A feminist reader in early cinema /

In her introduction, Bean calls this collection of essays "inferential walks." The term is appropriate to a volume in which so much is made of flanerie (the flaneuse rather than the flaneur) and in which the chosen landscape is in such a ruinous state that evidence must be culled from myriad sources in order to reconstruct the missing films. Drawing on the work of Tom Gunning and Miriam Hansen, among others, the book defines "early" as nearly coterminous with silent cinema and makes clear that, during the chaotic originating years, cinema offered many opportunities to women that they would later lose. Essayists cast new light on early women directors like Guy Blache, Arzner, Weber, and Nazimova. Stars are also examined--Musidora, Pearl White, Garbo, Pickford, and early Italian and Chinese stars. Perhaps most interesting, the essays situate cinema within the context of the period: examined are such disparate elements as the "new woman," women in the work force, art nouveau and art deco, the airplane, fashion. In short, this collection contains myriad delights, uniformly engagingly written and exhaustively researched by mostly younger academics. Kudos to the editors. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. W. A. Vincent Michigan State University