An epic complete story with well fleshed out players.
Excellent. ( )

In 1962, Claude Ballard lives in a once-fashionable Los Angeles residential hotel, among old film containers and equipment and memories of a difficult, yet stimulating, past. A long-forgotten (fictional) film director whose magnum opus was The Electric Hotel, shown only once, in 1910, Claude lives out his days taking neighborhood walks with camera in hand and keeping a benevolent eye on a neighbor, a former silent film star whose memory and understanding of her surroundings often desert her.

Into Claude’s quiet, measured existence wanders Martin Embry, an academic field historian writing his dissertation, who takes one look at the director’s apartment and wants to know if the celluloid in those canisters has been developed and preserved. Actually, he takes one whiff and realizes they haven’t, for the decomposing film gives off a strong odor, like vinegar, which Claude has never noticed.

That shocks him and makes him more receptive when Martin tries to persuade him to loan him the films that can still be salvaged in the laboratory. Just as important, he coaxes the hermit to recount his life story; it’s as though Claude suddenly realizes that he’s been gathering dust and doesn’t have to.

And what a story, from a lonely youth in Alsace — Claude’s French, by birth — in which his mother died of smallpox when he was quite young. Claude nearly succumbs himself, and afterward, when his vision falters — “the edges of objects began to slowly quake and fringe” — the village doctor sends him to a specialist.
That’s exactly the same impression Claude has when, years later in Paris, he watches the first moving pictures of his life. The Lumière brothers, pioneers known today mostly to ardent cinephiles, create minute-long films of everyday life — a bus traveling down the street, people in a crowd.

From that moment, Claude knows his life mission. Not only does he want to learn about and make films, he wants to see and record life the way the Lumières do. A shy, withdrawn person who expects no one to notice him, for him, this is true adventure.

The Electric Hotel requires a reader’s patience, for the narrative takes a while to get places, portraying Claude’s career, associates, and obsessive love for Sabine Montrose, a French actress who stars in his films. But every time I asked myself if I really wanted to continue reading, once I started, I got lost in the story. It’s not just the writing, which often leaps off the page. Nor is it the fascinating detail about making movies back in the old days--and Smith means old, before any of the silent-film stars commonly discussed today got their start (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Mary Pickford, to name a few).

The tale of how Claude and his friends film The Electric Hotel, which occupies the bulk of the novel, involves a Siberian tiger, a dirigible, an impossible leading lady, and a cameo appearance by a grasping, self-involved Thomas Edison. Equally important, the novel portrays a forgotten time and place.

As always, people crave novelty, wish to be entertained, even to be shocked. But after they see Claude’s films, they may resent them afterward, because their attraction to the images tells them something about themselves they’d have preferred not to know.

So too with Claude, who tries to hide behind the camera, even into old age, to avoid facing his past. But the past never leaves — it’s all there, whether on celluloid or in meaning—and he’s a casualty.

Most of the characters come through fully, at least the important ones; other than Claude and Sabine, I particularly like Chip Spalding, the Australian stunt man who covers himself with grease and sets himself on fire.

However, several lesser figures remain faceless, and I wish the narrative had paid more attention to them, rather than include certain sequences that contribute very little. I especially wonder about a long First World War segment in Belgium, which, though well told, seems utterly superfluous (and bears little resemblance to any historical facts I know, or even possibilities)
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Nevertheless, The Electric Hotel may beguile as a tale of a bygone era, evoking passionate excitement over a way of seeing that hadn’t existed before—and which we now take for granted. ( )

In 1962, fictional silent film pioneer Claude Ballard, now in his eighties and living in a dilapidated Hollywood hotel, is sought out by a young man writing his dissertation on the history of early movies. The storyline covers Ballard’s eventful life, including his medical photography, creation of films to promote the Lumière brothers’ cinématographe, infatuation with an actress, production of The Electric Hotel, and involvement in capturing images of the Great War. It focuses on an ensemble of characters whose personal and professional interactions drive the plot.

This strength of this book lies in its vivid depiction of the history of the early silent film industry. The narrative covers the precursors to today’s Hollywood, from its initial short action scenes to full-length movies. It allows the reader to get a feel for what life was like in the early days of cinema, how audiences initially reacted, and the tendency toward sensationalism.

Though the pacing is a bit uneven and there are a few minor anachronisms, the multiple storylines are well-integrated. Sensitive readers may want to be aware that the book contains animal cruelty and graphic scenes of war-related atrocities. It will appeal to readers interested in the history of filmmaking.
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The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith is an evocative richly detailed story of the earliest days of filmmaking featuring pivotal encounters with historic figures such as the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison while taking place in prominent historic film centers of yesterday and today including Paris, Australia, New York, New Jersey, and of course Hollywood. The story begins in the Hollywood in the early sixties when a young academic tracks down Claude Ballard to ask what became of him and his legendary lost film The Electric Hotel. After some persuading Claude decides to tell the whole story starting with his days in Paris as a photographer supporting his sister slowly dying of consumption when his life was upended in 1895 in the basement of a Paris hotel. "When Claude recalled seeing those first Lumiere reels"..."he closed his eyes and smelled the warming nitrates of the celluloid." Transformed by the experience Claude signs up to be a cameraman representative of the Lumiere Brothers both creating new views, as he calls the brief early films, and exhibiting them while promoting the Lumiere products. With his sister's encouragement Claude captures on film her last breath as she dies before his camera. Claude's travels eventually take him to New York where he will first encounter his future business partner, a youngster on the make, Hal Bender, and his muse, "who would later maul him like a tiger", actress Sabine Montrose and as "Claude would say, the genesis of our troubled moviemaking family." Claude comes to Sabine's attention when her performance as Hamlet is disrupted by applause for Claude's film views being projected in an adjacent part of the theater. Claude is invited to Sabine's hotel to screen his film views in private for her and her colleagues. This leads to a night together that will transform Claude's emotional life and affect both of them in the future. After agreeing to share thirty percent of the proceeds Claude captures a view of Sabine as she gracefully rises out of a bubble bath before departing for Australia. First we learn about Hal Bender as he hustles for his family amusement parlor in Brooklyn that doubles as the home and support of himself, his younger brothers, and mother in the wake of their father's death. In Australia Chip Spaulding becomes the final member introduced in the "troubled moviemaking family" when Claude films the young daredevil taking a fiery plunge in Sydney as part of a water amusement at the Royal Aquarium and Pleasure Grounds. Claude having recruited Chip to act as his assistant and featured performer they work their way back to America and New York City where Sabine has returned from Europe and Hal Bender is excited or organize a special show with Claude and Sabine as special guests. Author Dominic Smith then traces the troupes' growing success as Claude creates and shoots their scenarios as they grow in length and sophistication with Sabine as their star and Chip providing stunts and Hal organizing financing until they purchase land and build their own studio across the Hudson River on the Palisades of New Jersey right in the shadow of Thomas Edison and the agents who enforce his patents on motion pictures. Claude embarks on their most ambitious photoplay The Electric Hotel a multi-reel epic at an unheard of 60 minutes to be projected in a theater when the average picture was less then 20 minutes and viewed at a Nickelodeon. All this to channel Claude's frustrated romantic obsession with Sabine by having her play a murderous consumptive widow who must be destroyed. As happens with passion projects Hal finds he needs go into debt to complete the picture, against all odds, they do followed by a successful premiere with the promise of recouping their investment, when disaster strikes in the form of Edison and his patent agents. In the financial chaos that follows Sabine vanishes while Claude, Chip, and Hal stick together making what films they can while dodging financial creditors. When war breaks out in Europe the trio follow to document the events only to have their troupe sundered further as they are swept up in the horror and carnage. Resolutions will follow for all the characters, although some will not come until returning to the framing story years later in Hollywood.

Author Dominic Smith is clearly fascinated by the history of image making, as a previous novel was The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre and his development of the eponymous daguerreotype process photography, and he puts his deep research on display as he follows his characters across years as film develops as a medium from impactful images being as simple as a train arriving in a station and a couple embracing with a kiss to advances in visual narrative length and sophistication to documentary horrors of a world at war. As a New Jersey native I particularly enjoyed the central part of the story taking place at a studio on the Palisades which was used as one of the first backlots for movie making. My only quibbles are I think the framing story, which does have interesting incidents, disrupts the narrative flow plus as the viewpoint character I found Claude to be the least dynamic of the three as I think the book could have been even richer if Smith had told parts of the story from the perspectives of Sabine, Chip, and Hal. Still a wonderful voyage through the earliest years in history and development of film as a medium and an artform.

The book includes an Author's Note about the title - "The Electric Hotel is the name of a silent "trick film" made by the early Spanish director Segundo de Chomon and released as El hotel electrico in 1908." ( )

Claude Ballard was once a French pioneer when it comes to silent films. He started off working for the Lumiere brothers before he moved on to make his own short movies but his last movie The Electric Hotel bankrupted and ended his career. Now he's living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angels. And that's where a history major student comes to find and interview him. To talk about his career and this brings back memories. Claude starts to remember his past, the making of the films and most of all Sabine Montrose, his muse.

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