The Lost World at BAM

The Lost World, the 1925 film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel, was both the first feature film to make use of stop-motion animation and perhaps the first great monster movie. The cinematic dinosaurs --- which reputedly left no less an illusionist than Harry Houdini collecting his jaw from the floor --- were animated by Willis O'Brien based on the artwork of Charles Knight, whose paintings of prehistoric life count among the American Museum of Natural History's most charming treasures. Recently screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of a series of films making use of Knight's work, The Lost World continues to entertain with its romantic evocation of the last age of exploration, its endearing animal actors, and, above all, its menagerie of vanished beasts, ungainly at times but with personality practically oozing through their scales. A fantastic, standing-ovation-worthy live accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra propelled the film and helped reveal how much life still pulses through those old bones.

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