Read The Oxford History of World Cinema Online
Authors: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
The more powerful members of the industry, such as the Motion Picture Patents
Company, often encouraged the incorporation of health and safety requirements into local
ordinances dictating the construction of new exhibition venues and the upgrading of old
ones. The New York City ordinance of 1913, specifying in detail such matters as the
number of seats, aisle width, and air flow, represented the culmination of efforts to make
exhibition venues more salubrious, that is, bearing a stronger resemblance to legitimate
theatrical houses. In fact, in that year and in that city, the first 'movie palaces' appeared.
These large and well-appointed theatres contrasted strongly with the nickelodeons. With
seats for up to 2,000 patrons, architecture mimicking Egyptian temples or Chinese
pagodas, large orchestras, and uniformed ushers, these theatres provided environments
nearly as fantastic as those projected on to their screens.
Vitagraph's The Life of Moses ( 1909), one of the first 'feature' films.
It was not only in the United States that film houses faced criticism and opposition in this
period. Permanent exhibition sites appeared in Germany in 1910, a few years later than in
the United States, but the rapid growth and increasing popularity of the new medium
attracted the attention of state officials and private reform groups concerned about film's
possible malign influence upon susceptible audiences and the nation's culture. The Berlin
Police Commission instituted an official pre-censorship plan in 1906, a year earlier than
their Chicago counterparts. As in the United States, children were perceived as
particularly vulnerable and in need of protection. Teachers and clergymen produced
several studies testifying to cinema's deleterious effect upon the young while teachers'
associations and other groups for popular and continuing education denigrated the use of
the cinema for amusement and urged increased production of scientific films for teaching
purposes. In 1907 reformers joined together in the cinema reform movement
(Kinoreformbewegung)
and touted the new medium's potential both for child and adult
education. Supported in their efforts by the trade press, who saw co-operation as a way to
avoid more official censorship, the cinema reformers were successful in persuading the
German industry to produce educational films, or
Kulturfilme,
that dealt with natural
sciences, geography, folklore, agriculture, industry, technology and crafts, medicine and
hygiene, sports, history, religion, and military affairs.
In 1912, literary intellectuals became interested in the by then predominant fiction film,
urging adherence to aesthetic standards to elevate the story film to art rather than'mere'
amusement. The industry responded with the
Autorenfilm,
or author film, the German
version of the
film d'art.
The first
Autorenfilm, Der Andere (The Other One),
was adapted
from a play by Paul Lindau about a case of split personality and starred the country's most
famous actor, Albert Bassermann. The prestigious theatre director Max Reinhardt
followed with filmed versions of two popular plays, Eine venezianische Nacht (
A
Venetian night
', 1913) and Insel der Seligen (' Island of the blessed', 1913).
Britain had no real equivalent to the American nickelodeon period, although debates
about cinema's cultural and social status paralleled those taking place across the Atlantic.
By 1911, when film rental and permanent exhibition sites became standard, most cinemas
mimicked the up-market accoutrements of the legitimate theatre. Before this, films were
exhibited in a variety of locations-the music halls and fairgrounds that had constituted the
primary venues of the early period as well as the so-called 'penny gaffs'. Although never
as numerous and often more transient than the nickelodeons, these store-front shows were
equivalent to their American counterparts in being unsanitary and unsafe. The first theatre
devoted entirely to film exhibition seems to have been established in 1907, and, between
the following year and the advent of the World War, films were increasingly exhibited in
'picture palaces', the equivalent of the American 'movie palaces', replete with uniformed
ushers and red plush seating for up to 1,000 or even 2,000 customers. While prices
remained low enough to permit former patrons to continue to attend, all these amenities
served to distance the cinema from its previous associations with the music halls and the
working class, to attract, as the trade press fervently hoped, a 'better' class of customer.
Like their transatlantic counterparts, British filmmakers also pursued respectability
through more positive tactics. In 1910 producer Will Barker paid the eminent theatrical
actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree £1,000 for appearing in a film version of
Shakespeare's Henty VIII. Rather than selling the film outright to distributors, as was still
the dominant practice, Barker gave one distributor exclusive rights to rent, but not to sell,
the film, claiming that its high production costs and high cultural status required special
treatment. Barker produced other films of a similar nature, establishing the .exclusive' or
'quality' picture, the adjectives referring to both the films and their distribution. Hepworth
and other producers followed Barker's lead, adapting contemporary plays and literary
classics that would appeal to the customers now patronizing the up-market theatres. In
1911 the Urban Company issued a catalogue of films suitable for use in schools. In the
same year, the trade paper Bioscope urged the industry to persuade government
authorities to recognize the educational value of film, even arranging a film screening for
members of the London County Council.
French
films d'art
provided the model for film producers in other countries, in their quest
for cultural respectability. French film-makers also emulated the narrative strategies of
more respectable entertainments, imitating the stories in popular illustrated family
magazines such as
Lectures pour tous
. Upon taking the position as chief producer-director
at Gaumont in 1907, Louis Feuillade wrote an advertisement for the studio's new serial,
Scènes de la vie telle qu'elle est
( Scenes from Real Life), claiming that the films would
elevate the position of the French cinema by affiliating it with other respectable arts.
'They represent, for the first time, an attempt to project a realism on to the screen, just as
was done some years ago in literature, theatre, and art.'
EPILOGUE: TRANSITION TO FEATURE FILMS
By about 1913 the American film industry's strategies for attaining respectability --
emulating respectable entertainments, internal censorship, and improved exhibition
venues -- had begun to pay off. Conditions were very different from what they had been
in 1908 when the medium had been the centre of a cultural crisis. Now a mass audience
sat comfortably ensconced in elaborate movie palaces, watching the first true mass
medium. And the films they watched were beginning to change as well, telling longer
stories through a different deployment of formal elements than had been the case in 1908
or even 1912. A few years later, by 1917, the situation had changed yet again. The
majority of important and powerful studios were located in Hollywood, by now the centre
not only of American film-making but of world film-making, largely as a result of the
First World War disruption of the European industries. Hollywood production and
distribution practices now set the norm for the rest of the world. The films themselves had
grown from one reel to an average length of sixty to ninety minutes, as film-makers
mastered the demands of constructing lengthier narratives and codified into standard
practices the formal conventions experimented with during the transitional years.
The industry called these lengthier films 'features', adopting the vaudeville term referring
to a programme's main attraction. They were descended from the multiple reel films
produced by the members of the Motion Picture Patents Company and the independents
during the transitional period, as well as from foreign imports. Although film historians
have characterized the MPPC's business practices as somewhat retrograde, the honour of
producing the first American multi-reeler goes to Trust member Vitagraph. In 1909 and
1910 Vitagraph released the biblical blockbuster The Life of Moses; a five-reel film
depicting the story of the Hebrew leader from his adoption by the Pharaoh's daughter to
his death on Mount Sinai. Vitagraph continued to produce multi-reelers, and the other
studios adopted the policy. Biograph, for example, released the two-reel Civil War story
His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled, in 1911. Clearly, then, elements within the American
film industry had begun to chafe at the 1,000foot or fifteen-minute limit, finding it
increasingly impossible to tell a story within these constraints.
Existing distribution and exhibition practices, however, militated against conversion to
the multi-reel film. The limited seating of most nickelodeons dictated short programmes
featuring a variety of subjects in order to ensure rapid audience turnover and a profit. The
studios, therefore, treated each reel of the multi-reelers separately, releasing them to the
exchanges according to the agreed schedule, sometimes weeks apart, and the
nickelodeons, except in rare instances, showed only one reel in any specific programme,
charging the same admission price as they did for all their other films. For this reason, the
impetus for the transition to the feature film came from the European, and specifically
Italian, films imported into the country. Multi-reel foreign imports were distributed
outside the control of the Trust and the independents, with rental prices keyed to both
negative costs and boxoffice receipts. Instead of playing the nickelodeons, these features
were 'roadshowed' as a theatrical attraction, shown in legitimate theatres and opera-
houses.
Films from other countries, such as Queen Elizabeth ( Louis Mercanton, 1912), played a
part in establishing feature films as the norm, but it was the spectacular Italian costume
films whose profits and popularity persuaded the American industry to compete with
longer films of its own. In 1911 three Italian productions, the fivereel Dante's Inferno
(Milano Films, 1909), the two-reel Fall of Troy ( 1910,, Giovanni Pastrone), and the four-
reel The Crusaders or Jerusalem Delivered ( 1911), treated American audiences to a
pictorial splendour seldom seen in domestic productions -- elaborate sets and huge casts
enhanced through the use of deep space. Released in the United States in the spring of
1913, the nine-reel Quo vadis? ( Enrico Guazzoni , Cines, 1913), running for more than
two hours and exhibited exclusively in legitimate theatres, really sparked the craze for the
spectacular feature film. Adapted from the best-selling novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, the
film boasted 5,000 extras, a chariot race, and real lions, as well as clever lighting and
detailed set design. The 1914 Cabiria ( Giovanni Pastrone, Italia) capped the trend. The
twelve-reel depiction of the Second Punic War contained such visually stunning scenes as
the burning of the Roman fleet and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. Pastrone enhanced the
film's spectacle through extended tracking shots (unusual at this time) that created a sense
of depth through movement rather than through set design.
Quo vadis? inspired a host of imitators, not least D. W. Griffith's own multi-reel biblical
spectacular, Judith of Bethulia ( 1913), which was made against the wishes of a Biograph
front office still committed to the one-reel film. But Griffith's own historical costume
drama epic, The Birth of a Nation ( 1915), excelled all previous features in length and
spectacle, while dealing with a truly American subject, the Civil War and Reconstruction.
It was this film that began to establish the feature as the norm rather than the exception.
Prior to the film's January 1915 release, Griffith's publicity department had hyped its
expense, huge cast, and historical accuracy, creating great public anticipation for the