Hello everyone and welcome to our video series, "A Timeline of World Cinema"
I'm Bradley Weatherholt and I will be your host on this journey through the history of film.
In this episode we will discuss the first 20 years of cinema. From it's birth to the
rise of the feature film.
We call this period Pre-Classical because the films that belong to it don't follow the
classical narrative conventions that come with the rise of the feature film.
In order to understand this time period, we really must begin with the invention of the
motion picture camera.
Many credit the Americans with the invention of the motion picture camera, particularly
one American, Thomas Edison.
Not only did Thomas Edison not invent the motion picture camera, it was actually made
by a team of engineers under Thomas Edison.
It wasn't even the Americans that first came up with the motion picture camera. In fact
several entrepreneurs from all over the world have claims to what is the first motion camera picture
As with many other examples in American cinema, Edison's reputation relies more on his marketing
skills than it does the actual facts.
And if credit is going to go to Edison and the Americans, it must also be shared with
the French.
Particularly one team, the Lumiere Brothers.
Perhaps the most influential filmmakers of early cinema, the French Lumiere Brothers
made world history when they invented the cinematograph.
The world leader in motion picture technology.
At the end of 1895 in what might be the most famous nights of cinema the Lumiere Brothers
premiered 10 short films in Paris.
These films were under 50 seconds long and were varied from a comedy to a simple shot
of people leaving a factory.
The night was a success and a buzz with demand. The Lumiere Brothers began making film after
film with a focus on documentaries.
The success of their documentary films coupled with the fictional pictures of the contemporary
Georges Méliès gave the French an edge against their American competition at the turn of
the century.
However, the Lumieres' success was short lived and unable to see the narrative potential
of cinema. The brothers stated that "The Cinema is an invention without any future."
Because of this their fame was eclipsed by the narrative films that soon followed.
Now before we get too ahead of ourselves, it is important to define what cinema was
like in this period.
Cinema attendants and audience members didn't go to the cinema for narratives or great stories.
In fact they went to see spectacles on the screen.
This type of cinema is what Tom Gunning calls "The cinema of attractions" and it predates
the cinema of narrative integration that comes later with the feature film.
The most infamous example of the exciting, thrilling, one shot
films, is the Lumiere Brothers "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat".
According to doubtful legend, the cinema attendants were so shocked that they actually ducked
and in some cases ran out of the theater.
We usually call these films "Black & White", but it is important to remember that most
of these films weren't presented in black & white at all.
As early as 1896, films were painted, hand painted, with color and toner to enhance mood
and atmosphere.
Likewise, though these films were "Silent" films they almost always involved sound.
Cinemas would incorporate orchestras or live bands to score the happenings on the screen.
In some cases they would have lecturers who would literally explain the events that were
happening in the narrative.
"...Suddenly the galley strikes on an enormous rock, which emerges from the mitts of the
bellows and the ship founders disappear in a vortex of foam..."
As you can imagine, films back then weren't made the same way. The directors acted more
as camera operators.
Edison's man Edwin S. Porter is perhaps the best example of director as simply camera operator.
However, the French director Méliès not only operated the camera, he had control the
artistic direction and narratives of the films that he produced.
It took no time for production companies to develop. Particularly in America where the
emphasis was on the speed of the production and not necessarily the quality.
Now, they operated this way under the logic that it doesn't matter how good or bad the
film is, it was still going to sell for the same price per foot.
American production companies preferred to hire several directors each with their own
cast and crew, who were all responsible for one task: produce a reel of film each week.
This practice of mass production eventually led to a new role, the role of a movie producer,
whose job it was to supervise all of these different productions and make sure the quotas were met.
Not satisfied by high demand alone, studios began to expand operations using the highly
lucrative field of distribution.
In 1906, nickelodeons appear. These small theaters got their name from their practice
of charging 5 cents or a nickel for admittance.
Nickelodeons were widely popular. In the span of just a few years, their numbers more than tripled.
By 1909, cinema attendance was estimated at 45 million people per week.
Audiences were beginning to complain about unclear narratives.
In the period between 1907 and 1917, huge measures were taken in order to produce a
clearer more cohesive narrative.
For the first time editing promoted narrative intensity and not just shock value.
American director, D. W. Griffith led the Americans in this push towards longer narratives.
When he first began directing in 1908, his films incorporated on average around 17 shots.
By 1913, that number jumped to 88. D. W. Griffith met a lot of opposition with the American
studio system because the Americans favored shorter films, under the logic that the shorter
the film was the more they could play in the nickelodeons, the more turnover they would
have, and the more nickels these studios would produce.
In 1913, Italian cinema changed the world with the feature film, "Quo Vadis".
It contained 5000 extras, a choreographed chariot race, and actual lions.
Faced with this competition, American studios commissioned D. W. Griffith for his dream project,
the 1915 feature, "The Birth of a Nation".
D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" was received with wild hype.
Matching ticket prices with those of broadway plays, the film was marketed so audiences
would take it seriously.
The strategy worked and the film was a smash hit.
Impressed with the sophisticated editing, developed story, and unprecedented action
audiences couldn't get enough.
"The Birth of a Nation" is a landmark in filmmaking, establishing most of classical cinema's conventions.
Perhaps most prominent of these is the film's use of parallel editing, where we cut between
two different threads of the story.
Despite all the film's significance, the film has a spoiled reputation.
The narrative is what modern audiences would find overtly racist.
The heroes of the film are KKK members and the antagonists are incredibly offensive portrayal
of African Americans.
Because of this the film has a shaky position in most film canon.
However, it is certainly one of the many things that makes "The Birth of a Nation" a film
that film historians and enthusiasts return to.
"The Birth of a Nation" marks a culmination of everything in cinema that had happened
up to that point.
By 1917, film had developed into its own type of medium.
New conventions arose and the time was ripe for the next period of cinema,
The Rise of the Studio System.