Praised as the "best modern survey of the silent period" (New Republic), this indispensable history tells you everything you need to know about American silent film, from the nickelodeons in the early 1900s to the birth of the first "talkies" in the late 1920s. The author provides vivid descriptions of classic pictures such as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Sunrise, The Covered Wagon, and Greed, and lucidly discusses their technical and artistic merits and weaknesses. He pays tribute to acknowledged masters like D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Lillian and Dorothy Gish, but he also gives ample attention to previously neglected yet equally gifted actors and directors. In addition, the book covers individual genres, such as the comedy, western gangster, and spectacle, and explores such essential but little-understood subjects as art direction, production design, lighting and camera techniques, and the art of the subtitle. Intended for all scholars, students, and lovers of film, this fascinating book, which features over 150 film stills, provides a rich and comprehensive overview of this unforgettable era in film history.

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant.

Silent films were, of course, never silent at all. However, the sound that used to accompany the screen picture in the early days of cinema has been neglected as an area of study. Altman explores the various musical, narrative, and even synchronized sound systems that enriched cinema before Jolson spoke.

Cohen argues that silent film allowed America to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe and develop an original form of expression compatible with American strengths and weaknesses. She connects the rise of film and the rise of America as a cultural center and 20th century world power.

"Commissioned for and sponsored by the National Film Preservation Board."

Although cinema was invented in the mid-1890s, it was a decade more before the concept of a “film spectator” emerged. As the cinema began to separate itself from the commercial entertainments in whose context films initially had been shown—vaudeville, dime museums, fairgrounds—a particular concept of its spectator was developed on the level of film style, as a means of predicting the reception of films on a mass scale. In Babel and Babylon, Miriam Hansen offers an original perspective on American film by tying the emergence of spectatorship to the historical transformation of the public sphere. Hansen builds a critical framework for understanding the cultural formation of spectatorship, drawing on the Frankfurt School’s debates on mass culture and the public sphere. Focusing on exemplary moments in the American silent era, she explains how the concept of the spectator evolved as a crucial part of the classical Hollywood paradigm—as one of the new industry’s strategies to integrate ethnically, socially, and sexually differentiated audiences into a modern culture of consumption. In this process, Hansen argues, the cinema might also have provided the conditions of an alternative public sphere for particular social groups, such as recent immigrants and women, by furnishing an intersubjective context in which they could recognize fragments of their own experience. After tracing the emergence of spectatorship as an institution, Hansen pursues the question of reception through detailed readings of a single film, D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), and of the cult surrounding a single star, Rudolph Valentino. In each case the classical construction of spectatorship is complicated by factors of gender and sexuality, crystallizing around the fear and desire of the female consumer. Babel and Babylon recasts the debate on early American cinema—and by implication on American film as a whole. It is a model study in the field of cinema studies, mediating the concerns of recent film theory with those of recent film history.

This exploration of fashion in American silent film offers fresh perspectives on the era preceding the studio system, and the evolution of Hollywood's distinctive brand of glamour. By the 1910s, the moving image was an integral part of everyday life and communicated fascinating, but as yet un-investigated, ideas and ideals about fashionable dress.

Examines the social and historical significance of women’s contributions to American silent film comedy. For many people the term "silent comedy" conjures up images of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Buster Keaton's Stoneface, or Harold Lloyd hanging precariously from the side of a skyscraper. Even people who have never seen a silent film can recognize these comedians at a glance. But what about the female comedians? Gale Henry, Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Constance Talmadge—these and numerous others were wildly popular during the silent film era, appearing in countless motion pictures and earning top salaries, and yet their names have been almost entirely forgotten. As a consequence, recovering their history is all the more compelling given that they laid the foundation for generations of funny women, from Lucille Ball to Carol Burnett to Tina Fey. These women constitute an essential and neglected sector of film history, reflecting a turning point in women's social and political history. Their talent and brave spirit continues to be felt today, and Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film seeks to provide a better understanding of women's experiences in the early twentieth century and to better understand and appreciate the unruly and boundary-breaking women who have followed. The diversity and breadth of archival materials explored in Comic Venus illuminate the social and historical period of comediennes and silent film. In four sections, Kristen Anderson Wagner enumerates the relationship between women and comedy, beginning with the question of why historically women weren't seen as funny or couldn't possibly be funny in the public and male eye, a question that persists even today. Wagner delves into the idea of women's "delicate sensibilities," which presumably prevented them from being funny, and in chapter two traces ideas about feminine beauty and what a woman should express versus what these comedic women did express, as Wagner notes, "comediennes challenged the assumption that beauty was a fundamental component of ideal femininity." In chapter three, Wagner discusses how comediennes such as Clara Bow, Marie Dressler, and Colleen Moore used humor to gain recognition and power through performances of sexuality and desire. Women comedians presented "sexuality as fun and playful, suggesting that personal relationships could be fluid rather than stable." Chapter four examines silent comediennes' relationships to the modern world and argues that these women exemplified modernity and new womanhood. The final chapter of Comic Venus brings readers to understand comediennes and their impact on silent-era cinema, as well as their lasting influence on later generations of funny women. Comic Venus is the first book to explore the overlooked contributions made by comediennes in American silent film. Those with an interest in film and representations of femininity in comedy will be fascinated by the analytical connections and thoroughly researched histories of these women and their groundbreaking movements in comedy and stage.

This film reference covers 646 silent motion pictures, starting with Eadweard Muybridge's initial motion photography experiments in 1877 and even including The Taxi Dancer (1996). Among the genres included are classics, dramas, Westerns, light comedies, documentaries and even poorly produced early pornography. Masterpieces such as Joan the Woman (1916), Intolerance (1916) and Faust (1926) can be found, as well as rare titles that have not received critical attention since their original releases. Each entry provides the most complete credits possible, a full description, critical commentary, and an evaluation of the film's unique place in motion picture history. Birth dates, death dates, and other facts are provided for the directors and players where available, with a selection of photographs of those individuals. The work is thoroughly indexed.