Read The Oxford History of World Cinema Online
Authors: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
profits, which put the industry on a more stable footing. In most countries, early cinemas
held fairly small audiences, and profits depended upon a rapid turnover, necessitating
short programmes and frequent changes of fare. This situation encouraged producers to
make short, standardized films to meet the constant demand. This demand was enhanced
through the construction of a star system patterned after the theatrical model which
guaranteed the steady loyalty of the newly emerging mass audience.
The films of this period, often referred to as the 'cinema of narrative integration', no
longer relied upon viewers' extra-textual knowledge but rather employed cinematic
conventions to create internally coherent narratives. The average film reached a standard
length of a 1000-foot reel and ran for about fifteen minutes, although the so-called 'feature
film', running an hour or more, also made its first appearance during these years. In
general, the emergence of the 'cinema of narrative integration' coincided with the cinema's
move toward the cultural mainstream and its establishment as the first truly mass
medium. Film companies responded to pressures from state and civic organizations with
internal censorship schemes and other strategies that gained both films and film industry a
degree of social respectability.
INDUSTRY
Before the First World War, European film industries dominated the international market,
with France, Italy, and Denmark the strongest exporters. From 60 to 70 per cent of all the
films imported into the United States and Europe were French. Pathé, the strongest of the
French studios, had been forced into aggressive expansion by the relatively small
domestic demand. It established offices in major cities around the world, supplemented
them with travelling salesmen who sold films and equipment, and, as a result, dominated
the market in countries that could support only one film company.
US producers faced strong competition from European product within their own country
for, despite the proliferation of relatively successful motion picture manufacturers during
the transitional years, a high percentage of films screened in the USA still originated in
Europe. Pathé opened a US office in 1904, and by 1907 other foreign firms, British and
Italian among them, were entering the US market on a regular basis. Many of these
distributed their product through the Kleine Optical Company, the major importer of
foreign films into the United States during these years and a company that played a
prominent role in the transition to the longer feature film. In 1907 French firms,
particularly Pathé, controlled the American market, sharing it with other European
countries: of the 1,200 films released in the United States that year only about 400 were
domestic. The American film industry took note of this, and the trade press, established in
this year with Moving Picture World, often complained about the inferior quality of the
imports, criticizing films that dealt with contemporary topics for their narrative
incomprehensibility and, worse yet, un-American morals.
Pathé Frères' glass-topped studio at Vincennes, in 1906
Paradoxically, an earlier move to rationalize film distribution had resulted in a
maximization of profits, and as a result US manufacturers initially concentrated on the
domestic market. However, during these years they began a campaign of international
expansion that resulted in their being well placed to step into the number one position in
1914, when European film industries were reeling from the effects of the outbreak of war.
In 1907 Vitagraph became the first of the major US firms to establish overseas
distribution offices, and in 1909 other American producers established agencies in
London, which remained the European centre for American distribution until 1916. As a
result the British industry tended to concentrate on distribution and exhibition rather than
production, conceding American dominance in this area. American films constituted at
least half of those shown in Britain with Italian and French imports making up a
substantial portion of the rest. Germany, which also lacked a wellestablished industry of
its own, was the second most profitable market for American films. In the pre-war years,
however, American firms lacked the strength to compete with the powerful French and
Italian industries in their own countries. American films were distributed outside Europe,
but often not to the financial benefit of the production studios, who granted their British
distributors the rights not only to the British Isles and some Continental countries but to
British colonies as well.
During this period American film production took place mainly on the east coast, with an
outpost or two in Chicago and some companies making occasional forays to the west
coast and even to foreign locations. New York City was the headquarters of three of the
most important American companies: Edison had a studio in the Bronx, Vitagraph in
Brooklyn, and Biograph in the heart of the Manhattan show-business district on
Fourteenth Street. Other companies -- Solax and American Pathé among them -- had
studios across the Hudson in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which also served as a prime location
for many of the New York based companies. The Great Train Robbery ( Edison, 1903)
was only one of the many ' Jersey' Westerns shot in the vicinity. So over-used were certain
settings that a contemporary anecdote claimed that two companies once shot on either
side of a Fort Lee fence, sharing the same gate. Chicago served as headquarters for the
Selig and Essanay studios and for George Kleine's distribution company. Many studios
sent companies to California during the winter to take advantage of the superior locations
and shooting conditions, and Selig established a permanent studio there as early as 1909.
However, Los Angeles did not become the centre of the American industry until the First
World War.
Around 1903, the rise of film exchanges led to a crucial change in distribution practices,
which in turn created a radical change in modes of exhibition. The rise of permanent
venues, the nickelodeons that began to appear in numbers in 1906, made the film industry
a much more profitable business, encouraging others to join Edison, Biograph, and
Vitagraph as producers. Until this time the companies had sold rather than rented their
product to exhibitors. While this worked well for the travelling showmen who changed
their audiences from show to show, it acted against the establishment of permanent
exhibition sites. Dependent upon attracting repeat customers from the same
neighbourhood, permanent sites needed frequent changes of programme, and so long as
this involved having to purchase a large number of films it was prohibitively expensive.
The film exchanges solved this problem by buying the films from the manufacturers and
renting them to exhibitors, making permanent exhibition venues feasible and increasing
the medium's popularity. Improvements in projectors also facilitated the rise of permanent
venues, since exhibitors no longer had to rely on the production companies to supply
operators.
By 1908 the new medium was flourishing as never before, with the nickelodeons -- so
called because of their initial admission price of 5 cents -- springing up on every street
corner, and their urban patrons consumed by the 'nickel madness'. But the film industry
itself was in disarray. Neighbouring nickelodeons competed to rent the same films, or
actually rented the same films and competed for the same audience, while unscrupulous
exchanges were likely to supply exhibitors with films that had been in release so long that
rain-like scratches obscured the images. The exchanges and exhibitors now threatened to
wrest economic control of the industry from the producers. In addition civil authorities
and private reform groups, alarmed by the rapid growth of the new medium and its
perceived associations with workers and immigrants, began calling for film censorship
and regulation of the nickelodeons.
In late 1908, led by the Edison and Biograph companies, the producers attempted to
stabilize the industry and protect their own interests by forming the Motion Picture
Patents Company, or, as it was popularly known, the Trust. The Trust incorporated the
most important American producers and foreign firms distributing in the United States,
and was intended to exert oligopolistic control over the industry: Along with Edison and
Biograph, members included Vitagraph, the largest of American producers, Selig,
Essanay, Mélièlis, Pathé and Kleine, the Connecticutbased Kalem, and the Philadelphia-
based Lubin. The MPPC derived its powers from pooling patents on film stock, cameras,
and projectors, most of these owned by the Edison and Biograph companies. These two
had been engaged in lengthy legal disputes since Biograph was founded, but their
resolution now enabled them to claim the lion's share of the Trust's profits despite the fact
that they were at the time the two least prolific of the American production studios.
The members of the MPPC agreed to a standard price per foot for their films and
regularized the release of new films, each studio issuing from one to three reels a week on
a pre-established schedule. The MPPC did not attempt to exert its mastery through
outright ownership of distribution facilities and exhibition venues, but rather relied upon
exchanges' and exhibitors' needs for MPPC films and equipment that could only be
obtained by purchasing a licence. The licensed film exchanges had to lease films rather
than buy them outright, promising to return them after a certain period. Only licensed
exhibitors, supposedly vetted by the MPPC to ensure certain safety and sanitation
standards and required to pay weekly royalty on their patented projectors, could rent Trust
films from these exchanges. The Trust's arrangements had an immediate impact on the
market, freezing out much foreign competition so that by the end of 1909 imports
constituted less than half of released films, a percentage which continued to decline. The
prejudice against foreign films manifested in the Trust's exclusionary tactics may have
encouraged European studios to produce 'classic' subjects, literary adaptations and
historical epics for example, which were more acceptable to the American market. Pathé,
whose 1908 position as a primary supplier of product to American exchanges made it a
prominent member of the MPPC, pioneered this approach through the importation of
European high culture in the form of the
film d'art.
In 1910 the MPPC began business practices that presaged those of the Hollywood studios,
establishing a separate distribution arm, the General Film Company. This instituted
standing orders (an early form of block booking) and zoning requirements that prevented
unnecessary competition by prescribing which exhibitors within a certain geographical
area could show a film. Higher rental rates for newly released films, versus lower ones for
those that had been in circulation, encouraged the differentiation of first-run venues from
those showing the older and less expensive product, another hallmark of the coming
studio system.
The Motion Picture Patents Company survived as a legal entity until 1915, when it was
declared illegal under the
Asta Nielsen (1881-1972)
provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust
Act, but even as early as 1912, several years before its
de jure
decline, the Trust had
de
facto
ceased to exert any significant control over the industry. Indeed, its members at this
point represented the old guard of the American film industry and many would cease to
exist soon after the court's unfavourable ruling. Their place was taken by the companies
of the nascent Hollywood moguls, many of whom had initially strengthened their position
in the industry through their resistance to the Trust's attempt to impose oligopolistic
control.
The MPPC's short-sighted plan to drive non-affiliated distributors and exhibitors out of
the business ironically sowed the seeds of its own destruction, for it gave rise to a
vigorous group of so-called 'independent' producers who supplied product to the many