This work revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. The author treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.

"Best moving pictures I ever saw." Thus did one Vaudeville theater manager describe Georges Melies's A Trip to the Moon Le Voyage dans la lune], after it was screened for enthusiastic audiences in October 1902. Cinema's first true blockbuster, A Trip to the Moon still inspires such superlatives and continues to be widely viewed on DVD, on the Internet, and in countless film courses. In Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, leading film scholars examine Melies's landmark film in detail, demonstrating its many crucial connecions to literature, popular culture, and visual culture of...