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50 free Silent Films trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This silent films trivia quiz covers cinema's first three decades, from Muybridge's galloping horse and Edison's kinetoscope to the night The Jazz Singer ended the era. It asks how 'silent' films actually sounded (pianists, Mighty Wurlitzers, Japanese benshi narrators), why so many were tinted blue or amber, what frame rates cameramen really cranked at, why 75 percent of American silents are lost, and how the Edison Trust pushed the studios west. It then covers the films and stars: Melies and A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, Griffith and The Birth of a Nation, Chaplin's Tramp, Keaton's Great Stone Face, Harold Lloyd on the clock, Mary Pickford and United Artists, Valentino's funeral, Nosferatu and the court order to destroy it, Caligari, Battleship Potemkin, Metropolis and its lost reels, Wings, Sunrise, and the modern homages from Silent Movie to The Artist. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on silent film and the individual films and performers, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for film students, classic movie fans and quiz nights; for deeper dives on the two great clowns, try our Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton trivia pages.
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Q 01Which 1927 film, the first commercially successful sound feature, is said to have ended the silent era?
The Jazz Singer
It used Warner Bros' Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and six songs sung by Al Jolson; silents were still the majority of releases in 1927 and 1928.
Q 02What are the on-screen text cards used in silent films to convey dialogue and narration called?
Intertitles
The title writer was a distinct profession from the scenario writer, and cards were often decorated with illustrations.
Q 03Roughly what proportion of American silent films are believed to be lost?
Around 75 percent
The nitrate stock was unstable and flammable, and studios junked films that had no remaining commercial value.
Q 04What kind of film stock made early movies so prone to decay and fire?
Nitrate
Slow projection was itself a fire risk, since each frame sat longer in front of the hot lamp.
Q 05In Japan, what was the live narrator who voiced characters and explained silent films called?
Benshi
Their popularity is one reason silent films lasted well into the 1930s in Japan.
Q 06Which giant theatre organ, with train-whistle and pistol effects, accompanied silent films?
The Mighty Wurlitzer
From the mid-1910s large theatres used organists or small ensembles; small-town cinemas made do with a pianist.
Q 07Which composer wrote one of the first purpose-built film scores, for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908)?
Camille Saint-Saens
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov scored Stenka Razin the same year; Joseph Carl Breil's music for The Birth of a Nation made original scores common.
Q 08In silent-era tinting, what colour usually signalled a night scene?
Blue
Amber or yellow meant day, red meant fire and green a mysterious mood; by the early 1920s about 80 percent of films had some colour.
Q 09Why was tinting abandoned once sound-on-film arrived?
The dyes interfered with the soundtrack
Colour would not be as common again for nearly four decades, until three-strip Technicolor became affordable.
Q 10What frame rate is often quoted as 'standard silent speed', even though there was no real standard?
16 fps
Edison's William Dickson ran his kinetoscope at a blistering 40 fps, and cameramen often cranked faster than they claimed.
Q 11How many blades did silent-era projector shutters commonly have to cut flicker?
Three
A three-blade shutter turns 16 frames into 48 flashes a second, just above the 46 that Edison found would 'strain the eye'.
Q 12Which pioneer built the kinetoscope, introduced in 1893 as a silent peep-show viewer?
Thomas Edison
He had wanted a system synchronised with his phonograph, but the later 'kinetophone' versions flopped.
Q 13Which siblings gave the first public film projection, in Berlin on 1 November 1895?
The Skladanowskys
Edison's 1896 New York exhibition set the precedent that showings should have an orchestra.
Q 21Which company did Chaplin co-found in 1919 with Fairbanks, Griffith and Mary Pickford?
United Artists
It gave him complete control over his films; his first feature was The Kid in 1921.
Q 22Which was Chaplin's first sound film?
The Great Dictator (1940)
He resisted talkies for over a decade, making City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue but with synchronised scores.
Q 23What nickname did Buster Keaton's deadpan expression earn him?
The Great Stone Face
Orson Welles called his 1926 film The General 'the greatest comedy ever made... and perhaps the greatest film ever made'.
Q 14What was the nickname of the Motion Picture Patents Company formed in 1908 to control the industry?
The Edison Trust
Its grip is one reason studios fled to the West Coast; it was found guilty of antitrust violations in 1915 and dissolved.
Q 15Which 1914 Thanhouser production is regarded as the first film serial?
The Million Dollar Mystery
Thanhouser of New Rochelle made 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917; The Perils of Pauline was shot largely on Staten Island.
Q 16Which actress has been called film's 'first true actress' for pioneering screen acting under D. W. Griffith?
Lillian Gish
Director Marshall Neilan complained in 1917 that stage people should get out of pictures; Garbo's naturalism arrived in 1926.
Q 17Which French filmmaker made A Trip to the Moon in 1902 and hand-tinted his fantasy films?
Georges Melies
His colouring was done by Elisabeth Thuillier's Paris workshop; a hand-coloured print of A Trip to the Moon found in 1993 was restored in 2011.
Q 18Who directed the 1903 Western The Great Train Robbery for the Edison company?
Edwin S. Porter
He shot it in New York and New Jersey in November 1903, and even made a parody of it himself.
Q 19D. W. Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation was adapted from which novel?
The Clansman
It was screened at the White House for Woodrow Wilson; its Klan ride was tinted a striking red.
Q 20At which studio did Charlie Chaplin first find fame in 1914?
Keystone
He soon adopted the Tramp persona and developed it emotionally in The Tramp (1915) at Essanay.
Q 24Which Buster Keaton film did Orson Welles call 'the greatest comedy ever made'?
The General
It, Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator all made the AFI's 100 Laughs list; Keaton supposedly got his nickname at 18 months.
Q 25In which 1923 film does Harold Lloyd dangle from the hands of a clock high above the street?
Safety Last!
His 'glasses character' wore lensless horn-rims; the danger was real but exaggerated by camera angles.
Q 26Which silent star was known as 'America's Sweetheart'?
Mary Pickford
She defined the screen ingenue and was one of the four founders of United Artists.
Q 27How old was Rudolph Valentino when his sudden death in 1926 triggered mass public mourning?
31
He died of peritonitis after surgery; his hits included The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik.
Q 28Nosferatu (1922) was an unauthorised adaptation of which novel?
Dracula
Bram Stoker's widow Florence sued and a court ordered every copy destroyed; the vampire was renamed Count Orlok.
Q 29Who played the vampire Count Orlok in Nosferatu?
Max Schreck
Shadow of the Vampire (2000) later imagined that Schreck really was a vampire; the film entered the public domain worldwide in 2019.
Q 30In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), what is Cesare, the character played by Conrad Veidt?
A somnambulist
The hypnotist Caligari uses him to commit murders; the film is the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema.