I hada similiar problems with City of Broken Dreamers and Shale Hill Secrets.
In my case, the problem was the sound card. I have a Soundblaster FX-5 and it sometimes disappears from the system as if it wasn't there at all. When the card disappeared in these two games, the animations disappeared and I had black screens, as you describe. When the card appeared in the system again, or when I connected such a small sound card to USB, the animations immediately appeared and were displayed normally.
Check your sound card, I'm not saying yours has to be the same, but it's one of the options.