Silent Magic: Rediscovering the Silent Film Era

Silent Magic: Rediscovering the silent film era

Hardcover. Condición: New. Estado de la sobrecubierta: New. Photographs Ilustrador. 1st Edition. Garbo, the eternal femme fatale; Fairbanks athletically rescuing his sweetheart from a fate worse than death; Chaplin, the Little Tramp, nonchalantly twirling his cane while disaster lurks; Lon Chaney, gruesome yet heart-rending as Quasimodo; the boy Napoleon leading his school friends in a snow battle; Gish floating down-river on a sheet of ice; suffering personified in the face of Falconetti's Joan of Arc; and Valentino on his white charger sweeping a swooning maiden off her feet. these are just some of the images of the silent film era, as potent and as memorable today as when they were first revealed to the public in the 1920s. Silent Magic celebrates that era, reminding us that even without the dimension of sound the films of that time were an art form in themselves, the vividness of their visual impact creating its own means of communication. And what need had the silent stars of mere words, as Gloria Swanson was to ask in a famous film of a later era, when their faces could say it all? Few people alive today can claim to have seen as many of these films on their first screenings as Ivan Butler - and fewer still could aspire to his feats of memory concerning the impressions they made on audiences for whom the very sight of a moving image on a screen was a novel experience. His recollections of his days as an 'omnivorous' filmgoer are razor-sharp, and he brings to life on the printed page even those films which must regretfully be regarded as residing among the legions of the lost. As the renaissance of the silent film continues apace, thanks to the painstaking restoration work of Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, Raymond Rohauer and others, the imaginatively scored accompaniments of Carl Davis and the enthusiastic support of the television companies which bring these films into millions of homes via the small screen, the numbers of 'silent' aficionados are constantly increasing. Silent Magic will provide this new audience with a source of reference, a generous helping of nostalgia and a newly aroused desire to see many more of the silent cinema's achievements. This is a large book and will require extra postage. All orders shipped protected in a box. Book. Nº de ref. del artículo: 000986

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