Description: This illuminating guide provides a selection of one hundred key films of the silent period (1895-1930), featuring films from a variety of countries, genres and directors, together with an introductory overview and usefull filmographic and bibliographic information.
Brief description: Bryony Dixon is Curator at the BFI National Archive where she is responsible for the collections of silent film.
Review Quotes:
"This is no bluffer's guide. The enjoyment of silent cinema is Dixon's priority. As Dixon says when discussing Hell's Hinges (1916): "Nearly everything in current cinema can be traced back to the silent era." And that's why this guide is so valuable - anyone interested in how cinema became what it is today will find many of the answers here, both in Bryony Dixon's illuminating book and the films you will rush to watch the minute you put it down." --Silent London
"David Thomson is arguably the doyen of "film list" authors and Dixon shares both his rare ability to justify a choice with a single cinematic trump card and his lucid prose style - her description of Dziga Vertov's radical montage as "visual Esperanto" is inspired. She captures some of silent cinema's most sublime moments - Charlie Chaplin mournfully eating his shoelaces in The Gold Rush (1925) or the woodland chase in People on Sunday (1930) - with an infectious joy." --The Times Literary Supplement, Lucian Robinson