A Triumph of Shadows, by Harry Ringel

I'm probably the only one in the horror community who reviewed Harry Ringel's The Phantom of Skid Row. I'm probably the only one who even read it. More's the pity.

Ringel isn't a hip, sexy author on the trendy indie circuit. His work isn't extreme, explicit, or transgressive. He's not part of the Stoker Club. In fact, he doesn't seem very cool at all. At least not by the accepted standards of authordumb.

The Phantom of Skid Row is an old fashioned story that could have been published in the mid nineteen sixties. It's a story of a young man, consumed with love for the cinema, who gets a job in a run-down inner city theater. There is a ghost, well, sort of and maybe there's one, but the supernatural aspects of this excellent novel are secondary. It's mostly about the abiding love of movies and how the industry always changes.

I looked very forward to a followup from Ringel, and it's finally here. A Triumph of Shadows is about the dawn of the movies. A time when Nickelodeons and vaudeville shows were disappearing. A story about an emerging new art form that would transform the way everyone looks at entertainment.

Sam Yanoff is a Jewish Russian emigrant who fled his home country after his parents are killed by police thugs. A young man, Yanoff had a knack for repairing machinery. He find work in America, and eventually opens his own shop. Yet Yanoff is fascinated by the burgeoning art of photography.

The earliest forms of motion picture entertainment were crude wind-up gadgets that sped still illustrations to give the illusion of motion. Earliest films were merely a minute or two long, with simple images. People were fascinated by any form of moving photography, or living pictures as they were called.

Industrious visionaries began to imagine stories being told with the new medium. in the beginning they were scoffed at. Who would sit still for ten minutes to watch something? It's a long way from there to the three hour opuses were routinely see today.

Some decried the very notion of storytelling by film. They felt too much detail spoiled the purity of motion photography. Experimentalists treated the form like surrealist art.

Obviously the field of film grew to glorious heights. Distributors came into the picture. There were betrayals, strongarm tactics, bribes, and upheavals. As always, the money people ended up on top. Same as it ever was.

Sam Yanoff was instrumental in the evolution of movie distribution and the first movies theaters as they came to be known. An honest man with resolute principles, he was left behind in favor of legendary names like Fox, Leow, Zukor, and Laemmle.

Yanoff is a fictional character, but Harry Ringel uses historical figures like the ones above to bring historical accuracy to A Triumph of Shadows. The amount of research he did for this novel is impressive. It's completely believable. I took the time to fact check various situations in the book and it's all accurate.

I do recommend A Triumph of Shadows to anyone who loves the movies and is interested in its roots. Unfortunately, I don't feel it's as good a book as is The Phantom of Skid Row. Sam Yanoff, his wife Rose, and their son Bernie aren't drawn as vividly as the people in Skid Row.

So definitely, if you're of a mind to do so, read The Phantom of Skid Row. Should you like the novel, by all means read A Triumph of Shadows. Then, like me, you may be interested in learning more about the subject.

My knowledge of silent movies is limited to comedy shorts, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a few other odds and ends. I'm looking around to find more to watch. There's a whole world of material out there to discover.

Written by Mark Sieber