Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema

Establishing a new vision for film history, Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema urges readers to consider the importance of complex social and cultural forces in early film. Andre Gaudreault argues that Edison and the Lumieres did not invent cinema; they invented a device. Explaining how this device, the kinematograph, gave rise to cinema is the challenge he sets for himself in this volume. He highlights the forgotten role of the film lecturer and examines film’s relationship with other visual spectacles in fin-de-siecle culture, from magic sketches to fairy plays and photography to vaudeville. In reorienting the study of film history, Film and Attraction offers a candid reassessment of Georges Melies’ rich oeuvre and includes a new, unabridged translation of Melies’ famous 1907 text Kinematographic Views. A foreword by Rick Altman stresses the relevance of Gaudreault’s concerns to Anglophone film scholarship.