The intention of this essay is to discuss G.A Smith’s Mary Jane’s Mishaps (1903) and D.W Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) alongside established theoretical criticism, mainly Barry Salt and Tom Gunning in an attempt to demonstrate how the early development of narrative cinema has changed historically and influenced the films we see today. I will be closely looking at how cinema has developed its codes of intelligibility, and why it became a predominantly narrative medium.
Before discussing the two films chosen and the debates between Barry Salt and Tom Gunning an understanding of how early film was first established must be attempted. Motion pictures have developed gradually throughout the years and have become an important tool of communication and entertainment in the 20th century and into the 21st century; having a substantial impact on the arts, technology and politics. The first public demonstration of moving film was Leaving the Lumiére Factory (1895); an actuality by the Lumiére brothers from France. By 1900 to 1910 films gradually moved from one-shot actualities into multi-shot films, with more complex narratives. However, dominant form remained the short film, with very few films lasting more than ten minutes. As David Robinson points out, ‘The first filmmakers did not suddenly invent a new form. Rather they relied upon existing patterns and ideologies.’ (Robinson 1996: p.69). This shows us that through the work of the theatre, filmmakers were able to create a new world through moving pictures thus attracting audiences to a new form of entertainment. The outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) helped early cinema through advanced technology being developed and an interest from Parliament involving filmma...
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...o Palace: The Birth of American Film, 1st ed. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
Kerr, P., 2010. Re-inventing the cinema. Screen [online], 51(4), 80-84 [viewed 25 February 2011]. Available from: http://www.screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/80.full.pdf
Filmography
Leaving the Lumiére Factory, 1895. Directed by Lumiére Brothers. France: Lumiére,
Le Voyage á la lune [A Trip to the Moon], 1902. Directed by George Méliès. France: Star Film.
Mary Jane’s Mishap, 1903. Directed by G.A Smith. UK: G.A.S. Films & Warwick Trading Company.
The Birth of a Nation, 1915. Directed by D.W Griffith. USA: David W. Griffith Corporation & Epoch Producing Corporation.
The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog, 1905. Directed by Edwin S. Porter. USA: Edison Manufacturing Company.
Triumph of the Will, 1935. Directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Germany: Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion.
Nosferatu , Directed by F.W. Murnau 1922, Youtube Video, 1:32 , Accessed May, 14, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBKI5Zb9v14
Inherit The Wind. Dir. Stanely Kramer. Perfs. Nedrick Young, Harold Jacob Smith. DVD. MGM, 1961
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Columbia Pictures, 1964.
Wizard of Oz, The. Dir. Victor Fleming. Perf. Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, and Ray Bolger. Warner Bros., 1939.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Lacombe, Lucien (The Criterion Collection), 2006. Video recording. Directed by Louis Malle, France : Optimum World Releasing
The American film industry’s early attempts at the narrative Western were limited and in the early years were produced mainly in the east. During this early time in the film industry the...
Inherit the Wind. Dir. Stanley Kramer. With Spencer Tracy, Fredrick March, and Gene Kelly. MGM. 1960.
The concept of ‘cinema of attractions’ encompasses the development of early cinema, its technology, industry and cultural context. The explanation of how it is perceived by early cinema audiences is closely related to the effects of history at that time. How Gunning coined the term ‘cinema of attractions’ pertains to the history of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century and his interpretation of the audience and their reaction film technology. Single shots, the process of creating a moving picture and the juxtaposition of limited techniques, coupled with a new invention of showing a moving picture.
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. Dir. Piers Haggard, Richard Quine, Braun Entertainment Group, Playboy Enterprises 1980, Film
Lacey, N. (2005). Film Language. Introduction to film (pp. 16-22). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
1980. Warner Bros. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Music by Wendy Carlos and Rcachel Elkind. Cinematography by John Alcott. Editing by Ray Lovejoy. With Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.