What is the oldest movie that depicted someone using a silencer on a gun? I would have thought it went back at least as far as the 1940s film noir potboilers, if not even further to the classic 30’s “gangster” films. But I haven’t found anything more recent than the 1960s. Can anyone improve on that?
1962s Manchurian Candidate might be the first. They explained the device as if it wasn’t something people were use to seeing in movies.
I might as well be the first to mention that silencers don’t really work like they’re shown in movies.
There’s a whole Tropes page just for that: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodSilencer
I have not actually seen this movie, but possibly:
So Goes My Love (1946), a biopic (such as they were back then) of Hiram Maxim, gun silencer pioneer.
ETA: The original working title was “Genius in the Family.”
I remember watching a 1950’s era Soviet movie about WWII that depicted the use of a Bramit suppressor on a Mosin Nagant rifle. But for the life of me I can’t remember which movie that was now.
The Guns of Navarone (1961) features someone armed with the suppressed version of the STEN gun.
Just wanted to point out that the title of this thread is
First appearance in a movie of a -
So it doesn’t have to be limited to silencers.
What’s a prop/costume/career that’s common now, but not in the past (and where DID they start showing that?).
First - but not the last - appearance in a movie of a sharktopus.