Preservation of the Sign Language (1913) User Reviews

A Silent Movie

[boblipton · 5/10 · 4 October 2018]

George William Veditz gives an eleven-minute speech in this silent movie. It's entirely in Sign Language.

Veditz was born to German emigrant parents in 1861. He lost his hearing at the age of eight and was enrolled in a school for the deaf. Over the course of his life (he died in 1937), he became an instructor in Sign Language at the Colorado School for the Deaf and President of the National Association of the Deaf. With the rise of motion pictures, silent until the middle of the 1920s, he pushed forward a proposal to make this film in support of Sign Language, which he felt was threatened by the oralist movement in education.

This movie was added to the National Film registry in 2010, While it, like many of the films on the Registry, have been added more for their political value than artstic merit as cinema, this is a worthy addition.

Critically Important, Albeit Flawed

[gavin6942 · 8/10 · 26 January 2016]

George Veditz, one-time president of the National Association of the Deaf of the United States, outlines the right of deaf people to sign instead of speak.

Deafened by scarlet fever at the age of eight, Veditz was one of the first to make motion-picture recordings of American Sign Language. Taking care to sign precisely and in large gestures for the cameras, Veditz chose fiery biblical passages to give his speech emotional impact.

I suspect the reason this film is generally rated so low is because it has no subtitles. And yes, that is something future distributors ought to consider. But at the same time, blind people cannot see movies and deaf people cannot hear them... maybe it is fair that at least one movie was intended for an audience that is not the majority.