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From the 1920s-1960s, American cinematic architecture underwent a seismic shift: movie theaters were neutralized for immersive watching, in large part by architect and writer Benjamin Schlanger. The Optical Vacuum examines how Schlanger reformed both theater and spectator, demonstrating that the essence of film viewing can be found in theatrical space.
List of contents
- Introduction: The Theater, the Film, and the Spectator
- Chapter One: Nostalgia for the Dark - Ben Schlanger and the Beginning of Neutralization, 1920-1932
- Chapter Two: A Field of Light - Optics and the Demasked Screen, 1932-1952
- Chapter Three: A Mobile Gaze Through Time and Space: Neutralization in the Era of Widescreen, 1950-1960
- Chapter Four: Cinephilia in Ruins: An Audience of the Elite, 1960-1970
- Coda
- Index
About the author
Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research focuses on spectatorship, exhibition, technology, and American film history, and she has published in various journals and books including Screen, Film History, Color and the Moving Image, World Picture, and 2ha.
Summary
From the 1920s-1960s, American cinematic architecture underwent a seismic shift: movie theaters were neutralized for immersive watching, in large part by architect and writer Benjamin Schlanger. The Optical Vacuum examines how Schlanger reformed both theater and spectator, demonstrating that the essence of film viewing can be found in theatrical space.
Additional text
Movie theaters are not just places to see a film. They are sites in which to experience new technologies, explore immersive environments and to innovate new modes of seeing and hearing. This fascinating book shows us that movie theaters have long been irretrievably shaped by dynamic debates across fields such as modernism, architecture, design, and commercial entertainment, inviting us to look beyond the screen and at the spaces in which movies have long been embedded. This book is essential reading for those interested in the history of theaters and cinema, as well as those interested in modernity, entertainment, and the persistent transformation of the human senses by technological design.
