Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames

Analyzes the visual and cultural context of Europe's first feature films from 19th century painting to pictorial photography

Sheds new light on the late 19th and early 20th century's cultural context
Innovatively brings together different media, their artistic traditions, and their respective theoretical and discursive paradigms
Presents an alternative history of early European cinema by analyzing it from an inclusive art historical perspective
Thoroughly explores the first European feature films' cinematic form and function

Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films' intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts.

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