From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film

New
Paperback
1998
$35.26

Film critic David Robinson chronicles the early use of film as vaudeville sideshow; as sheer spectacle of moving images precluding any notion of plot development or drama; and as a fledgling dramatic effort, ranging from prizefights to Passion plays. He also takes readers to the nickelodeon theaters, and replete with more than 150 drawings and photographs, shows how the earliest devices of cinematic prehistory--machines with colorful names like the Phantascope and the Wheel of Life--led to the technology of filmmaking we know today.

Synopsis

Film critic David Robinson chronicles the early use of film as vaudeville sideshow; as sheer spectacle of moving images precluding any notion of plot development or drama; and as a fledgling dramatic effort, ranging from prizefights to Passion plays. He also takes readers to the nickelodeon theaters, and replete with more than 150 drawings and photographs, shows how the earliest devices of cinematic prehistory--machines with colorful names like the Phantascope and the Wheel of Life--led to the technology of filmmaking we know today.

$35.26

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 213
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 29 Jan 1998
ISBN 10: 0231103395
ISBN 13: 9780231103398
Book Overview: Robinson chronicles the early use of film as vaudeville sideshow; as sheer spectacle of moving images precluding any notion of plot development or drama; and as a fledgling dramatic effort, ranging from prizefights to Passion plays.

Media Reviews

A diligent overview from the moment cinema was just a flicker in a magic lantern to the golden years between 1893 and 1913, when scientists and technicians laboriously fitted together the 'pieces in a puzzle' and created feature films. New York Times Book Review This concise history takes us from footage of an Edison employee sneezing to multireel features with a sophistication appropriate to the lavish theaters in which they were shown New Yorker

Author Bio

David Robinson is a film historian and critic.