Introduction to Film PDF

CHAPTER 1 A Trip to the Moon THE INVENTION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE CINEMA, 1880s--1904 The Big Swallow The nineteenth century saw a vast proliferation of visual forms of popular culture. The industrial era offered ways of mass-producing lantern slides, books of photographs, and illustrated fictio...

CHAPTER 1 A Trip to the Moon THE INVENTION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE CINEMA, 1880s--1904 The Big Swallow The nineteenth century saw a vast proliferation of visual forms of popular culture. The industrial era offered ways of mass-producing lantern slides, books of photographs, and illustrated fiction. The middle and working classes of many countries could visit elaborate dioramas---painted backdrops with three-dimensional figures depicting famous historical events. Circuses, "freak shows," amusement parks, and music halls provided other forms of inexpensive entertainment. In the United States, many dramatic troupes toured, performing in the theaters and opera houses that existed even in small towns. Hauling entire theater productions from town to town, however, was expensive. Similarly, most people had to travel long distances to visit major dioramas or amusement parks. In the days before airplane travel, few could hope to see firsthand the exotic lands they glimpsed on display in books of travel photographs or in their stereoscopes, handheld viewers that created three-dimensional effects by using oblong cards with two photographs printed side by side. The cinema was to offer a cheaper, simpler way of providing entertainment to the masses. Filmmakers could record actors' performances, which then could be shown to audiences around the world. Travelogues would bring moving images of far-flung places directly to spectators' hometowns. Movies would become the most popular visual art form of the early twentieth century. Page 4 The cinema was invented during the 1890s. It appeared in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, as did the telephone (invented in 1876), the phonograph (invented in 1877), and the automobile (developed during the 1880s and 1890s). Like them, it was a technological device that became the basis of a large industry. It was also a new form of entertainment and a new artistic medium. During the first decade of the cinema's existence, inventors worked to improve the machines for making and showing films. Filmmakers also had to explore what sorts of images they could record, and exhibitors had to figure out how to present those images to audiences. THE INVENTION OF THE CINEMA The cinema is a complicated medium, and before it could be invented, several technological requirements had to be met. Preconditions for Motion Pictures First, scientists had to realize that the human eye will perceive motion if a series of slightly different images is placed before it in rapid succession---minimally, around sixteen per second. During the nineteenth century, scientists explored this property of vision. Several optical toys gave an illusion of movement by using a small number of drawings, each altered somewhat. In 1832, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and Austrian geometry professor Simon Stampfer independently created an optical device called the Phenakistoscope (1.1). The Zoetrope, invented in 1833, contained a series of drawings on a narrow strip of paper inside a revolving drum (1.2). The Zoetrope was widely sold after 1867, along with other optical toys. In these toys, the same action was repeated over and over. 1.1 A Phenakistoscope's spinning disc of figures gives the illusion of movement when the viewer looks through a slot in the stationary disc. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. 1.2 Looking through the slots in a revolving Zoetrope, the viewer receives an impression of movement. George Eastman International Museum of Photography A second technological requirement for the cinema was the capacity to project a rapid series of images on a surface. Since the seventeenth century, entertainers and educators had been using "magic lanterns" to project glass lantern slides, and some could rapidly flash two or three changes of a figure's position. But there had been no way to show a large number of images fast enough to create a sustained illusion of movement. If it had been easy to make a long series of drawings on some support, cinema would not have needed photography. Photography, however, was the simplest way to produce many lifelike images. The problem was that the illusion of movement needed at least sixteen photographs exposed per second. It took inventors several years to achieve such a short exposure time. The first still photograph was made on a glass plate in 1826 by Claude Niépce, but it required an exposure time of eight hours. For years, photographs were made on glass or metal, without the use of negatives, so only one copy of each image was possible; exposures took several minutes each. Not until 1878 did split-second exposure times become feasible. Rapid photography became the third precondition for cinema as we know it. Page 5 Fourth, the cinema would require that photographs be printed on a base flexible enough to be passed through a camera rapidly. Strips or discs of glass could be used, but only a short series of images could be registered on them. In 1888, George Eastman devised a still camera that made photographs on rolls of sensitized paper. This camera, which he named the Kodak, simplified photography so that unskilled amateurs could take pictures. The next year Eastman introduced transparent celluloid roll film, creating a breakthrough in the move toward cinema. The film was intended for still cameras, but inventors soon used the same flexible material in designing machines to take and project motion pictures. Fifth, and finally, experimenters needed to find a suitable intermittent mechanism for cameras and projectors. In the camera, the strip of film had to stop briefly while light entered through the lens and exposed each frame. A shutter then covered the film as another frame moved into place. Similarly, in the projector, each frame stopped for an instant in the aperture while a beam of light projected it onto a screen. Again a shutter passed behind the lens while the filmstrip moved. At least sixteen frames had to slide into place, stop, and move away each second. (A strip of film sliding continuously past the gate would create a blur.) Fortunately, other inventions of the century also needed intermittent mechanisms to stop and start quickly. For example, the sewing machine (invented in 1846) advanced strips of fabric several times per second while a needle pierced them. Intermittent mechanisms usually consisted of a gear with slots or notches spaced around its edge. By the 1890s, all the technical conditions for the cinema existed. But who would bring the elements together in a way that could be exploited on a wide basis? Major Precursors of Motion Pictures Some inventors made important contributions without creating moving photographic images. Several men were simply interested in analyzing motion. In 1878, ex-governor of California Leland Stanford asked photographer Eadweard Muybridge to find a way of photographing running horses to help study their gaits. Muybridge set up a row of twelve cameras, each making an exposure in one-thousandth of a second. The photos recorded one-half-second intervals of movement (1.3). Muybridge later made a lantern to project moving images of horses, but these were drawings copied from his photographs onto a revolving disc. Muybridge did not go on to invent motion pictures, but he made a major contribution to anatomical science through thousands of motion studies using his multiple-camera setup. 1.3 One of Muybridge's earliest motion studies, photographed on June 19, 1878. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. Page 6 In 1882, inspired by Muybridge's work, French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey studied the flight of birds and other rapid animal movements by means of a photographic gun. Shaped like a rifle, it exposed twelve images around the edge of a circular glass plate that made a single revolution in one second. In 1888, Marey built a box-type camera that used an intermittent mechanism to expose a series of photographs on a strip of paper film at speeds of up to 120 frames per second. Marey was the first to combine flexible film stock and an intermittent mechanism in photographing motion. He was interested in analyzing movements rather than in reproducing them on a screen, but his work inspired other inventors. During this period, many other scientists used various devices to record and analyze motion. A fascinating and isolated figure in the history of the invention of the cinema was Frenchman Émile Reynaud. In 1877, he had built an optical toy, the Projecting Praxinoscope. This was a spinning drum, rather like the Zoetrope, but one in which viewers saw the moving images in a series of mirrors rather than through slots. Around 1882, he devised a way of using mirrors and a lantern to project a brief series of drawings on a screen. In 1889, Reynaud exhibited a much larger version of the Praxinoscope. From 1892 on, he regularly gave public performances using long, broad strips of hand-painted frames (1.4). These were the first public exhibitions of moving images, though the effect on the screen was jerky and slow. The labor involved in making the bands meant that Reynaud's films could not easily be reproduced. Strips of photographs were more practical, and in 1895 Reynaud started using a camera to make his Praxinoscope films. By 1900, he was out of business, however, due to competition from other, simpler motion-picture projection systems. In despair, he destroyed his machines, though replicas have been constructed. 1.4 Using long flexible bands of drawings, Reynaud's Praxinoscope rear-projected cartoon figures onto a screen on which the scenery was painted. Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo Another Frenchman came close to inventing the cinema as early as 1888---six years before the first commercial showings of moving photographs. That year, Louis Le Prince, working in England, was able to make some brief films, shot at about sixteen frames per second, using Kodak's recently introduced paper roll film. To be projected, however, the frames needed to be printed on a transparent strip; lacking flexible celluloid, Le Prince apparently was unable to devise a satisfactory projector. In 1890, while traveling in France, he disappeared, along with his valise of patent applications, creating a mystery that has never been solved. His camera was never exploited commercially and had virtually no influence on the subsequent invention of the cinema. An International Process of Invention We cannot attribute the invention of the cinema to a single source. There was no one moment when the cinema emerged. Rather, the technology of the motion picture came about through an accumulation of contributions, primarily from the United States, Germany, England, and France. Edison, Dickson, and the Kinetoscope Page 7 In 1888, Thomas Edison, already the successful inventor of the phonograph and the electric light bulb, decided to design machines for making and showing moving photographs. Much of the work was done by his assistant, W. K. L. Dickson. Because Edison's phonograph worked by recording sound on cylinders, the pair tried fruitlessly to make rows of tiny photographs around similar cylinders. In 1889, Edison went to Paris and saw Marey's camera, which used strips of flexible film. Dickson then obtained some Eastman Kodak film stock and began working on a new type of machine. By 1891, the Kinetograph camera and Kinetoscope viewing box (1.5) were ready to be patented and demonstrated. Dickson sliced sheets of Eastman film into strips 1 inch wide (roughly 35 millimeters) and spliced them end to end. He punched four holes on either side of each frame so that toothed gears could pull the film through the camera and Kinetoscope. Dickson's early decisions influenced the entire history of the cinema; 35 mm film stock with four perforations per frame remained the norm for more than a hundred years. Initially, however, the film was exposed at about forty-six frames per second---much faster than the average speed later adopted for silent filmmaking. 1.5 The Kinetoscope was a peephole device that ran the film around a series of rollers. Viewers activated it by putting a coin in a slot. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. Before Edison and Dickson could exploit their machine commercially, they needed films. They built a small studio, called the Black Maria, on the grounds of Edison's New Jersey laboratory and were ready for production by January 1893 (1.6). The films lasted only twenty seconds or so---the longest run of film that the Kinetoscope could hold. Most films featured well-known sports figures, excerpts from noted vaudeville acts, or performances by dancers or acrobats (1.7). Annie Oakley displayed her riflery, and a bodybuilder flexed his muscles. A few Kinetoscope shorts were knockabout comic skits, forerunners of the story film. 1.6 Edison's studio was named after the police paddy wagons, or Black Marias, that it resembled. The slanted portion of the roof opened to admit sunlight for filming, and the whole building revolved on a track to catch optimal sunlight. Everett Historical/Shutterstock 1.7 Amy Muller danced in the Black Maria on March 24, 1896. The black background and patch of sunlight from the opening in the roof were standard traits of Kinetoscope films. Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Washington, D. C. 20540 USA dcu \[LC\_00694109\] Page 8 Edison had exploited his phonograph by leasing it to special phonograph parlors, where the public paid a nickel to hear sound through earphones. (Only in 1895 did phonographs become available for home use.) He did the same with the Kinetoscope. On April 14, 1894, the first Kinetoscope parlor opened in New York. Soon other parlors, both in the United States and abroad, exhibited the machines (1.8). For about two years the Kinetoscope was highly profitable, but it was eclipsed when other inventors, inspired by Edison's new device, found ways to project films on a screen. 1.8 A typical entertainment parlor, with phonographs (note the dangling earphones) at left and center and a row of Kinetoscopes at right. Later videogame arcades would operate on the same business model. Department of the Interior/PhotoQuest/Getty Images European Contributions Another early system for taking and projecting films was invented by the Germans Max and Emil Skladanowsky. Their Bioscop held two strips of film, each 3½ inches wide, running side by side; frames of each were projected alternately. The Skladanowsky brothers showed a fifteen-minute program at a large vaudeville theater in Berlin on November 1, 1895---nearly two months before the famous Lumière screening at the Grand Café. The Bioscop system was too cumbersome, however, and the Skladanowskys eventually adopted the standard 35 mm, single-strip film used by more influential inventors. The brothers toured Europe through 1897, but they did not establish a stable production company. Page 9 The Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, invented a projection system that helped make the cinema a commercially viable enterprise internationally. Their family company, Lumière Frères, based in Lyon, France, was the biggest European manufacturer of photographic plates. In 1894, a local Kinetoscope exhibitor asked them to produce short films that would be cheaper than the ones sold by Edison. Soon they had designed an elegant little camera, the Cinématographe, which used 35 mm film and an intermittent mechanism modeled on that of the sewing machine (1.9). The camera could serve as a printer when the positive copies were made. Then, mounted in front of a magic lantern, it formed part of the projector as well. One important decision the Lumières made was to shoot their films at sixteen frames per second, rather than the forty-six frames per second used by Edison. Sixteen frames per second became the most commonly used rate for about twenty years. The first film made with this system was Workers Leaving the Factory, apparently shot in March 1895 (1.10; Video 1.1). It was shown in public at a meeting of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale in Paris on March 22. Six further showings to scientific and commercial groups followed, including additional films shot by Louis. 1.9 Unlike many other early cameras, the Lumière Cinématographe was small and portable. This 1930 photo shows Francis Doublier, one of the firm's representatives who toured the world showing and making films during the 1890s, posing with his Cinématographe. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. On December 28, 1895, one of the most famous events in film history took place. The location was a room in the Grand Café in Paris. In those days, cafés were gathering spots where people sipped coffee, read newspapers, and were entertained by singers and other performers. That evening, fashionable patrons paid a franc to see a twenty-five-minute program of ten films, about a minute each. Among the films shown were a close view of Auguste Lumière and his wife feeding their baby, a staged comic scene of a boy stepping on a hose to cause a puzzled gardener to squirt himself (later named L'arroseur arrosé, or "The Waterer Watered"), and a shot of the sea. Although the first shows did moderate business, within weeks the Lumières were offering twenty shows a day, with long lines of spectators waiting to get in. They moved quickly to exploit this success, sending representatives all over the world to show films and make more of them. At the same time that the Lumière brothers were developing their system, a parallel process of invention was going on in England. The Edison Kinetoscope had premiered in London in October 1894, and the parlor that displayed the machines did so well that its owners asked R. W. Paul, a producer of photographic equipment, to make some extra machines for it. For reasons that are still not clear, Edison had not patented the Kinetoscope outside the United States, so Paul was free to sell copies to anyone who wanted them. Because Edison would supply films only to exhibitors who had leased his own machines, Paul also had to invent a camera and make films to go with his duplicate Kinetoscopes. By March 1895, Paul and his partner, Birt Acres, had a functional camera, which they based partly on the one Marey had made seven years earlier for analyzing motion. Acres shot thirteen films during the first half of the year, but the partnership broke up. Paul went on improving the camera, aiming to serve the Kinetoscope market, whereas Acres concentrated on creating a projector. On January 14, 1896, Acres showed some of his films to the Royal Photographic Society. Among those was Rough Sea at Dover (1.11), which became one of the most popular first films. 1.10 The Lumière brothers' first film, Workers Leaving the Factory, was a single shot made outside their photographic factory. It embodied the essential appeal of the first films: realistic movement of actual people. Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory 1.11 Birt Acres's Rough Sea at Dover, one of the earliest English films, showed large waves crashing against a seawall. Rough Sea at Dover Seeing such one-shot films of simple actions or landscapes today, we can hardly grasp how impressive they were to audiences who had never seen moving photographic images. A contemporary review of Acres's Royal Photographic Society program hints, however, at their appeal: The most successful effect, and one which called forth rounds of applause from the usually placid members of the "Royal," was a reproduction of a number of breaking waves, which may be seen to roll in from the sea, curl over against a jetty, and break into clouds of snowy spray that seemed to start from the screen.1 Acres gave other demonstrations, but he did not systematically exploit his projector and films. Page 10 Projected films were soon shown regularly in England, however. The Lumière brothers sent a representative who opened a successful run of the Cinématographe in London on February 20, 1896, about a month after Acres's first screening. R. W. Paul went on improving his camera and invented a projector, which he used in several theaters to show copies of the films Acres had shot the year before. Unlike other inventors, Paul sold his machines rather than leasing them. By doing so, he not only speeded up the spread of the film industry in Great Britain but also supplied filmmakers and exhibitors abroad who were unable to get other machines. Among them was one of the most important early directors, Georges Méliès. American Developments During this period, projection systems and cameras were also being devised in the United States. Three important rival groups competed to introduce a commercially successful system. Woodville Latham and his sons Otway and Gray began work on a camera and projector in 1894 and were able to show one film to reporters on April 21, 1895. They even opened a small storefront theater in May, where their program ran for years. The projector did not attract much attention because it cast only a dim image. The Latham group did make one considerable contribution to film technology, however. Most cameras and projectors could use only a short stretch of film, lasting less than three minutes, because the tension created by a longer, heavier roll would break the film. The Lathams added a simple loop to create slack and thus relieve the tension, allowing much longer films to be made. The Latham loop has been used in most film cameras and projectors ever since. Indeed, so important was the technique that a patent involving it was to shake up the entire American film industry in 1912. A second group of entrepreneurs, the partnership of C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat, first exhibited their Phantoscope projector at a commercial exposition in Atlanta in October 1895, showing Kinetoscope films. Partly because of competition from the Latham group and a Kinetoscope exhibitor, who also showed films at the exposition, and partly because of dim, unsteady projection, the Phantoscope attracted skimpy audiences. Later that year, Jenkins and Armat split up. Armat improved the projector, renamed it the Vitascope, and obtained backing from the entrepreneurial team of Norman Raff and Frank Gammon. Raff and Gammon were nervous about offending Edison, so in February they demonstrated the machine for him. Because the Kinetoscope's initial popularity was fading, Edison agreed to manufacture Armat's projector and supply films for it. For publicity purposes, it was marketed as "Edison's Vitascope," even though he had no hand in devising it. The Vitascope's public premiere was at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York on April 23, 1896. Six films were shown, five of them originally shot for the Kinetoscope; the sixth was Acres's Rough Sea at Dover, which again was singled out for praise. The showing was a triumph. Although it was not the first time films had been projected commercially in the United States, it marked the beginning of projected movies as a viable industry there. The third major early invention in the United States began as another peepshow device. In late 1894, Herman Casler patented the Mutoscope, a flip-card device (1.12). He needed a camera, however, and sought advice from his friend W. K. L. Dickson, who had terminated his working relationship with Edison. With other partners, they formed the American Mutoscope Company. By early 1896, Casler and Dickson had their camera, but the market for peepshow movies had declined, and they decided to concentrate on projection. Using several films made during that year, the American Mutoscope Company soon had programs playing theaters around the country and touring with vaudeville shows. 1.12 At the right, a Mutoscope, a penny-in-the-slot machine with a crank that turned a drum containing a series of photographs. The stand at the left shows the circular arrangement of the cards, each of which flipped down and was briefly held still to create the illusion of movement. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. Page 11 The camera and projector were unusual, employing 70 mm film that yielded larger, sharper images. By 1897, American Mutoscope was the most popular film company in the country. That year the firm also began showing its films in penny arcades and other entertainment spots, using the Mutoscope. The simple card holder of the Mutoscope was less likely to break down than was the Kinetoscope, and American Mutoscope soon dominated the peepshow side of film exhibition as well. Some Mutoscopes remained in use for decades. By 1897, the invention of the cinema was largely completed. There were two principal means of exhibition: peepshow devices for individual viewers and projection systems for audiences. Typically, projectors used 35 mm film with sprocket holes of similar shape and placement, so most films could be shown on different brands of projectors. But what kinds of films were being made? Who was making them? How and where were people seeing them? EARLY FILMMAKING AND EXHIBITION The cinema may have been an astonishing novelty in the 1890s, but it came into being within a varied context of public leisure-time activities. All but the tiniest towns had theaters, and traveling shows crisscrossed the country. Dramatic troupes put on plays, lecturers used magic-lantern slides to illustrate their talks, and concerts featuring the newly invented phonograph brought the sounds of big-city orchestras to a wide public. Vaudeville gave middle-class audiences a variety of acts on a single program, ranging from performing animals to plate-spinning jugglers to slapstick comedians. Burlesque offered a similar potpourri of acts, though less family-oriented with their vulgar comedy and occasional nudity. People living in large cities could go to amusement parks, such as Coney Island in New York, which boasted roller coasters and elephant rides. Scenics, Topicals, and Fiction Films The new medium of film moved smoothly into this spectrum of popular entertainment. Like the early films that we have already mentioned, most subjects were nonfiction, or actualities. These included scenics, or short travelogues, offering views of distant lands. News events might be depicted in brief topicals. In many cases, cinematographers covered news events in the locations where they occurred. Often, however, filmmakers recreated current events in the studio---both to save money and to make up for the fact that cameramen had not been on the scene. In 1898, for example, both American and European producers used model ships in miniature landscapes to recreate the sinking of the battleship Maine and other key occurrences relating to the Spanish-American War. Audiences probably did not believe that these faked scenes were actual records of real incidents. Instead, they accepted them as representations of those incidents, comparable to engravings in news magazines. From the beginning, fiction films were also important. Typically, these were brief staged scenes. The Lumières' Arroseur arrosé, presented in their first program in 1895, showed a boy tricking a gardener by stepping on his hose. Such simple jokes formed a major genre of early filmmaking. Some of these fiction films were shot outdoors, but simple painted backdrops were quickly adopted and remained common for decades. Creating an Appealing Program Looking at the earliest films, we may find them so alien that we wonder what sort of appeal they held for audiences. With a little imagination, though, we can see that people then were probably interested in films for much the same reasons that we are. Every type of early film has some equivalent in contemporary media. The glimpses of news events, for example, may seem crude, yet they are comparable to the short clips shown in mass media today. Early scenics gave viewers glimpses of faraway lands, just as today's video documentaries do. The entertainment mixture available on YouTube is comparable to early film programs. Despite the variety of early genres, fiction films gradually became the most popular theatrical attraction---a position they have held ever since. Most films in this early period consisted of a single shot. The camera was set up in one position, and the action unfolded during a continuous take. In some cases, filmmakers did make a series of shots of the same subject. The resulting shots were then treated as a series of separate films. Exhibitors had the option of buying the whole series of shots and running them together, thus approximating a multishot film, or they might choose to buy only a few of the shots, combining them with other films or lantern slides to create a unique program. During this early period, exhibitors had considerable control over the shape of their programs---a control that would gradually disappear from 1899 onward, as producers began making longer films containing multiple shots. Page 12 Quite a few early exhibitors had experience running lantern-slide programs or other forms of public entertainment. They mixed scenics, topicals, and fiction films in a single, varied program, usually with musical accompaniment. In the more modest presentations, a pianist might play; in vaudeville theaters, the house orchestra provided music. In some cases, exhibitors had noises synchronized with the actions on the screen. The exhibitor might lecture during part of the program, describing the exotic landscapes, the current events, and the brief stories passing across the screen. At the least, the exhibitor would announce the titles because early films lacked opening credits and intertitles explaining the action. Some showmen mixed films with lantern slides or provided musical interludes using a phonograph. During these early years, the audience's response depended significantly on the exhibitor's skill in organizing and presenting the program. During the first decade of cinema, films were shown in many countries around the world. But the making of films was concentrated largely in the three principal countries where the motion-picture camera had originated: France, England, and the United States. Page 13 The Growth of the French Film Industry The Lumières' early screenings were successful, but the brothers believed that film would be a short-lived fad. As a result, they moved quickly to exploit the Cinématographe. They initially avoided selling their machines, instead sending operators to tour abroad and show films in rented theaters and cafés. These operators also made one-shot scenics of local points of interest. From 1896 on, the Lumière catalogue rapidly expanded to include hundreds of views of Spain, Egypt, Italy, Japan, and other countries. Although the Lumière brothers are usually remembered for their scenics and topicals, they also produced many staged films, usually brief comic scenes. Some of the Lumière operators' films were technically innovative. Eugène Promio, for example, is usually credited with originating the moving camera. The earliest cameras were supported by rigid tripods that did not allow the camera to swivel and make panorama, or panning, shots. In 1896, Promio introduced movement into a view of Venice by placing the tripod and camera in a gondola. Other filmmakers continued this practice, placing their cameras in boats and on trains (1.13). Traveling shots of this type (and soon panning movements as well) were associated mainly with scenics and topicals during this era. 1.13 Lumière operator Eugène Promio influenced many filmmakers by placing his camera in moving boats to make several of his films, including Egypte: Panorama des rives du Nil ("Egypt: Panorama of the Banks of the Nile," 1896). Egypte: Panorama des rives du Nil Because the Lumières quickly began exhibiting their films abroad, the first showings of projected motion pictures in many countries were put on by their representatives. Thus the history of the cinema in many nations begins with the arrival of the Cinématographe (see The Rapid Spread of Cinema around the World p. 12). The Lumières and a few other firms made the cinema an international phenomenon. The Lumières further aided the spread of cinema when, in 1897, they began selling their Cinématographes. But the same year saw a setback for their firm. On May 4, 1897, during a film screening at the Charity Bazaar in Paris, a curtain was ignited by the ether being used to fuel the lamp of the projector (which was not a Cinématographe). The resulting blaze was one of the worst tragedies in the history of the cinema, killing about 125 people. As a result, the cinema lost some of its attraction for fashionable city dwellers. In France, for several years, films were mainly exhibited in less lucrative traveling fairground shows (fêtes foraines). The Lumières continued producing films, but gradually more innovative rivals made their films seem old-fashioned. Their firm ceased production in 1905, though Louis and Auguste remained innovators in the area of still photography. Following the initial success of the Lumière Cinématographe in 1895, other film production firms appeared in France. Among these was a small company started by a man who was perhaps the single most important filmmaker of the cinema's early years, Georges Méliès (see Georges Méliès, Magician of the Cinema pp. 14-15). GEORGES MÉLIÈS, MAGICIAN OF THE CINEMA Méliès was a performing magician who owned his own theater. After seeing the Lumière Cinématographe in 1895, he decided to add films to his program, but the Lumière brothers were not yet selling machines. In early 1896, he obtained a projector from English inventor R. W. Paul and, by studying it, was able to build his own camera. He was soon showing films at his theater. Although Méliès is remembered mainly for his delightful fantasy movies, replete with camera tricks and painted scenery, he made films in all the genres of the day. His earliest work, most of which is lost, included many Lumière-style scenics and brief comedies, filmed outdoors. During his first year of production, he made seventy-eight films, including his first trick film, The Vanishing Lady (1896). In it, Méliès appears as a magician who transforms a woman into a skeleton. The trick was accomplished by stopping the camera and substituting the skeleton for the woman. Later, Méliès used stop-motion and other special effects to create more complex magic and fantasy scenes. These tricks had to be accomplished in the camera, while filming; prior to the mid-1920s, few laboratory manipulations were possible. Méliès also acted in many of his films, recognizable as a dapper and spry figure with a bald head, moustache, and pointed beard. In order to be able to control the mise-en-scène and cinematography of his films, Méliès built a small glass-enclosed studio. Finished by early 1897, the studio permitted Méliès to design and construct sets painted on canvas flats (1.14). Even working in this studio, however, Méliès continued to create various kinds of films. In 1898, for example, he filmed some reconstructed topicals, such as Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine" (1.15). His 1899 film, The Dreyfus Affair, told the story of the Jewish officer convicted of treason in 1894 on the basis of false evidence. The controversy was still raging when Méliès made his pro-Dreyfus picture. As was customary at the time, he released each of the ten shots as a separate film. When shown together, the shots combined into one of the most complex works of the cinema's early years. With his next work, Cinderella (1899), Méliès began joining multiple shots and selling them as one film. 1.14 The interior of the Star studio, with Méliès on the balcony lifting a rolled backdrop while assistants arrange a large painted shell and trapdoors. Painted theater-style flats and smaller set elements are stored at the right rear and hang on the back wall. Album/Alamy Stock Photo 1.15 One of many reconstructed documentaries relating to the sinking of the American battleship Maine, which began the Spanish-American War. Georges Méliès's Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine" used a painted set with actors playing the divers. A fish tank in front of the camera suggested an undersea scene. Divers at Work on the Wreck of the \"Maine\" Méliès's films, and especially his fantasies, were extremely popular in France and abroad, and they were widely imitated. They were also commonly pirated, and Méliès had to open a sales office in the United States in 1903 to protect his interests. Among the most celebrated of his films was A Trip to the Moon (1902), a comic science-fiction story of a group of scientists traveling to the moon in a space capsule and escaping after being taken prisoner by a race of subterranean creatures (1.16). Méliès often enhanced the beauty of his elaborately designed mise-en-scène by using hand-applied tinting (Color Plate 1.1). 1.16 The space capsule lands in the Man in the Moon's eye in Méliès's fantasy A Trip to the Moon. A Trip to the Moon Except in Méliès's first years of production, many of his films involved sophisticated stop-motion effects. Devils burst out of a cloud of smoke, pretty women vanish, and leaping men change into demons in midair. Some historians have criticized Méliès for depending on static theatrical sets instead of editing. Yet recent research has shown that in fact his stop-motion effects also utilized editing. He would cut the film in order to match the movement of one object perfectly with that of the thing into which it was transformed. Such cuts were designed to be unnoticeable, but clearly Méliès was a master of this type of editing (Video 1.1). For a time, Méliès's films were widely successful. After 1905, however, his fortunes slowly declined. His tiny firm could not satisfy the burgeoning demand for films. He continued to produce quality films, including his late masterpiece Conquest of the Pole (1912), but eventually these came to seem old-fashioned. In 1912, deep in debt, Méliès stopped producing, having made 510 films (about 40 percent of which survive). He died in 1938, after decades of working in his wife's candy and toy shop. Two other firms that would dominate the French film industry were formed shortly after the invention of the cinema. Charles Pathé was a phonograph seller and exhibitor in the early 1890s. In 1895, he purchased some of R. W. Paul's imitation Kinetoscopes, and the following year formed Pathé Frères, which initially made most of its money on phonographs. From 1901, however, Pathé concentrated more on film production, and profits soared. The firm expanded rapidly. In 1902, it built a glass-sided studio and began selling the Pathé camera, which became the world's most widely used camera until the end of the 1910s. Page 14 At first Pathé's production was somewhat derivative, borrowing ideas from Méliès and from American and English films. For example, in 1901, Ferdinand Zecca, the company's most important director, made Scenes from My Balcony. It picked up on the vogue, recently started in England, for shots presenting things as if seen through telescopes or microscopes (1.17, 1.18). Pathé's films were extremely popular. Although it took a sale of only 15 prints of a film to break even, actual sales averaged 350 prints. Pathé expanded abroad, opening sales offices in London, New York, Moscow, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. Selling both projectors and films, Pathé encouraged people to enter the exhibition business, thus creating more demand for Pathé films. Within a few years, Pathé Frères became the single largest film company in the world. 1.17, 1.18 One of many mildly risqué films made in this early period, Zecca's Scenes from My Balcony shows a man looking through a telescope, followed by shots of what he sees, including a woman undressing. Scenes from My Balcony Page 15 Page 16 Its main rival in France was a smaller firm formed by inventor Léon Gaumont. Like Lumière Frères, Gaumont initially dealt in equipment for still photography. The firm began producing films in 1897. These were mostly made by Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker (Video 1.1). Gaumont's involvement in film production remained limited in this era because he was more concerned with technical innovations in film equipment. Building a production studio in 1905 made Gaumont more prominent, largely through the work of director Louis Feuillade. England and the Brighton School After the first public screenings in early 1896, film exhibition spread quickly in England, largely because R. W. Paul was willing to sell projectors. At first, most films were grouped together to be shown as a single act on the program of a music hall (the British equivalent of American vaudeville theaters). Beginning in 1897, short, cheap film shows were also widely presented in fairgrounds, appealing to working-class audiences (1.19). 1.19 A typical fairground film show in England, about 1900. Behind the elaborate painted façades, the auditoriums were simple tents. Note here the picture of Thomas Edison in the center and the use of a bass drum to attract spectators. British Film Institute Stills, Posters and Designs, London. At first, most English filmmakers offered the usual novelty subjects. For example, in 1896, Paul made Twins' Tea Party (1.20; Video 1.2). Topicals showing the annual Derby were popular, and both the parade celebrating Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897 and events relating to the Boer War in South Africa were widely circulated. Some of these early newsreels consisted of more than one shot. The operator might simply stop and restart the camera to capture only highlights of the action, or he might actually splice bits of film together to hurry the action along. Similarly, some scenics were influenced by the Lumière films' placement of the camera on moving vehicles. Phantom rides, designed to give the spectator the illusion of traveling, became popular in England and other countries (1.21). As elsewhere, in England exhibitors gathered many types of films into a varied program. 1.20 Paul's Twins' Tea Party appealed to audiences by showing two cute toddlers squabbling and then kissing and making up. It was typical of many films of this era: a single shot taken on an open-air stage in direct sunlight, against a neutral backdrop. Twins\' Tea Party 1.21 View from an Engine Front---Barnstaple, made by the Warwick Trading Company in 1898, was typical of a popular genre, the phantom ride. View from an Engine Front---Barnstaple Page 17 Early English films became famous for their imaginative special-effects cinematography. For example, Cecil Hepworth began producing on a small scale in 1899. At first he concentrated on actualities, but he soon directed trick films as well (1.22; Video 1.2). Hepworth went on to become the most important British producer from 1905 to 1914. 1.22 In Hepworth's Explosion of a Motor Car (1900), stop-motion changes a real car into a fake one, which promptly blows up. A passing bobby dutifully inventories the body parts that rain in from above, creating a grim but amusing film. Explosion of a Motor Car There were other producers scattered around England. The most notable were a small group working around the resort town of Brighton. Chief among them were G. A. Smith and James Williamson, both of whom were still photographers who branched into filmmaking in 1897. Their explorations of editing and special effects influenced filmmakers in other countries. Williamson's 1900 film The Big Swallow is a good example. A man, seen against a blank background, is gesturing angrily because he does not want his picture taken. He walks forward until his wide-open mouth blots out the view (1.23). An imperceptible cut then substitutes a black backdrop for his mouth, and we see the cinematographer and his camera pitch forward into this void. Another concealed cut returns us to the open mouth, and the man backs away from the camera, laughing and chewing triumphantly (1.24; Video 1.2). 1.23, 1.24 Two stages of Williamson's The Big Swallow, as the irritated subject "eats" the cinematographer and camera. The Big Swallow Smith's 1903 grotesque comedy Mary Jane's Mishap uses editing in a remarkably sophisticated way. One basic distant framing of a slovenly maid in a kitchen is interrupted by several cut-ins to medium shots that show her amusing facial expressions (1.25, 1.26; Video 1.2). Although the actor's position is usually not matched well at the cuts, there is a general attempt to create a continuous action while using closer shots to guide our attention. This principle would become one basis for the dominant continuity style of filmmaking (see Chapter 2). 1.25, 1.26 In Mary Jane's Mishap, close views alternate with long shots to show such detail as the maid's accidentally smearing a "moustache" on her face while shining some shoes. Mary Jane's Mishap The English cinema was innovative and internationally popular early in film history, though it would soon weaken in the face of French, Italian, American, and Danish competition. The United States: Competition and the Resurgence of Edison The United States was by far the largest market for motion pictures because it had more theaters per capita than any other country. For more than fifteen years, American and foreign firms competed vigorously there. Although American films were sold abroad, US firms concentrated on the domestic market. As a result, France and Italy were soon to move ahead of the United States and control the international film trade until the mid-1910s. Exhibition Expands Page 18 After the first New York presentation of Edison's Vitascope in April 1896, film venues spread rapidly across the country. The Vitascope was not for sale, but individual entrepreneurs bought the rights to exploit it in different states. During 1896 and 1897, however, many small companies marketed their own projectors, all designed to show 35 mm prints. Soon hundreds of projectors were in use, and films were shown at vaudeville houses, amusement parks, small storefront theaters, summer resorts, fairs, even churches and opera houses. Mov­ies were not yet copyrighted and prints were sold rather than rented, so it was difficult to control the circulation of films. Edison's pictures were often duplicated, while Edison profited by duping films imported from France and England. Firms also frequently made direct imitations of each other's movies. The years from 1895 to 1897 were the novelty period of the cinema because the primary appeal was simply the astonishment of seeing movement and unusual sights reproduced on the screen. By early 1898, however, films' novelty had worn off. As attendance declined, many exhibitors went out of business. One event that helped revive the industry was the Spanish-American War of 1898. Patriotic fervor made audiences eager to see anything relating to the conflict, and companies in the United States and abroad profited by making both authentic and staged films. Another type of film that helped revive the industry was the Passion Play. Beginning in 1897, filmmakers made a series of single-shot scenes from Jesus's life---views that resembled illustrations in Bibles or magic-lantern slides. One series of shots was released in February 1898 as The Passion Play of Oberammergau (1.27). As with many of the more elaborate films of the day, the exhibitor had the option of buying some or all of the shots and combining them, along with lantern slides and other religious material, to make a lengthy program. Prizefight films were also popular, especially because they often could be shown in places where live bouts were prohibited. 1.27 "The Messiah's Entry into Jerusalem," one of the single-shot tableaux that made up The Passion Play of Oberammergau, produced by the Eden Musée, an important New York entertainment establishment. The Passion Play of Oberammergau From 1898, then, the American film industry enjoyed a certain stability, with most films being shown in vaudeville theaters. Production increased during this period to meet the high demand. Growing Rivalry Page 19 The American Mutoscope Company did particularly well during the late 1890s, partly because of its sharp 70 mm images, displayed by the company's own touring operators in vaudeville houses. By 1897, American Mutoscope was the most popular film company in America, and it attracted audiences abroad as well (1.28). American Mutoscope began filming in a new rooftop studio (1.29). The firm changed its name in 1899 to American Mutoscope and Biograph (AM&B), reflecting its double specialization in peepshow Mutoscope reels and projected films. Over the next several years, AM&B was hampered by a lawsuit brought against it by Edison, who consistently took competitors to court for infringing patents and copyrights. In 1902, however, AM&B won the suit because its camera used rollers rather than sprocketed gears to move the film. The company's prosperity grew. In 1903, it began to make and sell films in 35 mm rather than 70 mm, a change that boosted sales. Beginning in 1908, it employed one of the most important silent-era directors, D. W. Griffith. 1.28 Eugène Lauste, an American Mutoscope Company employee who had helped invent the Biograph camera, by the camera booth in the Casino de Paris, where he showed films in 1897 and 1898. The hall, with its potted palms and chandeliers, indicates the sort of elegant venue in which some early film screenings were held. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. 1.29 Officials of the American Mutoscope Company (including W. K. L. Dickson, second from right) in the firm's new rooftop studio. Like the Black Maria, the studio rotated on rails to catch the sun. The camera was sheltered in the metal booth, and simple painted sets were built against the framework. George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester. Another important company was American Vitagraph, founded in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith as an advertising firm. Vitagraph began producing popular films relating to the Spanish-American War. Like other production companies of this period, Vitagraph was threatened with patent- and copyright-infringement lawsuits by Edison, who hoped to control the American market. Vitagraph survived by agreeing to cooperate with Edison, making films for the Edison firm and in turn dealing in Edison films itself. AM&B's 1902 legal triumph over Edison briefly reduced the risk of lawsuits throughout the industry by establishing that Edison's patents did not cover all types of motion-picture equipment (see Chapter 2). As a result, Vitagraph expanded production. Within a few years, it would emerge as an important firm making artistically innovative films. Blackton would also make some of the earliest animated films. Edwin S. Porter, Edison's Mainstay The rise in production at AM&B and Vitagraph in the wake of Edison's failed lawsuit obliged Edison's company to make more films to counter their competition. One successful tactic was to make longer films shot in the studio. In this endeavor, it had the assistance of the most important American filmmaker of this early period, Edwin S. Porter. Porter was a film projectionist and an expert at building photographic equipment. In the late 1900s, he went to work for Edison, whom he greatly admired. He was assigned to improve the firm's cameras and projectors. That year the Edison Company built a new glass-enclosed rooftop studio in New York, where films could be shot using the typical painted stage-style scenery of the era. In early 1901, Porter began operating a camera there. At this point in cinema history, the cameraman was also the film's director, and soon Porter was responsible for many of the company's most popular films. Porter has often been credited with virtually all the innovations of the pre-1908 period, including making the first story film and inventing editing as we know it. In fact, there were hundreds of staged films telling stories at the period, and Porter drew on cutting techniques used by Méliès, Smith, and Williamson. He imaginatively developed his models, however, and he undoubtedly introduced some original devices. His fame came from his position as the foremost filmmaker of the preeminent American production company, so his works were widely seen and imitated. Porter had access to all the foreign films that the Edison Company was duping, so he could study the latest innovations. He examined Méliès's A Trip to the Moon closely and decided to copy its manner of telling a story in a series of shots. From 1902 on, many of his films contained several shots, with significant efforts to match time and space across cuts. Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903) is a notable attempt at such storytelling. It begins with a long shot of a dozing fireman dreaming of a woman and child threatened by fire; the dream is rendered as a sort of thought balloon, a circular vignette superimposed in the upper part of the screen. A cut to a close-up shows a hand pulling a public fire alarm. Several shots, mixing studio and location filming, show the firemen racing to the scene. The film ends with two lengthy shots that show the same action from two vantage points. In the first shot, a fireman comes in a bedroom window to rescue a mother and then returns to save her baby. In the second shot, we see both rescues again, from a camera position outside the house. To a modern audience, this repetition of events seems strange, but such displays of the same event from different viewpoints were not uncommon in the early cinema. (In Méliès's A Trip to the Moon, we see the explorers' capsule land in the Man in the Moon's eye \[see 1.16\] and then see the landing again from a camera position on the moon's surface.) Life of an American Fireman was based on earlier films and lantern slides depicting fire-fighting techniques. Brighton School director James Williamson had made a similar film, Fire!, in 1901. Page 20 Porter made several significant films in 1903, among them an adaptation of the popular stage version of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Porter's film was a series of one-shot scenes of famous episodes in the novel, linked by printed intertitles---the first known to have been used in an American film (1.30, 1.31). (Porter derived this technique from a G. A. Smith film, and Pathé's Victimes de l'alcoolisme of 1902 had used intertitles.) 1.30, 1.31 Porter's Uncle Tom's Cabin used an intertitle to introduce each shot. Here, "The Escape of Eliza" leads to a single shot of the famous episode in the novel in which Eliza flees across the ice floes on a river. Uncle Tom's Cabin Porter's most important film, The Great Train Robbery, also made in 1903, used eleven shots to tell the story of a gang of bandits who hold up a train. A telegraph operator, whom they tie up at the beginning, alerts authorities, and a posse ambushes the thieves as they divide the loot. After the lengthy robbery scene, the action returns to the telegraph office seen earlier, then moves to a dance hall as the telegraph operator runs in to alert the local townspeople, and finally switches back to the robbers in a forest. Although Porter never cuts repeatedly among these locales, a few years later filmmakers would begin to do so, thus creating a technique called crosscutting (see The Beginnings of the Continuity System p. 15). Porter's film was, nonetheless, gripping in its depiction of violent action (1.32). Indeed, a novel extra shot, showing one of the robbers in a close view firing a gun toward the camera, was included; exhibitors had the option of placing it at the beginning or end of the film. Perhaps no film of the pre-1905 period was as popular as The Great Train Robbery (Video 1.3). 1.32 To make this shot for The Great Train Robbery, Porter exposed the film twice, showing most of the action of the holdup staged in the studio, with the view of the train as seen through the window filmed separately. The Great Train Robbery Porter worked for Edison for several more years. In 1905, he directed The Kleptomaniac, a social critique that contrasted the situations of two women who commit theft. The first part shows a rich kleptomaniac stealing goods at a department store; we then see shots of a poor woman impulsively taking a loaf of bread. The final courtroom scene shows the poor woman being sentenced, while the rich one is let off. In Porter's 1906 film The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, superimposition and a rocking camera depict a drunkard's dizziness while Méliès-style special effects show his dream of flying above a city. In 1909, Porter left Edison to become an independent producer, but he was soon outshone by others just entering the field. From 1902 to 1905, Porter was one of many filmmakers who contributed to an industrywide concentration on fiction filmmaking. Unlike topicals, which were dependent on unpredictable news events, fiction films could be carefully planned in advance. Scenics involved expensive travel to distant locales, but fiction films allowed their makers to stay at or near the studio. Advance planning and in-house control enabled companies to create films steadily and on schedule. Moreover, audiences seemed to prefer films with stories. Some of these were still one-shot views, but filmmakers increasingly used a series of shots to depict comic chases, extravagant fantasies, and melodramatic situations. By 1904, major changes were taking place in the new medium and art form of the cinema. Fiction films were becoming the industry's main product. Increasingly, movies were rented to exhibitors, a practice that established the division among production, distribution, and exhibition that was to shape the expansion of the film industry. Page 21 Although the leading industries were in France, England, and the United States, small-scale production also occurred in other parts of the world from an early date. Enterprising exhibitors made scenics and topicals of local interest to mix into their programs of imported films. In Spain, for instance, the first films were taken by Eugène Promio when he brought the Lumière Cinématographe to Madrid in June 1896. By October of the same year, Eduardo Jimeno shot the first Spanish-made film, Worshippers Leaving the Noon Mass at Pilar de Zaragoza; similar imitations of Lumière actualities and even fiction films were produced in 1897. In India, exhibitor Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar ordered a European camera and filmed wrestling matches, circus monkeys, and local events, showing these actualities alongside imported films beginning in 1899. Entrepreneurs in other countries made similar films, but because only one or a few prints were made, hardly any survive. During the first ten years of the commercial exploitation of the cinema, conditions were established for international growth of the industry. Moreover, filmmakers had begun to explore the creative possibilities of the new medium. These explorations were to intensify over the next decade. REFERENCE 1\. From The Photogram, quoted in John Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), p. 64. **2** **The Inherited Taint** **THE INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION OF THE CINEMA, 1905--1912** **Polidor coi Baffi** **Before 1904, the cinema led a somewhat vagrant existence. Producers sold film prints, and exhibitors showed them in vaudeville houses, music halls, rented theaters, and fairground tents. The same prints were often resold and continued to circulate for years, becoming ever more battered. Around 1905, however, the film industry expanded and stabilized. Permanent theaters were devoted especially to film, and production expanded to meet increased demand. Italy and Denmark joined the ranks of important producing countries, and filmmaking on a smaller scale emerged in many other lands.** **After 1905, films grew longer, using more shots and telling more complex stories. Filmmakers explored new techniques for conveying narrative information. Perhaps no other era has seen such extensive changes in films' formal and stylistic traits.** **FILM PRODUCTION IN EUROPE** **France: Pathé versus Gaumont** **During this period, the French film industry was still the largest, and its movies were the ones most frequently seen around the world. The two main firms, Pathé Frères and Gaumont, continued to expand, and other companies were formed in response to an increased demand from exhibitors. As in many Western countries, workers were winning a shorter workweek and thus had more leisure time for inexpensive entertainments. The French firms also courted a wider middle-class audience.** **Page 23** **From 1905 to 1908, the French film industry grew swiftly. Pathé was already a large company, with three separate studios. It was also one of the earliest film companies to become vertically integrated. A vertically integrated firm is one controlling the production, distribution, and retailing of a product. As we shall see time and again in this book, vertical integration has been a major strategy pursued by film companies and often a measure of their strength. Pathé made its own cameras and projectors, produced films, and around 1911 began manufacturing film stock as well. In 1906, Pathé also started buying theaters. The following year, the firm began to distribute its own films by renting rather than selling them to exhibitors. By then, it was the largest film company in the world. Starting in 1908, it distributed films made by other companies as well.** **By 1905, Pathé employed six filmmakers, overseen by Ferdinand Zecca, each making a film a week. The films encompassed a variety of genres: actualities, historical films, trick films, dramas, vaudeville acts, and chases. During 1903 and 1904, Pathé created an elaborate system for hand-stenciling color onto release prints. Stencils were painstakingly cut from a copy of the film itself, with a different stencil for each color. Assembly lines of women workers then painted the colors frame by frame on each release print. Pathé reserved color for trick films and films displaying flowers or elegantly dressed women (Color Plate 2.1). Such hand-coloring continued until the early sound era.** **In 1908, Pathé launched SCAGL, a unit to produce prestige pictures. It was headed by Albert Capellani, one of the great directors of the pre-World War I era (see D.W. Griffith and Albert Capellani: Two Early Masters of the Cinema p. 40). Among Pathé's most profitable films were series starring popular comics: the "Boireau" series (with André Deed), the "Rigadin" films (with the music-hall star Prince), and, above all, the Max Linder series. Linder's films, set in a middle-class milieu, reflected the industry's growing bid for respectability (2.1). Max typically suffered embarrassment in social situations, such as wearing painfully tight shoes to an elegant dinner. He was often thwarted in love; in Une ruse de mari ("The Husband's Ruse"), he unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide in various ways. Linder's films were enormously influential. Charles Chaplin once referred to Linder as his "professor" and himself as Linder's "disciple".1 Linder worked in both the United States and France from 1909 until his death in 1925.** **2.1 Max Linder in Une ruse de mari ("The Husband's Ruse," directed by Linder in 1913). Linder's distinctive appearance---elegant clothes, top hat, and dapper moustache---influenced other comics to adopt trademark outfits.** **Une Ruse De Mari** **Aside from being a vertically integrated firm, Pathé also used the strategy of horizontal integration. This term means that a firm expands within one sector of an industry, as when one film production firm acquires and absorbs another one. Pathé enlarged its production by opening studios in such places as Italy, Russia, and the United States. From 1909 to 1911, its Moscow branch made about half the films produced in Russia.** **Pathé's main French rival, Gaumont, also expanded rapidly. After finishing its new studio in 1905, the firm took on additional filmmakers. Alice Guy trained this new staff and turned to making longer films herself (2.2). Among the new filmmakers was scriptwriter and director Louis Feuillade, who took over the supervision of Gaumont's films when Guy left in 1908. He became one of the silent cinema's most important artists. Feuillade was extraordinarily versatile, making comedies, historical films (see Color Plate 2.2), thrillers, and melodramas.** **2.2 Alice Guy collaborated with designer Victorin Jasset on La Naissance, la vie et la mort de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ ("The Birth, Life, and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ," 1906). This scene of the scourging of Christ indicates the elaborate staging and sets used for some prestige films of this period.** **La Naissance** **Following Pathé's lead, other companies and entrepreneurs opened film theaters, aiming at affluent consumers. Such theaters often showed longer and more prestigious films. Prosperity in the French industry and in film exports led to the formation of several smaller firms during this period.** **Page 24** **One of these had a significant impact. As its name suggests, the Film d'Art company, founded in 1908, identified itself with elite tastes. One of its first efforts was The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (1908, Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes). Using stage stars, a script by a famous dramatist, and an original score by composer Camille Saint-Saëns, the film told the story of a famous incident in French history (2.3, 2.4). It was widely shown and had a successful release in the United States. The Assassination of the Duc de Guise and similar works created a model of what art films should be like. The Film d'Art company, however, lost money on most of its productions and was sold in 1911.** **2.3, 2.4 The sets and acting in The Assassination of the Duc de Guise derived from the theater. Its shots, however, showed characters moving smoothly from one space to another, as when the Duc de Guise walks through a curtained doorway to confront his enemies.** **The Assassination of The Duc de Guise** **On the whole, the French industry prospered. From 1907 on, the rental system encouraged the opening of cinema theaters. By 1910, screenings in cafés and traveling fêtes foraines had dwindled, and large film theaters were the rule. During the same era, however, French firms were facing challenges in the lucrative American market and would soon lose their dominance over world markets.** **Italy: Growth through Spectacle** **Italy came somewhat late to the film production scene, but beginning in 1905 its film industry grew rapidly and soon resembled that of France. Although films were produced in several cities, Rome's Cines (founded in 1905) and Turin's Ambrosio (1905) and Itala (1906) soon emerged as the principal companies. The new firms were handicapped by a lack of experienced personnel, and some lured artists away from French firms. As a result, some Italian films were imitations, even remakes, of French movies.** **Exhibition also expanded quickly. Italy depended less than other European countries on films being shown in traveling fairs and other temporary venues. Instead, many permanent theaters opened. Thus, in Italy, cinema won respect as a new art form earlier than in other countries. Italian producers moved toward art films at about the same time that Film d'Art was making The Assassination of the Duc de Guise. In 1908, the Ambrosio company made The Last Days of Pompeii, the first of many adaptations of a famous historical novel. As a result, the Italian cinema became identified with historical spectacle.** **By 1910, Italy was probably second only to France in the number of films it sent around the world. Partly because Italian producers catered to permanent film theaters, they were among the first who consistently made films of more than one reel (that is, longer than fifteen minutes). For example, in 1911, a major director of the period, Giovanni Pastrone, made La caduta di Troia ("The Fall of Troy"; 2.5) in three reels. The triumph of this and similar films encouraged Italian producers to make longer, more expensive epics.** **2.5 The large sets, crowd scenes, and lavish historical costumes of The Fall of Troy were typical of Italian epics.** **The Fall of Troy** **Page 25** **Not all Italian films were epics, however. Beginning in 1909, producers imitated the French by creating several comic series. Itala hired Pathé's actor André Deed, who briefly abandoned his Boireau character to become Cretinetti ("Little Cretin"). Other companies found French or Italian comics to build series around, such as Ambrosio's Robinet and Cines's Polidor (2.6). These films were much cheaper than epics. They were also livelier and more spontaneous, and they became internationally popular. Hundreds of such films were made, although the fad gradually declined during the 1910s.** **2.6 French-born clown Ferdinand Guillaume as the popular Polidor in Polidor coi baffi ("Polidor's Moustache," 1914).** **The Big Swallow** **Denmark: Nordisk and Ole Olsen** **That a small country like Denmark became a significant player in world cinema was largely due to entrepreneur Ole Olsen. He had been an exhibitor, initially using a peepshow machine and later running one of the first movie theaters in Copenhagen. In 1906, he formed a production company, Nordisk, and immediately began opening distribution offices abroad. Nordisk's breakthrough came in 1907 with Lion Hunt, a fiction film about a safari. Because two lions were actually shot during the production, the film was banned in Denmark, but the publicity generated huge sales abroad. The company's New York branch, established in 1908, sold Nordisk films under the brand name Great Northern. In the same year, Olsen completed the first of four glass studios for indoor production (2.7).** **2.7 Nordisk's second studio was typical of such buildings in many countries during the silent era. Glass walls and roofs permitted sunlight to illuminate scenes.** **Det Danske Filmmuseum, Copenhagen.** **Nordisk films quickly established an international reputation for excellent acting and production values. Nordisk specialized in crime thrillers and somewhat sensationalistic melodramas, including "white-slave" (prostitution) stories. Olsen had a circus set permanently installed, and some of the firm's major films centered on circus life, such as The Four Devils (1911, Robert Dinesen and Alfred Lind) and Dødsspring til Hest fra Cirkuskuplen ("Death Jump on Horseback from the Circus Dome," 1912, Eduard Schnedler-Sørensen). The latter film concerns a count who loses his fortune through covering the gambling debts of a friend. His skill at riding horses allows him to work in a circus, where he becomes romantically involved with two women (2.8). One of them tries to kill him by causing his horse to plunge from a high platform; the second woman nurses him back to health. Rival producers admired such films for compressing abrupt plot twists and highly emotional situations into two or three reels.** **2.8 A dramatic staging in depth in Dødsspring til Hest fra Cirkuskuplen: the heroine watches from the foreground as the hero demonstrates his equestrian skills in the circus ring.** **Dødsspring til Hest fra Cirkus-Kuplen** **Although a few Danish companies started up during this period, Olsen eventually managed either to buy them or to drive them out of business. Nevertheless, it was one of these short-lived small firms that made Afgrunden ("Downfall," 1910, Urban Gad), which brought instant fame to actress Asta Nielsen. Like Max Linder, she was one of the first international film stars. Dark and thin, with large, intense eyes, she possessed an unconventional beauty. She often played women destroyed by love: seduced and abandoned, or sacrificing themselves for the happiness of the men they love (see 2.19--2.21). Nielsen was equally adept at comedy, however, and, although she had trained in the theater, she was one of the earliest screen performers whose style seemed to owe nothing to the stage. Nielsen went on to work in Germany, where she became one of the mainstays of the industry.** **Page 26** **The Danish industry remained healthy until World War I cut off many of its export markets.** **Other Countries** **Led by Cecil Hepworth's production company, England remained a significant force in world film markets. Its 1905 film Rescued by Rover was one of the biggest international hits of its day. Filmmaking spread to other countries as well. The earliest systematic production in Japan, for example, was launched in 1908. Most films made there were records of kabuki plays, filmed in static long shots. In Germany, a few production companies started up, though the industry did not begin to flourish until 1913. Pathé dominated Russian filmmaking, but several domestic firms also established themselves. In other countries, small production companies appeared, produced a few films, and vanished. None challenged France, Italy, Denmark, and the United States as the ruling industries on the international scene.** **THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EXPANDING AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY** **Today, Hollywood dominates the international market in entertainment media. Before World War I, however, the United States was not yet the world's most economically important country. Great Britain still ruled the waves; its ships carried more goods than did those of any other country, and London was the globe's financial center. It was the Great War that allowed the United States to surpass England and other European countries.** **Before the war, American film firms concentrated on the swiftly expanding domestic demand and paid less attention to foreign markets. US companies were still battling among themselves for power in the new industry. Between 1905 and 1912, American producers, distributors, and exhibitors tried to bring some stability to the shifting and confused film business. Only then would they be able to turn greater attention to export.** **The Nickelodeon Boom** **By 1905, films were screening in most of the available vaudeville houses, local theaters, and other venues. The main trend in the American film industry from 1905 to 1907 was the rapid multiplication of film theaters. These were typically small stores, installed with fewer than two hundred seats. Admission was usually a nickel (hence, the term nickelodeon) or a dime for a program running fifteen to sixty minutes. Most nickelodeons had only one projector. During reel changes, a singer might perform a current song, accompanied by lantern slides.** **Nickelodeons spread for several reasons. When production companies turned away from actualities toward story films, moviegoing became less a novelty and more a regular entertainment. Shorter workweeks left more leisure time. In addition, producers took to renting rather than selling films. Because exhibitors no longer had to keep running the same films until they made back their purchase price, they could change their programs two, three, even seven times a week. As a result, some of their patrons returned regularly. Nickelodeons could run the same brief programs over and over continuously, from late morning to midnight. Many exhibitors made huge profits.** **Nickelodeons had advantages over earlier forms of exhibition. Unlike amusement parks, they were not seasonal. They were cheaper than vaudeville houses and more regularly available than traveling exhibitions. Expenses were low. Spectators typically sat on benches or in simple wooden seats. There were seldom newspaper advertisements to alert patrons in advance concerning programs. Patrons usually either attended on a regular basis or simply dropped in. The front of the theater displayed hand-painted signs with the names of the films, and there might be a phonograph or barker attracting passersby.** **There was almost always some sound accompaniment. The exhibitor might lecture along with the film, but piano or phonograph accompaniment was more common. In some cases, actors stood behind the screen and spoke dialogue in synchronization with the action on the screen. More frequently, people used noisemakers to create appropriate sound effects.** **Page 27** **In the days before 1905, when films had mainly been shown in vaudeville theaters or by touring lecturer-exhibitors, admission prices were often twenty-five cents or more---too much for most blue-collar workers. Nickel theaters, however, opened films to a mass audience, many of them immigrants. Nickelodeons clustered in business districts and working-class neighborhoods in cities. Blue-collar workers could attend theaters near their homes, while secretaries and office boys caught a show during the lunch hour or before taking public transport home after work. Women and children made up a significant proportion of city audiences, stopping in for a break while shopping. In small towns, a nickelodeon might be the only place showing films, and people from all strata of society would watch movies together.** **By 1908, nickelodeons had become the main form of exhibition. As a result, many more movies were needed by the new distributors, or film exchanges, that bought prints from the producers. A single nickelodeon, using three films in a program that changed three times a week, would rent about 450 titles a year!** **During the nickelodeon boom, most films came from abroad. Pathé, Gaumont, Hepworth, Cines, Nordisk, and other European firms flooded the weekly release schedules. Because there were far more theaters in the United States than in any other country, a huge number of copies could be sold to exchanges there. Such sales helped keep the English industry healthy and allowed the Italian and Danish industries to expand quickly.** **The nickelodeons also launched the careers of several important businessmen. The Warner brothers got their start as nickelodeon exhibitors (2.9). Carl Laemmle, later the founder of Universal, opened his first nickelodeon in Chicago in 1906. Louis B. Mayer, who became the second "M" of MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), had a small theater in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Other studio executives who started out running nickelodeons included Adolph Zukor (later head of Paramount), William Fox (who formed the company that became 20th Century-Fox), and Marcus Loew (whose Loew's was the parent company of MGM). These men would help create the basic structure of the Hollywood studio system during the 1910s.** **2.9 The Cascade Theater in Newcastle, Pennsylvania was the first nickelodeon acquired by Jack, Albert, Sam, and Harry Warner. A sign promises "Refined Entertainment for Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children." The Warners went on to careers in exhibition and production, eventually establishing Warner Bros.** **George Eastman International Museum of Photography, Rochester.** **The Motion Picture Patents Company versus the Independents** **In the meantime, however, the nickelodeon boom spurred intense competition. The more established leaders of the industry consolidated power among themselves and tried to exclude newcomers. They realized that control of the burgeoning film business would be highly profitable.** **1907--1908: Control through Litigation** **Since 1897, the Edison company had tried to force its competitors out of business by suing them. Edison claimed to own the basic patents on motion-picture cameras, projectors, and film stock. Some companies, such as Vitagraph, paid Edison a license fee to be able to go on producing. After a court decision went in Edison's favor in 1904, other companies joined in paying such fees. American Mutoscope & Biograph (AM&B), however, refused to cooperate with Edison because its Biograph camera had a different mechanism and separate patents.** **In early 1907, an appeals court handed down an important decision. Edison had sued AM&B for infringement of its camera patent. The decision reaffirmed that AM&B's roller-driven camera was sufficiently different and did not infringe Edison's patent, based on sprocket gears. The decision also stated, however, that other camera designs currently in use did infringe that patent. As a result, all production companies and importers assumed that they had to pay either AM&B or Edison to stay in business.** **Page 28** **The rivalry between Edison and AM&B became more intense in 1908. Edison decided to sue AM&B yet again, this time claiming that the latter had infringed its patents on film stock. AM&B countered by buying the patent for the Latham loop and suing Edison for using this device in its cameras and projectors. The two firms set up rival licensing arrangements in early 1908: members of the Association of Edison Licensees paid Edison in order to go on making films, and the Biograph Association of Licensees collected money mostly from foreign companies and importers who wanted to bring films into the American market.** **The film market approached chaos. Exhibitors needed a great many films, but producers were so busy fighting each other that they could not release enough titles. During this same period, however, Edison and AM&B decided to cooperate. They created a separate company that would control all competitors by owning and charging licensing fees on the key existing patents. In December of 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), headed by Edison and AM&B, was created. Several other production companies belonged to the MPPC: Vitagraph, Selig, Essanay, Lubin, and Kalem. To keep operating, each of these had to pay fees to the two main companies (though Vitagraph, which had contributed a patent to the arrangement, got back a portion of the license fees).** **In an attempt to gain a larger share of the US market, the MPPC strictly limited the number of foreign firms that could join. Pathé, the largest importer, and Méliès were allowed into the MPPC, as was George Kleine, a major Chicago firm that imported European films by Gaumont and Urban-Eclipse (an English--French company). Several European companies, such as Great Northern (Nordisk) and all Italian firms, were shut out. Although foreign companies continued to operate in the United States, both in the MPPC and as independents, they never regained the large share of the market that they had enjoyed before 1908. France and Italy continued to be the leaders in markets outside the United States until World War I.** **The MPPC hoped to control all three phases of the industry: production, distribution, and exhibition. Only licensed companies could make films. Only licensed distribution firms could release them. And all theaters wanting films made by members of the MPPC had to pay a weekly fee for the privilege. Eastman Kodak agreed to sell film stock only to members of the MPPC, and in return they would buy no stock except from Kodak.** **This arrangement set the stage for control over the entire US film market by an oligopoly. When one company dominates its market, that firm has a monopoly. In an oligopoly, a small number of firms cooperate to control the market and block the entry of new companies. Members of the MPPC's oligopoly tried to eliminate all other firms by threatening to sue for patent infringement. A producer who used a film camera without paying the MPPC risked being taken to court. The same was true for exhibitors because the MPPC claimed to control the patents covering their projectors. By and large, American film production and distribution remain an oligopoly today.** **During 1909, the American film industry stabilized somewhat. MPPC members set up a regular schedule of weekly releases. Newer films cost more and declined in value after they had been shown for a while (a situation that has survived to the present in a system of runs and windows). One reel became the standard film length. Each reel rented for the same price, whatever the film was, because producers viewed films as standard products, like sausages.** **1909--1915: The Independents Fight Back** **Still, the MPPC encountered challenges. Not all producers, distributors, and exhibitors were willing to pay fees to Edison and AM&B. Exhibitors who had purchased their projectors outright were particularly annoyed. It is estimated that about 6,000 theaters agreed to pay the weekly fee, but another 2,000 refused. The unlicensed theaters provided a market that unlicensed producers and distributors could serve. This portion of the industry was soon identified as the independents.** **In April 1909, the first effective blow against the MPPC was dealt when Carl Laemmle, who ran the largest American distribution firm, turned in his license. He started the Independent Motion Picture (IMP) company, a small firm that would later form the basis for the Universal studio. Within the next few years, more than a dozen other independent companies started up across the country, including Thanhouser, Solax (run by Alice Guy Blaché, formerly of Gaumont in France), and the New York Motion Picture Company (headed by Thomas H. Ince, who would become an important producer). Independent theaters could rent films from the European companies shut out of the MPPC arrangement. Trying to avoid patent-infringement suits by the MPPC, independent companies claimed to be using cameras that employed different mechanisms.** **Responding to the independent movement, the MPPC created the General Film Company in 1910 as an attempt to monopolize distribution. The General Film Company was to release all the films made by MPPC producers. The MPPC also hired detectives to gain evidence that producers were using cameras with the Latham loop and other devices patented by the MPPC. Between 1909 and 1911, the MPPC brought lawsuits against nearly all of the independent producers for using patent-infringing cameras. One such suit, against Laemmle's IMP, was based on the Latham-loop patent. In 1912, the courts ruled against the MPPC, on the grounds that the technique of the Latham loop had been anticipated in earlier patents. Consequently, independent companies could use any camera without fearing litigation. This court decision was a severe blow to the MPPC.** **Page 29** **Also in 1912, the American government began proceedings against the MPPC as a trust (a group of companies acting in unfair constraint of trade). The case was decided against the MPPC in 1915. By that point, however, a number of the independent firms had wisely allied themselves with national distributors and opted for the new feature-film format. In contrast, some former members of the MPPC had become victims of mismanagement. As a result, during the early 1910s, several members of the independent sector of the industry began to create the new, more stable oligopoly that would form the Hollywood film industry.** **Social Pressures and Self-Censorship** **The quick spread of nickelodeons led to social pressures aimed at reforming the cinema. Many religious groups and social workers considered the nickel theaters sinister places where young people could be led astray. The movies were seen as a training ground for prostitution and robbery. French films were criticized for treating adultery in a comic fashion. Violent subject matter such as reenacted executions and murders were common fare early in the nickelodeon boom.** **In late 1908, the mayor of New York briefly succeeded in closing down all the city's nickelodeons, and local censorship boards were formed in several towns. A concerned group of New York citizens formed the Board of Censorship in March 1909. This was a private body aimed at improving the movies and thus forestalling the federal government from passing a national censorship law. Producers were to submit films voluntarily, and films that passed could include a notice of approval. As a way of gaining respectability, MPPC members allowed their films to be examined, and they even supported the board financially. This cooperation led the group to change its name to the National Board of Censorship (and, in 1915, to the National Board of Review). Although censorship boards continued to be formed on the municipal and state levels, no national censorship law was---or ever has been---passed. Variants of this policy of voluntary self-censorship have existed in the American film industry ever since.** **Both the MPPC and the independents also tried to improve the public image of the movies by releasing more prestigious films that would appeal to middle- and upper-class spectators. Films became longer and more complex in their narratives. Stories derived from celebrated literature or portraying important historical events counter-balanced the popular slapstick chases and crime films. Some of these prestigious films, such as The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (See France: Pathé versus Gaumont, 2.3--2.4), came from abroad. American producers increasingly turned to similar source material. In 1909, D. W. Griffith, on his way to becoming the most important American silent director, filmed Robert Browning's verse play Pippa Passes, quoting lines from the original as intertitles. Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays condensed to one or two reels became common.** **Along with this effort to appeal to refined audiences came a change in the places where films were shown. Some nickelodeons continued to operate well into the 1910s, but from 1908 on, exhibitors also began to build or convert larger theaters for showing films. These establishments might charge ten or twenty-five cents, or even more, for longer programs. Some theaters combined films and live vaudeville acts. Popular song slides, which were perceived as lower class, gradually disappeared as the better-class theaters began to use two projectors---and hence had no need for a song to cover the change of reels. Musical accompaniment by orchestras or pipe organs, ornate decorations, and occasional educational lectures accompanying the films were all designed to create an atmosphere very different from that of the nickel movie houses.** **The Rise of the Feature Film** **Part of the move toward longer programs and more prestigious films involved increasing the length of the films. In the early years of the twentieth century, feature simply referred to an unusual film that could be featured in the advertising. During the nickelodeon boom, when the one-reel length became standard, feature still had the same meaning. But the term also came to be associated with longer films. Before 1909, these were typically prizefight films or religious epics and were often shown in legitimate theaters rather than nickelodeons. One exception was The Story of the Kelly Gang, an Australian narrative film based on the life of the notorious outlaw, Ned Kelly. Released in 1906 and lasting around an hour, it may have been the first feature film in the modern sense (2.10).** **2.10 In The Story of the Kelly Gang, the gang captures a police camp and starts to eat, when one of their members alerts them that more police are approaching.** **The Story of the Kelly Gan** **By 1909, some American producers started making multireel films. Because the MPPC's rigid release system allowed for only single reels, such films had to be released in one part per week. In late 1909 and early 1910, for example, Vitagraph sold The Life of Moses as five separate reels. Once all five were out, however, some exhibitors showed them as a single program.** **Page 30** **In Europe, the exhibition system was more flexible, and multireel films were common. When these were imported into the United States, they were typically shown in their entirety in legitimate theaters, at higher admission prices. As we saw, Itala's three-reel The Fall of Troy (see 2.5) had a great success in 1911. In 1912, Adolph Zukor triumphantly imported Queen Elizabeth and Camille, French productions starring the famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. Such pressure from imports led American firms to release longer films as a unit. In 1911, Vitagraph brought out its three-reel Vanity Fair as one film. By the mid-1910s, the feature film would become the standard basis for programming in more prestigious theaters, and the mixture of short films preferred by nickelodeon managers would decline.** **The Star System** **In the earliest years of the cinema, films were advertised as novelties. Once the nickelodeon boom and the formation of the MPPC had regularized the American industry, companies sold films by brand name. Spectators knew that they were seeing an Edison or a Vitagraph or a Pathé picture, but filmmakers and actors received no screen credit. In vaudeville, the legitimate theater, and the opera, the star system was well established. Film actors' names, however, were not publicized---in part because fame would allow them to demand higher wages.** **Indeed, before 1908, few actors worked regularly enough in films to be recognized. At about that time, however, producers started signing actors to longer contracts, and audiences began to see the same faces in film after film. By 1909, viewers were spontaneously asking theater managers the actors' names or writing to the companies for photographs. Fans made up names for the most popular stars: Florence Lawrence, who regularly appeared in Griffith's films, became "the Biograph Girl"; Florence Turner was "the Vitagraph Girl"; and Vitagraph's heartthrob, Maurice Costello, was dubbed "Dimples" (see 2.22). Reviewers picked up these nicknames. Of Griffith's 1909 film Lady Helen's Escapade, a commentator remarked, "Of course, the chief honors of the picture are borne by the now famous Biograph girl, who must be gratified by the silent celebrity she has achieved. This lady combines with very great personal attractions very fine dramatic abilities indeed."2** **By 1910, some companies responded to audience demand and began publicizing their popular actors. Kalem supplied theaters with photographs to display in their lobbies. Personal appearances by stars in theaters became an institution. In 1911, the first fan magazine, The Motion Picture Story Magazine, appeared. That same year, an enterprising firm began selling photo postcards of popular players. Stars were named in advertisements aimed at exhibitors (2.11). Still, films seldom included credits until 1914.** **2.11 An advertisement from October 1911 names Owen Moore and Mary Pickford as the stars of an upcoming release by an independent producer, Majestic.** **The Majestic Motion Picture Co** **The Movies Move to Hollywood** **The first American film companies were located in New Jersey and New York. Other producers emerged in Chicago (Selig, Essanay), Philadelphia (Lubin), and elsewhere in the East and the Midwest. Because filmmakers worked outdoors or in sunlit glass studios, poor weather could hamper production. After the formation of the MPPC in 1908, some film companies sent production units to sunnier climes for the winter: New York--based firms might head to Florida, whereas Chicago companies tended to go west.** **Page 31** **During the early 1910s, the Los Angeles area emerged as the country's major production center. It had several advantages. Its clear, dry weather permitted filming outdoors most days of the year. Southern California offered a variety of landscapes, including ocean, desert, mountain, forest, and hillside. The Western had emerged as one of the most popular American genres, and such films looked more authentic when filmed in the real West rather than in New Jersey.** **The small suburb of Hollywood was one of several where studios were established, and its name eventually came to stand for the entire American filmmaking industry---despite the fact that many decisions were still made in New York, in the head offices of the companies. Studios in the Hollywood area would soon grow from small open-air stages to sizable complexes with large enclosed studios and numerous departments.** **In 1904, the American film industry had consisted of several small companies trying to put each other out of business. By 1912, it had gone through an unsuccessful attempt by one group, the MPPC, to monopolize the market. Now more film firms existed, and they were on the brink of building the business into something much larger and more stable.** **THE BEGINNINGS OF FILM ANIMATION** **Films using some aspects of animation existed from the beginnings of the cinema. Émile Reynaud's drawn images for his projecting Praxinoscope were important forerunners for cinematic animation (see Major Precursors of Motion Pictures, 1.4). Quick-draw artists from vaudeville---among them J. Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of Vitagraph---performed in several early films. There is some evidence that in 1890s' advertising films and films made for toy projectors, filmmakers created movement of objects or drawings by photographing them one frame at a time.** **Animation within the film industry seems to have begun in 1906, when Blackton made Humorous Phases of Funny Faces for Vitagraph. It consisted mostly of drawings of faces that developed frame by frame, as Blackton added bits of lines. Thus the drawings gradually appeared but did not move---until the end, when the faces roll their eyes. That same year, Pathé produced Le Théâtre de Petit Bob (Little Bob's Theater), for which Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón patiently moved objects between single-frame exposures to make the contents of a boy's toybox appear to come to life. Such animation of objects is called pixilation.** **Creating animated films took a great deal of time and effort. In this early period, they usually were the painstaking creations of individual artists, working alone or with an assistant. Animation involved either making objects seem to move or bringing many separate drawings to life.** **The earliest major film animating objects was Vitagraph's The Haunted Hotel (1907), directed by Blackton. Here the "magical" movement occurred within a live-action film. A hotel patron is plagued by supernatural forces, rendered onscreen through double exposures, wires, stop motion, and other tricks. In one scene, a knife moves on its own to cut and butter bread (2.12). The Haunted Hotel was one of the first releases by Vitagraph's new Paris office, and it was widely imitated abroad.** **2.12 In Blackton's The Haunted Hotel, a meal prepares itself through frame-by-frame animation.** **The Haunted Hotel** **Émile Cohl, who worked primarily for Gaumont from 1908 to 1910, was the first person to devote his energies to drawn animation. His earliest cartoon was Fantasmagorie (1908; 2.13). In order to create steady movement, Cohl placed each drawing on a plate of glass illuminated from beneath and then traced the image onto the next sheet of paper, making slight changes in the figures. His many films were often based on bizarre, stream-of-consciousness transformations of a series of shapes, one into another. Cohl also made live-action films, often incorporating some animated sequences. Like Méliès, Cohl retired from filmmaking in the teens and lived a life of poverty; he died in 1938.** **2.13 Cohl's Fantasmagorie was drawn in black ink on white paper and then printed in negative to give the impression