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Published for the first time in English in 1994 as Burning Passions, Cherchi Usai's groundbreaking guide to silent film studies has become the indispensable textbook for scholars, researchers, and archivists. This much-awaited sequel to the first edition has been extensively rewritten and updated in order to reflect the spectacular development witnessed by the discipline in the past few years.
In addition, two new chapters have been added for this edition. The first is an extensive analysis of color technology and aesthetics, from hand-coloring to the dawn of Technicolor. The second is a detailed account of how silent films are saved from destruction, restored, and made accessible by film archives. A number of new illustrations, tables, bibliographical references and historical sources add additional value to this fundamental survey of the first thirty years in the history of the moving image.
Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition (2000) David Robinson Preface to the First English Edition (1994) Kevin Brownlow
Introduction: Burning Passions
1. The Romance of Celluloid
2. The Way of All Flesh Tones
3. The Ethics of Film Preservation
4. Raiders of the Lost Nitrate
5. F is for Filmography
6. Histoire Détective
7. Film History Pursued by Other Means
Appendices
1: Film Measurement Tables
2: Moving Image Archives
3: Identification of Méliè's Films by the Star Film Trademarks 1896—1913
4: Identification of Eastman Kodak Stock by its Edge Codes 1913—28
5: Identification of Pathé Films by heir Edge Marks
6: Film Mutilation and How to Prevent It (1924)
7: The Film Prayer
Anonymous
Posted April 29, 2002
If you have ever wondered what a film archivist does, this book is for you. If you are really serious about your passion for silent films, this book is for you. Mr Usai's concise book is packed full of research tips. There are over 50 illustrations, many in color, of all kinds of different early film frames (70mm, 35mm, 9.5mm, 28mm) plus early color processes, even early 3-D frames. He explains how the early color processes worked and how early films were assembled. He goes into great detail on how that silent film that you may watch today may be drastically altered from the original in the early 1900s. And he explains the many frustrating problems that silent film archivists encounter. He explains the pitfalls of compiling filmographies, and how some printed sources are valuable and others are worthless. If you are just becoming interested in silent films, this book will be too much for you. But if you are really interested in the 'nuts and bolts' of archive work, or the detective work that we do to study silent cinema, then you won't be able to put this book down!
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Overview
Published for the first time in English in 1994 as Burning Passions, Cherchi Usai's groundbreaking guide to silent film studies has become the indispensable textbook for scholars, researchers, and archivists. This much-awaited sequel to the first edition has been extensively rewritten and updated in order to reflect the spectacular development witnessed by the discipline in the past few years.
In addition, two new chapters have been added for this edition. The first is an ...