Parallel tracks : the railroad and silent cinema / Lynne Kirby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kirby, Lynne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Railroads in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 338 pages)

Other Title:

Parallel tracks

Place of Publication:

Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 2018.

Summary:

From its earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception, and the promise of a journey. Parallel Tracks is the first book to explore and explain this relationship in both theoretical and historical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history. Describing the train as a mechanical double for the cinema, Lynne Kirby gives her romantic topic a compelling twist. She views the railroad/cinema romance in light of the technological and cultural instability underlying modernity and presents the railroad and cinema as complementary experiences that shaped the modern world and its subjects - the passengers and spectators who traveled through that world.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One: Inventors and Hysterics: The Train in the Prehistory and Early History of Cinema

Two: Romances of the Rail in Silent Film

Three: The Railroad in the City

Four: National Identity in the Train Film

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.