Synopses & Reviews
The current digital revolution has sparked a renewed interest in the origins and trajectory of modern media, particularly in the years around 1900 when the technology was rapidly developing. This collection aims to broaden our understanding of early cinema as a significant innovation in media history. Joining traditional scholarship with fresh insights from a variety of disciplines, this book explains the aesthetic and institutional characteristics in early cinema within the context of the contemporary media landscape. It also addresses transcultural developments such as scientific revolutions, industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, as well as differing attitudes toward modernization. Film 1900 is an important reassessment of early cinema's position in cultural history.
Review
The capable Ligensa and Kreimeier invited a coterie of renowned Continental scholars and thinkers to reflect on issues of modernity and cinema by harking back to the fin de siècle. Such archeological excavations into the cinema of attractions enable one to critique the specific predicament in the 21st century. Using a concept of 'triangulation,' the contributors look at the interrelationships between film, culture, and spectators (i.e., how they construed the emerging film apparatus of early silent film as it both shaped and was itself transformed by culture): for example, the eminent Thomas Elsaesser plays with the trope of the naïve rube spectator who pops up throughout the history of media. Though technical and complex, the essays are not too abstruse for those fascinated with the moments of modernity (e.g., industrialization, urbanization, synchronicity, medical psychology, and so on) and the dynamics of perceptions (even, curiously enough, hypnosis). Particularly noteworthy for its richness is Kreimeier and Tom Gunning's foray into the energetic, thrilling spectacle of truly sensational motion (as in the phantom rides), where heightened consciousness of spatial landscapes challenges perception. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. -- ChoiceT. Lindval, Virginia Wesleyan College, March 2010 John Libbey Publishing John Libbey Publishing John Libbey Publishing
About the Author
Klaus Kreimeier is Professor Emeritus of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany.
Annemone Ligensa received her M.A. in Theater, Film, and Television Studies from the University of Cologne, Germany, where she also worked as a lecturer in Media Psychology.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Triangulating a Turn: Film 1900 as Technology, Perception and Culture Annemone Ligensa
1. Archaeologies of Interactivity: Early Cinema, Narrative and Spectatorship Thomas Elsaesser
2. Viewing Change, Changing Views: The 'History of Vision'-Debate Frank Kessler
3. The Ambimodernity of Early Cinema Problems and Paradoxes in the Film-and-Modernity Discourse Ben Singer
4. Mind, the Gap: The Discovery of Physiological Time Henning Schmidgen
5. 'Is Everything Relative?': Cinema and the Revolution of Knowledge Around 1900 Harro Segeberg
6. The Aesthetic Idealist as Efficiency Engineer: Hugo Munsterberg's Theories of Perception, Psychotechnics and Cinema Jörg Schweinitz
7. Between Observation and Spectatorship: Medicine, Movies and Mass Culture in Imperial Germany Scott Curtis
8. The Scene of the Crime: Psychiatric Discourse on the Film Audience in Early Twentieth Century Germany Andreas Killen
9. Seen Through the Eyes of Simmel: The Cinema Programme as a 'Modern' Experience Andrea Haller
10. 'Under the Sign of the Cinematograph': Urban Mobility and Cinema Location in Wilhelmine Berlin Pelle Snickars
12. Perceptual Environments for Films: The Development of Cinema in Germany, 1895-1914 Joseph Garncarz
12. 'Fumbling Towards Some New Form of Art': The Changing Composition of Film Programmes in Britain, 1908-1914 Ian Christie and John Sedgwick
13. The Attraction of Motion: Modern Representation and the Image of Movement Tom Gunning
14. 'Dashing Down Upon the Audience': Notes on the Genesis of Filmic Perception Klaus Kreimeier
15. German Tonbilder of the 1900s: Advanced Technology and National Brand Martin Loiperdinger
16. Sculpting with Light: Early Film Style, Stereoscopic Vision and the Idea of a 'Plastic Art In Motion' Michael Wedel
17. 'A Cinematograph of Feminine Thought': The Dangerous Age, Cinema and Modern Women Annemone Ligensa
14. Cinema as a Mode(l) of Perception: Dorothy Richardson's Novels and Essays Nicola Glaubitz
Biographies of the Authors