In our present age the moving image has become for many the preferred medium of communication. In the hundred years since the first public showings of flickering images were projected onto makeshift screens in fairground booths, the moving image has become an accepted means of communication. Ironically advances in technology appear set to do away with visits to the cinema by allowing us to request and download films for viewing in the comfort of our own homes. In the days before television most cities and towns could boast a range of cinemas showing the latest Hollywood offerings; that few of these cinemas still exist is all the more reason for us to welcome the present volume, which documents the rise of the cinema from its earliest beginnings.
The centenary of the first showing of moving images by the Lumiere brothers in the basement of the Grand Café at no. 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris on 28 December 1895 prompted a veritable flood of publications on the early cinema, mostly covering the cinema in individual countries from a historical perspective. Few took much account of the developments which prompted inventors such as the Lumieres, Thomas Edison, William Friese Greene and others to perfect the technology required for the recording and reproduction of moving images for public performance. The publishers are, therefore, to be thanked for this new volume which reminds us that interest in images of people and places has its origins as far back as the search by Renaissance artists to record perspective on their canvasses. Their experiments using newly discovered mathematical methods were regarded as an important element of the new “natural philosophy”. This, coupled with a growing interest in natural magic, which was especially prevalent among Jesuit savants, led in turn to the development of the first peep boxes. By the nineteenth century the peep boxes had developed into a range of optical instruments, some of which were available for home use by the wealthy classes; for the labouring classes there were occasional visits by itinerant showmen who provided, for a small fee, a range of peep show instruments. Increasingly attempts were made to replace images of static scenes with some form of motion. Thus magic lantern slides began to be produced which could simulate a primitive form of moving image. In due course experiments with photographing moving objects such as those by Eadweard Muybridge led to machines such as the Mutoscope and Kinetoscope, both of which simulated movement by viewing a time‐lapse sequence of photographic images of a moving subject. The reader will find an in‐depth survey of these pre‐cinema developments and much more in this fascinating volume.
Editors André Gaudreault, Nicolas Dulac and Santiago Hidalgo are all members of the teaching staff at the Department of Film Studies at the Universite de Montreal, whilst individual authors of the 30 essays that make up this volume are drawn from a range of academic institutions worldwide; all are recognised authorities in the field of early cinema. The publishers express the hope that the present volume “will be the definitive volume on early cinema history for years to come”; there is every reason to believe that this wish is well‐founded. Whilst the volume should surely become a standard work of reference to teachers and students of the discipline, the work will doubtless also have appeal for the reader with a more general interest in the subject. As well as essays on the early technology used to create images the reader will find essays on early film programmes, advertising, creation of celebrity status, and film showings in prisons. One area that the reviewer noted was lacking was any reference to the premises, other than fairground booths, in which films were shown.
Each essay includes a detailed list of references, which will doubtless serve as sources of further information. References are to both recent works and those published contemporaneously with developments in the early cinema. The work includes a large number of interesting illustrations as well as a detailed index. Whilst it would be invidious to single out any essay for special mention the reader may well begin with the introductory essay by the volume's editors, whilst the final essay by Thomas Elsaesser, Emeritus Professor of Film and Television Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, poses a range of questions for further study. The price of the volume no doubt limits the range of potential purchasers but anyone who acquires it will be repaid by many hours of interesting reading. It goes without saying that it deserves to be on the library shelves of institutions where the subject forms part of the academic curriculum.
