Reflecting the stimulating diversity of early cinematic styles, technologies, and narrative forms, essays address a range of topics - from the dangerous sexuality of the urban 'flâneuse' to the childlike femininity exemplified by Mary Pickford, from the Shanghai film industry to Italian diva films - looking along the way at birth-control sensation films, French crime serials, 'war actualities', and the stylistic influence of art deco. The contributors bring a number of disciplinary frameworks to bear, including not only film studies but also postcolonial studies, dance scholarship, literary analysis, philosophies of the body, and theories regarding modernism and postmodernism.