Matthew Solomon

Before he became an influential cinematic innovator, Georges Méliès (1861–1938) was a maker of deluxe French footwear, an illusionist, and a caricaturist.  Proceeding from these beginnings, Méliès Boots traces how the full trajectory of Georges Méliès’ career during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, along with the larger cultural and historical contexts in which Méliès operated, shaped his cinematic oeuvre.  Solomon examines Méliès’ unpublished drawings and published caricatures, the role of laughter in his magic theater productions, and the constituent elements of what...

One of the biggest hits of the silent era, The Gold Rush (1925) was famously described by Charlie Chaplin – the star, writer and director of the film – as 'the picture I want to be remembered by'. Enjoying popular and critical success not once but twice, the film was given a new lease of life with sound in 1942 after Chaplin added his own narration and music.

Matthew Solomon provides an in-depth discussion of the film's genesis within the Northern genre, its production and reception history, and its subsequent canonisation. Considering both unauthorised and authorised...

In Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, a number of leading film scholars examine Méliès’s landmark film in detail, demonstrating its many crucial connections to literature, popular culture, and visual culture of the time, as well as its long “afterlife” in more recent films, music videos, and television. Together, their essays make clear that Méliès should be seen not only as a major filmmaker but also as a key figure in the emergence of modern spectacle. By bringing the interdisciplinary methodologies of early cinema studies to bear on A Trip to the Moon, the book’...