The Cinema of Attractions Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde

Writing in 1922, flushed with the excitement of seeing Abel Gance’s La Roue, Fernand Léger tried to define something of the radical possibilities of the cinema. The potential of the new art did not lie in ‘imitating the movements of nature’ or in ‘the mistaken path’ of its resemblance to theatre. It