The International Origins
"The Moving Spotlight" Theory.
"The Persistence of Vision," theory presented by Roget. Illusion of continuous motion-zoetropes, flipbooks.
The Lumiere Brothers: First film. 1895
Daguerre-emulsion on celluloid.
19th century art-product of industrial revolution.
Thomas Edison-credited with inventing projector, invented kinetoscope, single user film players, later displaced by theatres.
1902-George Melies, France. "A Trip To The Moon." The Formalist Tradition-films that exist in the imagination. Artificially arranged scenes.
Porter/Edison-realists. Porter began as actor for Edison. "The Great Train Robb
ery."
The Rise of the American Film. 1915-1919
Components:
- D.W. Griffith
- American Comedians (Chaplin, Keaton, Sennett)
- Movies became big business. Capitalism.
- WWI-Cellulose nitrate used in film was used in Europe to make nitroglycerin. America continued to make movies while Europe was fighting.
American films lacked ambiguity-characters were somewhat straightforward. German films gave characters depth, neuroses, compulsion.
D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith-grew up impoverished in Kentucky. Childhood-son of Confederate Soldier. Took the movie from novelty to art form, playing with time and space. Other Griffith contributions:
- Film is not the scene. It's the shot.
- Using cuts, dissolves, fades.
- "Birth of a Nation" 1915. Form vs. horrifying content.
- Later makes "Intolerance" as response to "Birth Of A Nation." Got away from the narrative-went to the "idea" film. Audiences found its four story lines and chronological/geographical jumps confusing. It was a bomb at the box office.
The Great German Silents
1919-1925
- German government recognizes value of film, supports film makers.
- UFA studios built in 1920's, and supported by US studios.
- Berlin is the hub, with both distribution and production in one place, compared with US, which had the split betweem New York and Hollywood.
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"
Technical and Stylistic advances:
- Moving cameras.
- Preplanning narrative use of camera and actor movement.
- Lighting-low key, shadowy.
- Set design artistic and typifies character's mindsets.
- Tightly constructed scripts.
- Focus on acting and form.
Three types of German films:
- Large scale historical costume dramas.
- Horror films, expressionistic, surrealist fare, e.g. "Nosferatu," and "Golem." Also, Kammerspiel, known as "intimate theatre" or "instinct" film.
- The Street Film. These were tales of lower middle class life and were studies of individuals. Known for gritty realism.
Sigfried Kracauer, in his book, From Caligari To Hitler, looked at German films as reflective of culture and predictive of the future.
The era of the great German silents ends in 1925 as the best German cinematographers migrate to the US, as well as Hitler's gaining of power.
Art and Dialect in the Soviet Film
Comparisons with German film:
First films in Russia were French, shown by the Lumiere Brothers. Pre-revolution (1917-1919) films long, drawn out literary epics.
Post revolution: Lenin says: "Cinema is the most important of the arts." Important for propaganda and education. A general feeling of unrest and insecurity was what they were to address.
Moscow School Of Cinematography built by Lenin in 1919. Invites D.W. Griffith to head it, but he declines. Griffith's editing inspired montage.
Key Players:
- Kuleshov
Head of Moscow school-fond of the narrative.
- Vertov
Kino-eye (film-eye), kino-pravda (film-truth). Propagandist. Heavily influenced by editing in film.
- Eisenstein
Pupil of Vertov.