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Lecture 1:Early Cinema

Professor Kevin Sandler

Pre-1915 cartoon of “Going to the Movies”

This Lesson

• Working Terms

• Roots of Cinema

• Movement toward Narrative

• Competition for Audiences

• Assignments

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Biograph advertising poster, 1900s

Working Terms

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Star Theatre, New York CityEarly 1900s

Hollywood

A cultural site that refers to the constellation of creative industries behind network television and films in the Los Angeles region that produce and distribute globally.

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1923 Hollywoodland real estate development

Industry

A set of institutions or manufacturers, often business enterprises (usually corporations), that desire to maximize profits. In other words, a commercial enterprise.

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Universal Studios lot with Warner Bros. lot in distance

Hollywood As Industry

“How did a collection of major studio corporations (Hollywood) come to dominate the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies and continue to maintain its control through the coming of sound, the innovation of color and widescreen images, and the diffusion of television and home video?”

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Douglas Gomery

Roots of Cinema

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Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). Kircher published this first known illustration of a magic lantern in Ars magna

lucis et umbrae, 1646.

Magic Lantern

A device that employed a lens, a shutter, and a persistent light source that projected images on glass slides onto a white wall or drapes.

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Magic lantern from the 1870s

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Magic Lantern Slide from the 1800s

Magic Lantern Slide

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Invented in 1834 by William George Horner, the Zoetrope was an early form of motion picture projector that consisted of a drum containing a set of still images, that was turned in a circular fashion in order to create the illusion of motion.

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A Zoetrope with three strips of Zoetrope animation

Zoetrope

Eadweard Muybridge

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The Horse in Motion, photograph by Eadweard Muybridge. "Sallie Gardner," owned by Leland Stanford; running at a 1:40

gait over the Palo Alto track, 19th June 1878.

Kinetograph

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Interior of the kinetrographic theater, Edison's Laboratory, Orange, N. J., showing phonograph and kinetograph.

Appeared in Century Magazine Vol. 48, Issue 2 (June 1894).

Kinetoscope

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Early Kinetoscope parlor in San Francisco about 1894-1895

The “peephole machine” showing the continuous, circulating loop of film

Black Maria

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Edison's Black Maria studio, East Orange, NJ, circa 1895

The Kiss (Edison, 1896)

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A Fad with Long-Term Effects

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Kinetoscope viewing situation with earphones, circa 1985

Xerox's 1978 film strip series "On Location With Grammar"

Lumière Brothers

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Advertisement from Auguste Lumière (1862-1954) and Louis

Lumière (1864-1948)

The first screening of motion pictures at Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café on December 28, 1895

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Lumière, 1896)

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Cinema of Attractions

• Exhibitionist cinema– Showing rather than

telling– Theatrical display

over narrative absorption

– Acknowledgment of the camera by the film’s characters

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Sandow (Edison, 1894)

Vitascope

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Poster for Edison’s Vitascope, 1896

Tootsie (1982)

Screenplay by Murray Schisgal and Larry Gelbart

based on a story by Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart

Movement Toward Narrative

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Lecture 1: Part III

The Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco, CaliforniaSeptember 12, 1915

A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)

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The Innovation of Méliès

• Special Effects– Stop tricks– Multiple exposure– Time-lapse

photography– Dissolves– Hand painted cells to

add colorA Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)

The Gay Shoe Clerk(Porter, 1902)

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Life of an American Fireman(Porter, 1902)

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The Great Train Robbery(Porter, 1903)

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The Innovation of Porter

• Storytelling– Separate scenes– Parallel editing– Camera movement– Location shooting– Less stage-bound

camera placementThe Great Train Robbery

(Porter, 1903)

The Suburbanite(McCutcheon, 1904)

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J. Stuart Blackton

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Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) Princess Nicotine or The Smoke Fairy (1909)

Nickelodeons

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Keith’s Theater, Washington, D.C., 1913

Competition for Audiences

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Lecture 1: Part IV

Thomas Edison posing with Sir Thomas Lipton, the creator of Lipton Tea circa 1905

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company

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The Mutoscope, circa 1900, and Biograph, circa 1896.

Motion Picture Patents Company

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Executives of film companies newly licensed by the Motion Picture Patents Company gather at the Edison Laboratory on December 18, 1908. First row (left to right): Frank L. Dyer, Sigmund Lubin, William T. Rock, Thomas A. Edison, J. Stuart Blackton, Jeremiah J. Kennedy, George Kleine, and George K. Spoor. Second row: Frank J. Marion, Samuel Long, William N. Selig, Albert E. Smith, Jacques A. Berst, Harry N. Marvin, Thomas Armat (?), and George Scull (?).

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The First Oligopoly

• The Edison Trust– Fixed prices– Restricted distribution

and exhibition– Had exclusive contract

with Eastman Kodak– Had exclusive deal

with General Film Company

The 1902 sheet music, “The Kodak Girl,” a March and Two-Step

composed by William T. Cramer and dedicated to the Eastman

Kodak Company

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Cleaning Up Hollywood

• The Edison Trust– Courted middle-class

viewers– Eliminated sing-alongs– Raised prices– Self-censored its own

films– Submitted films to

censorship board– Drew from the classics

Young Tom Edison (1940)

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Early Cinema Regulation

1912 National Board of Censorship seal for the Edison Company

The Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company

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Carl Laemmle, William Fox, and Adolph Zukor of the Motion Pictures Distributing and Sales Company. They would later be the heads of Universal, Fox, and Paramount.

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The Second Oligopoly

• The Sales Company– Challenged the Edison

Trust oligopoly– Offered multi-reel

feature films– Developed stars– Offered movies based

on famous plays and novels

– Made controversial filmsOne of the most popular stars in

her day: Theda Bara, “The Vamp” in Under the Yoke (1918)

Major Events 1911-1915

• 1911: Kodak broke their agreement with the Edison Trust

• 1912: Edison lost a patent suit against a rival company

• 1915: Edison Trust found to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and ordered to be dissolved

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Assignments

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Lecture 1: Part V

Sweeney Todd (2008)

Florence Lawrence, the “Biograph Girl,” circa 1910

Reading

• Douglas Gomery, “Hollywood as Industry”

• Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions”

• George Sadoul, “Founding Father: Louis Lumière in Conversation with George Sadoul”

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E-Board Post• Who are some contemporary filmmakers

whose work is similar to George Méliès? In what way?

• Lumière’s and Edison’s early films have less to do with storytelling than with visual spectacle. Can you think of some forms of contemporary media that privilege novelty over narrative? Why do audiences still find this kind of cinema appealing?

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End of Lecture 1

Next

Lecture:

Narrative Integration

Traffic in Souls (1913)

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