© Columbia University Press
Silent Film Sound
Paper, 528 pages, 258 half-tones
ISBN: 978-0-231-11663-3
$30.00
/ £17.50
January, 2005
Cloth, 528 pages, 258 half-tones
ISBN: 978-0-231-11662-6
$77.50
/ £45.50
"Weighty and ambitious....This thoroughly researched and copiously illustrated book is
recommended for large libraries and all cinema collections." — Roy Liebman,
Library Journal
and vintage photos." — Bookwatch
"Edison's pioneering work...is given a large amount of space in a
fascinating new book." — Steve Ramm, Groove
Magazine
"Rather than reinventing the
wheel or allowing for too many examples in his analysis, Altman successfully dispels notions of a
homogenous turn-of-the-century soundscape and interweaves salient but ignored aspects of early
cinema and its coinciding entertainments...Highly recommended." —
Choice
"A magisterial
effort of a type rarely seen in cinema today... Altman's history is precise, reflective, and
human." — Cinemas Journal
"Rick Altman's Silent Film Sound
is revisionist film history at its best." — Marshall Deutelbaum,
New Review of Film and Television
"Nothing short of a classic, definitive work." — Jacob
Smith, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film
"A major contribution to the history of early cinema."
— American Studies
scholarly understanding not only of early film sound, but also of the full range of film
history." — Kecia D. McBride, Film
Criticism
"Rick Altman has given us a
magnum opus... a stunningly original work of film history." — Tom Gunning,
Film Quarterly
"[A]
majestic book... Readable as the most complete account of early American cinema." —
Dana Polan, Screening The Past
scholarly fields in addition to film history, including musicology, media studies, sound studies
and American history." — Katherine Spring, Film
International
"Silent Film Sound is a
top pick for any serious college-level film library." — California
Bookwatch
"Altman radically rewrites the
history of sound practices in silent cinema in the United States. He boldly challenges the basic
assumptions of earlier work and carefully develops a series of cogent arguments about the
complexity and swiftly changing nature of American silent cinema in which sound often had an
importance equal to that of the moving image. The arguments are based on extensive, meticulous
research in primary sources, many of them examined for the first time. This book is simply an
extraordinary achievement." — Richard Abel, University of Michigan
"New historians usually assert that history is always already an act
of "interpretation" and that it thus always has to be re-done, over and over again, to fit new
generations, new modes of thought. With this masterful work by Rick Altman, other historians can
take a break from their efforts! Altman's interpretations are so solid that they will remain
operative for much longer than usual." — André Gaudreault, University of
Montreal