Author Description

Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man’s imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, devilry and death. SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE Volume 4 begins in 1917, when Hollywood star Theda Bara rose to the peak of her fame in Fox’s epic "Cleopatra", and ends in 1919, a year when German Expressionism generated its first cinematic masterpiece in the form of Robert Wiene’s "Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari". This volume references approximately 2,000 films, and contains over 250 photographic illustrations and graphics from film productions and also from relevant documentary sources. SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades – a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.