Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures

Ask almost anyone about the origins of the motion picture, and you’ll get a glib and automatic answer. It will include a fast, indefinite reference to Edison and Eastman and will move on, with more-or-less authentic nostalgia, to Mack Sennett, Fatty Arbuckle, D. W. Griffith and maybe a few others. With luck, one or two titles—The Great Train Robbery, for example—may creep in.

The fact is, most of us simply do not know much about it.

It is good, therefore, to take a long look at the people, the events, and the discoveries—accidental and otherwise—which combined, during the years of many centuries, to produce the motion picture as we know it today.

This book gives us the long look, the authentic perspective. It may tend to slow down our glibness, to clothe our fancy with fact, and to deflate any notion that the movies belong exclusively to our own well-publicized 20th Century.

It is sobering, but it is necessary. For, unless we brace ourselves with some knowledge of what has gone before, we cannot be adequately prepared for what lies ahead. The industry, as we have known it in the past, is undergoing great changes. It is difficult to predict exactly what form it will eventually take. One thing is certain, however—the “Magic Shadows” in one form or another will continue to entertain and instruct the millions in every land for generations to come.

Edward P. Curtis

Rochester, N. Y.
July 2, 1960