The electric hotel

Title:

The electric hotel

Author:

Smith, Dominic, 1971- author.

Personal Author:

Smith, Dominic, 1971- author.

ISBN:

9780374146856

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

336 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Abstract:

"Winding through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey, the battlefields of Belgium during World War I, and the faded Knickerbocker Hotel in 1960s Hollywood, The Electric Hotel follows the intertwined fates of the cinematographer Claude Ballard and his muse, Sabine Montrose"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Cinematographers -- Fiction.

Film historians -- Fiction.

Genre:

Historical fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	FICTION SMITH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION SMITH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION SMITH	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westover Hills	Book	FICTION SMITH	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A sweeping work of historical fiction from the New York Times -bestselling author Dominic Smith, The Electric Hotel is a spellbinding story of art and love.

For more than thirty years, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging for mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel --the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose--the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments in desperate need of restoration, as well as Claude's memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.

The Electric Hotel is a portrait of a man entranced by the magic of moviemaking, a luminous romance, and a whirlwind trip through early cinema. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A long-retired moviemaker recalls the early days of silent films in Smith's atmospheric follow-up to The Last Painting of Sara De Vos (2016, etc.).In 1962, 85-year-old Claude Ballard lives in a run-down Hollywood hotel and spends his days gathering mushrooms and photographing street scenes. He has not made a movie since his "grand cinematic experiment," The Electric Hotel, appeared in 1910. As his reminiscences to young film scholar Martin Embry unfold, we eventually learn the reasons for his decision, but first we get a wonderfully vivid re-creation of the spell cast by the earliest films, when photographer's apprentice Claude sees the Lumire brothers' first reels exhibited in the basement of a Paris hotel in 1895: "every inch of the screen was aliveyou burrowed into the screen, dug it out with your gaze." His work for the Lumires takes him to New York, where the audience's loud response to a moving picture next door to her theater infuriates touring French actress Sabine Montrose. She winds up in bed with Claude and in the new medium; buccaneering producer Hal Bender finds them a studio perched over the Palisades in New Jersey, where he hopes to elude Thomas Edison's litigious Motion Picture Patents Company. Smith skillfully blends film history with the adventures of his cast; a Stanislavsky-obsessed acting coach and an Australian stuntman are among the intriguingly idiosyncratic folks who join Sabine, Claude, and Hal, each haunted by damage a parent has inflicted, to joyously invent a new art form. The novel climaxes with a brilliantly detailed account of the filming of The Electric Hotel and its triumphant premiere, followed by multiple blows that have been deftly foreshadowed. The account of Claude's traumatic experiences filming the devastation of World War I is something of a letdown, but a final scene with Sabine ties up emotional loose ends, and Martin's screening of the restored Electric Hotel provides a moving finale.A compelling plot, robust characters, and finely crafted prose richly evoke a bygone age and art. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.