Until then, I suggest that you seek out a copy of "In the Spirit of Jazz, " a wide-ranging essay collection that contains seven of his best pieces about film (14 more of which can also be found in Philip Lopate's "American Movie Critics: An Anthology From theSilents Until Now").
But, starting in the nineteen-thirties, music soundtracks were added to silents, and the films needed to move through the projector at twenty-four frames a second, so that the optical sound reader could handle the music track.