Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's series traces American cinema from its earliest days at the turn of the century through the coming of sound, using surviving silent stars as witnesses rather than historians. James Mason narrates as the film moves from the Lumiere brothers' 1896 train footage and Edison's kinetoscope experiments to the rise of the studio system in a citrus-grove town called Hollywood. Interviews recorded late in life with actors, directors, and stunt performers who worked on films now considered lost fill in details no written record kept, and rare footage, some rescued from private collections and studio vaults, shows techniques and performances that vanished when talkies took over. The series follows the industry's growth from one-reelers shot on rooftops to the elaborate productions of Griffith, Chaplin, and Keaton, treating the transition to sound not as progress but as the end of a distinct visual art form. It stands as one of the fullest surviving records of how the industry actually worked before anyone thought to write its history down.