EARLY YEARS OF
AMERICAN CINEMA
 The
Hollywood film has 3 characteristics:
 MASS
MEDIUM
 COMMERCIAL
 NARRATIVE art form
 Could
have developed as:
 Scientific
instrument
 Medium of home entertainment
3
ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS
 Growth
of large urban areas
 Increase in leisure time
 Development of the necessary technology
 THE
URBAN POPULATION BASE
 Urban
areas, esp. in northeast & midwest, grew
dramatically at the turn of the century
 Provided concentrated masses of people
necessary for film to be a commercial medium
 CAUSES
OF THE GROWTH OF URBAN AREAS
 Immigration
from abroad
Mostly
from southern & eastern Europe
Fewer farmers, sought industrial jobs in the cities
Tended to live in cohesive, discrete communities
Mostly very poor, few spoke English
1st movie audiences, key figures in the industry
 Migration
to the cities from rural areas
Americans
left farms, sought work in the cities
 1870
- 25% of Americans lived in urban areas
 1910 - 45% lived in urban areas
 1920 - over 50% lived in urban areas
 Trend continued until WW II, then reversed
(rise of TV)
 INCREASE
 Shorter
IN LEISURE TIME
workweeks came about because of:
Automation
State
& local regulations
Growth of unions
 Shrinking
1900
workweek:
- average workweek was 66 hours
1910 - 56 hours
1920 - 41 hours
 Movies
had advantages over other
entertainment
 Cheap
(5-10¢)
 Suitable for the entire family
 No English was required (silent films)
 THOMAS
EDISON & THE EDISON COMPANY
 Wanted
moving pictures to accompany his
phonograph
 Invented almost nothing involved with motion
pictures
 W.K.L. DICKSON & KINETOGRAPH
1890:
1st important motion picture camera
Electrically powered, resulting in a huge, heavy
machine
 BLACK
MARIA
 Studio
built to house the kinetograph
 Because it used natural sunlight, built on railroad
tracks, rotated to follow the sun; had a roof
which could be rolled back to allow sunlight
 In
1892, Fred Ott's Sneeze 1st kinetograph
film made in the Black Maria
Black Maria
Fred Ott’s Sneeze
 KINETOSCOPE
 Invented
by Dickson for viewing films made
 Electrically-powered, showed short (45-60 sec.) films to
only 1 viewer at a time
 KINETOSCOPE
 1894,
PARLORS
Edison contracted with Raff & Gammon to open
parlors filled with kinetoscopes in NYC
 Charged 25c for admission
 Made $ 1st year, then lost $ due to cost of maintenance
The Kinetoscope
Dance
 THOMAS
 1895,
ARMAT & THE VITASCOPE
Armat developed primitive film projector
called the Vitascope; many people could view a
film at 1 time
 Edison bought the invention & manufactured it
 Premiered in NY at Koster & Bial's Music Hall,
1896
 Then distributed throughout the US
The Vitascope
Vitascope advertisement
 EDISON'S
COMPETITORS
 Relatively
cheap & easy to make equipment & films
 Most important was the BIOGRAPH company
 Established
in 1896 by Dickson, who had left the Edison Co.
 Well-financed (Rockefeller $)
 Dropped electrically-powered camera for a hand-cranked camera
 Early
film industry truly competitive, many small
companies sharing market fairly equally
 THE
NICKELODEON ERA
 Exhibition
of films has gone through 3 broad
stages:
NICKELODEON
ERA relatively short, but established
the base audience for motion pictures
PICTURE PALACE ERA symbolizes exhibition during
Hollywood's “Golden Age”
SHOPPING MALL MULTIPLEX typifies film exhibition
today
 THE
NICKELODEON ERA (1905-1915)
 1905,
movie boom began, popular activity esp. in
urban ghettos
 Nickelodeon Theater opened in Pittsburgh
 Soon, all small movie theaters known as
“nickelodeons”
 By 1910, 10,000 in major cities throughout the
US
 Audience almost exclusively working class
 DESCRIPTION
 Admission
price 10c, rarely actually 5c
 Small, simple, often converted storefronts, in
working class neighborhoods
 Accommodated about 50-100 people
 Films accompanied by piano player, interpreter
in ethnic neighborhoods
 PROGRAM
 About
1 hr. long, included usually 3 short films
(10 min. each)
 Films, also included vaudeville acts
 Films mostly French slapstick comedies
 Program changed 2-3 times per week,
stimulating demand for films & growth of
production companies
 PATRONS
 Called
“Democracy's Theater”
 Ticket prices of available entertainment:
Opera
& Theater
Good Vaudeville
Bad Vaudeville
Nickelodeon
 Average
$2.00
.50
.15
.10
Upper class
Middle class
Middle class
Working class
income of a working-class family was
$12-15 per week, with about $1.25 available for
entertainment
The Nickelodeon
 CHANGE
FROM WORKING CLASS TO MIDDLE
CLASS
 1912,
change in audiences (process had begun as
early as 1905)
 Theater owners sought prestige, more $; higherclass audience
 Offered special rates to women & children
 In military towns, favored officers & banned
enlisted men
 Tried
to lose reputations as “ethnic theaters”
Avoided
films heavily slanted toward particular ethnic
groups
Avoided ethnic vaudeville acts
Eliminated songs in foreign languages
 Built
theaters in middle-class neighborhoods
 Vaudeville houses & legitimate theaters began
showing movies
 MPPC's
efforts to “Americanize” industry helped
transition
 Most
 1915,
American directors white & middle-class
D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation
3
hours long, more like play or novel, less like vaudeville
 $2 ticket price
 Attracted a large white, middle-class audience
 Exhibitors began to seek more expensive, longer films, &
producers met this demand
 End
of MPPC, which made 1-reelers exclusively,
helped end the nickelodeon; independents made
feature-length films
The Birth of a Nation
 Nickelodeon
era short, but had important
impact on American film industry
 Created
an audience & demand for movies;
working class never abandoned the movies
 Stimulated growth of movies as both industry &
cultural phenomenon