Images Sing

When I was first becoming interested in movie history as a young teenager, I had the good fortune of catching Hollywood: A Celebration of The American Silent Film on PBS. Directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill for British television, it initially aired in 1980, then was re-run several times (I saw it around 1988), and released on VHS. Drawing extensively on Brownlow's magisterial book The Parade's Gone By, the thirteen-part documentary covered nearly every important aspect of Hollywood in the teens and twenties, including:

Directors...


Westerns...


Comedians...


Romantic Idols...


Vamps and It Girls...


Doomed couples...


and Stuntmen...


The entire program, running more than twelve hours, is incredibly detailed, and so rich in clips, interviews, historical context, and deeply felt passion for the period that it almost makes you mourn the coming of sound:


It's currently out of print, and sadly has never been released in the U.S. on DVD, but for a movie-besotted kid, it was the perfect introduction to a glamorous, mysterious new world of art. I very much wish some enterprising company (perhaps those silent movie aficionados at Kino?) would make it available once again; in the meantime, I was happy to find the above clips on YouTube, and more can be found here.