Jaakko Seppälä
Homepage: http://www.helsinki.fi/taitu/tet/Jaakko/WorldFilmHistory1.html

• For decades early cinema was a neglected field of study
• Early cinema was seen as an elementary stage of cinematic evolution
• International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) held a symposium in Brighton in 1978
• The event brought together film archivists and film historians around a common purpose
• Early cinema began to be understood as a period that possessed a different conception of space, time and narrative form from the way in which these issues were approached in the later classical cinema

• For a long time the history of early cinema was theorised under the hegemony of narrative films
• Early cinema (films made before 1906/1907) is now understood as the cinema of attractions
• This cinema celebrates its ability to show something
• In the first few years the film projector was the attraction
• Then the demonstration of the possibilities of cinema continued in films
• What ever the attraction is, it is of interest in itself

• Many early films are non-fiction films – actualities
• These films use footage of real events
• Topics of actualities: parades, sports, shipwrecks etc.
• News events were covered on location where they happened but also recreated in studios
• Line between fact and fiction was not sharply drawn
• Trick films are cinematic magic tricks
• These films are essentially devoid of plot
• Special effects were used to show what was possible

• First story films were comic skits
• Before 1903 mainly single-shot films
• In many of these films there is no sense of depth
• Longer multi-shot films became common from 1903
• Reasons: artistic innovation, product differentiation,
enabled to sell more feet of film, more efficient to shoot films in studios than to make actualities on location
• Simple narratives that follow action in linear fashion
• New multi-shot film genre: the chase film
• Common and popular genre internationally in 1903-1905

• Early films need to be studied in the context of the screen
• The exhibitor, rather than the image-maker, generally held editorial control and was responsible for what is now called postproduction
• The exhibitor bought single-shot films and created film programs
• Lecturing, vocal acting, music, sound effects etc.
• Early story films were often based on well known myths, fairy tales and nursery rhymes
• Audiences were familiar with these (prior knowledge)

• Itinerant movie-show people played an important role in the creation of audiences for films outside the largest cities
• In the United States storefront nickelodeons in large cities began operating in 1904 and 1905
• Soon nickelodeons opened in every larger town
• Preconditions: film production on a large scale and film exchanges
• In 1910 26 million Americans visited nickelodeons every week (mass entertainment)

• Before the turn of the decade cinema was truly an international phenomenon
• Films travelled freely across boarders
• A typical film show consisted of films made in various countries
• There were no national cinemas and it did not much matter where a film was made
• Filmmakers influenced each other
• This was an era of experimental filmmaking

• Stage Magician (Theatre Robert Houdin)
• In 1896 Méliès bought a projector from R. W Paul and built his own film camera
• Made films for his own company Star Film
• The master of the trick film
– Stop motion
– Superimpositions
• In many ways these films are excessively theatrical
• Méliès was internationally successful until 1905

• Pathé Frères was formed in 1896
• The company produced film equipments and films
• Pathé camera was the most popular film camera in the world before the 1920s
• The company produced all kinds of films but in the early
1900s it was best known for its story films (fréeries)
• Pathé became the first vertically integrated film company in the world when it opened its own film theatre in 1906
• The largest and most important film company in the world before the Great War

• Film d’Art was a small company founded in 1908 by Paul
Latiffe
• The company had good connections to the theatre world
• Film d’Art produced prestigious art films films for upper class audiences
• L’assassinat du duc de Guise (1908)
• Legitimate actors, scripts written by famous dramatists and original scores by well known composers
• Film as art
• In 1911 the company was in debt and had to be sold

• British cinema had an influential and innovative beginning
• Silent British films made after 1905 have been neglected (and/or considered bad)
• A large number of phantom ride films in early 1900s
– Dolly shot films inspired by Lumière films
• The Brighton School (Williamson & Smith)
– Ingenuity in editing and shooting practices
• Rescued by Rover (1905)

• Fiction film production began in 1905
• In the early 1910s Italy was one of the major powers in world cinema
• Early film production: actualities, historical films and slapstick comedies
• Soon Italy was known for historical epics
– The zenith of achievement: Cabiria (1914)
• First feature films were made in the early 1910s
• Diva films (Lyda Borelli & Francesca Bertini)
• Strongman films (Maciste)