Reviewed by:

• On the Screen: Displaying the Moving Image, 1926–1942 by Ariel Rogers
• Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (bio)

On the Screen: Displaying the Moving Image, 1926–1942 By Ariel Rogers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Pp. 320.

For most film histories, the screen in the mainstream movie theater is a singular object, albeit one that forms the most important part of the apparatus. As the canons of film history and theory insist, unified spectators gaze upon a single screen that immerses them cohesively. And according to this standard narrative, once the digital era comes roaring to life, screens proliferate while spectators' attention splinters. Yet, as Ariel Rogers masterfully demonstrates in her impeccably researched book, On the Screen: Displaying the Moving Image, 1926–1942, this is less a historical truth than a vestige of approaches that have sidestepped a wealth of material evidence. The spatial configurations that Rogers turns up are proof of a synthetic approach to screens in the "long 1930s" that valued flexibility, transparency, synchronization, and mobility. By attending to special effects—especially rear projection, where previously shot footage is projected on a screen behind a live actor performing in front of the camera—in Hollywood studios, theatrical technologies, and domestic projection, Rogers traces the beginnings of multiple screens, so familiar in the contemporary moment, to a seemingly unlikely birth nearly a century ago, when an American economic nadir met a zenith of production and exhibition experimentation.

One of the major developments of special effects technology in the 1930s was a superior approach to compositing. Earlier in the twentieth century, composite shots, or images that involved shots made on at least two separate occasions and were later composited together, could be achieved through in-camera solutions or primitive optical printers. But in the early 1930s, Linwood Dunn at RKO patented the Acme-Dunn Optical Printer. It ensured far smoother combinations—or, as Rogers might define it, multiple synthesized images. Dunn's achievements aided in creating many of the most memorable images from the wildly successful King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, 1933), as did the miniature rear projection that famously allowed stop-motion puppets to appear to inhabit the same space as live actors like Fay Wray. King Kong's screens—the multiple screens of the optical printer, the cellulose acetate screens on animation tables that showed miniaturized actors, or the theatrical screens on which it awed audiences—form a roadmap for Rogers' argument. An apparent cohesion is, for Rogers, the product of a multiplicity of screens operating simultaneously.

Kong makes a particularly good example for Rogers' secondary points because of its well-documented problematic approaches to race and gender. [End Page 646] King Kong has frequently been interpreted as a colonialist fantasy of racialized male sexuality, while Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) is the white female object of desire. Rear projection's multiplied screens meant Fay Wray performed separately from the Kong puppet. Yet final composited images showed them inhabiting the same space, even touching. As such, rear projection both encouraged and precluded Kong and Ann's embrace and thus miscegenation itself, uncovering how effects technologies buttressed damaging American ideologies.

In the bulk of the book, Rogers looks to mainstream exhibition practice between 1926 and the very early 1940s. There, she finds abundant evidence that a "logic of proliferating surfaces" was nascent long before digital histories tend to credit (p. 62). Early—and generally failed—attempts at widescreen are given due attention, as are the Trans-Lux theaters, which relied on rear projection at the moment of exhibition to showcase news-reels in illuminated theaters. Deep dives into the multiscreen structures of theaters like the Los Angeles and the RKO Roxy support Rogers's assertion that screens not only served to keep spectators stilled and quiet. They also facilitated movement through and around the theater building, generally for concession sales.

A turn toward the "extratheatrical" (following Haidee Wasson) in the last chapter turns the book's argument in a surprising direction: toward the connections between filmic and televisual watching. Rather than maintain stringent medium specificity, Rogers...

审核人：

• 在屏幕上：显示动态影像，1926-1942 年，阿里尔·罗杰斯 (Ariel Rogers)
• Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece（生物）

在屏幕上：显示动态图像，1926-1942年，阿里尔·罗杰斯着。纽约：哥伦比亚大学出版社，2020 年。Pp。320.

对于大多数电影史来说，主流电影院的屏幕是一个单一的对象，尽管它构成了设备最重要的部分。正如电影历史和理论的经典所坚持的那样，统一的观众凝视着一个单一的屏幕，让他们沉浸其中。根据这种标准的叙述，一旦数字时代呼啸而过，屏幕就会激增，而观众的注意力就会分散。然而，正如阿里尔·罗杰斯 (Ariel Rogers) 在其研究无可挑剔的著作《屏幕上：显示移动图像，1926-1942》中巧妙地展示的那样，这与其说是历史真相，不如说是回避了大量物质证据的方法的残余。罗杰斯出现的空间配置证明了“漫长的 1930 年代”中屏幕的合成方法，该方法重视灵活性、透明度、同步性和移动性。通过在好莱坞电影制片厂、戏剧技术和家庭投影中的特殊效果——尤其是背投，之前拍摄的镜头被投射到在镜头前表演的现场演员身后的屏幕上，罗杰斯追溯了多个屏幕的开始，所以近一个世纪前，当美国经济低谷遇到生产和展览实验的顶峰时，似乎不太可能诞生。

1930 年代特效技术的主要发展之一是卓越的合成方法。在 20 世纪早期，可以通过相机内解决方案或原始光学打印机实现合成镜头，或涉及至少在两个不同场合拍摄并随后合成在一起的图像。但在 1930 年代初期，RKO 的 Linwood Dunn 为 Acme-Dunn 光学打印机申请了专利。它确保了更平滑的组合——或者，正如罗杰斯所定义的那样，多个合成图像。邓恩 (Dunn) 的成就帮助创作了大获成功的《金刚》(King Kong) 中许多最令人难忘的图像（Merian C. Cooper 和 Ernest Schoedsack，1933 年），微型背投也是如此，它以让定格木偶与 Fay Wray 等现场演员出现在同一空间而闻名。金刚的屏幕——光学打印机的多个屏幕、动画桌上展示微型演员的醋酸纤维素屏幕，或者它让观众敬畏的戏剧屏幕——构成了罗杰斯论证的路线图。对于罗杰斯来说，明显的凝聚力是多个屏幕同时运行的产物。

Kong为罗杰斯的次要观点做了一个特别好的例子，因为它有充分记录的关于种族和性别的问题方法。[第646页结束]金刚经常被解释为种族化男性性行为的殖民主义幻想，而安达罗（Fay Wray）是白人女性的欲望对象。背投的倍增屏幕意味着 Fay Wray 与金刚木偶分开表演。然而，最终的合成图像显示它们居住在同一个空间，甚至相互接触。因此，背投既鼓励又排除了 Kong 和 Ann 的拥抱，从而阻止了通婚本身，揭示了技术如何支持破坏性的美国意识形态。

在本书的大部分内容中，罗杰斯着眼于 1926 年至 1940 年代初期的主流展览实践。在那里，她发现了大量证据表明，“增殖表面的逻辑”早在数字历史趋于可信之前就已经萌芽了（第 62 页）。早期——而且通常都失败了——宽银幕的尝试得到了应有的关注，Trans-Lux 影院也是如此，它们在展览时依靠背投在照明影院中展示新闻卷轴。深入了解洛杉矶和 RKO Roxy 等剧院的多屏幕结构支持罗杰斯的断言，即屏幕不仅可以让观众保持安静。他们还促进了剧院大楼内和周围的移动，通常用于特许销售。

在最后一章中转向“剧院外”（跟随海蒂·沃森）将本书的论点转向一个令人惊讶的方向：转向电影和电视观看之间的联系。罗杰斯并没有保持严格的培养基特异性，而是...