Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. 498 pages, ill., ISBN
0-679-43840-8. A quelques exceptions près,
le phénomène de la starification au cinéma a
reçu peu d’attention dans le domaine de la
recherche durant la dernière décade. D’une
prose aussi claire que le crystal et d’une
argumentation lucide, le livre de Jeanine
Basinger constitue un aperçu sur ce sujet,
parlant, en trente chapitres, des célébrités
telles que Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino
et Douglas Fairbanks mais aussi négligeant
injustement des talents tels que Colleen
More, Clara Bow, Mabel Normand et Tom
Mix. Basinger est formidable dans sa
discussion avec Lon Chaney, un génie de la
preformance à l’écran qui a été trop souvent
relégué dans les catégories du bizarre et du
grotesque. Une lecture indispensable comme
introduction au cinéma muet.
Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. 498 pages, ill., ISBN
0-679-43840-8. Salvo pocas excepciones, el
fenómeno del estrellato cinematográfico ha
recibido poca atención por parte de los
investigadores, durante la última década.
Con prosa clara y argumentación lúcida,
Jeanine Basinger aborda en treinta capítulos
múltiples aspectos de la vida de celebridades
tales como Mary Pickford, Rudolph
Valentino y Douglas Fairbanks, descuidando
sin embargo talentos como Colleen More,
Clara Bow, Mabel Normand y Tom Mix.
Basinger es formidable en su discusión con
Lon Chaney, un genio de la actuación en la
pantalla, quien a menudo es reducido a lo
extraño y grotesco. Se trata de un libro cuya
letura resulta indispensable como
iontroducción al estudio del cine mudo.
yourself in trouble. One cannot help but feel some sort of solidarity
towards the author, given the many dilemmas involved in his project.
Our wishes for its successful completion are matched by the hope
that the complete work will eventually be available in an electronic
database form with a free search capability throughout the entire text,
so that its user is not forced to browse through several volumes
before finding the necessary information. I am confident that this,
too, is very much in Bousquet’s plans. (Paolo Cherchi Usai)
Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. 498 pages, ill.,
ISBN 0-679-43840-8 (cloth)
With the remarkable exception of Miriam Hansen and few others, the
phenomenon of film stardom has received little attention in the
scholarly field during the past decade. This is all the more amazing if
one considers the wealth of memoirs and anecdotal history published
outside the academia. It is perhaps for this reason that the personalities
at the core of Hollywood’s golden age have been marginalized to
the old-style cinéphile publications. With her crystal-clear prose and
lucid argument, Jeanine Basinger has produced a compelling and
immensely enjoyable overview of the topic in thirteen chapters dealing
with celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino and
Douglas Fairbanks, but also unjustly neglected talents like Colleen
More, Clara Bow, Mabel Normand and Tom Mix. Basinger is at her
best in her discussion of Lon Chaney, a genius of screen performance
too often pigeonholed in the categories of the weird and the
grotesque.
The occasional factual inaccuracies and the absence of important
names -especially comedians- such as Lupino Lane or Max Davidson
by no means diminishes the value of Basinger’s achievement. The
author is the first to admit that “it was especially difficult to give up
such important names as Wallace Read, Blanche Sweet”, Theda Bara
and Pearl White: however, this should be seen as an encouragement
for other authors to continue along the path drawn by Basinger with
such a remarkable sense of historical atmosphere. Not since Kevin
Brownlow’s seminal work The Parade’s Gone By has such a lively portrait
of the silent era’s actresses, actors, and filmmakers, been drawn
with such clarity from the collective memory. If I had to put together
a bibliography for an introductory course in silent cinema, Silent Stars
would stand out as one of the few mandatory readings on the subject.
(Paolo Cherchi Usai)
90 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000