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The Screening of America
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11129 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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10 / 1993 |
4,001 Words |
| Author
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John C. Tibbetts
John C. Tibbetts, an associate professor of theater and film
at the University of Kansas, contributes regularly to national
music publications and is editor of the recently published
Dvorak in America.
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HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, VOL. 1
The Emergence of Cinema, The American Screen to 1907
Charles Musser
New York: Scribner's Sons, 1991
613 pp., $60.00
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, VOL. 2
The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915
Eileen Bowser
New York: Scribner's Sons, 1991
337 pp., $60.00
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, VOL. 3
An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928
Richard Kozarski
New York: Scribner's Sons, 1991
395 pp., $60.00
Seven more volumes are forthcoming before 1995.
Of the many dates that could mark the centennial of the birth of the American motion picture industry, one of the most likely is October 6. It was on that day, a century ago, that the Library of Congress received the first copyright application for a filmstrip, titled Edison Kinetoscopic Records. Although the actual images do not survive today, the filmstrip is known to have included a few scenes of a tightrope walker and a Spanish dancer. In honor of the event, the Library of Congress has launched an official centennial exhibition of the history of film.
Film historians, meanwhile, have been busy with a number of centennial projects of their own. Perhaps the most significant is the ongoing ten-volume History of the American Cinema, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. The series' general editor, Charles Harpole, head of the Film Division of the University of Central Florida, assures us that the authors "have attempted to make their volumes as comprehensive as the current state of material resources and publishing constraints will allow." Rather than emphasize the contents of individual films, the general priority is to examine the production, exhibition, and viewing of movies in their contemporary contexts. Each volume, Harpole promises, will be replete with a rich selection of visuals--production stills, frame enlargements, ads, graphs, and charts--as well as extensive and
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