Still: American Silent Motion Picture Photography David S. Shields Release Date: June 19, 2013 The University of Chicago Press Hardcover, 401 pages In the opening pages of his recent book on American silent film photography, Still, David S. Shields estimates that over eighty percent of the silent features produced within the first three decades of filmmaking…
Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 Italian opera La bohème has seen many forms in the century since its first performance in Turin. The story–itself borrowed from Henri Murger’s 1851 collection Scènes de la vie de bohème–has been retold in many forms, with and without the music. It’s been made into films, produced in countless venues featuring storied performers like…
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter has apparently long stymied filmmakers, because there has yet to be a cinematic version that fully adapts the material without changing the tone or intent of the author’s original novel. Not to be overly sarcastic about it or anything. It’s a damn shame, too, because Letter is truly a masterwork of American…
In the early days of the film industry, the fledgling production studios had not yet established the massive industrial complex of Hollywood movie-making. Films were created almost piecemeal, thrown together in a matter of days in order to keep fresh material in front of fickle audiences. There was little room in the budget for an…
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