During the first twenty years of this century, crime, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, venereal disease, abortion, poverty, racism - all the problems that torment America today - were rampant, disrupting the lives of millions. Many contemporary silent films depicted a society shielded by a 'mask of innocence'; but there were others - hundreds of them, both serious and exploitative - that went behind that mask, to reveal the deep rents these problems tore in the social fabric. A tragic number of these films have been lost, but almost all of them are vividly re-created for us in this definitive study. Cinema historian Kevin Brownlow has delved deeply into contemporary sources to describe the context, creation, plot, and reception of the movies that showed America its true face - extraordinary documents that still have the power to move us, although we can know many only through this book. This is the final segment of Kevin Brownlow's trilogy, of which the first two volumes were The Parade's Gone By...(1968, about the entertainment movies of the Twenties) and The War, the West, and the Wilderness (1979).
- ISBN10 0224029037
- ISBN13 9780224029032
- Publish Date 28 March 1991 (first published 21 November 1990)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 10 August 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 579
- Language English