Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century
Matthew Solomon
Disappearing Tricks revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. Where others have called upon magic as merely an evocative metaphor for the wonders of cinema, Matthew Solomon focuses on the work of the professional illusionists who actually made magic with moving pictures between 1895 and 1929.
The first to reveal fully how powerfully magic impacted the development of cinema, the book combines film and theater history to uncover new evidence of the exchanges between magic and filmmaking in the United States and France during the silent period. ... Read more
Highlighting early cinema's relationship to the performing body, visual deception, storytelling, and the occult, Solomon treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.
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About Matthew Solomon
Reviews for Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century
ExpressMilwaukee.com "Students of magic history, film history, the intersection of both, ... Read more