From 1916 to the Arrival of Sound

Abstract

By the time of the First World War, film production was a global industry, the motion picture an influential medium of communication about political, social and aesthetic values, and visits to the film theater an institutionalized cultural practice. By 1916, the new Hollywood aesthetic was becoming far more attractive to spectators at home and abroad, and the Hollywood star and studio systems the object of the European film industries' envy. Film-makers and critics reflected upon ancient Greece and Rome as vehicles for cinematic creativity and for the understanding of cinema as a uniquely silent, universal pantomimic art. This chapter investigates seven films from 1916 to the late 1920s as exemplars of those developments. These are Helen of Troy, Quo Vadis, Ways to Strength and Beauty, The Slave of Phydias, La conquete des Gaules, Cleopatra, and Ben-Hur.

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