The History of the Movies
in America
Part One
The Silent Era
From the Top
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1830’s “Persistence of Vision”
Invention of Photography (Daguerre)
Electric Power
Creation of Celluloid (1st commercial plastic)
Invention of the Incandescent Light Bulb
The Desire for $$$
Eadweard Muybridge
1830-1904
• One of the first to show
“moving pictures”
• Wagered that a horse
leaves all four of its feet
• Created the
Zoopraxiscope to prove it
Galloping Horse
Edison and the Kinetoscope
Edison and the Kinetoscope
• Edison realized motion pictures could attract a
paying audience
• Coin operated box that would show amusing films
• 1st copyrighted film April 14, 1894 - “The Sneeze”
• Opposed to showing movies on a screen - felt that
you would lose money
The Sneeze
The Lumiere Brothers
• Louis and Auguste Lumiere –
French Inventors
• Created the Cinematographe
(1895)
• Showed movie on a screen
• Overnight sensation
• One film of a train pulling into a
station terrorized the audience
• However, audiences soon tired
of the format
Georges Melies (1861 – 1938)
• French Theatre Magician
• First to use the fade-in/out and
dissolve
• Made over 500 films
• “A Trip to the Moon” (1902)
most famous
• Used far off stationary camera
with single POV
• His style became outdated and
he soon became bankrupt
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Meanwhile – Back in the USA
• Edison – Angered by misjudging the potential of the
“flickers” acquires the rights to the Latham Loop and
Vitascope starting a 12 year Patent War
• Creates the MPPC (Motion Picture Patents Company) which
corners the market on cameras, projectors, and production
companies - enforced with armed henchmen who bullied
independent film makers
• Independents move to Southern CA to avoid conflict
• Audiences flock to the Nickelodeons (due to the 5 cent
admission price) Low cost appealed to the working class
• Soon became appealing to the middle and upper classes
through the works of Edwin Porter. His Epic “The Great
Train Robbery” was an astounding 12 minutes long and
introduced the concept of a “story-driven” movie
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• First Western
• First to use editing as a
storytelling technique
• One of the first to use
panning and close-ups
• Moved from documentary to
narrative
• Based on a true robbery by
Butch Cassidy
1905 - 1915
• Nickelodeon attendance exceeds 2 million in over
10,000 movie houses
• Carl Laemmle creates the Independent Motion
Picture Company (IMP) separate from MPPC
• Censorship begins in Chicago and NYC
• William Fox and company successfully break
MPPC’s control with Federal Anti-Trust suit
• MPPC’s decline also due to audience’s growing
desire for multireel films (features) signaling the
end of the nickelodeon
• Movies of any significance made in France, until
Griffith’s Birth of a Nation changes everything
The Players
D.W. Griffith
Cecil B. Demille
Mack Sennett
D.W. Griffith (1875 – 1948)
D.W. Griffith (1875 – 1948)
• “Father of Motion Picture” pioneers the process of
actor rehearsals due to his naturalistic acting styles
• Started with the Edison Company as an actor
• Joined the Biograph as a director and became a huge
success
• Refined such techniques as cross-cutting, camera
angles, artificial lighting, realistic sets, flashbacks,
split screens, soft focus, dissolves, fades, and irises
• Made over 450 movies with Biograph
D.W. Griffith (1875 – 1948)
• The “art” films of Europe and the hour-long
“superspectacles” of Italy made him extremely envious
• He quit Biograph to work on his three-hour
masterpiece “Birth of a Nation.” It’s racist tones
caused controversy and protest
• He made “Intolerance” in self-defense. Long and
confusing, it was his first “flop” he never recovered
• Entrenched in the studio system he lost touch with
popular tastes and faded into obscurity
Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Based Thomas Dixon Jr.'s antiblack, bigoted play, The Clansman
• Its release set up a major
censorship battle over its vicious,
extremist depiction of African
Americans. Unbelievably, the film
is still used today as a recruitment
piece for Klan membership.
• 3 Hours long (longest film to date)
• Black characters in leading roles
are played by white actors in
blackface
Birth of a Nation (1915)
• It was one of the biggest box-office
money-makers in the history of film,
due to its charge of $2 per ticket. It
made $18 million by the start of the
talkies.
• The subject matter of the film caused
immediate criticism by the newlycreated NAACP and renounced as
"the meanest vilification of the
Negro race."
• Riots in Boston and Philadelphia.
Chicago, Denver, St. Louis and other
major cities refuse to show it
Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Film scholars agree, however, that
it is the single most important and
key film of all time in American
movie history
• Introduces & refines camera angles,
traveling shots, artificial lighting,
realistic sets, flashbacks, split
screens, soft focus, dissolves, fades,
and irises.
• Makes Lillian Gish a star
Cecil B. DeMille (1881 - 1951)
Cecil B. DeMille (1881 - 1951)
• Both Parents were playwrights
• Enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Arts (under
David Belasco)
• 1913 Formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co.
with Jesse Lasky and Sam Goldwyn (later became
Paramount Pictures)
• Perfected the switch from short films to feature
length films
• Often credited with making Hollywood the “Motion
Picture Capital of the World”
Cecil B. DeMille (1881 - 1951)
• Gained fame with romantic comedies that were
considered racy for the times
• With Hollywood under pressure to clean up its image,
switched to Biblical Epics (featuring the same saucy
scenes with a morality tag at the end)
• Notable silent films of the time period (Ten
Commandments 1923 and King of Kings 1927)
• Showman and Self-Promoter he embodied the image
of the ultimate director (baggy pants and megaphone)
• As film transferred to the talkies, his movies became
epic masterpieces
Among his Epics are…
Ten Commandments (1923)
Cleopatra (1943)
Samson and Delilah (1949)
Greatest Show On Earth (1952)
Ten Commandments (1956)
Famous Quotes
"The public is always right"
"You are here to please me. Nothing else on
earth matters." -C.B. to his crew
"Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll
give you a picture."
Mack Sennett (1880 - 1960)
The King of Comedy
Mack Sennett (1880 - 1960)
• Born to Irish Immigrants
• Began show business career working in burlesque and
film career with bit parts in Biograph pictures
• He and two bookies start Keystone Studios in 1912
• Perfects the “slapstick” comedy short, working with
location and situation rather than a script
• His company contained mostly circus performers and
vaudeville performers including the Keystone Kops,
Fatty Arbuckle, and Charlie Chaplin
• With talking pictures his movies become B-Grade and
by 1935 he is out of business
• Directed 300+ films and produced over 500+ films
The Star System
• Previously, actors preferred anonymity which meant
studios did not give screen credit nor pay them very
much
• This all changed when Carl Laemmle (IMP) lured
Florence Lawrence away from Biograph, where she
was known simply as the “Biograph Girl,” creating
false rumors of her death and then promoted her return
as the “IMP Girl” and making her name a household
word
• From then on, movie-goers flocked to the movies to
see their favorite stars, creating a permanent shift in
movie control.
Stars of the Silent Screen
Florence Lawrence
America’s 1st Movie Star
Mary Pickford
America’s Sweetheart
Charlie Chaplin
Harold Lloyd
Buster Keaton
Fatty Arbuckle
Keystone Kops
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
The King of Silent Hollywood
Clara Bow
The “It” Girl
Rudolph Valentino
Dorothy & Lillian Gish
Theda Bara
Lon Chaney
The Man of a Thousand Faces
Tom Mix
Louise Brooks
Greta Garbo
All Good Things Must Come
To An End…
Sources
• Naughton, John and Adam Smith. Movies –
A Crash Course. Ivy Press, NY, 1998.
• Corey, Melinda and George Ochoa. The
American Film Institute Desk Reference.
DK Publishing, Inc., NY, 2002.
• http://imdb.com
• http://www.doctormacro.com/