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The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century
The Phantom Empire is a brilliant, daring, and utterly original book that analyzes (even as it exemplifies) the effect that the image saturation of a hundred years of moving pictures have had on human culture and consciousness.
In his intense and mysterious evocation of (seemingly) every kind of movie ever made, Geoffrey O'Brien erases the distinction between spectator and commentator and virtually reinvents film writing in our time.
In his intense and mysterious evocation of (seemingly) every kind of movie ever made, Geoffrey O'Brien erases the distinction between spectator and commentator and virtually reinvents film writing in our time.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 29, 2020
New York poet, Geoffrey O'Brien has written an intense, personal and compelling book about film that it slightly outdated but still great fun to read. His film imagery is astounding. I especially enjoyed his insights into our film watching and how it has changed our society. The book is original and interesting. Five stars.
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September 15, 2007Imagine if Don Delillo (in Cosmopolis mode) were to write a prose poem in the style of Sans Soleil about the overpowering cultural effects of movies on their spectators, and you’d have a rough idea of what O’Brien’s dizzying head-trip of a book is like. With boundless metaphors and descriptive language that bombards you to the point that at times one forgets what’s even being described, it’s an uncontainable, visionary work that is very easy to read and very difficult to take specific ideas away from – everything flows together but seems impossible to summarize or pin down. It’s a book in which the stylish writing itself seems to carry the meaning; the book washes over you just like The Movies that O’Brien waxes poetic over.
July 25, 2020
This is a unique book — a fluid meditation on our collective experience of the movies.
Geoffrey O’Brien is a poet, and his book gives us an experience rather than an argument or a collection of facts. You have to give in to it and just let him go where he’s going.
The effect, for me anyway, is to provoke my own thinking about the movies and what their part in our lives is. Movies came along as something very different in our experience — different from live theater, different from novels, different from radio, even different from the experience of television that came later. You go into a darkened theater and, if you’re lucky and not distracted, you lose yourself in the movie. For an hour or two, or sometimes more, the movie is reality. What you see and hear genuinely affects you and may change you.
From the standpoint of the creature evolution built us to be, experiencing a movie is a strange thing. Our senses give us the experience of a reality that is not here or now and in which we cannot act or have effect. The whole point is to fool your senses and your mind into living in a world that isn’t “really” there.
But only for a time. And then you’re left to somehow make your experience in the world of the movie part of your experience in the real world. A movie that really affects us becomes part of our lives. We don’t leave it in the theater.
Although he doesn’t follow a timeline, O’Brien takes us through the history of movies from the days of D.W. Griffith and George Méliès to Stanley Kubrick and George Miller. But he doesn’t really focus in on how the movies have changed over time — the current of his writing is really how the movies have changed us, become not just another thing in our culture but a substantive part of modern life.
That said, he does visit the different genres of the movies — the western, film noir, suspense, horror, and all the other genres and sub-genres. What’s interesting to me in his repeat trips through the movies and genres is the blurring between our lives and the movies we watch. Our experiences in horror movies or suspense movies are part of our “real lives.
And it’s a two way street. Different genres arrive at different times in our collective lives — film noir in the forties, science fiction in the fifties, spy and secret agent movies in the seventies, . . . And they appeal to us at different parts of our own lives as well — maybe we were horror movie fans as teenagers, fans of suspense or mysteries later, and maybe historical drama later still.
And different genres have their unique characteristics in our experience.
Horror movies compel us to watch them. We are drawn to them even against our better judgement, and then they reward us with the reminder that everything normal is just a veneer over everything threatening, like a murderer stalking us on summer days or our Dr. Jekyll ready to burst out of our Mr. Hyde.
Movies can even double back on themselves to give us an experience of our experience of movies. O’Brien dwells for a chapter on the “Italian system” in which movies were made up of and about movies, like a commentary on themselves or an alternative world in which everything was predictable because it had all been done before in other movies. That the movies’ plots and scenarios were unoriginal even seems to have been the point, that we experience what our experience of the movies is.
The book was written well before the Trump presidency, and O’Brien was free to imagine that Ronald Reagan’s presidency was a culmination of advanced interplay between the movies and reality. He hadn’t seen what happens when the presidency is occupied by a character from “reality” television. I would love to know how the Trump presidency fits into the view he developed here (I did search for anything in his more recent writing but didn’t find anything like what I was looking for — maybe other readers can find something interesting).
In the final chapter, O’Brien repeats the reminder, “It’s only a movie,” several times. But what does that mean? I think there is irony in his reciting the line, and it comes back to the theme I began with. Movies are real. During the movie, it is reality itself, in the dark theater. The experiences we have had are real, not just “movie real” but “real” — we were scared during Alien, tormented during The Deer Hunter, and amazed during 2001. And the era of movies, beginning in the twentieth century, changed what life is for us.
Geoffrey O’Brien is a poet, and his book gives us an experience rather than an argument or a collection of facts. You have to give in to it and just let him go where he’s going.
The effect, for me anyway, is to provoke my own thinking about the movies and what their part in our lives is. Movies came along as something very different in our experience — different from live theater, different from novels, different from radio, even different from the experience of television that came later. You go into a darkened theater and, if you’re lucky and not distracted, you lose yourself in the movie. For an hour or two, or sometimes more, the movie is reality. What you see and hear genuinely affects you and may change you.
From the standpoint of the creature evolution built us to be, experiencing a movie is a strange thing. Our senses give us the experience of a reality that is not here or now and in which we cannot act or have effect. The whole point is to fool your senses and your mind into living in a world that isn’t “really” there.
But only for a time. And then you’re left to somehow make your experience in the world of the movie part of your experience in the real world. A movie that really affects us becomes part of our lives. We don’t leave it in the theater.
Although he doesn’t follow a timeline, O’Brien takes us through the history of movies from the days of D.W. Griffith and George Méliès to Stanley Kubrick and George Miller. But he doesn’t really focus in on how the movies have changed over time — the current of his writing is really how the movies have changed us, become not just another thing in our culture but a substantive part of modern life.
That said, he does visit the different genres of the movies — the western, film noir, suspense, horror, and all the other genres and sub-genres. What’s interesting to me in his repeat trips through the movies and genres is the blurring between our lives and the movies we watch. Our experiences in horror movies or suspense movies are part of our “real lives.
And it’s a two way street. Different genres arrive at different times in our collective lives — film noir in the forties, science fiction in the fifties, spy and secret agent movies in the seventies, . . . And they appeal to us at different parts of our own lives as well — maybe we were horror movie fans as teenagers, fans of suspense or mysteries later, and maybe historical drama later still.
And different genres have their unique characteristics in our experience.
Horror movies compel us to watch them. We are drawn to them even against our better judgement, and then they reward us with the reminder that everything normal is just a veneer over everything threatening, like a murderer stalking us on summer days or our Dr. Jekyll ready to burst out of our Mr. Hyde.
Movies can even double back on themselves to give us an experience of our experience of movies. O’Brien dwells for a chapter on the “Italian system” in which movies were made up of and about movies, like a commentary on themselves or an alternative world in which everything was predictable because it had all been done before in other movies. That the movies’ plots and scenarios were unoriginal even seems to have been the point, that we experience what our experience of the movies is.
The book was written well before the Trump presidency, and O’Brien was free to imagine that Ronald Reagan’s presidency was a culmination of advanced interplay between the movies and reality. He hadn’t seen what happens when the presidency is occupied by a character from “reality” television. I would love to know how the Trump presidency fits into the view he developed here (I did search for anything in his more recent writing but didn’t find anything like what I was looking for — maybe other readers can find something interesting).
In the final chapter, O’Brien repeats the reminder, “It’s only a movie,” several times. But what does that mean? I think there is irony in his reciting the line, and it comes back to the theme I began with. Movies are real. During the movie, it is reality itself, in the dark theater. The experiences we have had are real, not just “movie real” but “real” — we were scared during Alien, tormented during The Deer Hunter, and amazed during 2001. And the era of movies, beginning in the twentieth century, changed what life is for us.
March 5, 2008
O'Brien's weird and wonderful reflection on Movies and how it mixes in with other aspects of popular culture. When I read this I felt like I was smoking opium.
August 6, 2023
What were the impressions of the public who went to the movies regularly during the golden era of Hollywood? How did it influence their lives or how they viewed the world? How have the movies of the 20th century shape our culture and our consciousness? These questions are at the heart of Geoffrey O'Brien's fascinating book "The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century." In his book O'Brien traces the history of the movies and its impact on us as viewers not through dates, historical figures or events but through evoking the feelings, memories and emotions we have experienced by watching movies. Therefore, the book is not necessarily a linear history of film, but a long form poem or monologue that touches on virtually every type of film ever made.
This different approach might not be for everyone, but I found it original and unique from every other film book I have ever read. O'Brien's descriptions of emotions and knowledge developed from a lifetime of watching movies are very thought provoking causing me to analyze my own experience as a moviegoer. I particularly enjoyed the section on horror films which really captured the appeal these movies have had over time. At the end of the book, there is a list of the films O'Brien cites in the book which is helpful to look up some of the references that I did not get while reading. The book is an interesting and challenging look at the influence of movies in the 20th century that puts the reader in an almost dream like state. Cinephiles looking for a different analysis of film history will want to seek out this book.
This different approach might not be for everyone, but I found it original and unique from every other film book I have ever read. O'Brien's descriptions of emotions and knowledge developed from a lifetime of watching movies are very thought provoking causing me to analyze my own experience as a moviegoer. I particularly enjoyed the section on horror films which really captured the appeal these movies have had over time. At the end of the book, there is a list of the films O'Brien cites in the book which is helpful to look up some of the references that I did not get while reading. The book is an interesting and challenging look at the influence of movies in the 20th century that puts the reader in an almost dream like state. Cinephiles looking for a different analysis of film history will want to seek out this book.
July 6, 2015
Incredible writing combined with a unique worldview make this a very fun read. This book will not be for everyone as the movies sited and the authors style will be foreign to many folks. He is high octane with a beat generation like energy and has a Hunter Thompson/Jack Kerouac hybrid vibe that electrifies the pages for me. I enjoy the author's premise that posits our culture is directly linked to our movies and the depth is not superficial. Highly recommended for obtaining what is clearly a perspective that broadens one's world view and allows some very interesting contemplation as to how the big screen impacts culture.
June 4, 2025
This is a unique book, an original foray into a personal, post-modern sort of film and cultural criticism. O'Brien blends personal recollection, snippets of film history from around the world, brief descriptions of shots and lines of dialogue from actual films, and critical insights regarding the film audience into a seamless (well, almost seamless) whole. Not only does he succeed in doing this, but there is a key idea underlying and supporting his method: that the vast store of imagery which the international cinema has created now functions as a kind of collective unconscious. All of us who grew up spending countless hours watching movies are participants in and seriously influenced by the international film culture. (One weakness is the relative lack of attention O'Brien pays to television shows, which most people spend more time watching than movies.) This is certainly one of my favorite works of criticism.
September 18, 2020
A dreamlike history of film light on industry jargon but heavy on allusion and bookish prose. Some may find it too pretentious and navel gazing but O’Brien’s internalization of the medium and how it affects personal & cultural memory scans with mine and as a result, I find the book endlessly fascinating with numerous citable passages to back up my admiration. Leans heavy on the Walter Benjamin theories of aura and art reproduction, but is a more populist critique than a straightforward Marxist critique. I think this is to its strength as it trades academic jargon-heavy language out for a waxy and penetrating style of writing. It loses itself in the weeds sometimes but it’s better to get lost in some new kudzu than your average garden variety weeds.
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January 6, 2021A strange book that flowed through my mind like water: nourishing, enthralling, and refreshing as it past, but at the same time fleeting. I had a surprisingly difficult time grasping hold of any of the thoughts or conclusions presented within for more than the moment they existed in front of me on the page, but I marveled at them while they did.
Maybe one day I'll sit down with this thing and read it through without pause.
Maybe one day I'll sit down with this thing and read it through without pause.
October 30, 2024
Devil’s in the details (and in the ghosts of personal filmic archives) !!!!!!
(The most Paul Auster coded film criticism I’ve ever read)
(The most Paul Auster coded film criticism I’ve ever read)
November 14, 2015
"You new children enjoyed, without remotely realizing it, a privilege none of your ancestors could savor: to look at the movies your parents watched, the movies your grandparents watched, and by that secretive gaze to appropriate the childhoods of the people who gave birth to you. You could even try (and it was one of the more delicate educational exercises the world afforded you) to grasp the muted sorrow of the grown-ups at seeing Gable and Garbo young, and Leslie Howard and Carole Lombard alive."
Starts off like the cinephile equivalent to the opening chapters of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - a child learning a sense of self and the world through movies and other boxed-off world analogs - picture books, television, Bazooka Joe wrappers. Moves through the century to the point where the barrage of film and video we're now immersed in make life a endlessly self-referential dream, and where actual dreams are so cinematic that our mental directing and editing skills make film seem less like a technological innovation and more like an inevitable evolutionary end, a realization of what was already innate.
Fantastic book, and unlike any other film writing I've ever read. Now, to spend the rest of the afternoon reading all of O'Brien's Criterion liner note essays...
Starts off like the cinephile equivalent to the opening chapters of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - a child learning a sense of self and the world through movies and other boxed-off world analogs - picture books, television, Bazooka Joe wrappers. Moves through the century to the point where the barrage of film and video we're now immersed in make life a endlessly self-referential dream, and where actual dreams are so cinematic that our mental directing and editing skills make film seem less like a technological innovation and more like an inevitable evolutionary end, a realization of what was already innate.
Fantastic book, and unlike any other film writing I've ever read. Now, to spend the rest of the afternoon reading all of O'Brien's Criterion liner note essays...
June 20, 2009
Intriguing, poetic, and psychological rumination on movies. Need to read it again, as it's been a decade.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews