Books on the silent era of cinema. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Behind the Mask of Innocence Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era By Kevin Brownlow

Original Trade Paperback Edition

All the issues that torment America today were rampant in the silent-film era: crime, poverty, alcohol, drugs, racial and ethnic prejudice, epidemics, and the controversies over birth control, abortion, and the death penalty. And there were others that persist today but were then even more explosive: sexual mores, government and police corruption, prison conditions, immigration, and strife between capital and labor. Although many early moviemakers ignored harsh realities, choosing to depict a society shielded by a “mask of innocence,” others went behind that façade, fighting the ever-present censors and producing films that made even the most sheltered moviegoer aware of deep rents in the country’s social fabric. Some films were exploitative, some serious, but together they add up to a revelation of the dark side of American life — a revelation startling to us today because it was later, in the era of the Hays Office, so thoroughly ignored, indeed denied, by Hollywood.

Profusely illustrated with well-reproduced stills, frame enlargements and contemporary advertisements. Another fine Brownlow production.

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