the-evolution-of-greenscreen-compositing/ – Todd Wilcox Dec 14 '15 at 16:17
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    @Walt - there is no reason whatsoever that subs have to go over the picture. That is a trend from TVs which have very limited space, not theaters. It would be pretty trivial to project subtitles separately below the film, and synchronization is mostly done manually even now. – Davor Dec 14 '15 at 18:06
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    Heck, they could have written the text on a board and held that at the bottom of the frame. That is most similar to what they did in early silent film by showing a full screen text board ("inter-title") for 7 to 10 seconds. – wallyk Dec 14 '15 at 21:04
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    In 1909 M. N. Topp registered a patent for a “device for the rapid showing of titles for moving pictures other than those on the film strip”. - So soft subs have been a thing since 1909? –  Dec 15 '15 at 16:59
  • I wonder if in that time they used to release audio tapes with the silent movies or not, audio tapes were common it could have increased the entertainment 100x... – Tanweer Dec 16 '15 at 11:16
  • @Tanweer: Magnetic recording was not invented until around World War II. Some movies might have been distributed with phonograph records or piano rolls to be played with them but not perfectly synchronized, but I'm unaware of that. – supercat Dec 16 '15 at 16:44
  • Why do you assume that silent movies should have had subtitles? Why do you assume that filmmakers would want "to show everything that actors say"? – green_ideas Nov 15 '17 at 12:28

7 Answers7

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Film was exposed only once and the quality was not good enough to film the projection of a movie in order to add subtitles underneath in a copy. The only editing tool was cutting and that's why movies had intertitles (text cards) between shots.

As a note, George Méliès, among others, did experiment with multiple exposures but it made parts of the movie blurry and was only useful for adding ghosts or for dream sequences.

Stephane
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  • Melies also was known to hand paint his images to make them in color long before color film was possible. – Catija Dec 14 '15 at 03:19
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    I don't really believe this was the only way to do it. You could for example have a second projector, which projects a picture on empty space on the screen below the actual movie. There you would project subtitles. – Falco Dec 14 '15 at 11:21
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    @Falco This assumes that the venue considers a second projector and syncronizing the two "cheap", and that the second film - which is just as long as the first - is also "cheap". – Adam Davis Dec 14 '15 at 15:27
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    Why would you use two projectors to play one movie when you can play two movies? Does adding subtitles justify reducing your revenue by half? Or double your operational costs? – Nelson Dec 16 '15 at 08:24
  • @Falco - so you'd have to make a second movie in order to show the first movie, and theaters would have to have a second projector and someone to synchronize them? Sounds a bit cumbersome and expensive, in comparison. – PoloHoleSet Jul 29 '16 at 14:39
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    @AdamDavis but the second projector could be a much older model, lower luminosity and even half the framerate of the first, because subtitles are static. The synchronisation doesn't have to be very good, with the slow cuts and short dialogs of movies at that time +/- 1 second would still be acceptable. With lower framerate the second film would be much shorter than the first and thus a lot cheaper – Falco Jul 29 '16 at 15:05
  • @AndrewMattson the second movie could run at 4 frames per second and be a lot cheaper and the second projector could be an outdated model. Plus you need a lot more to screen a second movie in parallel. But if you are one of the few subtitled theaters in the city, people are inclined to pay more – Falco Jul 29 '16 at 15:08
  • @Falco Sure. It would still be substantially more expensive than one projector. Maybe, as you suggest, not twice the cost, but even if it's lower light output (and honestly I don't think that would work very well), it still have all the major requirements of a projector - lenses, motors, gearing, shutter, etc. I don't think the price difference between a "regular" projector and your slower modified projector is going to be all that much, and on top of that you have to distribute, maintain, load, synchronize, and store two rolls of film. It's just way more hassle than interstitial cards. – Adam Davis Jul 29 '16 at 15:13
  • @Falco - "could" - do most movie studios, then or now, seem like they'd go that route, with the extra expense, if they don't need to? – PoloHoleSet Jul 29 '16 at 16:33
  • Meh. This answer gives no references to back its assertions, and deals only (and very briefly) with the technical/cost side of the issue--and who's to know, without references, that it covers that aspect accurately (see, e.g., other answers here); which is only one aspect of this broad question (see, for eample, the subquestion asking about moviemakers not wanting to 'show everything that actors say'), which might have been close-voted as being too broad. – green_ideas Nov 11 '17 at 15:22
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You're right about the cost. As recently as 1970, subtitles were expensive. Eg polish budget film Hydrozagadka had an actress recite credits instead of displaying text - just because it was cheaper.

Our mindset is spoiled by computers applying subtitles effortlessly, but in film times it was huge work. Even when the technology was perfected it was expensive. (And as others answered - in silent movies the technology was at early experimental stage.)

Agent_L
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    It is not true that the technology did not exist. It was possible to use subtitles, but that meant that the film could only be distributed in the filmmaker's native language. If you want some examples of subtitles in silent film, see this thread in Nitrateville. http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21308

    There is a film called THE CHAMBER MYSTER (1920) which uses "bubbles" like in comic books to show a character's speech. You can see some images from the film at https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/the-sunday-intertitle-bubble-and-squeak/ .

     – Bruce Calvert Dec 14 '15 at 18:55
  • By "technology existed" I meant "used widely enough to be practical". Eg color photography was possible in 1892, but it wasn't technologically matured enough for wide use until like 40 years later. (Prokudin's photos are similarly exceptional as experimental speech bubbles you describe). Sorry for being imprecise. – Agent_L Dec 15 '15 at 10:58
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    ah, that movie, a Polish superhero movie ))) – shabunc Jun 08 '17 at 09:46
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Intertitles were never called "intertitles" during the silent era. They were just "titles". We call them intertitles now to distinguish them from subtitles and the main titles of a film.

Subtitles were used occationally, like in Clarence Brown's FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926), when John Gilbert hears Garbo's character name "Felicitas" over and over.

The main reason that they were not used, is that silent films were translated into many languages and exported all over the world. It would have been a lot of work to superimpose subtitles of different languages over a changing scene. The translations were usually done in the country where they were shown, not at the studio in the producing country. This also came in handy when the movie bombed at the box-office, or was reissued. It was fairly easy to cut in new dialog or intertitles to change the film.

Bruce Calvert
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  • Do you have a source for this? It seems very unlikely that international distribution would have been the main concern 100 years ago. – Moyli Dec 14 '15 at 08:12
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    @Moyli Making a movie was very expensive, changing titles was cheap. And you could use actors from anywhere because you didn't have to care about accents (see "The Artist"). I agree that is probably wasn't a major decision factor, but it certainly may have contributed to the thought processes at the time, given that subtitles were more expensive and people didn't even know if subtitles would work with the audience. – Peter Dec 14 '15 at 08:41
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    Sure, no-one's denying that, but the claim "The main reason* is that silent films were exported all over the world"* really needs something to back it up – it seems unlikely that silent films were made primarily for international distribution. Even today, apart from Hollywood blockbusters, the vast majority of films are never exported. – Moyli Dec 14 '15 at 13:23
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    It's a well known fact that silent films were made for domestic and world-wide distribution. Just look at all the American films saved in European archives, and now available at the European Film Gateway. (http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/). Many of the surviving American silent films were found with Czech, Italian, French or Dutch intertitles, and repatriated to the USA for restoration. Pathé and Méliès exported all of their films from France to the USA in the early teens. World War I wiped out most European studios, and American films dominated world movie screens for decades after. – Bruce Calvert Dec 14 '15 at 18:44
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    "Subtitles were used occationally, like in Clarence Brown's FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926), when John Gilbert hears Garbo's character name "Felicitas" over and over." Also, in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," in the flashback when the mad scientist gains his powers and takes on the identity of Dr. Caligari, the screen becomes filled with the word "CALIGARI" superimposed in several places over the action. – user24353 Jan 01 '16 at 22:36
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    Actually, 'intertitles' (the titles interspersed throughout so-called silent films were called subtitles (titles subordinate to main titles). See The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry. Scroll up a bit for The word subtitles can be used to refer .. to narrative or descriptive titles in silent films. The latter are usually described today as intertitles, but during the silent era they were always called subtitles. – green_ideas Nov 04 '17 at 03:34
  • Of course, what were then most often called "subtitles" (equivalent to today's retronym-like "intertitles") were also called "titles" because this term covered all the titles, including main titles, credit titles, subtitles, etc. – green_ideas Nov 11 '17 at 15:26
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The purpose of subtitles is to generally allow audience members to mentally pretend that the words they're hearing are actually in their own language. In most cases, the purpose of intertitles is to allow the audience to pretend that they can hear things that they see the actors saying. In order for the latter mental substitution to work, however, the audience needs to be able to actually watch the actors, which means they can't be trying to read the text at the same time.

Using subtitles would have been a technical annoyance but not an insurmountable one, especially if one was willing to reserve space on the screen for them. Multiple-exposure photography was not difficult, and if one were using interpositives one could produce an internegative with subtitltes in different languages without requiring extra steps in the final printing. Handling multiple languages while using direct printing off camera negatives would have required more complicated printing steps, but nothing insurmountable.

I think the much bigger issue is that even if subtitles had posed zero extra technical difficulty, intertitles would still generally work better for dramatic purposes in silent films.

supercat
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  • +1 Some films in Europe were created with bilingual (e.g. French/German) Intertitles. In addition, it may be relevant or at least intersting that theatres, in the US at least, had someone read a film's intertitles out loud for the audience, specifically, one assumes, for the illiterate but possibly also for the visually impaired or folks sitting behind women who didnt remove their hats in the theatre. Too bad this answer hasnt gotten more attention. (Regarding technology you say the opposite as the highly upvoted accepted answer, but neither of you back up your assertions.) – green_ideas Nov 11 '17 at 15:16
  • @Clare: If one wants white subtitles on a black and white film, there are three ways that could be achieved: (1) Shoot the film, rewind it in the camera, and then double-expose the titles onto the film. George Melies was using in-camera double exposures even before 1900, so doing titles this way would have been trivial; (2) Shoot the film, duplicate the negative onto an inter-positive, copy that onto an inter-positive, and copy that onto an inter-negative. Double-expose the subtitles onto the internegative and voila. (3) As above, but replace two of the above steps with one reversal-process. – supercat Nov 12 '17 at 14:36
  • @Clare: I don't know when reversal processing would have come into common practice, but generally two steps of negative copying will work better than one reversal-processed step. The fact that film piracy was a problem implies that making an internegative off an intermediate positive would not have been difficult (pirates would presumably not have access to the original negatives, and would thus have to make an internegative from a release print). – supercat Nov 12 '17 at 14:39
  • ( I am not a photographer, so I don't understand, at present, the processes as you've described them) But I'm researching this topic. For now: What do you think of the explanation given in the accepted answer of this question? I am not sure what the accepted answer here is even saying/claiming. I don't know what filming a projection of a movie has to do with the issue. And I also believe they had equipment/methods that allowed for other kinds that of editing than cutting. – green_ideas Nov 12 '17 at 17:15
  • @Clare: See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc02uAidouE for an example of what was possible in 1898 (one man is playing all four roles). Also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOq3Dx4UkhU from 1901. Subtitles would not have been a problem, if they had been considered desirable. – supercat Nov 14 '17 at 15:12
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It seems to me that, in addition to the various other reasons mentioned, that even if it were a viable option to use subtitles, they might not have been preferred to intertitles for silent films, because they require the audience to choose whether to read or to watch the action. When silent films were current, the moving images were a spectacle, and people may not have preferred having to read the words during the action. Even for audiences used to subtitles, they distract some attention from watching the action. Intertitles also facilitate the style used (of acting and writing) where the words shown are not literally everything that would be said, which works well when sound isn't used.

Edit: As TheBlackBenzKid commented about the reasons why keeping watching the image was particularly important in silent films:

"I would further add to this opinion that is also based on art and body language. The music and the sound played a big part as well as actor facial expressions etc." – TheBlackBenzKid

Dronz
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    I would further add to this opinion that is also based on art and body language. The music and the sound played a big part as well as actor facial expressions etc. – TheBlackBenzKid Dec 16 '15 at 12:17
  • @TheBlackBenzKid Thanks, yes, great elaboration of what I meant by wanting to keep watching the moving image. – Dronz Dec 16 '15 at 18:19
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Also films were made for an international audience. Intertitles could be cut out and new ones put in for each language.

Scott Burdon
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I suspect that part of it was that, for an artistic standpoint, lack of dialogue was just part of the medium and they were all about action and gesture and writing a dialogue script wasn't part of the process.

Even with modern sound films the decision between dubbing and subtitles for foreign language sis difficult and both have pros and cons. A particular issue is that with a primarily visual medium subtitles are a massive distraction.

In fact even with traditional theatre and even opera you get a similar effect. With something like Shakespeare a lot of the writing is about rhythm pacing and putting a hard emphasis on key lines. Traditional theatre acting tends to be quite stylised simply because it is hard to make out every word and nuance from the back row.

So actors and directors were sort of used to the idea that everything had to be big and emphatic.

Chris Johns
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