The Story of Film part 2: The Triumph of American Film

The 1920s. Moving between Hollywood, Denmark and Moscow, Mark Cousins shows how glamour and gravitas battled to define film.

In the '20s , Hollywood industrializes entertainment. Stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton emerged. But the gloss and fantasy was challenged by men like Robert Flaherty, Eric Von Stroheim and Carl Theodor Dreyer, who wanted the medium to be more serious and mature. The battle for the soul of cinema began, producing some of the greatest movies ever made.