Charting key films from the past hundred years, along with technological developments and historical landmarks, Francine Stock explores in compelling detail the nature of our relationship with film - from the first screenings of the Lumiere Brothers' short films, which saw audiences shrinking from oncoming trains, to the perception-altering 3-D Avatar. The twenties saw the birth of celebrity, still so influential even today. With the influence of Freud and the unconscious came film noir, anticipated by dark European classics like La Bete Humaine; Hollywood in the fifties turned ideological fears into lurid sci-fi and body-snatching horror; with the social change of the sixties came refracted ways of seeing, from Alfie to theStargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey or a compelling seventies nightmares like Carrie. Moving towards our own century, Francine Stock considers how film reflects back on itself, bending time and technology to look to the future. More than a century on from those earliest awe-inspiring images, we are still in thrall to the power of film. In this fascinating, entertaining and illuminating book Francine Stock shows how film both reflects and remakes our world.