Do contemporary big-budget blockbuster films like Gravity move something in us that is fundamentally the same as what avant-garde and experimental films have done for more than a century? In a powerful challenge to mainstream film theory, Cinema s Bodily Illusions demonstrates that this is the case.

Scott C. Richmond bridges genres and periods by focusing, most palpably, on cinema s power to evoke illusions: feeling like you re flying through space, experiencing 3D without glasses, or even hallucinating. He argues that cinema is, first and foremost, a technology to...