Richard Abel’s latest look is Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910-1914. Its subject is the relationship between early cinema and the construction of a national identity. Abel analyses film distribution and exhibition practices to reconstruct a context for understanding moviegoing at a time when American cities were coming to grips with new groups of immigrants and women working outside the home. It makes use of a hugely impressive range of archival sources archive prints, the trade press, fan magazines, newspaper advertising, reviews, and syndicated columns.
The Bioscope 