Customer Reviews

The Art of the Moving Picture (Modern Library Movies)

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Quite astonishing, wrote one critic, and this, often very dreamy, book of 1915!!! is exactly this. I am not a movie critic, just a reader and this book was a delight to read. It deals about the era of the silent movies, around 1915 when there were no Rambos or Terminators running across the screen with Qsound and computerised warping effects. It was the time when everything had to be expressed in gestures, like a moving picture book, because of the lack of sound.
The author therefore comes with a lot of interesting theories and opinions of how a story could and should be elegantly communicated in a moving picture. He even comes up with a theory of why California is as crazy as Hollywood seems to most of us now.
This work has to be a classic of movie pictures, just like The Art of War for the military, or Keynes for economics, and for people that are, like me, just interested readers of all kind of subjects, also highly recommended.

One of the earliest compilations of movie history, this book serves motion picture buffs on several levels. First, it gives a view of films as art in the silent era. Secondly one sees film techniques thought innovative fifty years later. Finally, the people involved were the author's contemporaries, allowing a view both compelling and provocative.
By 1915 motion pictures were maturing. To glean an understanding of their development is essential if one is a student of their history. This book adds to the realization that already many in the industry were making sophisticated productions captivating eager audiences.
At the same time, one would be remiss not to inform the reader that the archaic style of this book may be troubling. But in one hundred years the book will still have merit, this review most likely will not.