In the film Shooting Stars (1928),a main character watches his film in a cinema. The intertitles in this fictional film are written but also feature illustrations.
In the Silent films I've seen the intertitles just feature writing, is this always the case? Or are there any Silent films out there with illustrations and words?
Go to bed Frank or this is going to get ugly .
I've seen a few of them; in comedies, they were often a small sight gag to go along with the title. In Buster Keaton's 'The Boat,' after the boat in question sinks upon launching, the next intertitle is 'You can't keep a good boat down,' and there is a drawing of the boat leaping up out of the water like a salmon.
- Crazy. All crazy but I'm.
Thank you.
Go to bed Frank or this is going to get ugly .
Many intertitles feature small pictures or drawings around the edges and sometimes also the background is one large drawing relevant for the movie or this particular scene.
How the West Was Won (1962) although not a silent film had a few intertitles with beautiful illustrations depicting scenes from the old west. (cattle etc.)
Several years ago, as part of a film festival, I got to see a silent (gay) porno film. The most entertaining part was the titles, which had stick-figures drawn to complement the screen action! I remember them to this day.
(The film itself was the second half of a double feature, the main attraction being Nazimova's "Salome.")
Some examples:
From Tourneur's The Blue Bird ('18):
http://imgur.com/IciXRZ4
There are several like this one in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari:
http://imgur.com/TvJHE0W
The Cat and the Canary:
http://imgur.com/eu5RX52
Metropolis:
http://imgur.com/Li5SiW9
One of my very favorite films, Abel Gance's J'Accuse! ('19), has several of these throughout... I remember one that was done on a battlefield with live actors, tanks and other visions of battlement:
http://imgur.com/Wp3xr6V
Animation in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans:
http://imgur.com/coIbE9z
One of my favorite intertitles, though not a drawing or animated, is from Anthony Asquith's Escape From Dartmoor, aka A Cottage on Dartmoor, which he made just a year after Shooting Stars:
http://imgur.com/C1Wjy1Z
Will Hays is my shepherd, I shall not want. Wills prod and Will's gaff, they confound me.