Back in the early days of silent films, actors didn’t just wear colored makeup—they actually painted their faces with heavy white greasepaint to compensate for black-and-white film exposure.
This stark makeup helped their facial expressions read better under intense lighting. But it also had an odd side effect: it made their skin look like a mask on camera, which audiences found eerie. It was only after sound and better film technology arrived that makeup styles became more natural.
So those ghostly faces you see in vintage movies? That was makeup and (well, what they call) tech, not horror — and part of what made silent cinema so visually unique.