Silent films were caught in the cross-hairs of all this.

Buster Keaton: Silent Film Visionary -- Too Much Imagination

Yet, that sort of nightmare world of industrialization both inspired and was depicted in silent film. The Lumiere brothers were innovative geniuses who devised a portable camera, better equipped for transfer than Edison's bulky machine, and photographed technological marvels (like that train engine) to entertain audiences. One of the great comics of the silent film era, Buster Keaton, would explore the fascinating technological world of the railway in his greatest cinematic work, the General. The General debuted in 1927, again, the same year as the first talkie, and served as a kind of farewell to the marvelous world of the silent film era. Described as a "Civil War farce" by New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall, Buster Keaton's portrayal of Johnnie Gray is viewed as "hardly the person who would be...
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