Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth

by Paula Marantz Cohen

Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth connects the rise of film and the rise of America as a cultural center and twentieth-century world power. Silent film, Paula Cohen reveals, allowed America to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe and answer the call by nineteenth-century writers like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman for an original form of expression compatible with American strengths and weaknesses. When film finally began to talk in 1927, the medium had already done its work. It had helped translate representation into a dynamic visual form and had "Americanized" the world.

Cohen explores the way film emerged as an American medium through its synthesis of three basic elements: the body, the landscape, and the face. Nineteenth-century American culture had already charged these elements with meaning--the body through vaudeville and burlesque, landscape through landscape painting and moving panoramas, and the face through portrait photography. Integrating these popular forms, silent film also developed genres that showcased each of its basic elements: the body in comedy, the landscape in the western, and the face in melodrama. At the same time, it helped produce a new idea of character, embodied in the American movie star.

Cohen's book offers a fascinating new perspective on American cultural history. It shows how nineteenth-century literature can be said to anticipate twentieth-century film--how Douglas Fairbanks was, in a sense, successor to Walt Whitman. And rather than condemning the culture of celebrity and consumption that early Hollywood helped inspire, the book highlights the creative and democratic features of the silent-film ethos. Just as notable, Cohen champions the concept of the "American myth" in the wake of recent attempts to discredit it. She maintains that American silent film helped consolidate and promote a myth of possibility and self-making that continues to dominate the public imagination and stands behind the best impulses of our contemporary world.

Genres: Film, History, Nonfiction

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Paula Marantz Cohen, Distinguished Professor of English, received her BA in English and French from Yale University and her Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. She is the author of seven books and numerous essays on literature, film, and culture.

Her most recent academic book, Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth (Oxford UP), was selected as a Choice Outstanding Book for 2003. Her first novel, Jane Austen in Boca (St. Martin's Press), was a Literary Guild/Book of the Month Club Featured Alternate and a Page-Turner of the Week in People Magazine.

She has articles and stories in many journals, including Yale Review, Boulevard, Iowa Review, Raritan, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review. She is the Co-Editor of the Journal of Modern Literature and a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. She is the recipient of the Lindback Teaching Award.

Reviews

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thesis is that silent films are the artistic expression of Frederick Jackson Turners American myth of being always new and remaking ones self, and takes further the American literary ideal of direct expression without intervention of language which eluded Emerson et al. Notes that films emphasized men’s bodies but women’s faces. Also acknowledged interdependence of film roles and star discourse and notes that movie scandals happened when the offstage stuff contradicted or turned unpleasant the film roles (Mary Miles Minter’s naïve infatuation with Taylor being a negative extension of her screen roles as naïve girl in love). Interesting, but many factual errors.

[Chuck Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen's predilection for thumbnail histories and unsubstantiated speculation hinders what I believe is a first-rate scholarly work, but it is still quite good. The two chapters dedicated to facial expressiveness and early stardom are essential reading.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually really cool if you are interesting in the social product of silent-film and its contribution to the american project.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen argues that the face, the landscape and the desire to recreate one's self in any form of image or situation are the unique qualities that embody the idea of the "American myth."