History of cinema

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The history of film chronicles the artistic and cultural development of a visual art form that uses film technologies that began in the late 19th century, influenced by the existing screen culture of magic lantern shows, and by traditions in photography, theater, and other popular media.

The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. There were moving picture screenings long before the commercial, public screening of ten Lumière brothers' short films in Paris on 28 December 1895, which has generally been regarded as the breakthrough of projected cinematographic motion pictures. The earliest films were typically in black and white, under a minute long, without recorded sound, and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera. The first decades saw film move from a novelty, to an established mass entertainment industry, with film production companies and studios established throughout the world. Conventions toward a general cinematic language developed, with film editing, camera movements and other cinematic techniques contributing specific roles in the narrative of films.[1]

Popular new media, including television (mainstream since the 1950s), home video (1980s), and the internet (1990s), influenced the distribution and consumption of films. Film production usually responded with content to fit the new media, technical innovations (including widescreen (1950s), 3D, and 4D film), and more spectacular films to keep theatrical screenings attractive. Systems that were cheaper and more easily handled (including 8mm film, video, and smartphone cameras) allowed for an increasing number of people to create films of varying qualities, for any purpose including home movies and video art, outside the conventions of the production systems of big studios. The technical quality tended to be lower than professional movies, but improved with digital video and affordable, high-quality digital cameras. Improving over time, digital production methods became more popular during the 1990s, resulting in increasingly realistic visual effects and popular feature-length computer animations.

Precursors

The use of film as an art form traces its origins to several earlier traditions in the arts such as (oral) storytelling, literature, theatre, opera, and visual arts. Cantastoria and similar ancient traditions combined storytelling with series of images that were shown or indicated one after the other. Predecessors to film that had already used light and shadows to create art before the advent of modern film technology include shadowgraphy, shadow puppetry, camera obscura, and the magic lantern.

Around 1790, old traditions of charlatans and entertainers using camera obscura or magic lantern to project images of demons or ghosts were further developed into a type of multimedia show known as phantasmagoria.[2][3] These popular shows entertained audiences using mechanical slides, rear projection, mobile projectors, superimposition, dissolves, live actors, smoke (on which projections may have been cast), odors, sounds and even electric shocks.[4][5] While the earliest magic lantern shows were often designed to frighten viewers, advances by projectionists allowed for creative and even educational storytelling that could appeal to wider family audiences.[6] New magic lantern techniques such as the use of dissolving views allowed for smoother transitions between two projected images and aided in providing stronger narratives, while chromatropes provided colourful animations of intricate abstract patterns.[7]

In 1833, scientific study of a stroboscopic illusion in spoked wheels by Joseph Plateau, Michael Faraday and Simon Stampfer led to the invention of the Fantascope, also known as the stroboscopic disk or the phenakistiscope, which was popular in several European countries for a while. Plateau thought it could be further developed for use in phantasmagoria and Stampfer imagined a system for longer scenes with strips on rollers, as well as a transparent version (presumably associated with projection). Plateau, Charles Wheatstone, Antoine Claudet and others tried to combine the technique with the stereoscope (introduced in 1838) and photography (introduced in 1839) for a more complete illusion of reality, but until innovations in photo-sensitive chemicals and technologies to exchange the pictures allowed sharp recordings of sequences, such experiments relied on stop motion techniques to depict simple periodic movements.

Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion cabinet cards utilized the technique of chronophotography to study motion.
An Anschütz electrotachyscope

With the 1878 publication of The Horse in Motion cabinet cards, Eadweard Muybridge introduced a method to record motion sequences that became known as chronophotography. Muybridge and later chronophotographers, like Étienne-Jules Marey, Georges Demenÿ, Albert Londe, and Ottomar Anschütz, almost exclusively used the technique for scientific study of locomotion of animals and humans. In 1880, Muybridge started lecturing on animal locomotion and used his Zoopraxiscope to project animations of the contours of his recordings, traced onto glass discs.[8][9] In 1887, Anschütz started presenting his chronophotographic recordings in motion with his Electrotachyscope, displaying short loops on a small milk glass screen. By 1891, he had started mass production of a more economical, coin-operated peep-box viewing device of the same name that was exhibited at international exhibitions and fairs, including the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, or for longer periods at for instance the Berlin Exhibition Park (with nearly 34,000 paying visitors in summer 1892), at The Crystal Palace in London, and in several U.S. stores. Shifting the focus of the medium from technical and scientific interest in motion to entertainment for the masses, he recorded wrestlers, dancers, acrobats, scenes of everyday life, and probably some staged comical sequences. Extant records suggest some of his output directly influenced later works by the Edison Company, such as the 1894 film Fred Ott's Sneeze.[10]

From October 1892 to March 1900, inventor Émile Reynaud exhibited his Théâtre Optique ("Optical Theatre") film system at the Musée Grévin in Paris. Reynaud's screenings of animated stories such as Pauvre Pierrot and Autour d'une cabine were accompanied by live music, songs and some synchronised sound effects, and attracted over 500,000 visitors over the course of 12,800 shows.[11][12]

Edison's Kinetoscope peep-box viewer, mostly developed by lab assistant William Kennedy Dickson, was introduced to the public in 1893,[13] with images on celluloid loops showing about half a minute of motion picture entertainment,[14] mostly performed by well-known vaudeville acts in the company's Black Maria studio.[15] The Kinetoscope quickly became a global sensation with multiple viewing parlors across major cities by 1895.[13] As the initial novelty of the images wore off, the Edison Company was slow to diversify their repertoire of films and waning public interest caused business to slow by Spring 1895. To remedy declining profits, experiments, such as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, were conducted in an attempt to achieve Edison's original goal of combining the phonograph with visual recordings. Limitations in syncing the sound to the visuals, however, prevented widespread application.[16] During that same period, inventors began advancing technologies towards film projection that would eventually overtake Edison's peep-box format.[17]

On 25, 29 and 30 November 1894, Anschütz projected moving images from Electrotachyscope discs on a large screen in the darkened Grand Auditorium of a Post Office Building in Berlin.[18] From 22 February to 30 March 1895, a commercial 1.5-hour program of 40 different scenes was screened for audiences of 300 people at the old Reichstag and received circa 4,000 visitors.[19]

Novelty era (1890s – early 1900s)

Early projection, proliferation of actualities and newsreels

Main article: Actuality film
Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) by Louis Le Prince
La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon

Throughout the late 19th century, several inventors such as Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Louis Le Prince, William Friese-Greene, and the Skladanowsky brothers developed devices that could capture and project moving images. The scenes in these experiments primarily served to demonstrate the technology itself and were usually filmed with family, friends or passing traffic as subjects.[20] Initial advertisements promoted the devices used to screen films rather than the films themselves. As the technologies became more familiar to audiences, their potential for capturing and recreating events was exploited primarily in the form of actualities and newsreels.[21] Actualities began as a "series of views" that often contained shots of beautiful and lively places or performance acts. During the creation of these films, cinematographers often drew upon previously established aesthetic values, such as framing. Due to the short length (often only one shot) of many actualities, catalogue records indicate that production companies marketed to exhibitors by promoting multiple actualities with related subject matters that could complement each other.[22] To enhance the viewers' experience, showings could be accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, live sound effects and commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist.[23][24] Films were mostly screened inside temporary storefront spaces, in tents of traveling exhibitors at fairs, or as "dumb" acts in vaudeville programs.[25]

The early era of filmmaking, dubbed "the cinema of attractions" by film historian Tom Gunning, offered a relatively cheap and simple way of providing entertainment to the masses, with relatively little attention to story-telling.[26] Film was rarely recognized as an art form by exhibitors or audiences. Regarded by the upper class as a "vulgar" and "lowbrow" form of cheap entertainment, films largely appealed to the working class and were often too short to hold any strong narrative potential.[27]

A frame from the Lumière brothers staged comedy film, L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895)

The first paying audience for a motion picture gathered at Madison Square Garden to see a staged actuality that purported itself to be a boxing fight filmed by Woodville Latham using a device called the Eidoloscope on May 20, 1895. Commissioned by Latham, the French inventor Eugene Augustin Lauste created the device with additional expertise from William Kennedy Dickson and crafted a mechanism that came to be known as the Latham loop, which allowed for longer continuous runtimes and was less abrasive on the celluloid film.[28]

The first public screening by Auguste and Louis Lumière, on December 28, 1895, consisted of ten films and lasted roughly 20 minutes. It mainly presented actualities, such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, but the show also included the staged comedy L'Arroseur Arrosé.[29] The Cinématographe was an instant success, bringing in an average of 2,500 to 3,000 francs daily by the end of January 1896.[13] Following the first screening, the order and selection of films were changed often.[17] Following the success of their 1895 screening, The Lumière brothers sent cameramen across the world to capture new subjects for presentation. After the cinematographer shot scenes, they often exhibited their recordings locally and then sent them back to the company factory in Lyon to make duplicate prints for sale to whoever wanted them.[30]

The Lumière brothers' primary business interests were in selling cameras and film equipment to exhibitors, not the actual production of films. Despite this, filmmakers across the world were inspired by the potential of film as exhibitors brought their shows to new countries.

In the process of filming actualities, especially those of real events, filmmakers discovered and experimented with multiple camera techniques to accommodate for their unpredictable nature.[31]

A 1900 restaging of the 1897 film La Fée aux Choux, directed by Alice Guy

Experiments in film editing, special effects, narrative construction, and camera movement during this period by filmmakers in France, England, and the United States became influential in establishing an identity for film going forward. At both the Edison and Lumière studios, loose narratives such as the 1895 Edison film, Washday Troubles, established short relationship dynamics and simple storylines.[32] Alice Guy's La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) (1896) is arguably the earliest narrative film in history (as well as the first film to be directed by a woman).[33] That same year, the Edison Manufacturing Company released The May Irwin Kiss in May to widespread financial success. The film, which featured the first kiss in cinematic history, led to the earliest known calls for film censorship.[34]

In 1897, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was released. The film was a complete recording of a heavyweight world championship boxing match at Carson City, Nevada. It generated more income in box office than in live gate receipts and was the longest film produced at the time. Audiences had probably been drawn to the Corbett-Fitzsimmons film en masse because James J. Corbett (a.k.a. Gentleman Jim) had become a matinee idol since he had played a fictionalized version of himself in a stage play.[35]

From 1910 on, regular newsreels were exhibited and soon became a popular way of discovering the news before the advent of television – the British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole was filmed for the newsreels as were the suffragette demonstrations that were happening at the same time. F. Percy Smith was an early nature documentary pioneer working for Charles Urban when he pioneered the use of time lapse and micro cinematography in his 1910 documentary on the growth of flowers.[36][37]

In a 1955 article for The Quarterly of Film Radio and television, film producer and historian Kenneth Macgowan asserted that the intentional staging and recreation of events for newsreels "brought storytelling to the screen".[38]

Experimentation with narrative filmmaking

France: Georges Méliès, Pathé Frères, Gaumont

Georges Méliès (left) painting a backdrop in his studio

Following the successful exhibition of the Cinématographe, development of a motion picture industry rapidly accelerated in France. Multiple filmmakers experimented with the technology as they worked to attain the same success that the Lumière brothers had with their screening. These filmmakers established new companies such as the Star Film Company, Pathé Frères, and Gaumont.

The most widely cited progenitor of narrative filmmaking is the French filmmaker, Georges Méliès. Méliès was an illusionist who had previously used magic lantern projections to enhance his magic act. In 1895, Méliès attended the demonstration of the Cinematographe and recognized the potential of the device to aid his act. He attempted to buy a device from the Lumière brothers, but they refused.[39] Months later, he bought a camera from Robert W. Paul and began experiments with the device by creating actualities. During this period of experimentation, Méliès discovered and implemented various special effects including the stop trick, the multiple exposure, and the use of dissolves in his films.[14] At the end of 1896, Méliès established the Star Film Company and started producing, directing, and distributing a body of work that would eventually contain over 500 short films.[40] Recognizing the narrative potential afforded by combining his theater background with the newly discovered effects for the camera, Méliès designed an elaborate stage that contained trapdoors and a fly system.[38] The stage construction and editing techniques allowed for the development of more complex stories, such as the 1896 film, Le Manoir du Diable (The House of the Devil), regarded as a first in the horror film genre, and the 1899 film Cendrillon (Cinderella).[41][42] In Méliès' films, he based the placement of the camera on the theatrical construct of proscenium framing, the metaphorical plane or fourth wall that divides the actors and the audience.[43] Throughout his career, Méliès consistently placed the camera in a fixed position and eventually fell out of favor with audiences as other filmmakers experimented with more complex and creative techniques.[44] Méliès is most widely known today for his 1902 film, Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon), where he used his expertise in effects and narrative construction to create the first science fiction film.[45]

In 1900, Charles Pathé began film production under the Pathé-Frères brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to lead the creative process.[46] Prior to this focus on production, Pathé had become involved with the industry by exhibiting and selling what were likely counterfeit versions of the Kinetoscope in his phonograph shop. With the creative leadership of Zecca and the capability to mass-produce copies of the films through a partnership with a French toolmaking company, Charles Pathé sought to make Pathé-Frères the leading film producer in the country. Within the next few years, Pathé-Frères became the largest film studio in the world, with satellite offices in major cities and an expanding selection of films available for presentation.[47] The company's films were varied in content, with directors specializing in various genres for fairground presentations throughout the early 1900s.[46]

Gaumont was the main regional rival of Pathé-Frères. Founded in 1895 by Léon Gaumont, the firm initially sold photographic equipment and began film production in 1897, under the direction of Alice Guy, the industry's first female director.[48] Her earlier films share many characteristics and themes with her contemporary competitors, such as the Lumières and Méliès. She explored dance and travel films, often combining the two, such as Le Boléro performed by Miss Saharet (1905) and Tango (1905). Many of Guy's early dance films were popular in music-hall attractions such as the serpentine dance films – also a staple of the Lumières and Thomas Edison film catalogs.[49] In 1906, she made The Life of Christ, a big-budget production for the time, which included 300 extras.

Germany: Oskar Messter

Oskar Messter

German inventor and film tycoon Oskar Messter was an important figure in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, with which it merged eventually. Messter first added a Geneva drive on the projectors to oscillatingly cause intermittent movement to advance the frames of the film and he set up the first film studio in Germany in 1900.

From 1896, Messter was interested in the search of a method of reproduction and synchronization of the sound effects of the cinematographic performance at the time of the silent movies. So Messter invented the Tonbilder Biophon to show films, in which a gramophone played Unter den Linden accompanying the projection of animated images, but it was not a simple add on but to precisely match the series of musical pieces with moving images. In effect, to add sound to the silent cinema, it was necessary to solve problems of synchronization, since the image and the sound were recorded and reproduced by separated devices, which were difficult to initiate and to maintain rigged. On August 31, 1903, Messter held the first sound projection that took place in Germany at the "Apollo" Theater in Berlin.

England: Robert W Paul, Cecil Hepworth, The Brighton School

Both Cecil Hepworth and Robert W. Paul experimented with the use of different camera techniques in their films. Paul's 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' of 1895 was the first camera to feature reverse-cranking, which allowed the same film footage to be exposed several times, thereby creating multiple exposures. This technique was first used in his 1901 film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost. Both filmmakers experimented with the speeds of the camera to generate new effects. Paul shot scenes from On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus (1899) by cranking the camera apparatus very slowly.[50] When the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed. Hepworth used the opposite effect in The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder (1901). The Chief's movements are sped up by cranking the camera much faster than 16 frames per second, producing what modern audiences would call a "slow motion" effect.[51]

The first films to move from single shots to successive scenes began around the turn of the 20th century. Due to the loss of many early films, a conclusive shift from static singular shots to a series of scenes can be hard to determine. Despite these limitations, Michael Brooke of the British Film Institute attributes real film continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, to Robert W. Paul's 1898 film, Come Along, Do!. Only a still from the second shot remains extant today.[52] Released in 1901, the British film Attack on a China Mission was one of the first films to show a continuity of action across multiple scenes.[38] The use of the intertitle to explain actions and dialogue on screen began in the early 1900s. Filmed intertitles were first used in Robert W. Paul's film, Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost.[53] In most countries, intertitles gradually came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing the need for narration provided by exhibitors.

Development of continuous action across multiple shots was furthered in England by a loosely associated group of film pioneers collectively termed "the Brighton School". These filmmakers included George Albert Smith and James Williamson, among others. Smith and Williamson experimented with action continuity and were likely the first to incorporate the use of inserts and close-ups between shots.[38] A basic technique for trick cinematography was the double exposure of the film in the camera. The effect was pioneered by Smith in the 1898 film, Photographing a Ghost. According to Smith's catalogue records, the (now lost) film chronicles a photographer's struggle to capture a ghost on camera. Using the double exposure of the film, Smith overlaid a transparent ghostly figure onto the background in a comical manner to taunt the photographer.[54] Smith's The Corsican Brothers was described in the catalogue of the Warwick Trading Company in 1900: "By extremely careful photography the ghost appears *quite transparent*. After indicating that he has been killed by a sword-thrust, and appealing for vengeance, he disappears. A 'vision' then appears showing the fatal duel in the snow."[55] Smith also initiated the special effects technique of reverse motion. He did this by repeating the action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first.[56] The first films made using this device were Tipsy, Topsy, Turvy and The Awkward Sign Painter. The earliest surviving example of this technique is Smith's The House That Jack Built, made before September 1900. Cecil Hepworth took this technique further by printing the negatives of the forward motion in reverse frame by frame, producing a print in which the original action was exactly reversed. To do this he built a special printer in which the negative running through a projector was projected into the gate of a camera through a special lens giving a same-size image. This arrangement came to be called a "projection printer", and eventually an "optical printer".[57]

The first two shots of As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), with the telescope POV simulated by the circular mask

In 1898, George Albert Smith experimented with close-ups, filming shots of a man drinking beer and a woman using sniffing tobacco.[38] The following year, Smith made The Kiss in the Tunnel, a sequence consisting of three shots: a train enters a tunnel; a man and a woman exchange a brief kiss in the darkness and then return to their seats; the train exits the tunnel. Smith created the scenario in response to the success of a genre known as a phantom ride. In a phantom ride film, cameras would capture the motion and surroundings from the front of a moving train.[58][59] The separate shots, when edited together, formed a distinct sequence of events and established causality from one shot to the next.[60] Following The Kiss in the Tunnel, Smith more definitively experimented with continuity of action across successive shots and began using inserts in his films, such as Grandma's Reading Glass and Mary Jane's Mishap.[38] In 1900, Smith made As Seen Through a Telescope. The main shot shows a street scene with a young man tying the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend, while an old man observes this through a telescope. There is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl's foot shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back to the continuation of the original scene.[61]

James Williamson perfected narrative building techniques in his 1900 film, Attack on a China Mission. The film, which film historian John Barnes later described as having "the most fully developed narrative of any film made in England up to that time", opens as the first shot shows Chinese Boxer rebels at the gate; it then cuts to the missionary family in the garden, where a fight ensues. The wife signals to British sailors from the balcony, who come and rescue them.[62] The film also used the first "reverse angle" cut in film history.[63] The following year, Williamson created The Big Swallow. In the film. a man becomes irritated by the presence of the filmmaker and "swallows" the camera and its operator through the use of interpolated close-up shots.[64] He combined these effects, along with superimpositions, use of wipe transitions to denote a scene change, and other techniques to create a film language, or "film grammar".[65][66] James Williamson's use of continuous action in his 1901 film, Stop Thief! stimulated a film genre known as the "chase film."[67] In the film, a tramp steals a leg of mutton from a butcher's boy in the first shot, is chased by the butcher's boy and assorted dogs in the following shot, and is finally caught by the dogs in the third shot.[67]

United States: The Edison Company and Edwin S. Porter

Still from The Great Train Robbery, produced by Edwin S. Porter

The Execution of Mary Stuart, produced in 1895 by the Edison Company for viewing with the Kinetoscope, showed Mary Queen of Scots being executed in full view of the camera. The effect, known as the stop trick, was achieved by replacing the actor with a dummy for the final shot.[68][69] The technique used in the film is seen as one of the earliest known uses of special effects in film.[70]

The American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter started making films for the Edison Company in 1901. A former projectionist hired by Thomas Edison to develop his new projection model known as the Vitascope, Porter was inspired in part by the works of Méliès, Smith, and Williamson and drew upon their newly crafted techniques to further the development of continuous narrative through editing.[14] When he began making longer films in 1902, he put a dissolve between every shot, just as Georges Méliès was already doing, and he frequently had the same action repeated across the dissolves.

In 1902, Porter shot Life of an American Fireman for the Edison Manufacturing Company and distributed the film the following year. In the film, Porter combined stock footage from previous Edison films with newly shot footage and spliced them together to convey a dramatic story of the rescue of a woman and her child by heroic firemen.[14]

Porter's film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), had a running time of twelve minutes, with twenty separate shots and ten different indoor and outdoor locations. The film is seen as a first in the Western film genre and is significant for the use of shots suggesting simultaneous action occurring at different locations.[14] Porter's use of both staged and real outdoor environments helped to create a sense of space while the placement of the camera in a wider shot established depth and allowed for an extended duration of motion on screen.[71] The Great Train Robbery served as one of the vehicles that would launch the film medium into mass popularity.[39][72] That same year, the Miles Brothers opened the first film exchange in the country, which allowed permanent exhibitors to rent films from the company at a lower cost than the producers that sold their films outright.[73]

John P. Harris opened the first permanent theater devoted exclusively to the presentation of films, the nickelodeon, in 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The idea rapidly took off and by 1908, there were around 8,000 nickelodeon theaters across the country.[74] With the arrival of the nickelodeon, audience demand for a larger quantity of story films with a variety of subjects and locations led to a need to hire more creative talent and caused studios to invest in more elaborate stage designs.[73]

In 1908, Thomas Edison spearheaded the creation of a corporate trust between the major film companies in the United States known as the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) to limit infringement on his patents. Members of the trust controlled every aspect of the filmmaking process from the creation of film stock, the production of films, and the distribution to cinemas through licensing arrangements. The trust led to increased quality filmmaking spurred by internal competition and placed limits on the number of foreign films to encourage the growth of the American film industry, but it also discouraged the creation of feature films. By 1915, the MPPC had lost most of its hold on the film industry as the companies moved towards the wider production of feature films.[45]

During the 1900s, the leader in the United States was the French group Pathé, which held almost 50% of the global market on its own.[75][76]

Australia: Limelight Department

One of the largest earlly film studios was the Limelight Department of The Salvation Army in Melbourne. The company unofficially started in 1891 with the production of lantern slides and released about 300 films of various lengths between 1898 and 1910, many for their own evangelistic purposes, but also for films for private clients and government contracts. Notable productions include the feature-length multi-media presentation Soldiers of the Cross (1900) and the short Bushranging in North Queensland (Joseph Perry, 1904, considered the first bushranger drama).[citation needed]

Continued international growth (1900s–1910s)

New film producing countries

Italian epic film Cabiria

With the worldwide film boom, more countries now joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in serious film production. In Italy, production was spread over several centers, Turin was the first major film production centre, and Milan and Naples gave birth to the first film magazines.[77] In Turin, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in 1905, and remained the largest in the country through this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome, which started producing in 1906. The great strength of the Italian industry was historical epics, with large casts and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone's two-reel La Caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy) made a big impression worldwide, and it was followed by even bigger productions like Quo Vadis? (1912), which ran for 90 minutes, and Pastrone's Cabiria of 1914, which ran for two and a half hours.[78]

Italian companies also had a strong line in slapstick comedy, with actors like André Deed, known locally as "Cretinetti", and elsewhere as "Foolshead" and "Gribouille", achieving worldwide fame with his almost surrealistic gags.

The most important film-producing country in Northern Europe up until the First World War was Denmark.[78][79] The Nordisk company was set up there in 1906 by Ole Olsen, a fairground showman, and after a brief period imitating the successes of French and British filmmakers, in 1907 he produced 67 films, most directed by Viggo Larsen, with sensational subjects like Den hvide Slavinde (The White Slave), Isbjørnejagt (Polar Bear Hunt) and Løvejagten (The Lion Hunt). By 1910, new smaller Danish companies began joining the business, and besides making more films about the white slave trade, they contributed other new subjects. The most important of these finds was Asta Nielsen in Afgrunden (The Abyss), directed by Urban Gad for Kosmorama. This combined the circus, sex, jealousy and murder, all put over with great conviction, and pushed the other Danish filmmakers further in this direction. By 1912, the Danish film companies were multiplying rapidly.[78]

The Swedish film industry was smaller and slower to get started than the Danish industry. Here, Charles Magnusson, a newsreel cameraman for the Svenskabiografteatern cinema chain, started fiction film production for them in 1909, directing a number of the films himself. Production increased in 1912, when the company engaged Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller as directors. They started out by imitating the subjects favoured by the Danish film industry, but by 1913 they were producing their own strikingly original work, which sold very well.[78]

Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Pathé shooting some fiction subjects there, and then the creation of real Russian film companies by Aleksandr Drankov and Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. The Khanzhonkov company quickly became much the largest Russian film company, and remained so until 1918.[78]

In Germany, Oskar Messter had been involved in film-making from 1896, but did not make a significant number of films per year until 1910. When the worldwide film boom started, he, and the few other people in the German film business, continued to sell prints of their own films outright, which put them at a disadvantage. It was only when Paul Davidson, the owner of a chain of cinemas, brought Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad to Germany from Denmark in 1911, and set up a production company, Projektions-AG "Union" (PAGU), that a change-over to renting prints began.[78] Messter replied with a series of longer films starring Henny Porten, but although these did well in the German-speaking world, they were not particularly successful internationally, unlike the Asta Nielsen films. Another of the growing German film producers just before World War I was the German branch of the French Éclair company, Deutsche Éclair. This was expropriated by the German government, and turned into DECLA when the war started. But altogether, German producers only had a minor part of the German market in 1914.[citation needed]

Contrary to the claim that American films dominated European markets from the mid-1910s, the French film industry remained the world leader until the outbreak of World War I in July 1914. In 1913, French films occupied 85% of the screens worldwide, with Pathé alone accounting for around 50% of the global market through its extensive network of subsidiaries, production, and distribution channels. Gaumont also held a major position internationally, often outperforming American studios. It was only the disruptions caused by the war that allowed American companies to gradually become the world leaders in cinema.[80][81][82][83]

Film technique

A.E. Smith filming The Bargain Fiend in the Vitagraph Studios in 1907. Arc floodlights hang overhead.

New film techniques that were introduced in this period include the use of artificial lighting, fire effects and low-key lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame is dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes.[78]

Continuity of action from shot to shot was also refined, such as in Pathé's le Cheval emballé (The Runaway Horse) (1907) where cross-cutting between parallel actions is used. D. W. Griffith also began using cross-cutting in the film The Fatal Hour, made in July 1908. Another development was the use of the point of view shot, first used in 1910 in Vitagraph's Back to Nature. Insert shots were also used for artistic purposes; the Italian film La mala planta (The Evil Plant), directed by Mario Caserini had an insert shot of a snake slithering over the "Evil Plant". [citation needed] By 1914 it was widely held in the American film industry that cross-cutting was most generally useful because it made possible the elimination of uninteresting parts of the action that play no part in advancing the drama.[84]

In 1909, 35mm became the internationally recognized theatrical film gauge.[45]

As films grew longer, specialist writers were employed to simplify more complex stories derived from novels or plays into a form that could be contained on one reel. Genres began to be used as categories; the main division was into comedy and drama, but these categories were further subdivided.[78]

Intertitles containing lines of dialogue began to be used consistently from 1908 onwards,[85] such as in Vitagraph's An Auto Heroine; or, The Race for the Vitagraph Cup and How It Was Won. The dialogue was eventually inserted into the middle of the scene and became commonplace by 1912. The introduction of dialogue titles transformed the nature of film narrative. When dialogue titles came to be always cut into a scene just after a character starts speaking, and then left with a cut to the character just before they finish speaking, then one had something that was effectively the equivalent of a present-day sound film.[78]

During World War I and industry

The visual style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari included deliberately distorted forms, complex tinting, and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. It uses Mise-en-scène.

The years of the First World War were a complex transitional period for the film industry. The exhibition of films changed from short one-reel programmes to feature films. Exhibition venues became larger and began charging higher prices.[78]

In the United States, these changes brought destruction to many film companies, the Vitagraph company being an exception. Film production began to shift to Los Angeles during World War I. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was formed in 1912 as an umbrella company. New entrants included the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company, and Famous Players, both formed in 1913, and later amalgamated into Famous Players–Lasky. The biggest success of these years was David Wark Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith followed this up with the even bigger Intolerance (1916), but, due to the high quality of film produced in the US, the market for their films was high.[78]

In France, film production shut down due to the general military mobilization of the country at the start of the war. Although film production began again in 1915, it was on a reduced scale, and the biggest companies gradually retired from production. Italian film production held up better, although so called "diva films", starring anguished female leads were a commercial failure. In Denmark, the Nordisk company increased its production so much in 1915 and 1916 that it could not sell all its films, which led to a very sharp decline in Danish product

  1. ↑ Hawkk, Robert. "CinebyHD.App". CinebyHD.App.
  2. ↑ Ruffles, Tom (27 September 2004). Ghost Images: Cinema of the Afterlife. McFarland. pp. 15–17. ISBN 9780786420056.
  3. ↑ Meier, Allison C. (12 May 2018). "The Magic Lantern Shows that Influenced Modern Horror". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 15 August 2020.
  4. ↑ Castle, Terry (1988). "Phantasmagoria: Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie". Critical Inquiry. 15 (1): 26–61. doi:10.1086/448473. ISSN 0093-1896. JSTOR 1343603. S2CID 162264583.
  5. ↑ Mannoni, Laurent; Brewster, Ben (1996). "The Phantasmagoria". Film History. 8 (4): 390–415. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815390.
  6. ↑ Eisenhauer, Jennifer F. (2006). "Next Slide Please: The Magical, Scientific, and Corporate Discourses of Visual Projection Technologies". Studies in Art Education. 47 (3): 198–214. doi:10.2307/25475781. ISSN 0039-3541. JSTOR 25475781.
  7. ↑ Marsh, Joss (2013). "Dickensian 'Dissolving Views': The Magic Lantern, Visual Story-telling and the Victorian Technological Imagination". In Geiger, Jeffrey; Littau, Karin (eds.). Cinematicity in Media History. Edinburgh University Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780748676118. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt9qdrrf.7.
  8. ↑ Lawrence, Amy (2003). "Counterfeit Motion: The Animated Films of Eadweard Muybridge". Film Quarterly. 57 (2): 15–25. ISSN 0015-1386. JSTOR 10.1525/fq.2004.57.2.15.
  9. ↑ Latsis (2015). "Landscape in Motion: Muybridge and the Origins of Chronophotography". Film History. 27 (3): 2. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.27.3.1. JSTOR 10.2979/filmhistory.27.3.1. S2CID 194973091.
  10. ↑ Rossell, Deac (2016). "Copycats: Anschütz Chronophotographs as Direct Source Materials for Early Edison Kinetoscope Films". Film History. 28 (2): 142. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.28.2.06. S2CID 192159745.
  11. ↑ "Le Théâtre optique – Émile Reynaud". 11 November 2008. Archived from the original on 11 November 2008.
  12. ↑ Myrent, Glenn (1989). "Emile Reynaud: First Motion Picture Cartoonist". Film History. 3 (3): 191–202. JSTOR 3814977.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Rossell, Deac (1995). "A Chronology of Cinema, 1889–1896". Film History. 7 (2): 140. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815166.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Cook, David A. (1990). A history of narrative film (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. pp. 5–13, 20, 22. ISBN 0-393-95553-2. OCLC 18834152.
  15. ↑ Grainge, Paul; Jancovich, Mark; Monteith, Sharon (2007). Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-1906-1. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt1r28dt.
  16. ↑ Musser, Charles (1991). Before the nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. The UCLA Film and Television Archive studies in history, criticism, and theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 53–56. ISBN 978-0-520-06080-7.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Sklar, Robert (2002). A world history of film (2nd ed.). New York: Harry N. Abrams. p. 26. ISBN 0-8109-0606-6. OCLC 46713129.
  18. ↑ "Ottomar Anschütz, Kinogeschichte, lebender Bilder, Kino, erste-Kinovorführung, Kinovorführung, Projektion, Kinoe, Bewegungsbilder".
  19. ↑ "Ottomar Anschütz, Kinogeschichte, lebender Bilder, Kino, erste-Kinovorführung, Kinovorführung, Projektion, Kinoe, Bewegungsbilder". www.ottomar-anschuetz.de. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  20. ↑ Fischer, Paul (2022). The man who invented motion pictures: a true tale of obsession, murder, and the movies (1st ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-9821-1482-4. OCLC 1201301040.
  21. ↑ de Klerk, Nico (1999). "A Few Remaining Hours: News Films and the Interest in Technology in Amsterdam Film Shows, 1896–1910". Film History. 11 (1): 5–17. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815253.
  22. ↑ Turvey, Gerry (2004). "Panoramas, Parades and the Picturesque: The Aesthetics of British Actuality Films, 1895–1901". Film History. 16 (1): 9–27. doi:10.2979/FIL.2004.16.1.9. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815556.
  23. ↑ Rothstein, Edward; B, S.-Ilent Films Were Never Silent When the Evil Landlord Twirled His Moustache (8 February 1981). "Silent Films Had a Musical Voice". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  24. ↑ American Cinema 1890–1909: Themes and Variations. Rutgers University Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0-8135-4442-7. JSTOR j.ctt5hhz03.
  25. ↑ Sammond, Nicholas. "Birth of An Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation: Vaudeville and the Movies". Birth of An Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. USC.edu.
  26. ↑ Gunning, Tom (2006). "The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde". In Strauven, Wanda (ed.). The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 381–388. ISBN 978-90-5356-945-0. JSTOR j.ctt46n09s.27.
  27. ↑ William Howard Guynn, ed. (2011). The Routledge companion to film history. New York. ISBN 978-1-136-89939-3. OCLC 1241889104.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  28. ↑ Abel, Richard, ed. (2004-03-01). Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203482049. ISBN 978-1-134-56676-1.
  29. ↑ "Film History Before 1920". www.filmsite.org. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
  30. ↑ Gina De Angelis (2003). Motion Pictures. The Oliver Press. ISBN 978-1-881508-78-6.
  31. ↑ Tom Elsaesser, ed. (1990). Early cinema: space, frame, narrative. London : BFI Pub. ISBN 978-0-85170-244-5.
  32. ↑ Bohn, Thomas W. (1987). Light and shadows: a history of motion pictures. Internet Archive. Palo Alto, Calif. : Mayfield Pub. Co. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-87484-702-4.
  33. ↑ Gaines, Jane M. (2004). "First Fictions". Signs. 30 (1): 1293–1317. doi:10.1086/421882. ISSN 0097-9740. JSTOR 10.1086/421882. S2CID 225091235.
  34. ↑ Hunt, Kristin (7 May 2020). "The First Movie Kiss". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 16 September 2021.
  35. ↑ Woods, Alan (1976). "James J. Corbett: Theatrical Star". Journal of Sport History. 3 (2): 162–175. ISSN 0094-1700. JSTOR 43609159.
  36. ↑ Dixon, Bryony. "Smith, Percy (1880–1945)". BFI Screenonlinee. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  37. ↑ "Percy Smith". wildfilmhistory.org. Archived from the original on September 28, 2008. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 38.3 38.4 38.5 MacGowan, Kenneth (1955). "The Story Comes to the Screen: 1896–1906". The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television. 10 (1): 64–88. doi:10.2307/1209964. ISSN 1549-0068. JSTOR 1209964.
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema. Jefferson: McFarland Company, Inc, 2000. Print.
  40. ↑ Wakeman, John (1987). World film directors: Volume I 1890–1945. H. W. Wilson. ISBN 0-8242-0757-2. OCLC 1153630930.
  41. ↑ "Film History Milestones – Pre-1900s". www.filmsite.org. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
  42. ↑ Kovács, Katherine Singer (1976). "Georges Méliès and the "Féerie"". Cinema Journal. 16 (1): 1–13. doi:10.2307/1225446. ISSN 0009-7101. JSTOR 1225446.
  43. ↑ Kessler, Frank (2012-12-31), "The Gentleman in the Stalls: Georges Méliès and Spectatorship in Early Cinema", in Christie, Ian (ed.), Audiences, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 35–44, doi:10.1515/9789048515059-005, hdl:1874/384504, ISBN 978-90-485-1505-9, S2CID 192341772, retrieved 2022-07-28
  44. ↑ Wexman, Virginia Wright (2010). A history of film. Internet Archive. Boston : Allyn & Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-62528-4.
  45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (30 March 2018). A Short History of Film (3rd ed.). Rutgers University Press. pp. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Short_History_of_Film_Third_Edition/fF9TDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22History+of+film%22+-wikipedia&printsec=frontcover. ISBN 9780813595146.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Abel, Richard (1993). "In the Belly of the Beast: The Early Years of Pathé-Frères". Film History. 5 (4): 363–385. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 27670731.
  47. ↑ Toulet, Emmanuelle (1995). Birth of the motion picture. Internet Archive. New York : Abrams. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8109-2874-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  48. ↑ Willems, Gilles "Les origines de Pathé-Natan" In Une Histoire Économique du Cinéma Français (1895–1995), Regards Croisés Franco-Américains, Pierre-Jean Benghozi and Christian Delage, eds. Paris: Harmattan, Collection Champs Visuels, 1997. English translation: The origins of Pathé-Natan Archived 9 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine La Trobe University
  49. ↑ Simon, Joan (2009). Alice Guy Blaché Cinema Pioneer. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15250-0.
  50. ↑ Strauven, Wanda (2006). "From 'Primitive Cinema' to 'Marvelous'". In Strauven, Wanda (ed.). The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 105–120. ISBN 978-90-5356-945-0. JSTOR j.ctt46n09s.10.
  51. ↑ "The Indian Chief and the Seidlitz Powder". British Film Institute. Retrieved 2022-05-26.
  52. ↑ Brooke, Michael. "Come Along, Do!". BFI Screenonline Database. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  53. ↑ Davidson, Ewan. "BFI Screenonline: Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost (1901)". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  54. ↑ Natale, Simone (2012-03-21). "A short history of superimposition: From spirit photography to early cinema". Early Popular Visual Culture. 10 (2): 125–145. doi:10.1080/17460654.2012.664745. hdl:2318/1768934. ISSN 1746-0654. S2CID 192110872.
  55. ↑ Leeder, Murray (10 January 2017). The modern supernatural and the beginnings of cinema. Springer. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-137-58371-0. OCLC 968511967.
  56. ↑ "Santa Claus (1898)". BFI Screenonline.
  57. ↑ Montanaro, Carlo; Gabhann, Liam Mac (2019). Silver Screen to Digital: A Brief History of Film Technology. Indiana University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-86196-746-9. JSTOR j.ctvsn3pvn.
  58. ↑ Gray, Frank. "The Kiss in the Tunnel". University of Brighton College of Arts and Humanities. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  59. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Smith, G.A. (1864–1959) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  60. ↑ Gray, Frank (1998). "Smith the Showman: The Early Years of George Albert Smith". Film History. 10 (1): 8–20. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 3815398.
  61. ↑ Brooke, Michael. "As Seen Through a Telescope". BFI Screenonline Database. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  62. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Attack on a China Mission (1900)". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  63. ↑ Buscombe, Edward (2006). 100 Westerns: BFI Screen Guides. Bloomsbury Publishing (UK). doi:10.5040/9781838710590.0039. ISBN 978-1-83871-059-0.
  64. ↑ Brooke, Michael. "BFI Screenonline: Big Swallow, The (1901)". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 2022-07-19.
  65. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Mary Jane's Mishap or, Don't Fool with the Paraffin (1903)". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  66. ↑ "BBC – A History of the World – Object: Kinemacolor 35mm cine-camera". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 "BFI Screenonline: Stop Thief! (1901)". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  68. ↑ "The execution of Mary Stuart 1895". Lomography. Archived from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  69. ↑ Reid, Steven (21 January 2019). "Opinion: Yes, the new Mary Queen of Scots film is inaccurate – but historians can't agree on her anyway". The Independent. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  70. ↑ Soloski, Alexis (14 September 2018). "A Bloody Rivalry for the Throne, This Time With Margot Robbie". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2 January 2022. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  71. ↑ Mashiah, Igal I. (1980). "EDWIN S. PORTER'S THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY: A Focus on the Origins of Narrative Structure". ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 37 (4): 355–362. ISSN 0014-164X. JSTOR 42575500.
  72. ↑ "The Great Train Robbery (1903)". www.filmsite.org. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 North, Joseph H. (1973). The early development of the motion picture (1887–1909). Internet Archive. New York, Arno Press. ISBN 978-0-405-04101-3.
  74. ↑ Bowser, Eileen (1990). The transformation of the cinema, 1907–1915. C. Scribner. pp. 4–6. ISBN 0-684-18414-1. OCLC 433110272.
  75. ↑ rédaction, La (2025-06-19). "Rencontre avec Jérôme Seydoux". Boxoffice Pro (in français). Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  76. ↑ "Gaumont et Pathé : l'affrontement de deux géants de cinéma". europe1.fr (in français). 26 February 2020. Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  77. ↑ Larry, Langman (2000). Destination Hollywood. McFarland. p. 278. ISBN 9780786406814.
  78. ↑ 78.00 78.01 78.02 78.03 78.04 78.05 78.06 78.07 78.08 78.09 78.10 Ahmed Sayeed (24 September 2019). You Could Be the Winner (Volume – II). Sankalp Publication. p. 223. ISBN 9789388660662.
  79. ↑ "On the 'Danishness' of Danish Films in Germany until 1918". www.kosmorama.org. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  80. ↑ "N°3197-Rapport d'information de M Blum, sur les forces et les faiblesses du cinéma français sur le marché international (commission des affaires étrangères)". www.assemblee-nationale.fr. Retrieved 2025-12-03.
  81. ↑ "L'Histoire de Pathé". www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com (in français). Retrieved 2025-10-16.
  82. ↑ Willems, Gilles (1995). "Les origines du groupe Pathé-Natan et le modèle américain". Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire. 46 (1): 98–106. doi:10.3406/xxs.1995.3157.
  83. ↑ "Firme Pathé Frères, 1896-1914". Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. Retrieved 2025-12-03.
  84. ↑ Michael Wedel, Thomas Elsaesser (1996). A Second Life-German Cinema's First Decades. Amsterdam University Press. p. 229.
  85. ↑ Barry, Salt (1992). Film Style and Technology-History and Analysis. Starword. pp. 108–139. ISBN 9780950906621.
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