Focussed on the body in motion within the space of the film frame, Jonathan Auerbach's book offers a reconsideration of cinema during its first decade (1893–1904). A period marked by experimentation and variety, Auerbach argues that “early filmmaking makes manifest a rhetoric of the human form, turning the body itself into an expressive medium.” Body Shots seeks to formulate an alternative conceptual framework which places the film frame and the body within it at centre stage rather than the audience or exhibition practices, and is thus in dialogue with apparatus theorists and more recent “cinema of attractions” scholars such as Tom Gunning, whose work is discussed in detail. In constructing his argument Auerbach uses close textual analysis of the films themselves and considers them in the light of the writings of American pragmatist philosophers and social psychologists from the turn of the twentieth century, such as William James, James Mark Baldwin and George Herbert Mead.

Auerbach's discussion focusses on a small selection of generally well-known films, organized into five sections: the first considers footage of the life and death of William McKinley and examines the role of the new film medium in the formation of a public sphere; the second looks at the relationship between ordinary people and the camera in public and reflects on how film makes people acutely aware of their bodies; the third section, styled as an “Interlude,” looks at the “kinetics of vocalization – moving mouths and lips,” and charts the relationship between sound and silent cinema; and the final two sections consider the rise of narrative film, first in chase movies (generally judged key to the development of cause-and-effect narrative) and secondly in Edwin S. Porter's “Life of an American Fireman,” concluding that it is not so much narrative which is the ordering principle in these early multi-shot films as bodies moving through space.

What gives this study its critical edge is Auerbach's precise and detailed close readings and his skilful situating of his discussion within contemporary intellectual history. These elements alert the reader to Auerbach's own background as a literary scholar and this approach helps open up the subject matter to a wider audience beyond film studies, as the materials and method have much to offer scholars interested in 1890s American culture more generally. However, the study's originality does prove challenging at times, as its methodology results in a number of stylistic shifts. For example, the historically contextualized discussion of McKinley is noticeably different in style and tone from the more conceptual and esoteric discussion of “the vocal gesture” in the Interlude. Yet, as the Interlude makes clear, Auerbach takes pains to look backwards at where cinema came from, for example the phonograph, rather than adopting a teleological approach which sees cinema history as a straight line towards the codes and conventions of classic Hollywood cinema. It is Auerbach's desire to offer readings of the paths not taken that form the study's most important contribution. An engaging and thought-provoking study, Body Shots, by focussing on the body in motion, ultimately helps to remind us of the powerful centrality of experimentation and hybridity at the heart of early cinema.