When Silent Films Were a Force for World Peace
In the 1920s, Moguls Pitched the Technology as a ‘Universal Language’ That Was More Than Mere Entertainment
By the 1920s, the standard-bearers of the Hollywood film industry had taken to speaking about movies in the loftiest terms—as saviors of humanity. Leading star and producer Douglas Fairbanks declared, “Pictures let us know each other. They’ll break down the hard national lines that make for war and suspicion.” Will Hays, president of the industry’s trade organization, said in 1925, “the motion picture may be … the greatest instrument humanity has yet known for the bringing about of understandings between man and man, between group and group and between nation …
