As Richard Abel observes, "the materiality of silent cinema... has become so foreign to us, so different from that of our own cinema at the end of the 20th century" that it is difficult to see silent cinema. the film as anything but anachronistic (4). However, with 2011's The Artist, an homage to silent cinema, winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, it may be worth examining the nature and appeal of silent film. In a way, silent cinema does something that modern spectacular special effects do not: it leaves more room for the imagination and invites the viewer to use their own mind in correspondence with the moving images. This article will analyze what makes silent film unique and show how the nature of silent film allows viewers to imagine for themselves aspects of the drama that are left out (voice, dialogue) while emphasizing d others (action, location, physical humor). ) in the same way that an audience participates in a live performance in the theater. The nature and beginnings of the silent filmCinema is a visual medium. But that doesn't mean there aren't other elements to film. The silent film era, for some, harkens back to a time when films were silent and simply visually expressive. But as Melinda Szaloky says, “silent cinema was never silent” is a “truism” (109). Indeed, Szaloky notes that “the sounds of the silent film were conceived as something external, an accompaniment to the visual universe of the film” (109). Silent cinema, since its beginnings in the basement of the Grand Café de Paris in 1895, has always been a medium that relied solely on the visual power of its moving images. Indeed, the first films of the Lumière brothers were only brief extracts or photographs of simple activities...... in the middle of a sheet of paper... the film, like a book of stories with images, was meant to be seen and felt, not heard. or read.Works CitedAbel, Richard. Silent film. United Kingdom: Athlone Press, 1996. Print. Dardis, Thomas. Keaton: The man who wouldn't lie down. NY: Scribner, 1979.Print.Ebert, Roger. “The films of Buster Keaton (1923-1928).” Chicago Sun-Times. November 10, 2002. the web. March 6, 2012. Hall, Mordaunt. “The General: A Civil War Farce.” New York Times. February 8, 1927.Web. March 6, 2012. Mast, Gerald. A brief history of cinema. NY: Pearson Longman, 2006. Print. “The popular sin”. Film daily. January 2, 1927. the web. March 6, 2012. Sann, Paul. The Lawless Decade: An Illustrated History of the Roaring Twenties. Web.6 March 2012. Szaloky, Melinda. “Sound Images in Silent Cinema: Visual Acoustics in Murnau’s Sunrise.” » Cinema Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2002, 109-131. Print.