Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium by which to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man's imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, nudity, devilry and death.

SHADOWS?IN?A?PHANTOM?EYE Volume 14 reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations from the years 1944-1946, a period when film noir emerged from the shadows and the golden age of horror movies entered its terminal stages, supplanted by the real-life newsreel images of destruction, atrocity and terror emerging from the ruins of war-torn Europe. This volume references approximately 900 films from all countries and reproduces over 200 rare photographic images, posters and illustrations, many newly unearthed from international film archives and never before published.

SHADOWS?IN?A?PHANTOM?EYE is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades - a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.