Paul Fischer (A Kim Jong-Il Production) is a meticulous writer, screenwriter and film producer known for dismantling the secretive worlds of true-crime stories. In The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, Fischer probes the life of Louis Le Prince, a struggling independent inventor largely lost to history, who, in 1888, first captured moving images of his family, and later secured patents in four countries for his innovation. But, in 1890, one month prior to unveiling his brainchild far and wide, Louis visited his estranged brother in Dijon, France. At the reunion of these now middle-aged siblings, Louis, with fervent passion and zeal, shared details about his creation and how he believed motion pictures "could alter the course of humankind" and "revolutionize the human experience, as drastically as the railroad and the telephone." After their visit, Louis set off to take an express train back to Paris, en route to the U.S., but somewhere between Dijon and Paris, he vanished and was never seen again.
His disappearance was never solved, but his devoted,
long-suffering wife spent the remainder of her days trying to prove her husband
had been kidnapped and killed--all arranged by Thomas Alva Edison, who she
claimed stole his invention and, in 1894, launched it as his own. Edison
claimed that his Kinetoscope technology marked the birth of motion pictures.
With a spellbinding presentation supported by painstaking research, Fischer puts forth evidence to try to unravel the mystery of Le Prince's life and death. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures is a work of art unto itself.
Simon and Schuster, $28.99
hardcover, 9781982114824, 416 pages
Publication Date: April
19, 2022
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NOTE: This
review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf
Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 19, 2022), link HERE
To read the longer form of this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (February 15, 2022), link HERE
