Startingwith the canon shell that landed in the eye of Georges Melies’ Man on the Moon,Filmish: a Graphic Journey Through Film (published by Abrams/SelfMadeHero) is a history of cinema in graphicnovel form. Cartoonist Edward Ross is a cinephile conducting a black-and-white,pen-and-ink, zig-zagging journey through the magic theater of flickering lightand shadow. Filmish isn’t a chronicle following developments year by year, butuses some 300 films to illustrate particular points about the art and potentialof filmmaking. Familiar classics such as Citizen Kane and Rear Window receiveattention, but so do lesser-knowns like Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom or theJapanese horror film Hausu.
WithFilmish, Ross distills a great deal of academic theory (often impenetrable inthe hands of academics) into entertaining and understandable form. Themetaphysics of cinema is touched on. Quoting Soviet director Dziga Vertov: thecamera makes “the invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest,the disguised overt.” And yet, as the author admits, the camera can also be “apowerful tool of deception.”
Despitethe cartoony format, Filmish is a serious scholarly endeavor complete withendnotes.
