Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema

Rating:
Summary: A provocative and entertaining journey of trains and film.
Review: Readers interested in the relationship between railroad and cinema should not look beyond Parallel Tracks, Lynne Kirby's extremely entertaining and insightful historical coverage of the how the train can be seen as a precursor to cinema. Conceptions of spectatorship, travel and suggestibililty normally associated with cinematic viewing practices are forcefully argued as inherent properties of how a passenger experiences rail travel. Perhaps a fault of the book is that it ends with the birth of sound cinema, when the whistle of the incoming train signified a new stage in cinematic representations of rail journeys, gender and identity. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in classic American silent film, westerns and rail thrillers, as well as those interested in how the railroad continues to impact on the triad of cinema, identity and modernity.