Film was born in 1894 or 1895 depending on whether as a historian you choose to attribute the birth of film to the American inventor Edison or the French Lumiere brothers. As with other great discoveries, the simultaneous overlap of ideas across cultures could very well have led to the birth of a new invention in spite of the claims of those who earned a place in history. For instance, it has been posed in scientific circles that the ongoing research in physics would have inevitably led to Einstein's theory of relativity. Such speculation may be shortsighted but the idea is entertaining when examining the developments of early cinema.
In film history, much importance is given to Edison and Lumiere, so much so that initially one expects their contribution to be more than that of the invention of the technology. A ready comparison can be found in the history of art, in which lengthy chapters on the birth of the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel do not appear. Rather the focus of the history is on what the artists produced with the aid of those instruments. Though both Edison and Lumiere produced one-reeler movies, they did little to advance the art of cinema, even despite the initial appeal of their early films. The more interesting of the two were Lumiere's actualites, which on the whole were little more than "home" movies.
As is often said, the subject of history is not static and continues to evolve. The most interesting revisionist reading is that of Thomas Edison, the inventor par excellence, whose business practices prove to be revealing of the early American film industry. Revisionist historians have discovered that Edison did more to hold back the development of film technology so that he could monopolize the industry, rather than let the market forces push for improvements. A ruthless abuser of the legal system, Edison forcefully induced producers and exhibitors to adopt his patents and pay him licensing fees. Essentially, Edison spent more time building legal cases than building machines. In addition to these patent wars, he took credit for an invention that was rightfully attributable to his soon-to-be-departed assistant and subsequent competitor, W.K.L. Dickson. On realizing the moneymaking potential of films, Edison harassed and intimidated his principal competitors, the Lumiere and Pathe brothers and American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. The feud in this fledgling industry continued until Edison eventually won. The last holdout was the Biograph Company in which his former assistant Dickson was a principal. In a move which ensured his control of the industry, Edison, along with the Biograph Company formed the Motion Picture Patents Company and aligned his new company with another great monopolizer of technology, George Eastman of Eastman Kodak's flexible film fame.
In a short twenty-five years, this simple recording device, a technical novelty, advanced into an international art/industry/social force. To grasp the full impact of the movies in their time, we have only to think about the wave of the computer in our era.
Early on, the movies, which were just one of many of the nineteenth century's flood of inventions, were seized by showmen for their entertainment potential. In the arena of popular entertainment, one-reeler films were first exhibited on Edison's Kinetoscope and Lumiere's Cinematograph and became part of the vaudeville lineup. These one-reeler films became another novelty act right alongside the live ones. Thus, from early on, businessmen adopted the movies as a means of revenue. The patrons consisted of the masses: the lower and middle-classes. The upper classes continued to look down on movies as an inferior art form produced for the masses of inferior people.
In the first decade of the 1900's, the insatiable demand for new material eventually paved the way for a quick reception of longer films of a narrative nature. Coincident with the emergence of the narrative, was the explosion of a permanent type theatre, the "nickelodeon" which charged five-to-ten cents for film programs. By this time the practice of leasing rather than the outright purchase of films had been adopted by exhibitors in order to provide a constant flow of product.
The development of film language and subject matter, the form and content of the art form, proceeded quickly as well. In terms of subject matter, Lumiere's actualites were simple everyday events, such as factory workers leaving the Lumiere factory, a baby eating its meal, and a boy playing a water hose prank on his older relative. Lumiere's actualites were based in reality unlike the spirited fantasies of his fellow countryman, Melies.
The Frenchman Melies was by far the most interesting filmmaker to first appear on the scene at the time. A magician by trade, he began in 1900 to combine his native ability for trick effects with narrative filmmaking. Melies' Trip to the Moon was an inventive narrative with the commercial appeal of adventure and humor.
A sad and revealing footnote to Melies' destiny was that he, being more the artist than the businessman, eventually lost to the competition. Years later, he was discovered to be street vendor. Accounts differ as to whether he eventually died in a sanitarium or in a home for destitute actors, or perhaps some would argue that there is little difference between the two. Nevertheless, it appears that the stress of the competitive and unruly film business bore heavily on one of cinema's first artists, thus, establishing another tradition in film history: it's a business that drives you crazy.
The development of narrative film language continued with Edwin S. Porter's use of the shot as the basic unit of film rather than the use of the scene. In his two 1903 films, The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, Porter discovered the power of building a scene through the editing of shots. His editorial methods resulted in a discontinuous method of narrative, in which simultaneous action is repeated in a linear time frame. Though his method is not as sophisticated as the contemporary multiple psychological points of view in a Kurosawa film or the non-linear time and space in an Alain Resnais film, the idea of a discontinuous narrative was born and established a point of reference for subsequent generations. It seems Porter's attempts at narrative film were logically developing towards a more continuous line. The discontinuous narrative appears to logically develop into the continuous narrative. Such a development is similar to the evolution in painting of analytical cubism leading to synthetic cubism.
The continuous narrative owes a great deal to the grand American experimenter, D.W.Griffith. As a result of his ingenuity and prolific output, D.W.Griffith furthered film language by revealing the increasingly cinematic properties of film within a continuous narrative. Griffith enhanced the power of storytelling through the more integrated use of the cinematic devices of the close-up, the moving shot, and parallel editing or crosscutting. In Griffith's The Lonely Villa, the use of crosscutting enhanced the suspense of the story and the use of mutually exclusive physical spaces, though static, brought a clear balance to the screen. In his attempts to tell a more vivid story, Griffith employed narrative devices, such as flashback and flashforward but in a more cinematic manner. He correctly assumed that by cutting directly from a close-up of the actor to the visual representation of the character's thought, the audience would logically make the connection between the two, the thinker and the thought. Though this convention is now taken for granted, Griffith was the first to exploit this convention as a cinematic means for externalizing internal thoughts.
An actor turned director, Griffith recognized the need for underacting and rehearsals. As noted by the critic Gerald Mast, Griffith's achievements were more the result of constant on-the-set experimentation than theoretical postulating. Griffith also borrowed many of his visual ideas from famous paintings and stories from the theater of David Belasco. As Mast points out, Griffith's shortcomings were in the subject matter which he inherited from Belasco's theatre, that of melodramatic stories and sentimental characters. It appears Griffith was essentially a 19th century man discovering the properties of a 20th century medium.
Griffith's opportunity to refine his cinematic techniques owes a great deal to the popularity of cinema in the early 1900's. Exhibitors discovered quickly that their audience's appetite for new films was insatiable. The early adoption of films by businessmen served not only to popularize the movies, which were becoming part of a world culture, but on the downside, gave them a foothold of power which is epitomized in Hollywood. The antagonism between artist and businessmen led in one major case to the formation of a new distribution company, United Artists, by three stars and one director.
Given the threat of a merger of distributors which would effectively restrict trade, stars Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and director D.W. Griffith, formed United Artists in order to exercise more creative and economic control over their explosive careers. As the critic Tino Balio notes, there were pitfalls in the artist-run company, basically due to the artists' very lack of business acumen and skills in an unregulated, complex theatrical market. Barely three years after the company was formed in 1919, UA began to lack the unlimited capital needed for completion funds and new production. By 1924, Griffith's New York studio was mired in high overhead costs and salaries that depleted his credit limit. He was forced to leave UA and sign a three-picture deal with Paramount. UA was near take-over when the actor/owners finally saved their company by bringing in an experienced producer businessman, Joseph Schenck. By 1928, Schenck had made UA solvent again, but his attempts to merge with MGM, who his brother was associated with, were thwarted by the dissenting vote of Chaplin, who held that UA remain a distribution company for independent producers. Yet eventually Pickford and Fairbanks retired, leaving Chaplin the only remaining producer of the original four. By the 30's, the star system was effectively reigned in and controlled by the studios.
Given that filmmaking is so capital-intensive, the commodity aspect of it is part of its' nature. In addition to the artistic and business aspects of filmmaking, the social aspects of films were readily felt early on as well. Films, such as the early travelogues of Lumiere and Pathe, made the world smaller and more accessible by exposing audiences to moving pictures of faraway and exotic places. The star system brought about a character identification with what were to become archetypes, such as Mary Pickford's innocent, young girl, or Charlie Chaplin's poor and downtrodden underdog, "the little tramp". Films not only changed the role models and fashions of the day but also changed the leisure habits of the masses. Audiences abandoned vaudeville for the exhibition houses, which were equipped with film projectors.
In light of the fact that many of the key personalities in early silent cinema were American (such as the inventors: Edison and Dickson, the financiers/showmen: Mayer, Loew, and Zukor, and the popular artists: Chaplin, Pickford, and Griffith), European cinema still dominated the U.S. markets until World War I. During World War I, European manpower and materials were directed towards the war effort, while America, more isolationist in policy and action, continued to produce films. In that short period of time, America took over both the domestic and international film markets. The ideology of the U.S. economic system, which is present in much of the content in American films, has continued to be one of the most influential factors in wooing the world. Despite its' humble beginnings as a novelty act, early cinema evolved into the more mature constructions of a cultural and economic Hollywood system that reflects the American model and dominant ideology.
In film history, much importance is given to Edison and Lumiere, so much so that initially one expects their contribution to be more than that of the invention of the technology. A ready comparison can be found in the history of art, in which lengthy chapters on the birth of the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel do not appear. Rather the focus of the history is on what the artists produced with the aid of those instruments. Though both Edison and Lumiere produced one-reeler movies, they did little to advance the art of cinema, even despite the initial appeal of their early films. The more interesting of the two were Lumiere's actualites, which on the whole were little more than "home" movies.
As is often said, the subject of history is not static and continues to evolve. The most interesting revisionist reading is that of Thomas Edison, the inventor par excellence, whose business practices prove to be revealing of the early American film industry. Revisionist historians have discovered that Edison did more to hold back the development of film technology so that he could monopolize the industry, rather than let the market forces push for improvements. A ruthless abuser of the legal system, Edison forcefully induced producers and exhibitors to adopt his patents and pay him licensing fees. Essentially, Edison spent more time building legal cases than building machines. In addition to these patent wars, he took credit for an invention that was rightfully attributable to his soon-to-be-departed assistant and subsequent competitor, W.K.L. Dickson. On realizing the moneymaking potential of films, Edison harassed and intimidated his principal competitors, the Lumiere and Pathe brothers and American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. The feud in this fledgling industry continued until Edison eventually won. The last holdout was the Biograph Company in which his former assistant Dickson was a principal. In a move which ensured his control of the industry, Edison, along with the Biograph Company formed the Motion Picture Patents Company and aligned his new company with another great monopolizer of technology, George Eastman of Eastman Kodak's flexible film fame.
In a short twenty-five years, this simple recording device, a technical novelty, advanced into an international art/industry/social force. To grasp the full impact of the movies in their time, we have only to think about the wave of the computer in our era.
Early on, the movies, which were just one of many of the nineteenth century's flood of inventions, were seized by showmen for their entertainment potential. In the arena of popular entertainment, one-reeler films were first exhibited on Edison's Kinetoscope and Lumiere's Cinematograph and became part of the vaudeville lineup. These one-reeler films became another novelty act right alongside the live ones. Thus, from early on, businessmen adopted the movies as a means of revenue. The patrons consisted of the masses: the lower and middle-classes. The upper classes continued to look down on movies as an inferior art form produced for the masses of inferior people.
In the first decade of the 1900's, the insatiable demand for new material eventually paved the way for a quick reception of longer films of a narrative nature. Coincident with the emergence of the narrative, was the explosion of a permanent type theatre, the "nickelodeon" which charged five-to-ten cents for film programs. By this time the practice of leasing rather than the outright purchase of films had been adopted by exhibitors in order to provide a constant flow of product.
The development of film language and subject matter, the form and content of the art form, proceeded quickly as well. In terms of subject matter, Lumiere's actualites were simple everyday events, such as factory workers leaving the Lumiere factory, a baby eating its meal, and a boy playing a water hose prank on his older relative. Lumiere's actualites were based in reality unlike the spirited fantasies of his fellow countryman, Melies.
The Frenchman Melies was by far the most interesting filmmaker to first appear on the scene at the time. A magician by trade, he began in 1900 to combine his native ability for trick effects with narrative filmmaking. Melies' Trip to the Moon was an inventive narrative with the commercial appeal of adventure and humor.
A sad and revealing footnote to Melies' destiny was that he, being more the artist than the businessman, eventually lost to the competition. Years later, he was discovered to be street vendor. Accounts differ as to whether he eventually died in a sanitarium or in a home for destitute actors, or perhaps some would argue that there is little difference between the two. Nevertheless, it appears that the stress of the competitive and unruly film business bore heavily on one of cinema's first artists, thus, establishing another tradition in film history: it's a business that drives you crazy.
The development of narrative film language continued with Edwin S. Porter's use of the shot as the basic unit of film rather than the use of the scene. In his two 1903 films, The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, Porter discovered the power of building a scene through the editing of shots. His editorial methods resulted in a discontinuous method of narrative, in which simultaneous action is repeated in a linear time frame. Though his method is not as sophisticated as the contemporary multiple psychological points of view in a Kurosawa film or the non-linear time and space in an Alain Resnais film, the idea of a discontinuous narrative was born and established a point of reference for subsequent generations. It seems Porter's attempts at narrative film were logically developing towards a more continuous line. The discontinuous narrative appears to logically develop into the continuous narrative. Such a development is similar to the evolution in painting of analytical cubism leading to synthetic cubism.
The continuous narrative owes a great deal to the grand American experimenter, D.W.Griffith. As a result of his ingenuity and prolific output, D.W.Griffith furthered film language by revealing the increasingly cinematic properties of film within a continuous narrative. Griffith enhanced the power of storytelling through the more integrated use of the cinematic devices of the close-up, the moving shot, and parallel editing or crosscutting. In Griffith's The Lonely Villa, the use of crosscutting enhanced the suspense of the story and the use of mutually exclusive physical spaces, though static, brought a clear balance to the screen. In his attempts to tell a more vivid story, Griffith employed narrative devices, such as flashback and flashforward but in a more cinematic manner. He correctly assumed that by cutting directly from a close-up of the actor to the visual representation of the character's thought, the audience would logically make the connection between the two, the thinker and the thought. Though this convention is now taken for granted, Griffith was the first to exploit this convention as a cinematic means for externalizing internal thoughts.
An actor turned director, Griffith recognized the need for underacting and rehearsals. As noted by the critic Gerald Mast, Griffith's achievements were more the result of constant on-the-set experimentation than theoretical postulating. Griffith also borrowed many of his visual ideas from famous paintings and stories from the theater of David Belasco. As Mast points out, Griffith's shortcomings were in the subject matter which he inherited from Belasco's theatre, that of melodramatic stories and sentimental characters. It appears Griffith was essentially a 19th century man discovering the properties of a 20th century medium.
Griffith's opportunity to refine his cinematic techniques owes a great deal to the popularity of cinema in the early 1900's. Exhibitors discovered quickly that their audience's appetite for new films was insatiable. The early adoption of films by businessmen served not only to popularize the movies, which were becoming part of a world culture, but on the downside, gave them a foothold of power which is epitomized in Hollywood. The antagonism between artist and businessmen led in one major case to the formation of a new distribution company, United Artists, by three stars and one director.
Given the threat of a merger of distributors which would effectively restrict trade, stars Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and director D.W. Griffith, formed United Artists in order to exercise more creative and economic control over their explosive careers. As the critic Tino Balio notes, there were pitfalls in the artist-run company, basically due to the artists' very lack of business acumen and skills in an unregulated, complex theatrical market. Barely three years after the company was formed in 1919, UA began to lack the unlimited capital needed for completion funds and new production. By 1924, Griffith's New York studio was mired in high overhead costs and salaries that depleted his credit limit. He was forced to leave UA and sign a three-picture deal with Paramount. UA was near take-over when the actor/owners finally saved their company by bringing in an experienced producer businessman, Joseph Schenck. By 1928, Schenck had made UA solvent again, but his attempts to merge with MGM, who his brother was associated with, were thwarted by the dissenting vote of Chaplin, who held that UA remain a distribution company for independent producers. Yet eventually Pickford and Fairbanks retired, leaving Chaplin the only remaining producer of the original four. By the 30's, the star system was effectively reigned in and controlled by the studios.
Given that filmmaking is so capital-intensive, the commodity aspect of it is part of its' nature. In addition to the artistic and business aspects of filmmaking, the social aspects of films were readily felt early on as well. Films, such as the early travelogues of Lumiere and Pathe, made the world smaller and more accessible by exposing audiences to moving pictures of faraway and exotic places. The star system brought about a character identification with what were to become archetypes, such as Mary Pickford's innocent, young girl, or Charlie Chaplin's poor and downtrodden underdog, "the little tramp". Films not only changed the role models and fashions of the day but also changed the leisure habits of the masses. Audiences abandoned vaudeville for the exhibition houses, which were equipped with film projectors.
In light of the fact that many of the key personalities in early silent cinema were American (such as the inventors: Edison and Dickson, the financiers/showmen: Mayer, Loew, and Zukor, and the popular artists: Chaplin, Pickford, and Griffith), European cinema still dominated the U.S. markets until World War I. During World War I, European manpower and materials were directed towards the war effort, while America, more isolationist in policy and action, continued to produce films. In that short period of time, America took over both the domestic and international film markets. The ideology of the U.S. economic system, which is present in much of the content in American films, has continued to be one of the most influential factors in wooing the world. Despite its' humble beginnings as a novelty act, early cinema evolved into the more mature constructions of a cultural and economic Hollywood system that reflects the American model and dominant ideology.
No comments:
Post a Comment