Silent Features

Vincent Bohlinger is Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at Rhode Island College. His primary interests are in Soviet cinema, and he is a regular contributor to Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema and KinoKultura. He is currently working on a book on Soviet film style from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s and co-editing a collection of essays on movie stars in Russian/Soviet  cinema. Ben Brewster was editor of Screen and taught Film Studies at the University of Kent before becoming Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the co-author of Theatre to Cinema (1996) and has contributed articles on early cinema to Screen, Cinema Journal, Film History, Cinema & Cie and a number of essay collections. Jon Burrows is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick. He is the author of Legitimate Cinema (2003) and The British Cinema Boom, 1909–1914 (2017) and various essays and articles on the subject of silent British cinema. Alex Clayton is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Bristol. He is the author of The Body in Hollywood Slapstick (2007), coeditor of The Language and Style of Film Criticism (2011), and a member of the editorial board of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism. He has published a range of essays on screen comedy, performance and aesthetics, and his next book is entitled Funny How? Sketch Comedy and the Art of Humor (forthcoming). Lisa Dombrowski is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University. She is the author of The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! (2008) and the editor of Kazan Revisited (2011), and has writtenfor the New York Times, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Film History, and the Criterion Collection. Rebecca Genauer is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is undertaking research on William de Mille. She is also a contributor to Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (2015). John Gibbs is Professor of Film at the University of Reading. He is a member of the editorial board of Movie: a journal of film criticism and the author of Mise-en-Scène: Film Style and Interpretation (2002), Filmmakers’ Choices (2006) and The Life of Mise-en-Scène: Visual Style and British Film Criticism, 1946–78 (2013). His collaborations with Douglas Pye include the collections Style and Meaning (2005) and The Long Take: Critical Approaches (2017), audiovisual essays on Notorious and The Phantom Carriage and coediting the series Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television. Heather Heckman is Director of Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina. She has contributed essays to The American Archivist, The Moving Image and Colour and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (2013). Scott Higgins is Charles W. Fries Professor of Film Studies and Director of the College of Film and the Moving Image at Wesleyan University. His books include Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow (2007), Arnheim for Film and Media Studies (2011), and Matinee Melodrama (2016). He has contributed to Serial Narrative (2017), Behind the Silver Screen: Editing and Special Effects (2016), and The Ultimate Stallone Reader (2014). Lea Jacobs teaches film history and aesthetics in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film (1997), The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s (2008), Film Rhythm after Sound (2015), and co-author of Theatre to Cinema (1998). She has also contributed articles to Cinema Journal, Film History, Iris, Screen and a number of other publications. Patrick Keating is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio. He is the author of Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir (2010), the editorof Cinematography (2014), and a contributor to The Classical Hollywood Reader (2012). Joe Kember is an Associate Professor in Film at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema (2009), and a number of articles and essays in Early Popular Visual Culture, The Velvet Light Trap, Visual Delights II (2002) and The Sounds of Early Cinema (2012). Anne Kerlan is a researcher at the Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, a team of the UMR Chine Corée Japon (CNRS-EHESS, Paris). She is an historian of Chinese visual culture. In addition to coediting and contributing to Loin d’Hollywood? Cinématographies nationales et modèle Hollywoodien (2013) she has published several articles and a book on a the history of a major Chinese studio, Hollywood à Shanghai. L’épopée des studios Lianhua (1930–1948) (2014). Steve Neale is Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Genre and Hollywood (2000), co-author of Epics, Spectacles and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010), editor of The Classical Hollywood Reader (2012), co-editor of ‘Un-American’ Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (2007) and Widescreen Worldwide (2010), and a contributor to Film Moments: Criticism, Theory, History (2010) and to Film Studies and Movie. Recipient of BAFTSS’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2017. Douglas Pye is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading. He is the author of Movies and Tone (2007), co-author of 100 Film Musicals (2011), and co-editor of The Long Take: Critical Approaches (2017), Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). He co-edits with John Gibbs the series Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television and is a member of the editorial board of Movie: a journal of film criticism. Sara Ross is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Programs for the School of Communication and Media Arts at Sacred Heart University. Her research interests include late silent film, romantic comedy, and the development of female characters in Hollywood. She has published articles on these and other topics in Aura, Camera Obscura, Film History, Modernism and Modernity, and a number of anthologies. Martin Shingler is a Senior Lecturer in Radio and Film at the University of Sunderland. He is the author of When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923–1939 (2018) and Star Studies: A Critical Guide (2012), co-author of On-Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio (1994) and Melodrama: Genre, Style and Sensibility (2004), and co-editor of the BFI Film Star book series.

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction Steve Neale

Germinal(1913) Ben Brewster

Assunta Spina (1915) Lea Jacobs

L`Enfant de Paris (1913) Heather Heckman

The Wishing Ring (1914) Rebecca Genauer

The Phantom Carriage (Körkalen) (1921) John Gibbs and Douglas Pye

Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler (1922) Steve Neale

Lazybones (1925) Scott Higgins

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) Steve Neale

The Strong Man (1926) Joe Kember

Miss Mend (Mucc Mettò) (1926) Vincent Bohlinger

Wings (1927) Sara Ross

Palais de Dance (1928) Martin Shingler

Piccadilly (1929) John Burrows

The Kiss (1929) Patrick Keating

Love and Duty (Lian `ai yu yiwu) (1931) Anne Kerlan

I Was Born, But....(Umarete wa mita keredo) (1932) Alex Clayton

Street Without End (Kagari naki hodo) (1934) Lisa Dombrowski

Bibliography

Index