Fischer adds vivid colour as he chronicles his subject’s obsession with bringing the world’s first motion picture camera to market, and sketches the revolutionary backdrop to this story of transatlantic treachery ... Fischer also gives his narrative the flavour of a whodunit, with chapters entitled ‘The Crime’ and ‘A Gun that Kills Nothing’. This ‘true tale of obsession, murder and the movies’ is an illuminating and thrilling read.
Fischer lays out his case meticulously and with many footnotes, though he takes pains to entertain. Those two aims don’t always jibe, particularly when his more poetic flights of prose come up against the granular realities of R&D ... Unsurprisingly, it’s the human elements, not the halides, that register most vividly ... Thanks to historical records, Fischer can say with assurance whether a particular day in 1883 was cold and clear or mild with an easterly wind. But when the Le Princes lose one son as a toddler and another child later under murkier circumstances, the page, as it were, goes blank. Who can know how deeply that affected the pair’s psyches, their work habits, their marriage? Barring some improbably rich paper trail, no conscientious biographer can presume to know for sure, and that’s a hazard Fischer has to navigate: the editorial line between strictly available truths and making a dead man come alive. His eloquent, sometimes excitable writing style goes a long way when it doesn’t wander off into the celluloid weeds. And the final pages offer, if not hard conclusions, a bittersweet postscript and even real catharsis — too late for Le Prince, maybe, but some kind of justice nonetheless.
... lively ... It turns out that neither Edison nor the French-born Lumière brothers—said to have been responsible, in 1895, for the earliest commercial presentation of a film—deserve their reputations as prime movers of the medium. As Mr. Fischer documents with the rigor of a historian and the flair of a true-crime writer, it was another Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, who in 1886 crossed the finish line first with his dual-camera-projector system ... Mr. Fischer milks the mystery for all it’s worth, but this book is no mere scandal sheet. The author paints a full portrait of Le Prince ... The book bogs down in necessary but dull descriptions of the technical minutiae that went into making early motion-picture cameras, but the pace picks up as Le Prince struggles to perfect his invention, remain financially solvent and contend with an interminable patents process.
... absorbing ... what Fischer does do is bring sharp forensic skills and a cool head to a narrative that has become hijacked by wild conspiracy theories ... Despite deflating the drama, Fischer tells the bigger story well ... It is a veritable second Enlightenment, a time of extraordinary creativity as the inherited boundaries of time and space dissolve. And if at times Fischer does veer towards the hagiographic when dealing with Le Prince, we can at least admire the tenacious way he unsettles the persistent idea that Edison bestrides the modern world like a Colossus.
... the work Fischer has done in going back to primary sources, in particular the unpublished memoirs of Lizzie and Adolphe, sheds light on Le Prince as a free-spirited idealist, more interested in the social and expressive potential of film than in its commercial exploitation. The claim Fischer’s biography has on our attention rests both on Le Prince’s achievements and the vision he had for them. One of the pleasures, and sadnesses, of Fischer’s account is its evocation of a period, however brief, when the emergence of a technology seemed to herald a new age of human interconnectedness. What followed instead was Le Prince’s disappearance, the theft of his ideas, and the cornering of a fledgling movie market by practices verging on gangsterism. The story of his life amounts not only to a captivating whodunit, but to a lens on the development of cinema itself ... Fischer’s narration is briskly paced and elegant, although he borrows too often from the stock library of tension-building effects.
... the book’s real strength is not its crime-solving (Fischer concludes with a plausible if not provable suspect); it’s the way Fischer, who is also a film producer, helps us see how revelatory motion pictures were at the time.
... an astonishing real-life whodunit ... Fischer sorts fact from conjecture as he offers a solution to this 130-year-old cold case. This is an absorbing tale, elegantly written and brilliantly told, with the plot twists and surprise ending worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.
... this diverting mystery — and Edison’s putative involvement in any crime committed — is only the headline here. A fascinating sideshow for sure, and arguably a marketing tease. But make no mistake: The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures delivers much, much more ... From a broader perspective, Fischer’s narrative is a compelling saga of both familial and scientific struggle. Throughout, he shines a brilliant light on the succession of major players searching for the keys to motion-picture technology, mechanical as well as chemical, both stateside and abroad ... The author offers fascinating coverage of, among other aspects, Edward Muybridge’s work with successive still images of human and equine locomotion, not to mention the gimmicky 'magic lantern' devices that preceded Edison’s and Le Prince’s nearly simultaneous breakthroughs ... He also dives deeply into the internal workings at Edison’s New Jersey labs, with a wide-ranging dissection of the company’s business model and much reportage on its internal management practices, rivalry, and endemic dissension. Most fascinating of all, at least for this reader, is Fischer’s discussion of the Le Prince family dynamic.
Fischer’s adept character sketches bring to life dozens of people who played a role in the creation of motion pictures and help reveal the cutthroat world inhabited by late 19th-century inventors ... What knits the book together is the mystery that has lasted for more than a century. Why and how did Le Prince disappear? Like any good mystery, it features unreliable witnesses, suspicious motives, and scant evidence.
With a spellbinding, thriller-like presentation supported by painstaking research, Fischer puts forth evidence to try to unravel the mystery of Le Prince's life and death. Deftly organized facts, coupled with the technical minutiae of filmmaking, reveal fascinating details of Le Prince's life and the challenges faced in his work, while also exposing the mysterious circumstances surrounding his disappearance. Fischer's stellar, suspenseful narrative is a work of art unto itself that finally gives Le Prince--and the impact of his often overlooked, cut-short creative genius--his due.
Fischer presents Thomas Edison as a sinister figure singularly interested in Le Prince’s disappearance—a bit of misdirection, as Fischer has a more likely suspect in mind—but the sensational end of Le Prince’s life remains unsolved. Fischer’s book also successfully chronicles the history of photography and explores how moving pictures were the next logical step—and how several inventors were in competition to get there first ... Fischer combines firsthand accounts with dynamic writing to bring the Victorian era to life. A remarkable cast of characters (including Le Prince’s equally fascinating wife, Lizzie) makes for compelling reading.
Fischer’s sketch of the historical context in which Le Prince worked is consistently entertaining and illuminating. The author vividly renders the personalities and science involved in the production of early cinema, and he lucidly explains the complex technological challenges and breakthroughs. Particularly insightful are Fischer’s interpretations of the likely motivations of Le Prince and his assistants as they attempted, under frequent financial duress, to complete a workable prototype of their camera and secure international patent protections. Also intriguing is the book’s contribution to the ongoing demythologization of cultural icon Edison, who seems to have routinely schemed his way into taking credit for the work of others. Though Fischer’s ultimate conclusion about the circumstances behind Le Prince’s death remains speculative, he offers and defends a plausible version of events that draws persuasively on extant historical evidence ... A fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative of one of the forgotten figures in cinematic history.
... fascinating ... Vivid character sketches, lyrical descriptions of the art and science of moviemaking, and a dramatic plot twist make this a must-read.
