Before Hollywood: From Shadow Play to the Silver Screen

by Paul Clee

Illustrated with black-and-white archival prints, drawings, and photographs From the simple camera obscura of the 1500s to the 17th century’s giant magic lanterns to the early films of Thomas Edison and the Lumicre brothers in the late 1800s, here is an intriguing story of invention and showmanship. Many of the techniques adopted by Hollywood were worked out by tinkerers, lanternists, and magicians in front of shocked and amazed audiences long before the first flickering black-and-white film was ever shown. This fascinating book explains how today’s movies—as well as photographs, special effects, and animation—came to be.

Peppered with first-hand accounts and newspaper reports, excerpts from the notes of early inventors and filmmakers, and descriptions and diagrams of detailed optical gadgets, Before Hollywood provides a window into the world of entertainment before movies were invented. It offers an illustrated tour of the beginnings of technologies that we take for granted today. Sidebars, afterword, timeline, endnotes, bibliography, Internet resources, and index.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 2005

Reviews

[Ch_jank-caporale · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Selznick mentioned this bbok inhis afterward for "The Invention of Hugo cabret." Since I have an interest in film studies, I checked it out. I serached out and use most of the information in this book with students- I've even had them build phenakistiscopes, thaumatropes, flip books, and the like to help them understand how film evolved and how it works. Clee has assembled all but the hands-on portion in this film book on the invention of "the movies." I recommend its use in a study of invention, lenses, movement, art, film, vision, magic...it touches on so many areas of interest! I would say it is written for mature fourth graders and up as it is long for readers new to chapter books and non-fictional text. But it is easy to understand and comprehensive without being overwhemingly technical. It is also well-illustrated with photos and drawings showing the historical evolution from toys, superstitions, mistakes, and science to "ENTERTAINMENT."

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

My plan for a PhD was always to study the ground this book has covered so there’s a weird feeling of what could have been as I read it. It’s very good on the subject too, detailing the many false starts and almost rans of cinema and bringing in a few even I wasn’t aware of. The only problem is that Clee doesn’t seem to be entirely sure of his audience: it’s tremendously detailed at times but the prose is quite stilted as if he’s unsure if this might be a book for young people or not. In many ways it feels like he’s slightly held back by this uncertainty so the prose sometimes plods where it could spark with enthusiasm. But as a basic introduction to the subject, and pointer to other works for details, it cannot be faulted: thorough, fascinating and well structured. It just needs a bit of oomph to the prose to make it a classic

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating read for lovers of film. It provides an in depth look at the history of how we finally got to the point where movies could be filmed. There's a reference to Gorges Melies (a famous magician in Paris that discovered spliced film by accdient and used the technique to make it look like actors were vanishing on film) in HUGO and I was familiar with Melies from reading BEFORE HOLLYWOOD.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a lot of people, pre-film visual entertainments hold a nominal appeal. They're fun to look at and play with for a few minutes, but they can't command the attention like, say, a game where you crush candy on your cellphone by spamming the # symbol, or whatever it is the kids are doing these days. For a smaller, perhaps luckier group, the old technologies- the camera obscura, puppet theaters, magical lantern slides- continue to exert a dreamy fascination. If you're one of these people, this book is for you.

"Before Hollywood" takes the reader on a sumptuously-illustrated tour, from the days when science and magic were comfortable handmaidens and children could be amused by projected still images and shadow forms, up to about the time at the beginning of the modern era, where several individuals claimed a partial stake in the invention of the motion picture. The book does a good job of showing how history sometimes does a mean retconning on certain dreamers and scientists who don't get the credit they deserve (one Emile Reynaud is a truly tragic figure) while others are lavished with perhaps a bit more praise than they deserve (it would be unseemly to name names).

The book concludes around the time that the bare bones of a film grammar emerged, with the likes of the Lumière Brothers firing their rocket into the eye of the Moon, and a gunslinger firing from the screen's canvas into the ranks of a distraught crowd, courtesy of Edison Studios. It's not taxing, revelatory history for the most part, but Clee's book provides ample and beautiful photos and illustrations (a definite must for the subject at hand) and regardless of how much you know about the subject, you're bound to come away entertained, if not a bit enriched by the journey. Recommended.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

We picked this up after finishing The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and I was surprised how fascinating it all was! I was able to pull up some YouTube videos to show my four-year-old how "magic lanterns" worked, and see some of the process of photography becoming moving pictures. The number of inventors involved all together is really astonishing. Definitely a good intro if you're curious about how we got from there to here!

[Mikul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fascinating to me.
After reading it I wanted to share it with Spielberg or some other Director, Producer that would also appreciate it enough to make a documentary film based on it.
It's not for everybody, I know. But for those who appreciate clever and artistic inventions, props and projection, etc.

[Roselyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really informative without going into complex definitions. Recommended for those who are curious about the history of film!