Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium by which to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man's imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, nudity, devilry and death.
SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE Volume 15 reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations from the years 1947-1949, a time when the global film industry, and the world in general, were rebuilding after the devastation of World War 2, with movie producers gearing up for a new age of glorious Technicolor and other innovations to compete with rise of television as mass entertainment. This volume references approximately 550 films, and features around 100 photographic illustrations from film productions and also from relevant documentary sources. It also contains as a quick reference tool a 100-page appendix which includes the film title index from each of the preceding fourteen volumes.
SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades - a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.
