Best moving pictures I ever saw. Thus did one Vaudeville theater manager describe Georges Melies s A Trip to the Moon Le Voyage dans la lune], after it was screened for enthusiastic audiences in October 1902. Cinema s first true blockbuster, A Trip to the Moon still inspires such superlatives and continues to be widely viewed on DVD, on the Internet, and in countless film courses. In Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, leading film scholars examine Melies s landmark film in detail, demonstrating its many crucial connecions to literature, popular culture, and visual culture of the time, as well as its long afterlife in more recent films, television, and music videos. Together, these essays make clear that Melies was not only a major filmmaker but also a key figure in the emergence of modern spectacle and the birth of the modern cinematic imagination, and by bringing interdisciplinary methodologies of early cinema studies to bear on A Trip to the Moon, the contributors also open up much larger questions about aesthetics, media, and modernity.
In his introduction, Matthew Solomon traces the convoluted provenance of the film s multiple versions and its key place in the historiography of cinema, and an appendix contains a useful dossier of primary-source documents that contextualize the film s production, along with translations of two major articles written by Melies himself. Included with the book is a critical edition DVD containing two versions of the film: a reconstructed version (finally presented at the speed specified in Melies s catalogs) accompanied by an original 1903 score and a recently rediscovered color-tinted version; both have optional audio commentaries by the editor.

Matthew Solomon's study of Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) provides an in-depth discussion of the film's production and reception history, placing it in the context of the turn-of-the-century Alaska Klondike gold rush, and analyses the film's narrative and formal features, particularly its references to music-hall performance styles and tropes.

Through his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles's multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles's work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles's work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totality illuminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.

Through his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles's multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles's work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles's work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totality illuminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.