Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

One-Setting the Stage

Two-Staging the Set

Three-The Web We Wove

Four-The Weave We Wore

Five-Taking It to the Seats

Six-Living It Up: In the Hills

Seven-Keep the Home Buyers Turning

Eight-More Play for Less Pay: Women

in Film Production

Epilogue: That's About the Sum of It

Appendix A.¿Mechanization and the Aftereffects of World War I

Appendix B.¿Audrey Munson: The "Girl of Dreams"

Appendix C.¿Purveyors of Fantasy: Erté and Georges Barbier

Appendix D.¿Critical Wit: James Laver

Appendix E.¿Siegfried Kracauer, Lotte Eisner

and the Rise of the Nazis Hypothesis

Glossary

Chapter Notes

Bibliography

Index

Lora Ann Sigler is a professor emerita of art history at California State University. She is a portrait/landscape artist and designer living in San Pedro, California.

¿ The heyday of silent film soon became quaint with the arrival of ""talkies."" As early as 1929, critics and historians were writing of the period as though it were the distant past. Much of the literature on the silent era focuses on its filmic art--ambiance and psychological depth, the splendor of the sets and costumes--yet overlooks the inspiration behind these.
This book explores the Middle Ages as the prevailing influence on costume and set design in silent film and a force in fashion and architecture of the era. In the wake of World War I, designers overthrew the artifice of prewar style and manners and drew upon what seemed a nobler, purer age to create an ambiance that reflected higher ideals.