Dominic Smith's engaging new novel, The Electric Hotel, offers a deep dive into the history of early cinema. In the early 1960s, Claude Ballard, a retired French filmmaker, lives in a run-down hotel. When approached by a young graduate student named Martin Embry about the long-lost film masterpiece The Electric Hotel, Ballard is reluctant to revisit the past, but Embry's enthusiasm encourages Ballard to recall his role in the making of an early cinematic treasure. Then Ballard reveals that he still has a copy of the film.

A photographer's apprentice in Paris in the 1890s, Ballard was hired by the Lumière Brothers as a roaming projectionist. His travels took him as far away as Australia and America, where, in picaresque fashion, he befriended a stunt man, a French actress and the young owner of a seedy Brooklyn amusement parlor. Before long, this idiosyncratic troupe settled in the cliffs of Fort Lee, New Jersey (once a prime location for the making of American movies, hence the expression "cliffhanger"), pouring all their energy, money and talent into what Ballard refers to as the "great cinematic experiment." It will come as no surprise to readers that the making of The Electric Hotel almost destroyed the lives and careers of the four friends.

As in Smith's own masterpiece, The Last Painting of Sarah DeVos (2016), the joy in The Electric Hotel is in the getting there: the travels from Paris to New York at the very birth of cinema, the repeated run-ins with a litigious Thomas Edison and Ballard's return to Europe amid the scarring battlefields of World War I. Though an extended set piece in war-ravished Belgium feels like a slight misstep, the novel quickly gets back on track as Ballard and Embry plan for a rerelease of the restored classic.

Smith skillfully blends film history with the adventures of his intriguing crew, never losing sight of their individuality. The Electric Hotel enchants with a compelling plot but satisfies with the fully felt pathos of its characters.

Following the New York Times best-selling The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Smith imagines silent-film pioneer Claude Ballard, who began his career as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers and was eventually bankrupted by his chef d'oeuvre, The Electric Hotel. The past is reawakened when a film student comes to interview Claude in his shabby suite at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel.

The year is 1963, and silent-film director Claude Ballard is tracked down at the Los Angeles hotel where he's long lived by a PhD student writing about Claude's lost masterpiece, The Electric Hotel. Smith, who delved into art history in his previous novel, The Last Painting of Sara De Vos, does much the same for the history of early cinema this time around. Beyond that, we end up learning much more about Ballard's life, including his derring-do covering the carnage of World War I and his relationship with the love of his life, the complex and sultry actress Sabine Montrose. There's even a cameo by a most unpleasant Thomas Edison, who does his best to put a stop to Ballard's wildly successful film. Ballard's obsession with the moving image drives him throughout his journeys, and at times you want reach through the pages and give him a little shake. But he's an admirable person even if he doesn't realize it. VERDICT Smith tries to cover too much territory, but Ballard is finely rendered, and there are quite a few edge-of-your-seat moments. Recommended to fans of Graham Moore's The Last Days of Night and Amor Towles's The Gentleman from Moscow. [See Prepub Alert, 12/3/18.]—Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib., CT

Smith (The Last Painting of Sara De Vos) takes readers back to the dawn of the motion picture era in his splendid latest. Claude Ballard is an old man in 1962, living at Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel, when he's contacted by Martin Embry, a PhD candidate in film history. When the elderly director reveals that he owns a print of his first feature film, long considered lost, the young scholar's enthusiasm about its discovery prompts Claude to reminisce about the film's genesis and aftermath. From his early days photographically documenting ailments at a Paris hospital, to his rapid rise to prominence by demonstrating the capabilities of the Lumière brothers' moving picture innovations, to his ill-fated (both professionally and personally) production of The Electric Hotel, to his surprising heroic turn in WWI, Claude's own story—and those of the leading lady, stuntman, and impresario who collaborated with him—unfolds as cinematically as the scenes he creates on film. Fascinating information about the making of silent films (including a villainous cameo by Thomas Edison) is balanced by poignant, emotional portrayals of individuals attempting to define their lives offscreen even as they made history on it. Smith winningly delves into Hollywood's past. (June)