Bo Florin

Advertising has played a central role in shaping the history of modern media. While often identified with American consumerism and the rise of the 'Information Society', motion picture advertising has been part of European visual culture since the late nineteenth century. With the global spread of ad agencies, moving image advertisements became a privileged cultural form to make people experience the qualities and uses of branded commodities, to articulate visions of a 'good life', and to incite social relationships. Abandoning a conventional delineation of fields by medium, country, or period, this book suggests a lateral view. It charts the audiovisual history of advertising by focussing on objects (products and services), screens (exhibition, programming, physical media), practices (production, marketing), and intermediaries (ad agencies). In this way, the book develops new historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.

From the Introduction:"There are certainly enough ingredients to fire imagination: a director [Mauritz Stiller] who had just finished a masterpiece [Gösta Berlings Saga]; a leading lady, the directors protégée, becoming known through his film [Greta Garbo]; a Russian exile with an extraordinary true story to tell [Vladimir Semitjov]; a film company with a spectacular big budget production in Egypt on its track record [Trianon Film AG]; an extravagant hotel in Constantinople, in a setting bridging East and West, poverty and luxury, set against the background of the recent Russian revolution; a heated quarrel on intellectual property rights; a film crew in distress, left by their director on Christmas Eve as luck had turned; The End." No film, but a rediscovered manuscript A Tale from Constantinople written by Mauritz Stiller and Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius, here published for the first time with an introduction and two contextualising essays.