INTRODUCTION
Film Studies and Film History
MACHIN ES WHICH CREATED THE ILLUSION
O F M OV E M E N T
 Phenakistoscopes
 Thaumatropes
 Zoetropes
 Praxinoscopes
 All versions of spinning motion toys
EDWARD MUYBRIDGE
 Large scale photographic panorama of San Francisco 1878
 Sequence of 13 photographs taken at different moments
 360 degree view of city
 Created an illusion of continuity
FAMOUS ANALYSIS OF
TROTTING HORSES
(1878)
 Led to cinema’s creation
 Leland Stanford wanted to know
if all four hooves were off the
ground
 The horses tripped the camera’s
shutters (quick)
 The unfolding motions of time
and space
CELLULOID
 1889, George Eastman
 Crude Flexible Film Base
 Long strips of frames
became possible
 Celluloid is an early plastic
that melts when it gets hot
PERSISTENCE OF VISION
 Persistent after images
 Cinema arises from an interface
 Continuously moving still images
 A process of perception on the part of the human spectator which
readies him or her to receive continuity as motion itself
ELEMENTS OF MOTION
PICTURE FILM
 Flexible, Transparent Film Base (Eastman)
 Fast exposure time (Etienne-Jules Marey) 12 images on Film
Glass
 Mechanism to pull the film through the camera
 Intermittent device to stop the film
 A shutter to block off light
THOMAS EDISON
 Kinetograph (recorded images)
 Kinetoscope
 Peep Shows
 Black Maria Studio (New
Jersey)
 Horses Jumping, Niagra Falls,
Trains, Dancing Girls etc..
 A Step further than Edison
 Ensured that the film advanced
at a uniform rate
 Mobile Cameras
 Projections (larger than life)
 First 35 mm camera that also
served as a projector: Lumiere
 1895, First public viewing of
films at The Grand Café in Paris
LUMIERE BROTHERS
STYLE OF EARLY FILMS
 Single shot framing action
 Long-shot distance
 Black Maria showed vaudeville entertainers, famous sports figures
and celebrities performing for the camera
 The Lumieres took the cameras out to parks, gardens beaches and
other public places
GEORGES MÉLIÈS
 1896, Purchased a film projector and built a camera based on the
same mechanism
 First films showed shots of every day activities
 Magician, discovered the possibility of every day effects
 He built his own studio like Black Maria
 Glass sided like a greenhouse
GEORGES MÉLIÈS
 films progressed to being longer
narratives with scenes shot in
tableaux
 Each scene consisted of one
shot except when certain
transformations took place
 Cuts were designed to be
imperceptible on screen
LATE 19TH & EARLY 20TH
CENTURY
 Films circulated widely until World
War I (1914)
 Limited Resources
 From 1904 on, narrative form
became the most prominent form
of film communication
 French, Italian and American films
dominated world markets
The Great Train Robbery, Edwin Porter 1903
C L A S S I C A L H O L LY WO O D
CINEMA
 Edison attempted to monopolize the early film industry
 Tried to force competing filmmakers out of business (patent violations)
 American Mutoscope and Biograph survived because of differing technology
 In 1908 Edison teamed up with Biograph forming Motion Picture Patents
Company (MPPC)
 Eventually they were the only stockholders and patent holders licensing other
members to make, distribute and exhibit films
 MPPC never succeeded in eliminating its competition (Filmmakers like DW
Griffith would break out and create their own companies)
DW GRIFFITH
 1908 (Made 100’s of “one and two reelers” in a 5 year period)
 Complex narratives in short spans
 Didn’t event the devices that he used, he gave many techniques like
cross-cutting or parallel editing a strong narrative motivation
 By the time he made his features he was creating lengthy complex
scenes across multiple locations
T H E B I R T H O F A N AT I O N ( 1 9 1 5 )
AND INTOLERANCE (1916)
 Directed actors in a different way
 Medium close-ups and close ups to get subtle nuances in
performance –a technique still used today
 Quick cuts at the end of Intolerance were influential on Soviet
Filmmakers like Eisenstein: Battleship Potempkin (1925)
 He viewed film as an expressive medium capable of bringing
about social change
T H E B I RT H O F A N AT I O N
(1915)
 About the American Civil War
 Strong visual aesthetic, Birth of Hollywood Aesthetic
 Distortion of history
 Testament to the deep racism at the time
 Many thought it contributed to the rise of the Klu Klux Klan
EBERT ON “BIRTH”
 Griffith has a sure hand in the way he cuts from epic shots of enormous scope
to small human vignettes. He was the first director to understand instinctively how a
movie could mimic the human ability to scan an event quickly, noting details in the
midst of the larger picture. Many silent films moved slowly, as if afraid to get ahead
of their audiences; Griffith springs forward eagerly, and the impact on his audiences
was unprecedented; they were learning for the first time what a movie was capable
of.
EBERT ON “BIRTH”
 "The Birth of a Nation" is Griffith's sin, for which he tried to atone all
the rest of his life. So instinctive were the prejudices he was raised with as
a 19th century Southerner that the offenses in his film actually had to be
explained to him. To his credit, his next film, "Intolerance," was an
attempt at apology. He also once edited a version of the film that cut out
all of the Klan material, but that is not the answer. If we are to see this
film, we must see it all, and deal with it all.
EBERT ON “BIRTH”
 The long third act of the film is where the most offensive racism
resides. There is no denying the effectiveness of the first two acts.
The first establishes a bucolic, idealistic view of America before the
Civil War, with the implication that the North should have left well
enough alone. The second involves unparalleled scenes of the war
itself, which seem informed by the photographs of Matthew Brady
and have an powerful realism and conviction.
SARRIS ON “BIRTH”
 On the other hand, the equally distinguished critic Andrew Sarris
wrote about Griffith's masterpiece: "Classic or not, 'Birth of a Nation'
has long been one of the embarrassments of film scholarship. It can't
be ignored...and yet it was regarded as outrageously racist even at a
time when racism was hardly a household word."
INFLUENCE OF GRIFFITH
 Use of medium close ups and close ups
 Subtle changes in facial expressions
 Rapid editing at the end of Intolerance (Soviet Montage)
 Using parallel editing for highly dramatic purposes
CECIL B DEMILLE
 The Cheat (1915) Chiaroscuro/Rembrandt Lighting
 Influence on French Impressionist filmmakers
 Bright sources of light and no fill light
 Linear pattern of narrative
 Precursor to the formal complexity of Hollywood Narrative
 1914 (first film)--1956 (Last Film)
CONTINUITY SYSTEM
 Coherent spatial and temporal relations within narratives
 Match on action
 Less reliance on single frontal shots
 Eyeline matches
 180 degree rule
STANDARDIZATION OF
HOLLYWOOD STYLE
 Carefully motivated narrative elements
 Straightforward causal development
 Same production system
 Similar division of labor
 Little independent production
 Most alternative films were made in Europe
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
 Successful British Vaudevillian
 Extremely famous for comic films during the silent film era (pre
WW1)
 Wrote, Directed and starred in films
 He also continued to make silent films after the “talkies” were
introduced
 Was identified with leftist views during the McCarthy era and moved
back to Europe
CONTINUED
 1913: Keystone
 “IS THERE A MAN NAMED CHAFFIN IN YOUR COMPANY OR SOMETHING LIKE
THAT STOP IF SO WILL HE COMMUNICATE WITH KESSEL AND BAUMANN 24
LONGACRE BUILDING BROADWAY.” (1)
 They had lost Ford Sterling and needed to replace him

By 1916, just two years after appearing in his first motion picture, Charles Chaplin had become the
most famous entertainer in the world
 The Mutual Film Corporation created a subsidiary called The Lone Star Corporation solely to make
the Chaplin films. Lone Star paid Chaplin $10,000 a week plus a $150,000 signing bonus for the twelve
two-reel comedies.
CONTINUED:
 Viewed stereoscope images of the 1896 Klondike
 Donner Party Disaster of 1846/Horrors of the time are used for
comic purposes
 Believed that tragedy and comedy are never far apart
 Elaborate year & ½ production
 Partially due to his personal life with Lita Grey
THE GOLD RUSH
The Gold Rush out of the most unlikely sources for comedy. The first idea came
to him when he was viewing some stereoscope pictures of the 1896 Klondike gold
rush, and was particularly struck by the image of an endless line of prospectors
snaking up the Chilkoot Pass, the gateway to the gold fields. At the same time he
happened to read a book about the Donner Party Disaster of 1846
THE GOLD RUSH
 Chaplin - proving his belief that tragedy and ridicule are never far apart - set
out to transform these tales of privation and horror into a comedy. He decided
that his familiar tramp figure should become a gold prospector, joining the mass of
brave optimists to face all the hazards of cold, starvation, solitude, and the
occasional incursion of a grizzly bear.