Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema

(Hardback)

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The latest offering from the Reference Guides to the World's Cinema series, this critical survey of key films, actors, directors and screenwriters during the silent era of the American cinema offers a broad-ranging portrait of the motion picture production of silent film. Detailed but concise alphabetical entries include over 100 film titles and 150 personnel. An introductory chapter explores the early growth of the new silent medium while the final chapter of this encyclopaedic study examines the sophistication of the silent cinema. These two chapters outline film history from its beginnings until the perfection of synchronized sound, and reflect upon the themes and techniques established with the silent cinema that continued into the sound era through modern times. The annotated entries, alphabetically arranged by film title or personnel, include brief bibliographies and filmographies. An appendix lists secondary but important movies and their creators. Film and popular culture scholars should appreciate the vast amount of information that has been culled from various sources and that builds upon the increased studies and research of the past ten years.

Reviews

The Lewis and Clark of film studies, they seek to map the general terrain of the silent years. Their solid, reliable introductory guide leads inexperienced tourists through a distant realm of film history....The authors provide a worthwhile description of many important but neglected artifacts of silent US cinema. Recommended for general readers, undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, technical students, and filmmakers.-Choice
Using a dictionary format, the authors, both of whom have impressive credentials as film historians and university lecturers, have assembled an impressive amount of material on the silent film era in the United States.-American Reference Books Annual
"Using a dictionary format, the authors, both of whom have impressive credentials as film historians and university lecturers, have assembled an impressive amount of material on the silent film era in the United States."-American Reference Books Annual
"The Lewis and Clark of film studies, they seek to map the general terrain of the silent years. Their solid, reliable introductory guide leads inexperienced tourists through a distant realm of film history....The authors provide a worthwhile description of many important but neglected artifacts of silent US cinema. Recommended for general readers, undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, technical students, and filmmakers."-Choice

Author Bio

DONALD W. MCCAFFREY is Professor Emeritus of the University of North Dakota. He has written numerous articles about the silent and sound cinema. His first major work was 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Langdon (1968), his most recent book length publication is Assault on Society: Satirical Literature to Film (1992). CHRISTOPHER P. JACOBS is a part-time film lecturer at the University of North Dakota and the Movies Editor for the High Plains Reader, a weekly regional entertainment newspaper. In the fall of 1998, he was Script Supervisor for the independent feature film, Dead Dogs.