The Ancient World in Silent Cinema
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Ancient World in Silent Cinema (2013) is a book by Pantelis Michelakis, Maria Wyke.
Blurb:
In the first four decades of cinema, hundreds of films were made that drew their inspiration from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Bible. Few of these films have been studied, and even fewer have received critical attention. The films in question, ranging from historical and mythological epics to adaptations of ancient drama, burlesques, animated cartoons and documentaries, suggest a preoccupation with the ancient world that competes in intensity and breadth with that of Hollywood's classical era. What contribution did the worlds of antiquity make to early cinema, and how did they themselves change as a result? Existing prints as well as ephemera scattered in film archives and libraries around the world constitute an enormous field of research, and this edited collection is a first systematic attempt to focus on the instrumental role of silent cinema in early twentieth-century conceptualizations of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East.
Contents
Contents List of illustrations [page vii] List of colour plates [xiii] List of contributors [xv] Acknowledgements [xx] 1 Introduction: silent cinema, antiquity and ‘the exhaustless urn of time’ [1] pantelis michelakis and maria wyke part i theories, histories, receptions 2 The ancient world on silent film: the view from the archive [27] bryony dixon 3 On visual cogency: the emergence of an antiquity of moving images [37] marcus becker 4 Cinema in the time of the pharaohs [53] antonia lant 5 ‘Hieroglyphics in motion’: representing ancient Egypt and the Middle East in film theory and criticism of the silent period [74] laura marcus 6 Architecture and art dance meet in the ancient world [91] david mayer 7 Ancient Rome in London: classical subjects in the forefront of cinema’s expansion after 1910 [109] ian christie 8 Gloria Swanson as Venus: silent stardom, antiquity and the classical vernacular [125] michael williams 9 Homer in silent cinema [145] pantelis michelakis v part i i movement, image, mus ic, text 10 Silent Saviours: representations of Jesus’ Passion in early cinema [169] caroline vander stichele 11 The Kalem Ben-Hur (1907) [189] jon solomon 12 Judith’s vampish virtue and its double market appeal [205] judith buchanan 13 Competing ancient worlds in early historical film: the example of Cabiria (1914) [229] annette dorgerloh 14 Peplum, melodrama and musicality: Giuliano l’Apostata (1919) [247] giuseppe pucci 15 ‘An orgy Sunday School children can watch’: the spectacle of sex and the seduction of spectacle in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) [262] david shepherd 16 Silent laughter and the counter-historical: Buster Keaton’s Three Ages (1923) [275] maria wyke 17 From Roman history to German nationalism: Arminius and Varus in Die Hermannschlacht (1924) [297] martin m. winkler 18 The 1925 Ben-Hur and the ‘Hollywood Question’ [313] ruth scodel 19 Consuming passions: Helen of Troy in the jazz age [330] margaret malamud General bibliography [347] Index of films discussed [369] General index [373]
