Böcker av Ryan Jay Friedman

Throughout the silent-feature era, American artists and intellectuals routinely described cinema as a force of global communion, a universal language promoting mutual understanding and harmonious coexistence amongst disparate groups of people. This book examines the body of writing in which this understanding of cinema emerged and explores how it shaped particular silent films.

Explores why the movie business turned to black musical performance at the end of the 1920s to both resolve technological and aesthetic problems introduced by the medium of ""talking pictures"" and, at the same time, to appeal to the white ""Broadway"" audience that patronized their most lucrative first-run theatres.