Product Description

Based on extensive original research and filled with gorgeous illustrations, Silent Film Sound reconsiders all aspects of sound practices during the silent film period in America. Beginning with sound accompaniment and continuing through to the more familiar sound practices of the 1920s, renowned film historian Rick Altman discusses the variety of sound strategies cinema exhibitors used to differentiate their products. During the nickelodeon period prior to 1910, this variety reached its zenith with carnival-like music, automatic pianos, small orchestras, lecturers, synchronized sound systems, and voices behind the screen. In the 1910s, musical accompaniment began to support a film's narrative and emotional content, with large theaters and blockbuster productions driving the development of new instruments, new music-publication projects, and a new style of film music. A monumental achievement, Silent Film Sound challenges common assumptions about this period and reveals the complex and swiftly changing nature of silent American cinema.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #367189 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-02
• Released on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 462 pages

Review

"Weighty and ambitious....This thoroughly researched and copiously illustrated book is recommended for large libraries and all cinema collections." -- Library Journal

" Silent Film Soundis a bible of reference information and vintage photos." -- Bookwatch

"Edison's pioneering work...is given a large amount of space in a fascinating new book." -- Steve Ramm, Groove Magazine

"Rather than reinventing the wheel or allowing for too many examples in his analysis, Altman successfully dispels notions of a homogenous turn-of-the-century soundscape and interweaves salient but ignored aspects of early cinema and its coinciding entertainments...Highly recommended." -- Choice

"A magisterial effort of a type rarely seen in cinema today... Altman's history is precise, reflective, and human." -- Cinemas Journal

"Rick Altman's Silent Film Sound is revisionist film history at its best." -- Marshall Deutelbaum, New Review of Film and Television

"Nothing short of a classic, definitive work." -- Jacob Smith, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

"A major contribution to the history of early cinema." -- American Studies

"His groundbreaking, encyclopedic book represents a crucial contribution to the scholarly understanding not only of early film sound, but also of the full range of film history." -- Kecia D. McBride, Film Criticism, Spring 2006

"Rick Altman has given us a magnum opus... a stunningly original work of film history." -- Tom Gunning, Film Quarterly

"[A] majestic book... Readable as the most complete account of early American cinema." -- Dana Polan, Screening The Past

" Silent Film Sound is a superb contribution to many scholarly fields in addition to film history, including musicology, media studies, sound studies and American history." -- Katherine Spring, Film International

" Silent Film Sound is a top pick for any serious college-level film library." -- California Bookwatch

Review

"Altman radically rewrites the history of sound practices in silent cinema in the United States. He boldly challenges the basic assumptions of earlier work and carefully develops a series of cogent arguments about the complexity and swiftly changing nature of American silent cinema in which sound often had an importance equal to that of the moving image. The arguments are based on extensive, meticulous research in primary sources, many of them examined for the first time. This book is simply an extraordinary achievement." -- Richard Abel, University of Michigan

About the Author

Rick Altman is professor of cinema and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is the author of The American Film Musical and Film/Genre; the editor of Sound Theory Sound Practice; and the coeditor of The Sounds of Early Cinema.

Customer Reviews

A bible of reference information and vintage photos
Mention 'silent film' and most will think of images with the absence of sound but in fact, the silent film was accompanied by sound, and original research her provides a challenge to the ideas of earlier histories, revealing the changing nature and sounds of early American silent movies. In reality, silent films were not always accompanied, nor were accompaniments uniform: there was an evolutionary process to silent film sound which involved both evolving technology and changing ideas of film production. From peep show and projection to nickelodeon and the campaign to standardize film sounds, Silent Film Sound is a bible of reference information and vintage photos.