Thames looks at Hollywood

Press, 28 February 1980, Page 17

Thames looks at Hollywood

The silent' cinema is the lost age of entertainment in this century. When

talking pictures finally arrived with “The Jazz Singer,” many people regarded the event as .the death of a great art. But they were not mourning what passes for silent films today —jerky little melodramas with matchstick figures, virtually impossible to see in a blizzard of soot and whitewash. They had grown up with an industry which produced, in a few short

years, a huge range of spectacular, inventive and exciting films.

These productions w’ere presented in great style, in glittering picture palaces, with carefully constructed musical scores for full orchestral accompaniment. “Hollywood,” a 13-part British Thames series which begins on TV2 tonight, is devoted to the rise and fall of the silent film and presents a com-

plete picture of American film production frbm 1895 to 1930.

From a penny-arcade curiosity, the silent film rapidly developed into a universal language, distributed across the globe. America lagged far behind in the early years of the industry, but, by the end of World War I, Hollywood had become sy-

nonymous with the most popular entertainment the world has ever known.

Excerpts from hundreds of features and short subjects are shown in the series, along with more than 70 interviews with the great stars and directors.