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82 Silent Film, DVD Doors opened and shut, the director shouted orders through a bullhorn, or babbled just out of the frame. A carpenter hammered flats nearby for the next production. All of this, and more, while the actors blocked it out, already living in that small square of light where silence reigned like a tiny theatre for the deaf. Now, almost a century later, it’s peaceful, far from the center of action, the last voice on the street reduced to a whisper, then gone. Not even birdsong as evening’s opening credits begin to roll. only the film, shimmering out of a disc thinner than sound, characters moving like fish in their gray element— less than fish— not a hiss, not a bubble, not even a cry from that dim world of silence doubled by time. ...

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