Cinema: Year by Year, 1894-2000

by Robyn Karney

The revolutionary medium of film has reflected and shaped our culture for over a century. In this absorbing, fully up-to-date millennium edition, Cinema Year by Year takes you on an exhilarating voyage through the world of movies, from its inception in the 1890s to the technical ingenuity of the present day. Crammed with movie stills, studio portraits, "behind the scenes" photographs, and classic posters. Over 970 authoritative pages of key movie events, facts, and figures. Special features look at different elements of film history, including The Silent Era, The New Wave, Special Effects and The Rise of the Independent Movie. From the Lumiere brothers' historic premiere of 1895 to the runaway success of 1999's American Beauty, movies have exerted an extraordinary and wide-reaching influence over us. The lively newspaper-style approach brings unprecedented immediacy to this irresistible story, recounted year by year as it happened. Ready-reference pages list the key events and Oscar winners for each year and over 3,000 illustrations bring new life to the stars and scenes of over a century of film history. This unique reference work is the most entertaining and detailed illustrated history of cinema ever published.

Genres: Reference

976 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an absolutely beauty. You just can't go wrong with DK books. And if you love older movie posters, there are thousands here (granted, not theatre lobby-size) this is a great resource. It's more of a reference source, but a blast to pull off the home bookshelf during a movie-lover's debate.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poster reproductions in this, if nothing else, are first rate.
As it says, this takes a compartmentalized year-by-year approach, providing a snapshot of major events and releases. Some are short month-by-month capsules followed by several pages of newspaper-style articles on particular films or events. The attempt to write the entries as "present tense" news items is highly problemmatic. For one thing, without followup or post-mortem context it's hard to know if things actually happened as stated. It's as if stuff was lifted from contemporary accounts, which is suspect and unreliable. It's a cutesy but frustrating approach to presenting the material. I wouldn't take anything in this book at face value without fact checking elsewhere. However, the book provides a good skeletal framework for looking at any given movie year, and does cover most of the important stuff. And, as I say, the photo and poster reproductions are gorgeous.