Body Shots Early Cinemas Incarnations [Paperback]

This original and compelling book places the body at the center of cinema's first decade of emergence and challenges the idea that for early audiences, the new medium's fascination rested on visual spectacle for its own sake. Instead, as Jonathan Auerbach argues, it was the human form in motion that most profoundly shaped early cinema. Situating his discussion in a political and historical context, Auerbach begins his analysis with films that reveal striking anxieties and preoccupations about persons on public displayboth exceptional figures, such as 1896 presidential candidate William McKinley, and ordinary people caught by the movie camera in their daily routines. The result is a sharp, unique, and groundbreaking way to consider the turn-of-the-twentieth-century American incarnation of cinema itself.

Jonathan Auerbachis Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park and is the author ofMale Call: Becoming Jack London(1996) andThe Romance of Failure: First-Person Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne, and James(1989).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Body, Movement, Space
PART I. BODIES IN PUBLIC
1. Looking In: McKinley at Home
2. Looking Out: Visualizing Self-Consciousness
Interlude. The Vocal Gesture: Sounding the Origins of Cinema
PART II. BODIES IN SPACE
3. Chasing Film Narrative
4. Windows 1900; or, Life of an American Fireman
Conclusion: The Stilled Body

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Body Shotsis a provocative and compelling account of the centrality of corporeal movement and stillness to early cinema. Auerbach puts theory and history into productive conversation, significantly extending our knowledge of the contexts and strategies of cinema in its early years. It is an original and important book.Lee Grieveson, author ofPolicing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century-America