A Social History of Iranian Cinema Volume 1: The Artisanal Era, 1897-1941 by Hamid Naficy, and: Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941-1978 by Hamid Naficy, and: Volume 3: The Islamicate Period, 1978-1984 by Hamid Naficy, and: Volume 4: The Globalizing Era, 1984-2010 by Hamid Naficy (review)

For decades, the prevailing images of Iran have consisted of blindfolded American hostages, fist-pumping mobs burning American flags, and finger-wagging ayatollahs calling for death to the “Great Satan.” Of late, footage of centrifuges spinning uranium to apocalyptic purity have complemented the montage. But all the while, other visions of Iran, cinematic ones, have struggled for international exposure, contending—at times, unsuccessfully—with censorship, war, and indifference. Hundreds of Iranian actors, writers, directors and cameramen have given their lives so that their films might be screened at international festivals, purchased in small markets run by far-flung compatriots in exile, and downloaded from the Internet. The works of these professionals have been revelatory, controversial, inspiring, often beautiful, and above all, diverse. In A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Hamid Naficy surveys over a century of moving images from his native land and its diaspora, placing each film in its social, political, historic, religious, and aesthetic contexts with the love and meticulousness of a master jeweler setting precious stones.

The first volume opens with a disarming preface—appropriately entitled, “How It All Began”—that delineates the author’s personal, lifelong interest in all things cinematic. Naficy describes his massive study as a “cultural autobiography about [his] contentious love affair—and that of other Iranians—with cinema, Iran, and the West” (xxix). The reader quickly sees why. As a child, Naficy roamed the historic streets of Isfahan with a Kodak Brownie camera, later capturing family outings with a 35mm Agfa camera procured from (then) West Germany by the father of a blind friend. When not omnivorously taking in Hollywood and Soviet feature films at local theaters, he learned to build his own projector from scratch. At nine years of age he wrote critiques of U.S. government documentaries. Illustrated with family photos, freehand portraits on school notepaper, and even an image of the teenage Naficy assuming a movie-star pose, complete with pompadour and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. pencil moustache, these recollections lend a Barthean tone that resonates wistfully throughout the hundreds of pages and three volumes that follow.

Iranian cinema, Naficy observes, began with the screening of an actuality in 1900 (in Belgium) by the court photographer to the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, fifth king of Persia, during a European excursion. Qajar era cinema, which lasted until the dynasty’s overthrow in 1925, was, the author relates, a “cottage industry driven by a few importers and exhibitors, with ad hoc sponsorship by the royal court, the local elite, or the great powers,” without support from an “enabling infrastructure in the form of studios, labs, acting schools, and chain cinemas” (30). As a result, early Iranian cinema was largely artisanal. That is, one and the same man (Iranian cinema in the beginning was almost exclusively a male affair) frequently served as writer, actor, producer, director, distributor, and promoter. When this staffing arrangement proved inadequate, a filmmaker hired family members.

Iranian spectators in these early days enjoyed countless imported French, British, German, American, and Russian trick films, primitive narratives, and actualities. Not until 1929, when Ovanes Ohanians screened Iran’s first feature film, could they “narrate their individual stories or express their cultural and national aspirations in the...