Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema

From the earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception and the promise of a journey. This work explores and explains this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history. The author reveals the profound impact that the railroad and cinema have had on Western society and modern urban industrial culture. It should be of interest to those involved in film studies, American studies, feminist theory and the cultural study of modernity, and will be of particular interest to students of early film history. It should also appeal to general readers interested in silent films or in the history of the railroad, and includes analyses of icons of film history such as The General and The Great Train Robbery .