Silent Film and the Triumph of the American MythSilent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth connects the rise of film and the rise of America as a cultural center and twentieth-century world power. Silent film, Paula Cohen reveals, allowed America to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe and answer the call by nineteenth-century writers like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman for an original form of expression compatible with American strengths and weaknesses. When film finally began to talk in 1927, the medium had already done its work. It had helped translate representation into a dynamic visual form and had "Americanized" the world. Cohen explores the way film emerged as an American medium through its synthesis of three basic elements: the body, the landscape, and the face. Nineteenth-century American culture had already charged these elements with meaning--the body through vaudeville and burlesque, landscape through landscape painting and moving panoramas, and the face through portrait photography. Integrating these popular forms, silent film also developed genres that showcased each of its basic elements: the body in comedy, the landscape in the western, and the face in melodrama. At the same time, it helped produce a new idea of character, embodied in the American movie star. Cohen's book offers a fascinating new perspective on American cultural history. It shows how nineteenth-century literature can be said to anticipate twentieth-century film--how Douglas Fairbanks was, in a sense, successor to Walt Whitman. And rather than condemning the culture of celebrity and consumption that early Hollywood helped inspire, the book highlights the creative and democratic features of the silent-film ethos. Just as notable, Cohen champions the concept of the "American myth" in the wake of recent attempts to discredit it. She maintains that American silent film helped consolidate and promote a myth of possibility and self-making that continues to dominate the public imagination and stands behind the best impulses of our contemporary world. |
Contents
| 3 | |
1 Literary Antecedents of American Silent Film | 21 |
2 Houdini Keaton and the Rise of the Body | 43 |
3 Hart Fairbanks and the Vitalization of Landscape | 71 |
4 Griffith Gish and the Narrative of the Face | 107 |
5 The Birth of the Star System and the Shaping of the Modern Self | 131 |
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Common terms and phrases
action actor Adolph Zukor American Film American landscape American myth associated audience Béla Balázs body Buster camera career century character cinematic close-up Cole's context culture D. W. Griffith Douglas Fairbanks dramatic dynamic Edison effect elements Emerson emotion European experience face Fairbanks's famous fans feats film's filmmakers frontier frontier thesis girl Gish's Hart Hart's helped hero heroine Hollywood Houdini idea intertitles James Keaton kind language Lillian Gish literary live Mary Pickford meaning medium Modern Art movement movie star moving images Museum of Modern narrative film nature nineteenth nineteenth-century novel painting performance photograph physical picture play plot popular Quoted R. W. B. Lewis reality relationship representation role Rudolph Valentino scene screen seems sense Sherlock Jr shift shot silent film sound film stage star system story style talkies theater tion Turner unique Vachel Lindsay Valentino vaudeville visual West western Whitman William words York Zukor