From the front flap of this 272 page book: "Silent films are sometimes dismissed as quaint or out of date because of their jerky, scratchy quality; this book and the Thames Television series with which it is associated, set out to show that they were, in fact, beautiful as well as vastly entertaining works of art. Kevin Brownlow, with the help of John Kobal and his unique collection of early stills, recaptures the legendary days of film-makers like Cecil B. DeMille, King Vidor, Erich von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, of stars like Garbo, the Barrymores, Gloria Swanson, Keaton, Chaplin and Valentino. The early days of Hollywood must be among the most adventurous, extravagant and triumphant that the world of entertainment has ever known. From the first tentative essays of a few bold innovators, Hollywood blossomed almost overnight into a major industry, breeding millionaires and bankrupts, making outrageous demands on those who served it, producing in those early years some of the supreme triumphs of the movie-maker's art. 'Hollywood: The Pioneers' tells the story as never before. Kevin Brownlow, who, with David Gill, directed the Thames Television series, marshalls his great knowledge of the subject with lucidity and wit; the photographs - almost all taken from originals and many never seen before - are dramatically beautiful. This is a book for anybody interested in the cinema or who has seen the television series on which it is based will wish to acquire and cherish."

Hollywood, the pioneers

Arts & Photography

Brownlow, Kevin

Performing Arts

Collins

Napoleon: Abel Gance's Classic Film

When he was fifteen, Kevin Brownlow saw two reels of the 1927 Napoleon, and it changed his life. The film was more daring, both technically and artistically, than anything he had ever seen. How could it have been forgotten? Brownlow got in touch with the film's director and tracked down members of its cast and crew. He discovered that the making of the film was as much of an epic as the film itself. In 1967, he began an attempt to restore Napoleon. The work took years, but eventually Napoleon was presented, with live orchestra, to a new generation, and, as one critic put it, it became "the measure for all other films, forever." This book tells the dramatic story of Napoleon's incredible revival and also serves as a wonderful introduction and companion to the film. * Contains free CD of Carl Davis' original score

History & Criticism

J. Cape

The life and its biographer provide a landmark work on the cinema. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, David Lean found his great success as a director of the appropriately titled Great Expectations. There followed his legendary black-and-white films of the 1940s and his four-film movie collaboration with Noel Coward. Lean's 1955 film Summertime took him from England to the world of international moviemaking and the stunning series of spectacular color epics that would gain for his work twenty-seven Academy Awards and fifty-six Academy Award nominations. All are classics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India. Kevin Brownlow, a film editor in his own right and author of the seminal silent film trilogy initiated with The Parade's Gone By. . ., brings to Lean's biography an exhaustive knowledge of the art and the industry. One learns about the making of movies as realized by a master, but also of the highly personal costs of genius. The troubled Quaker family from which Lean came influenced his relationship with his son, his brother, and his six wives. Yet he showed in his work a deep understanding of humanity. The vastness of this scholarly and entertaining enterprise is augmented by sixteen pages of scenes from Lean's color films, thirty-two pages from his black-and-white movies, and throughout the text a vast number of photographs from his life and location work.

David Lean: A Biography

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

St.Martin's Press

The life and its biographer provide a landmark work on the cinema. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, David Lean found his great success as a director of the appropriately titled Great Expectations.There followed his legendary black-and-white films of the 1940s and his four-film movie collaboration with Noel Coward. Lean's 1955 film Summertime took him from England to the world of international moviemaking and the stunning series of spectacular color epics that would gain for his work twenty-seven Academy Awards and fifty-six Academy Award nominations. All are classics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India.Kevin Brownlow, a film editor in his own right and author of the seminal silent film trilogy initiated with The Parade's Gone By. . ., brings to Lean's biography an exhaustive knowledge of the art and the industry.One learns about the making of movies as realized by a mast

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

St Martins Pr

Here, from one of today’s leading authorities on film history, is the story, told brilliantly and for the first time, of the pioneering movie makers who as early as 1905 traveled beyond the studio stages to make feature films on location—and in so doing recorded the real history and real life of their time. The War, the West, and the Wilderness is the result of more than a decade of passionate research by Kevin Brownlow, whose last book, The Parade’s Gone By… (hailed by Charles Champlin as “the definitive work on the silent era”) is regarded as a classic history of early motion pictures. His new book is alive with the voices of the film-makers themselves, in their logbooks, in their letters and diaries, in their firsthand accounts of their adventurous journeys and cinematic innovations, and—even more immediate—in Brownlow’s interviews with cameramen, director’s, lighting technicians, and actors who relive those days, taking us with them to the Great War, to the West, ad into the Wilderness. It is the triumph of this book to reconstruct the dramatic moments when these men and women contrived, against ordinary odds, to bring to movie audiences for the first time, the look, the feel—the actuality—of large events and distant places, from the great battles of World War I to the South Seas with Jack London aboard the Shark, and the gold rush in Tonopah, Nevada.

The War, The West and The Wilderness

KNOPF

The acclaimed film historian's history of silent movies draws on the recollections of actors, directors, producers, cameramen, art directors, property men, editors, and stunt men and is richly enhanced by three hundred remarkable photographs

Hollywood: The Pioneers

Describes the making of the silent movie, Napoleon, and depicts the struggle to reconstruct the original version of the film

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Looks at how silent films dealt with social issues, including drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, racism, abortion, prostitution, disease, and poverty

Behind The Mask Of Innocence

The magic of the silent screen, illuminated by the recollections of those who created it.

The Parade's Gone By : A Vivid, Affectionate Portrait of the Golden Days of Hollywood

Business & Money

Industries

Secker Warburg

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brownlow, Kevin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Brownlow, Kevin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Brownlow, Kevin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hollywood, the pioneers

Napoleon: Abel Gance's Classic Film

David Lean: A Biography

David Lean: A Biography

The War, The West and The Wilderness

Hollywood: The Pioneers

Napoleon: Abel Gance's Classic Film

Behind The Mask Of Innocence

Napoleon: Abel Gance's Classic Film

The Parade's Gone By : A Vivid, Affectionate Portrait of the Golden Days of Hollywood