THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS.

WRITERS AND THEIR FANTASTIC VISION OF CINEMA (1900-1940)

Abstract

Since the appearance of cinema at the end of the 19th century, writers of that time established a particular relationship with the new art. Fluctuating between rejection and admiration, many of them developed reflections on its “magical” or “fantastic” nature, on its closeness to theater and literature, and on the changes sound would entail, decades later. With the first avant-garde movements, concerns about film nature reached new directions in the texts of various authors, integrating the phenomenon into writing itself and thus reaching a new artistic stage capable of reflecting Modernity. The visions on the essence of the new invention and its links with literature alternated with the romantic conceptions of cinema as a fantasmatic extension of reality. In this article some of these considerations will be analysed, in order to show the different positions that those writers had about cinema.