Read The Oxford History of World Cinema Online
Authors: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
flirts with his female customer. A cut-in approximates his view of her ankle as she raises
her skirt in tantalizing fashion. This close-up insert is an example not only of the visual
pleasure afforded by the 'cinema of attractions' but of the early cinema's voyeuristic
treatment of the female body. Despite the fact that their primary purpose is not to
emphasize narrative developments, these shots' attribution to a character in the film
distinguishes them from the totally unmotivated closer views in The Great Train Robbery
and Raid on a Coiner's Den.
The editing strategies of the pre- 1907 'cinema of attractions'were primarily designed to
enhance visual pleasure rather than to tell a coherent, linear narrative. But many of these
films did tell simple stories and audiences undoubtedly derived narrative, as well as
visual, pleasure. Despite the absence of internal strategies to construct spatial-temporal
relations and linear narratives, the original audiences made sense of these films, even
though modern viewers can find them all but incoherent. This is because the films of the
'cinema of attractions' relied heavily on their audiences' knowledge of other texts, from
which the films were directly derived or indirectly related. Early film-makers did learn
how to make meaning in a new medium, but were not working in a vacuum. The cinema
had deep roots in the rich popular culture of the age, drawing heavily during its infant
years upon the narrative and visual conventions of other forms of popular entertainment.
The pre-1907 cinema has been accused of being 'non-cinematic' and overly theatrical, and
indeed film-makers like Mélièlis were heavily influenced by nondramatic theatrical
practices, but for the most part lengthy theatrical dramas provided an inappropriate model
for a medium that began with films of less than a minute, and only became an important
source of inspiration as films grew longer during the transitional period. As the first
Edison Kinetoscope films illustrate, vaudeville, with its variety format of unrelated acts
and lack of concern for developed stories, constituted a very important source material
and the earliest film-makers relied upon media such as the melodrama and pantomime
(emphasizing visual effects rather than dialogue), magic lanterns, comics, political
cartoons, newspapers, and illustrated song slides.
Magic lanterns, early versions of slide projectors often lit by kerosene lamps, proved a
particularly important influence upon films, for magic lantern practices permitted the
projection of 'moving pictures', which set precedents for the cinematic representation of
time and space. Magic lanterns employed by travelling exhibitors often had elaborate
lever and pulley mechanisms to produce movement within specially manufactured slides.
Long slides pulled slowly through the slide holder produced the equivalent of a cinematic
pan. Two slide holders mounted on the same lantern permitted the operator to produce a
dissolve by switching rapidly between slides. The use of two slides also permitted
'editing', as operators could cut from long shots to close-ups, exteriors to interiors, and
from characters to what they were seeing. Grandma's Reading Glasses, in fact, derives
from a magic lantern show. Magic lantern lectures given by travelling exhibitors such as
the Americans Burton Holmes and John Stoddard provided precedents for the train and
travelogue films, the lantern illustrations often intercutting exterior views of the train,
interior views of the traveller in the train, and views of scenery and of interesting
incidents.
In addition to mimicking the visual conventions of other media, film-makers derived
many of their films from stories already well known to the audience. Edison advertised its
Night before Christmas ( Porter, 1905) by saying the film 'closely follows the time-
honored Christmas legend by Clement Clarke Moore'. Both Biograph and Edison made
films of the hit song 'Everybody Works but Father'. Vitagraph based its Happy Hooligan
series on a cartoon tramp character whose popular comic strip ran in several New York
newspaper Sunday supplements. Many early films presented synoptic versions of fairly
complex narratives, their producers presumably depending upon their audiences'pre-
existing knowledge of the subject-matter rather than upon cinematic conventions for the
requisite narrative coherence. L'Épopée napoléonienne ('The Epic of Napoleon', 1903-4
Pathé) presents Napoleon's life through a series of tableaux, drawing upon well-known
historical incidents (the coronation, the burning of Moscow) and anecdotes ( Napoleon
standing guard for the sleeping sentry) but with no attempt at causal linear connection or
narrative development among its fifteen shots. In similar fashion, multi-shot films such as
Ten Nights in a Barroom ( Biograph, 1903) and Uncle Tom's Cabin (Vitagraph, 1903)
presented only the highlights of these familiar and oftperformed melodramas, with shot
connections provided not by editing strategies but by the audiences' knowledge of
intervening events. The latter film, however, appears to be one of the earliest to have
intertitles. These title cards, summarizing the action of the shot which followed, appeared
at the same time as the multi-shot film, around 1903-4, and seem to indicate a recognition
on the part of the producers of the necessity for internally rather than externally derived
narrative coherence.
EXHIBITION
Cinema initially existed not as a popular commercial medium but as a scientific and
educational novelty. The cinematic apparatus itself and its mere ability to reproduce
movement constituted the attraction, rather than any particular film. In many countries,
moving picture machines were first seen at world's fairs and scientific expositions: the
Edison Company had planned to début its Kinetoscope at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair
although it failed to assemble the machines in time, and moving picture machines were
featured in several areas of the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris.
Fairly rapidly, cinema exhibition was integrated into pre-existing venues of 'popular
culture' and 'refined culture', although the establishment of venues specifically for the
exhibition of films did not come until 1905 in the United States and a little later
elsewhere. In the United States, films were shown in the popular vaudeville houses,
which by the turn of the century catered to a reasonably well-to-do audience willing to
pay 25 cents for an afternoon or evening's entertainment. Travelling showmen, who
lectured on educational topics, toured with their own projectors and showed films in local
churches and operahouses, charging audiences in large metropolitan areas the same $2
that it cost to see a Broadway show. Cheaper and more popular venues included tent
shows, set up at fairs and carnivals, and temporarily rented store-fronts, the forerunners of
the famous nickelodeons. Early film audiences in the United States, therefore, tended to
be quite heterogeneous, and dominated by no one class.
Early exhibition in Britain, as in most European countries, followed a similar pattern to
the United States, with primary exhibition venues being fairgrounds, music halls, and
disused shops. Travelling showmen played a crucial role in establishing the popularity of
the new medium, making films an important attraction at fairgrounds. Given that fairs and
music halls attracted primarily working-class patrons, early film audiences in Britain, as
well as on the Continent, had a more homogeneous class base than in the United States.
An early travelling cinema: Green's Cinematograph Show, Glasgow, 1898
Wherever films were shown, and whoever saw them, the exhibitor during this period
often had as much control over the films' meanings as did the producers themselves. Until
the advent of multi-shot films and intertitles, around 1903-4, the producers supplied the
individual units but the exhibitor put together the programme, and single-shot films
permitted decision-making about the projection order and the inclusion of other material
such as lantern slide images and title cards. Some machines facilitated this process by
combining moving picture projection with a stereopticon, or lantern slide projector,
allowing the exhibitor to make a smooth transition between film and slides. In New York
City, the Eden Musée put together a special show on the Spanish-American War, using
lantern slides and twenty or more films from different producers. While still primarily an
exhibitor, Cecil Hepworth suggested interspersing lantern slides with films and 'stringing
the pictures together into little sets or episodes' with commentary linking the material
together. When improvements in the projector permitted showing films that lasted more
than fifty seconds, exhibitors began splicing twelve or more films together to form
programmes on particular subjects. Not only could exhibitors manipulate the visual
aspects of their programmes, they also added sound of various kinds, for, contrary to
popular opinion, the silent cinema was never silent. At the very least, music, from the full
orchestra to solo piano, accompanied all films shown in the vaudeville houses. Travelling
exhibitors lectured over the films and lantern slides they projected, the spoken word
capable of imposing a very different meaning on the image from the one that the producer
may have intended. Many exhibitors even added sound effects -- horses' hooves, revolver
shots, and so forth-and spoken dialogue delivered by actors standing behind the screen.
By the end of its first decade of existence, the cinema had established itself as an
interesting novelty, one distraction among many in the increasingly frenetic pace of
twentieth-century life. Yet the fledgeling medium was still very much dependent upon
pre-existing media for its formal conventions and story-telling devices, upon somewhat
outmoded individually-driven production methods, and upon pre-existing exhibition
venues such as vaudeville and fairs. In its next decade, however, the cinema took major
steps toward becoming the mass medium of the twentieth century, complete with its own
formal conventions, industry structure, and exhibition venues.
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The Classical Hollywood
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The Dream that Kicks
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Cherchi Paolo Usai, and Codelli, Lorenzo (eds.) ( 1990),
Before Caligari
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Cosandey, Roland, Gaudreault, André, and Gunning, Tom (eds.) ( 1992),
Une invention
du diable?
Elsaesser, Thomas (ed.) ( 1990),
Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative
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Fell, John L. ( 1983),
Film before Griffith
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--- ( 1986),
Film and the Narrative Tradition
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Gunning, Tom ( 1986), "The Cinema of Attractions".
Holman, Roger (ed.) ( 1982),
Cinema 1900-1906: An Analytic Study
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Low, Rachael, and Manvell, Roger ( 1948),
The History of the British Film, 1896-1906
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Musser, Charles ( 1990),
The Emergence of Cinema
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--- ( 1991),
Before the Nickelodeon
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Transitional Cinema
ROBERTA PEARSON
Between 1907 and 1913 the organization of the film industry in the United States and
Europe began to emulate contemporary industrial capitalist enterprises. Specialization
increased as production, distribution, and exhibition became separate and distinct areas,
although some producers, particularly in the United States, did attempt to establish
oligopolistic control over the entire industry. The greater length of films, coupled with the
unrelenting demand from exhibitors for a regular infusion of new product, required this
standardization of production practices, as well as an increased division of labour and the
codification of cinematic conventions. The establishment of permanent exhibition sites
aided the rationalization of distribution and exhibition procedures as well as maximizing