Film and Attraction

Establishing a new vision for film history, Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinemaurges readers to consider the importance of complex social and cultural forces in early film. Andr#xE9; Gaudreault argues that Edison and the Lumi#xE8;res 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-si#xE8;cle 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 M#xE9;li#xE8;s' rich oeuvre and includes a new, unabridged translation of M#xE9;li#xE8;s' famous 1907 text "Kinematographic Views." A foreword by Rick Altman stresses the relevance of Gaudreault's concerns to Anglophone film scholarship.

Andr Gaudreault is a professor at the Dpartement d'histoire de l'art et d'tudes cinmatographiques at the Universit de Montral, the author of From Plato to Lumire: Narration and Monstration in Literature and Cinema, and the editor of American Cinema 1890-l909: Themes and Variations. Timothy Barnard is a film historian, publisher, and translator.