Studios Before the System

Reviews / Votes

This is an impressive, groundbreaking book that joins other recent revisionist works in offering an innovative notion of early cinema history that has invaluable ramifications for cinema history overall. Furthermore, it promises to make a considerable impact on the study of cinema's profound interrelations with architecture, modern technologies, and urban infrastructure at the beginnings of the 20th century. -- Richard Abel, University of Michigan A breakthrough book-at once a history of technology, cinema, and architecture-showing how they merge in the invention of the cinematic studio in a few wildly innovative years around 1900. Jacobson tells the story of this invention with flair, fluency, and most of all with awareness of its historical significance: by uniting real and virtual space in cinematic space, the studio transformed the human-built world. -- Rosalind H. Williams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rare is the book that justly can be called an instant classic, but Studios Before the System is just that. Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and admirably capacious, it is a landmark study of the built environments of early cinematic production. It is a foundational work that is also a pleasure to read -- Edward Dimendberg, author of Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images Studios Before the System offers a fresh, enormously productive and (as it turns out) badly needed perspective on filmmaking before the classical Hollywood studio system was fully established. Examining the buildings where films were made with unprecedented rigor, Jacobson illuminates the many ways in which these architectural spaces determined how subjects were filmed and represented--and the ways the studios themselves shaped the larger system of production and representation as personnel left the studios and moved on location. -- Charles Musser, Yale University In this excellent book, Jacobson (Univ. of Toronto) blends history and theory to create a landmark study of the very first film studios... Essential. Choice A truly important book, which will easily find its way to the 'must-read' section in all literature on film studies as well as art and technology studies. -- Jan Baetens Leonardo Reviews Studios Before the System is certain to become an indispensable resource for scholars of early cinema. What is more, the new theoretical perspective Jacobson brings to filmmaking during the period has far-reaching ramifications for the history and theory of the art form as a whole... A work of great originality and insight, which is also brilliantly written and accessible to scholars working in a broad range of academic fields. -- Alice Thorpe Early Popular Visual Culture