Early Cinema and Animation (1907-1926)

Foundations of the Animation Industry in Early Cinema (1907-1926)

• This chapter looks at how power transitioned from European film producers to the American market
• It details the consolidation of narrative feature films and a language focused on narrative continuity in the 1910s which are essential for classical Hollywood cinema
• The decade to follow introduced European cinematographic trends such as Expressionism and Soviet montage cinema
• New animation creators and studios, including Winsor McCay and Émile Cohl, established the groundwork for the animated stars of the 1920s

Cinema between 1907 and 1914

• The period between 1905 and 1912 was a period of extensive changes in film style
• The international film market was in the hands of European producers until 1914
• These firms developed the "film star" concept, new strategies of vertical and horizontal integration and a taste for film spectacle and melodramas and the first animation and cartoons
• Films in the US before 1907 did not have a permanent exhibition space, vaudeville houses, music halls, rented theatres and fairground tents were used
• The same film prints were frequently resold and accumulated scratches, circulating for years
• Filmmakers began exploring new storytelling ways after 1907, influenced by fiction and used longer films, more shots and complex stories

Italian and Danish Growth

• Until 1914, weekly releases in the US primarily came from abroad
• The United States was not yet the world's most economically important country before World War I
• It was the war that enabled the United States to overtake England and other European countries
• The US film market nearly collapsed before 1907 because of Edison's company and its dirty tactics to eliminate competitors, exhibitors needed numerous films, but producers were too busy battling each other
• Italian cinema was a late bloomer that expanded quickly
• Italians embraced cinema earlier than other countries
• Artists were lured away from French firms such as Segundo de Chomón because of a lack of experienced staff in the Italian film industry
• Cines (Rome), Ambrosio (Turin), and Itala (Turin) were the main Italian film production businesses to emerge
• Italian filmmakers focused on Italian history and culture in the 1910s
• Novel adaptations soon became historical spectacles that were longer and more expensive epics
• Italian historical epics from this time include “Quo Vadis?” (1913) and “Cabiria” (1914), that featured large extras and reconstructions of famous architecture
• Besides France and the United Kingdom, Denmark was another important country for the film industry in these years, especially Nordisk
• Ole Olsen founded the Danish film production business in 1906
• The firm quickly became well-known around the world for its great acting and production values and its main genres were crime thrillers and sensationalistic melodramas of "white-slaves" (prostitution) stories.
• The Abyss (1910) was one of the most popular Danish films
• Asta Nielsen became instantly famous because of this film and was one of the first international film stars
• Danish cinema was prosperous until World War I, when its export markets were cut off

Early European Stop Motion Animators

• One of the earliest stop-motion animators was British filmmaker Arthur Melbourne-Cooper
• Before 1899, he shot three propaganda films
• Viewers are asked to donate money for matches to send to the military in "Matches Appeal" (1899)
• "A Dream of Toyland” (1907), his most well-known work, is a live-action framing storey with a lengthy stop-motion animation sequence
• The animated motions lacks any apparent purpose, which includes disjointed animation and random movements with a dreamy quality
• Ladislas Starevich, a Russian artist, was one of the most important stop motion animators
• Starevich changed his name after settling in France to flee the Russian Revolution and was born as Władysław Starewicz
• Starevich primarily employed insect characters in his early animations, which quickly made him famous around the world and misled audiences into believing he used live, trained insects
• His insect films gave him rapid international recognition and earned him a decoration in 1911 from the Russian tsar
• “The Cameraman's Revenge” (1912), his most acclaimed Russian film contains a delightful use of miniatures and cinematic methods to depict an insects' affair
• By featuring a theatre fire brought on by flammable nitrate film, it also depicts the current state of film
• Interestingly, the characters of the first CG animated films were toys and insects, such as"Toy Story" (1995), "Antz," (1998), "Bugs", (1998)
• Highlighting similarities between stop motion and CG animation as the rigid bodies of insects are easier to animate than those of animals and humans

Émile Cohl, the First Animator

• Émile Cohl was a member of the 1880s avant-garde and anti-art movement named "The Incoherents"
• In his fifties he was hired by Gaumont
• “Fantasmagorie” (1908), his first film, is regarded as the beginning of animation
• The public welcomed the new genre of show from 1908 and immediately recognized it for what it was, as opposed to a film à trucs (a film with special effects) or a féerie (a fairy tale or magic story)
• Main stylistic traits of "Fantasmagorie":
• Graphic universe clearly separate from live action, the drawings emphasize lines over volume
• Proto-surrealism due to its incoherent narration: There is no narration, a concatenation and a flow of incoherent images
• Subject of film on film with a movie projection.
• Metamorphosis (morphing) as a relevant strategy of animation, an inborn possibility of frame-by-frame shooting only.
• Abstract animation before the emergence of abstract painting and cinema: a spiral appears projected on the movie screen
• Cohl's most creative period was from 1907 to 1911 and he continued working until the mid-1920s

First Animated Incursions of American Filmmakers

• Some American filmmakers were using animation techniques without being fully aware of it
• None of them claimed any paternity to animation art and because their movies were not deliberately made as animation pieces, modern film historians do not consider them animators
• Edison's top director, Edwin S. Porter, for example, was the first to use clay animation in "Fun in a Bakery Shop" (1902)
• Porter created "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), one of the most copied films in early cinema
• Most of their films were influenced by the lightning-sketch act (chalk talks), a vaudeville act where an artist drew quick caricatures of spectators or changed a drawing while giving his monologue
• To legitimize animation, they also felt it was important to incorporate the artist's hand sketching the lightning in the real world
• Film pioneer and motion picture tycoon James Stuart Blackton, founder of the American Vitagraph Company, worked for years in a collaborative/legal dispute with Thomas A. Edison
• His films that included trick films in the Méliès' style (“The Enchanted Drawing", 1900), lightning sketches ("Humorous Phases of Funny Faces", 1906) and “The Haunted Hotel” (1907), a frame-by-frame technique others imitated
• Blackton gave up animation in 1907

Effects of WWI in the Film Industry (1914-1918)

• Before the First World War, many elements of film style were employed globally in similar ways
• Films made in France, Italy, Denmark, England, and the United States, as well as movies from other nations, circulated widely outside their home countries
• "The Student of Prague" (Germany), "Atlantis" (Denmark), "The Mysterious X" (Denmark), "Cabiria" (Italy) are a few of the notable movies in Europe in 1913
• Additionally, that year marked the debut of the television series as a significant film form that foreshadowed subsequent TV show series
• The WWI outbreak in 1914 caused a sudden shortage of European films, severely limiting filmmaking in Italy and France
• The separation of other European film-producing countries led to the end of international film style and a rise in particular national cinemas
• The US became the world's primary film supplier in 1916, a position it has held ever since
• The average US production budget has remained larger in Hollywood than anywhere else in the world, and importing an American film is still often more affordable than producing one locally

Rapid Multiplication of Nickelodeons in the US

• Nickelodeons were a small, simple indoor theatres devoted to screen motion pictures with cheap admission prices (5 cents = 1 nickel).
• Nickelodeons provided many advantages over prior exhibition methods
• It had a stable location unlike changing amusement parks and was also cheaper (wooden seats, seldom ads in newspapers)
• Maintained entertainment elements such as live sound accompaniment and other spectacles during reel changes
• The Nickelodeons boom spurred major consequences in the exhibition sector, film producers took to renting rather than selling films
• Exhibitors also began changing their programmes more often, usually several times a week
• Patrons returned regularly but it also caused exhibitors to lose control over how films should be screened

The War Against the Motion Picture Patents Company (1908-1915)

• The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) was the first US oligopoly in the film industry and was formed in 1908, after an agreement with Edison to neutralise the competition
• It charged licensing fees on the existing key patents, affecting most of the US film companies
• The MPPC controlled over the entire production, distribution, and exhibition of the US film market from 1908 to 1911
• It also strictly limited the number of foreign firms that could join and import films, severing European access to the US market
• After 1911, a portion of the film industry refused to pay more fees and created the Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP) which would later become the basis for The Universal studio
• In 1912, the courts and the American government litigated against the MPPC, and in 1915, the case was decided against the MPPC

Creation of Hollywood in the 1910s

• Before 1908, the American film industry was based on the East Coast
• That year, the first production units arrived in California scouting for sunnier climes for the winter season as it has sunnier skies and more variety of landscapes
• This rise of Hollywood coincided with the star system, the feature film, and greater pressure for censorship
• Pressures aimed at reforming the cinema led to self-censorship as a way of gaining respectability and both the MPPC and the independents also tried to improve the public image of the movies
• In the earliest years of the cinema, films were advertised as novelties, and filmmakers and actors received no screen credit
• However, by 1910 some companies responded to audience demand and began exploiting their popular actors for publicity purposes, promoting them as “the Biograph girl” or “the Vitagraph girl"
• This exploitation of the film actors' names for publicity reasons resulted in the rise of the star system, films seldom included credits until 1914
• As a logical consequence of making multi-reel films, by the mid-1910s the feature film would become the norm, and the mixture of short films by the nickelodeon managers would diminish

Early Moves to Classical Storytelling

• Longer stories needed more shots and filmmakers had to make story films that were comprehensible to audiences
• Filmmakers wondered how techniques of editing, camera work, acting, and lighting could be combined to clarify what was happening in a film and so a search of an effective use of film techniques to enhance narrative clarity became important
• Hollywood just tried and progressively adopted basic continuity principles, such as
• A greater use of a chain of narrative causes and effects
• A growing respect of the axis-of-action or 180-degree rule
• Eyeline matches
• Match on action
• The shot/reverse shot

David Wark Griffith

• David Wark Griffith became in the early 1910s the most important and recognised American silent director, promoting many commercial and stylistic trends
• He helped to popularize the efforts for clarity of classical storytelling and helped in the creation of many narrative and stylistic devices
• Griffith's first important feature films were “The birth of a nation” (1915) and “Intolerance”. (1916) and from 1908 to 1914, Griffith produced nearly 500 titles
• Griffith founded his own company in 1915 and directed "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), one of the greatest box-office hits in the history of cinema

Was Griffith a Racist Director?

• After the release of "The Birth of a Nation," because people accused him promoting of racism and promoting the Ku Klux Klan
• Other Griffith titles such as “Ramona"(1910), "Intolerance" and "Broken Blossoms" seem to contradict the racist views
• Griffith's films launched the career of many relevant actresses, such as Lillian Gish, Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, and Mary Pickford
• The director kept making films until 1931, with some important works such as "Broken Blossoms" (1919), "Way Down East" (1920) and "Orphans of the Storm" (1921)

American Animation in the 1910s

• Although after 1911, pioneers of American animation emerged everywhere with little organization, New York City remained the principal national hub
• The 2 very American forms of art was animation and comic strips which inherited from the comic strips characters, their behaviour, and some graphic and comedy gambits
• Vaudeville was a secondary but significant influence for animation
• They were usually self-taught graphic artists whose education was limited to comic strips and whose commercial craftsmanship was a far cry from fine art
• A major exception was Winsor McCay, who helped to developed personality animation, a period characterized by the search for new devices, technical processes and an animation language

Winsor McCay

• Winsor McCay is the first 'classical' artist of American animation and a wonderful cartoonist, he always thought of himself as an animator
• Most of McCay's films were intended as vaudeville acts and although very finely crafted, he was unable to adapt it as an industrialized system
• "Animation should be art" according to him
• “Little Nemo” (1911) is a film with no plot or background with a mixed use of live-action and animation segment
• "The Story of Mosquito" (1912) functions almost as a horror story
• "Gertie the dinosaur” (1914) is McCay's first fully developed animated character
• "The Sinking of Lusitania” (1918) shows McCay's extreme artistic abilities in the use of perspective and diagonal movements and also using cel animation instead of paper

Emergence of the Animation studio System (1913-1919)

• After 1914, American animation was marked by the search for devices, technical processes, and the development of the animation language by a group of cartoonists

• Main players of American animation after 1914 were: Bray Productions (1913-1963, end of animation production in 1921), Barré Studio (1913-1916) and International Film Service (IFS) (1913-1918)

• Bray and Barré initiated processes to develop modernizing processes

• Most significant innovations introduced by Bray Productions:

• The "travelling shot” (1913),

• The patent of the "cels” process by Earl Hurd (1914).

• The rotoscope process by Max Fleischer (1916).

• The first animation on colour film stock

• Innovations developed by Barré Studio

• The peg system

• The rotating panel in the animation desk

• The "slash and tear” system

• Other common practices developed at this time include:

• The sketching of drawings with light blue pencils (most of the studios)

• A clear division into animation and colouring departments

• The "rubber-hose” animation style (introduced by Barré)

Expansion of the American Film Industry in the 1920s

• Wall Street investment firms became interested in the film industry, from $78 to $850 million
• A strategy of buying and building movie theatres helped the expansion of industry and the average weekly attendance at American movie theatres doubled from 1922 to 1928
• "The scandals of the Hollywood filmmaker's lifestyles" were documented
• Due to the vertically integration of production, distribution, and exhibition, challenges appeared such as the First National Exhibitors' Circuit which never became profitable

Material for the 1920s

• As the big Hollywood companies expanded, they employed "block booking” strategies and other distribution systems to maximize their profits
• During the 1920s, the movie business developed into a mature oligopoly, hierarchically structured:
• The Big Three:
• The Five Little
• United Artists:

Major Filmmakers

• They made films which had technological refinement which had an enormous effect on American filmmakers
• After the First World War, American filmmakers began a trend of replacing orthochromatic film stock with panchromatic
• Slapstick involves both intentional violence and violence by mishap
• In 1921, the Russian film industry was nationalized

American Animation Studios in the 1920s

• Not a flourishing industry yet, and studios were considered unimportant film fillers
• Paul Terry's design also largely influenced Osamu Tezuka's style and the birth of Japanese manga
• The Inkwell Studio and Fables Studios became prominent such as Disney
• Main traits of the "Out of the Inkwell" series were the use of the rotoscope technique, and nonsensical sense of humour

Young Walt Disney and

• Association of a young Walt Disney with Ub Iwerks is key to understand of animation
• Disney created Laugh-O-Gram studio (1921-1923) with Ub Iwerks, Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman and Carman Maxwell
• He set up the Disney Bros. Studio with "Alice's Day at Sea” and enjoyed more success

French and Avant Garde Influence

• Influences emerged in European and Avant Garde countries, such as French Impressionist movement
• While French art waned, German films surged and German film gained industry power but with issues
• Technologic upgrades in UFA studios and the use of propaganda
• A popular genre was the epic spectacle, based on the Italian epics
• With "Madame Dubarry”, made Pola Negri achieved international stardom and it revealed Ernst Lubitsch as the first major German director
• Influences in experimental and editing practices

The German Expressionist Movement

• German Expressionist films lasted from 1920 to 1927 and used extreme distortion to express an inner emotional reality
• By the late 1910s, Expressionism was a which was widely accepted and hardly came as a shock to critics and audiences
• some critics argued that Caligari”,“ should be considered a genre itself or the only true Expressionist film"
• The style exerted a considerable international influence, especially in Universal horror films and the lighting in the 1940s “film noir" genre

German Abstract Animations

• avant-garde German film community, unlike its French counterpart, favoured expressing itself though animated drawings
• These animations taught geometric rigour
• Walther Ruttmann's “Opus I” (1921) was The first abstract film well received in Germany and sensationally received by the public
• He put aside abstractionism and began filming experimental documentaries and experimented with film styles
• Lotte Reiniger is considered the pioneer of the silhouette film and created The filmic Dictionary which consists of long shots

Historical Soviet Montage movement

• In 1919, the Russian film industry was nationalized and cinema was the most important tool for propaganda
• Sergei Eisenstein introduced experiments with styles and editing methods