Claire Dupré La Tour
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266434
- eISBN:
- 9780191884191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266434.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional ...
More
The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional advertisements can be found in the UK in catalogues of James Williamson (1899) and Robert William Paul (1901), and in France in a catalogue of the Parnaland film company (1901). Although evidence shows that Pathé was using this technique in 1901, catalogues from its British branch reveal that it advertised it from May 1903. The advertisements highlighted positive outcomes for producers and exhibitors, and promoted titles in a variety of languages. This early titling strategy allowed Pathé to get ahead of its competitors in terms of industrialisation, control over its product, and domestic and foreign market share. This chapter focuses on early filmed titling and intertitling practices, Pathé’s innovative offer in 1903, and its evolution until 1908.Less
The shift from titles on lantern slides to the practice of titling on the film itself dates to the turn of the 20th century. Early examples of preserved filmed titles are rare, but occasional advertisements can be found in the UK in catalogues of James Williamson (1899) and Robert William Paul (1901), and in France in a catalogue of the Parnaland film company (1901). Although evidence shows that Pathé was using this technique in 1901, catalogues from its British branch reveal that it advertised it from May 1903. The advertisements highlighted positive outcomes for producers and exhibitors, and promoted titles in a variety of languages. This early titling strategy allowed Pathé to get ahead of its competitors in terms of industrialisation, control over its product, and domestic and foreign market share. This chapter focuses on early filmed titling and intertitling practices, Pathé’s innovative offer in 1903, and its evolution until 1908.
Barbara Tepa Lupack
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501748189
- eISBN:
- 9781501748202
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501748189.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book, the first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As the book demonstrates, the ...
More
This book, the first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As the book demonstrates, the Wharton brothers were behind some of the most profitable and influential productions of the era, including The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio they established in Ithaca, New York, Ted and Leo turned their adopted town into “Hollywood on Cayuga.” By interweaving contemporary events and incorporating technological and scientific innovations, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the popular serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. A number of the sensational techniques and character types they introduced are still being employed by directors and producers a century later.Less
This book, the first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As the book demonstrates, the Wharton brothers were behind some of the most profitable and influential productions of the era, including The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio they established in Ithaca, New York, Ted and Leo turned their adopted town into “Hollywood on Cayuga.” By interweaving contemporary events and incorporating technological and scientific innovations, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the popular serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. A number of the sensational techniques and character types they introduced are still being employed by directors and producers a century later.
Maite Conde
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520290983
- eISBN:
- 9780520964884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520290983.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter presents an overview and critique of theories of Brazil’s cinematic belle epoque, which have depicted the early film period as a golden age of Brazilian filmmaking in contrast to later ...
More
This chapter presents an overview and critique of theories of Brazil’s cinematic belle epoque, which have depicted the early film period as a golden age of Brazilian filmmaking in contrast to later decades that were dominated by Hollywood’s hegemony. The chapter shows how these utopian discourses regarding the belle epoque have obscured the cinematic period’s intrinsic link to Rio de Janeiro and its modernizing reforms, reforms that were inextricably linked to the development and expansion of global capitalism.Less
This chapter presents an overview and critique of theories of Brazil’s cinematic belle epoque, which have depicted the early film period as a golden age of Brazilian filmmaking in contrast to later decades that were dominated by Hollywood’s hegemony. The chapter shows how these utopian discourses regarding the belle epoque have obscured the cinematic period’s intrinsic link to Rio de Janeiro and its modernizing reforms, reforms that were inextricably linked to the development and expansion of global capitalism.
Deborah Knight
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159216
- eISBN:
- 9780191673566
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159216.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter shows another concern of early film theorists. This concern has been addressed more recently by a number of writers in the analytic tradition. The chapter focuses on the paradox of genre ...
More
This chapter shows another concern of early film theorists. This concern has been addressed more recently by a number of writers in the analytic tradition. The chapter focuses on the paradox of genre or ‘junk’ fiction consumption. Noel Carroll who was able to anatomize it solved the paradox by claiming that genre texts engage viewers in the cognitive activities of testing out hypotheses concerning the likely outcome of the action. This chapter argues that the ‘paradox of junk fiction’ is not so much false as ill-conceived and that some problematic assumptions that inform the paradox posited by Carroll inhabit the solution. The chapter further argues that entelechial causality is central for understanding genre fictions in which the horizon of expectations is framed. It is not a matter of predicting what will happen next in the context of a particular story.Less
This chapter shows another concern of early film theorists. This concern has been addressed more recently by a number of writers in the analytic tradition. The chapter focuses on the paradox of genre or ‘junk’ fiction consumption. Noel Carroll who was able to anatomize it solved the paradox by claiming that genre texts engage viewers in the cognitive activities of testing out hypotheses concerning the likely outcome of the action. This chapter argues that the ‘paradox of junk fiction’ is not so much false as ill-conceived and that some problematic assumptions that inform the paradox posited by Carroll inhabit the solution. The chapter further argues that entelechial causality is central for understanding genre fictions in which the horizon of expectations is framed. It is not a matter of predicting what will happen next in the context of a particular story.
Alison Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231161060
- eISBN:
- 9780231541565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161060.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 2: “Prison on Screen: The Carceral Aesthetic” examines how actuality, reconstruction, and fictional films representing prisons and prisoners made before cinema’s transitional era in the mid ...
More
Chapter 2: “Prison on Screen: The Carceral Aesthetic” examines how actuality, reconstruction, and fictional films representing prisons and prisoners made before cinema’s transitional era in the mid teens construct a carceral imaginary that was indebted to precinematic visions of imprisonment at the same time they established new conventions around visualizing incarceration. Beyond identifying the visual tropes used in prison dramas to signify the imprisonment, this chapter examines conventional and subversive narrative spaces carved out for prison trick films and dramas and asks whether films made prior to the transitional era open up alternative ways of theorizing carcerality.Less
Chapter 2: “Prison on Screen: The Carceral Aesthetic” examines how actuality, reconstruction, and fictional films representing prisons and prisoners made before cinema’s transitional era in the mid teens construct a carceral imaginary that was indebted to precinematic visions of imprisonment at the same time they established new conventions around visualizing incarceration. Beyond identifying the visual tropes used in prison dramas to signify the imprisonment, this chapter examines conventional and subversive narrative spaces carved out for prison trick films and dramas and asks whether films made prior to the transitional era open up alternative ways of theorizing carcerality.
Joe Kember
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199797615
- eISBN:
- 9780199979738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797615.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, Western
Adding a magic-lantern-style educative lecturer to moving pictures was one way of addressing emerging concerns in the 1900s that moving pictures themselves did not fix attention. By delving into the ...
More
Adding a magic-lantern-style educative lecturer to moving pictures was one way of addressing emerging concerns in the 1900s that moving pictures themselves did not fix attention. By delving into the detail of exhibition practices at St James’s Hall Plymouth, the chapter argues that town-hall shows there and elsewhere structured the manipulation of audience attention within new institutional configurations, and did so as early as 1901, not only after 1908 as previously understood. Shows at St James’s Hall serve to demonstrate that lecturers could contribute to the creation of new patterns of audience attention, mediating and modulating the various effects involved in moving-picture exhibition, and adapting a wide range of oral practices in doing so.Less
Adding a magic-lantern-style educative lecturer to moving pictures was one way of addressing emerging concerns in the 1900s that moving pictures themselves did not fix attention. By delving into the detail of exhibition practices at St James’s Hall Plymouth, the chapter argues that town-hall shows there and elsewhere structured the manipulation of audience attention within new institutional configurations, and did so as early as 1901, not only after 1908 as previously understood. Shows at St James’s Hall serve to demonstrate that lecturers could contribute to the creation of new patterns of audience attention, mediating and modulating the various effects involved in moving-picture exhibition, and adapting a wide range of oral practices in doing so.
Julie Brown and Annette Davison
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199797615
- eISBN:
- 9780199979738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797615.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, Western
The Introduction outlines the rationale for the book: the relative dearth of studies of the sonic environment of British cinemas in the period before the development of synchronized sound. It ...
More
The Introduction outlines the rationale for the book: the relative dearth of studies of the sonic environment of British cinemas in the period before the development of synchronized sound. It highlights the key factors that affected the production of this particular cultural, economic, institutional environment, and its difference from that of the United States, for example. It offers a brief summary of each of the collection’s chapters, and present a useful introduction to the resources available to the researcher at this time.Less
The Introduction outlines the rationale for the book: the relative dearth of studies of the sonic environment of British cinemas in the period before the development of synchronized sound. It highlights the key factors that affected the production of this particular cultural, economic, institutional environment, and its difference from that of the United States, for example. It offers a brief summary of each of the collection’s chapters, and present a useful introduction to the resources available to the researcher at this time.
Keith Withall
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906733704
- eISBN:
- 9781800342095
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906733704.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses the technical and inventive basis for cinema, and briefly describes the important pioneers. It covers the developments prior to the invention of cinema and the first decade of ...
More
This chapter discusses the technical and inventive basis for cinema, and briefly describes the important pioneers. It covers the developments prior to the invention of cinema and the first decade of its development, approximately 1895 to 1905. This is a distinct period in film, sometimes characterised by the term ‘primitives and pioneers’. Not all scholars are happy with the term primitive. The films seem simple compared with the complexities of late silent features, but they are also sophisticated in their own way. The screening of a good quality copy of a Georges Méliès' film would emphasise this point of view. There are three clear avenues for study: the technology itself, technique and language, and the idea of the ‘cinema of attractions’. It should be clear that even though these early films are not strictly narratives in the accustomed sense, they are full of opportunities for the study of representations and value systems.Less
This chapter discusses the technical and inventive basis for cinema, and briefly describes the important pioneers. It covers the developments prior to the invention of cinema and the first decade of its development, approximately 1895 to 1905. This is a distinct period in film, sometimes characterised by the term ‘primitives and pioneers’. Not all scholars are happy with the term primitive. The films seem simple compared with the complexities of late silent features, but they are also sophisticated in their own way. The screening of a good quality copy of a Georges Méliès' film would emphasise this point of view. There are three clear avenues for study: the technology itself, technique and language, and the idea of the ‘cinema of attractions’. It should be clear that even though these early films are not strictly narratives in the accustomed sense, they are full of opportunities for the study of representations and value systems.
Christine Cornea
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624652
- eISBN:
- 9780748671106
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624652.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This study offers a broad historical and theoretical reassessment of the science fiction film genre. The book explores the development of science fiction in cinema from its beginnings in early film ...
More
This study offers a broad historical and theoretical reassessment of the science fiction film genre. The book explores the development of science fiction in cinema from its beginnings in early film through to recent examples of the genre. Each chapter sets analyses of chosen films within a wider historical/cultural context, while concentrating on a specific thematic issue. The book therefore presents unique perspectives in its approach to the genre, which include discussion of the relevance of psychedelic imagery, the ‘new woman of science’, generic performance and the prevalence of ‘techno-orientalism’ in recent films. While American films is one of the principle areas covered, the book also engages with a range of pertinent examples from other nations, as well as discussing the centrality of science fiction as a transnational film genre. Films discussed include The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet, The Quatermass Experiment, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Demon Seed, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Wars, Altered States, Alien, Blade Runner, The Brother from Another Planet, Back to the Future, The Terminator, Predator, The One, Dark City, The Matrix, Fifth Element and eXistenZ.Less
This study offers a broad historical and theoretical reassessment of the science fiction film genre. The book explores the development of science fiction in cinema from its beginnings in early film through to recent examples of the genre. Each chapter sets analyses of chosen films within a wider historical/cultural context, while concentrating on a specific thematic issue. The book therefore presents unique perspectives in its approach to the genre, which include discussion of the relevance of psychedelic imagery, the ‘new woman of science’, generic performance and the prevalence of ‘techno-orientalism’ in recent films. While American films is one of the principle areas covered, the book also engages with a range of pertinent examples from other nations, as well as discussing the centrality of science fiction as a transnational film genre. Films discussed include The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet, The Quatermass Experiment, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Demon Seed, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Wars, Altered States, Alien, Blade Runner, The Brother from Another Planet, Back to the Future, The Terminator, Predator, The One, Dark City, The Matrix, Fifth Element and eXistenZ.
Julie Brown and Annette Davison (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199797615
- eISBN:
- 9780199979738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, Western
This book explores the sonic dimension of film exhibition in Britain, from the emergence of cinema through to the introduction of synchronized sound. With contributions from many of the acknowledged ...
More
This book explores the sonic dimension of film exhibition in Britain, from the emergence of cinema through to the introduction of synchronized sound. With contributions from many of the acknowledged experts on British silent film, as well as specialists on film music, the chapters provide an introduction to diverse aspect of early film sound: vocal performance (from lecturing and reciting to voicing the drama), music (from the forerunners of music for visual spectacle, to the impact of legislation and the development of an aesthetic), and performance in cinemas (from dancing and singalong films to live stage prologues, and even musical performances captured in British Pathé’s early sound shorts). Other topics include the sonic eclecticism of performances at the Film Society, British International Pictures’ first synchronized sound films, and the role of institutions such as the Musicians’ Union and the Performing Right Society in relation to cinema music and musicians.Less
This book explores the sonic dimension of film exhibition in Britain, from the emergence of cinema through to the introduction of synchronized sound. With contributions from many of the acknowledged experts on British silent film, as well as specialists on film music, the chapters provide an introduction to diverse aspect of early film sound: vocal performance (from lecturing and reciting to voicing the drama), music (from the forerunners of music for visual spectacle, to the impact of legislation and the development of an aesthetic), and performance in cinemas (from dancing and singalong films to live stage prologues, and even musical performances captured in British Pathé’s early sound shorts). Other topics include the sonic eclecticism of performances at the Film Society, British International Pictures’ first synchronized sound films, and the role of institutions such as the Musicians’ Union and the Performing Right Society in relation to cinema music and musicians.
Keith Williams
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474402484
- eISBN:
- 9781474490917
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402484.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Lays out the case that the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from media predating film. It explains how Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' was a key creative driver of Joyce’s ...
More
Lays out the case that the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from media predating film. It explains how Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' was a key creative driver of Joyce’s experimental fiction and details research methods and evidence for showing how his style and themes share the cinematograph’s roots in Victorian science and optical entertainment. It explicates how the book’s scope reveals and elucidates Joyce's references to optical toys, shadowgraphs, magic lanterns, panoramas, photographic analysis and film peepshows, which testify to his awareness of a moving image and projection culture before 1895, which film remediated. It also details how abundant close analysis in the following chapters will show how his techniques elaborated and critiqued their effects on modernity’s ‘media-cultural imaginary’; thus how Joyce’s writing could appear in advance of the narrative forms of early film itself. Consequently, the introduction provides detailed historicisation of Dublin’s visual culture during Joyce’s youth, as well as relevant optical science of the time, Dublin’s first film screenings and the context of his Volta Cinematograph.Less
Lays out the case that the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from media predating film. It explains how Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' was a key creative driver of Joyce’s experimental fiction and details research methods and evidence for showing how his style and themes share the cinematograph’s roots in Victorian science and optical entertainment. It explicates how the book’s scope reveals and elucidates Joyce's references to optical toys, shadowgraphs, magic lanterns, panoramas, photographic analysis and film peepshows, which testify to his awareness of a moving image and projection culture before 1895, which film remediated. It also details how abundant close analysis in the following chapters will show how his techniques elaborated and critiqued their effects on modernity’s ‘media-cultural imaginary’; thus how Joyce’s writing could appear in advance of the narrative forms of early film itself. Consequently, the introduction provides detailed historicisation of Dublin’s visual culture during Joyce’s youth, as well as relevant optical science of the time, Dublin’s first film screenings and the context of his Volta Cinematograph.
Alexander Kluge
Richard Langston (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501739200
- eISBN:
- 9781501739224
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.003.0019
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter looks at the dialogue between Christian Schulte and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about primitive diversity. “Primitive diversity” is an expression from the American East Coast for ...
More
This chapter looks at the dialogue between Christian Schulte and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about primitive diversity. “Primitive diversity” is an expression from the American East Coast for early film. The one- to two-minute films demonstrate the early form of cinema. Meanwhile, pre-Hollywood cinema is closely tied to the inventors of the film camera, who were also scientists. Primitive diversity encompasses the entire spectrum ranging from sensationalism, curiosity, and old greed to the abilities cameras themselves possess. Ultimately, this early cinema responds to the needs of migrant workers in the United States who come from many countries, are in need, and create their own public sphere themselves in the silent movies. Kluge claims that “astonishment as means of knowledge—that is primitive diversity.” The dialogue between Schulte and Kluge also ruminates on Kluge's indebtedness to the cinema of attraction.Less
This chapter looks at the dialogue between Christian Schulte and Alexander Kluge wherein they talked about primitive diversity. “Primitive diversity” is an expression from the American East Coast for early film. The one- to two-minute films demonstrate the early form of cinema. Meanwhile, pre-Hollywood cinema is closely tied to the inventors of the film camera, who were also scientists. Primitive diversity encompasses the entire spectrum ranging from sensationalism, curiosity, and old greed to the abilities cameras themselves possess. Ultimately, this early cinema responds to the needs of migrant workers in the United States who come from many countries, are in need, and create their own public sphere themselves in the silent movies. Kluge claims that “astonishment as means of knowledge—that is primitive diversity.” The dialogue between Schulte and Kluge also ruminates on Kluge's indebtedness to the cinema of attraction.
James Chandler
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226034959
- eISBN:
- 9780226035000
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226035000.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just ...
More
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people's very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being. This book challenges Sergei Eisenstein's influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. It begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, and then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, the author reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capra's It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It's a Wonderful Life. He then moves forward to romanticism and modernism—two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental—examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work. Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, the book casts new light on the long eighteenth century, and on the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.Less
In the middle of the eighteenth century, something new made itself felt in European culture—a tone or style that came to be called the sentimental. The sentimental mode went on to shape not just literature, art, music, and cinema, but people's very structures of feeling, their ways of doing and being. This book challenges Sergei Eisenstein's influential account of Dickens and early American film by tracing the unexpected history and intricate strategies of the sentimental mode and showing how it has been reimagined over the past three centuries. It begins with a look at Frank Capra and the Capraesque in American public life, and then digs back to the eighteenth century to examine the sentimental substratum underlying Dickens and early cinema alike. With this surprising move, the author reveals how literary spectatorship in the eighteenth century anticipated classic Hollywood films such as Capra's It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and It's a Wonderful Life. He then moves forward to romanticism and modernism—two cultural movements often seen as defined by their rejection of the sentimental—examining how authors like Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf actually engaged with sentimental forms and themes in ways that left a mark on their work. Reaching from Laurence Sterne to the Coen brothers, the book casts new light on the long eighteenth century, and on the novelistic forebears of cinema and our modern world.
James Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190915247
- eISBN:
- 9780190915278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190915247.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the ...
More
Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the human face with carrying the plot or at least with taking up the narrative slack between intertitles, sound film with its additional resources for expounding the narrative opens a space for a face that is inscrutable. Sternberg’s films release the face for spectacle without thereby surrendering it to the gaze of the moviegoer: in its independence of the enclosed world of a narrative, Dietrich’s face is in a position to look out and back at the spectator. Contrasting Morocco with An American Tragedy (in which Dietrich does not appear), the Introduction argues that there is thus an image of autonomy that Sternberg and Dietrich construct and that contributes an (often overlooked) ethical dimension to their cinema of spectacle.Less
Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the human face with carrying the plot or at least with taking up the narrative slack between intertitles, sound film with its additional resources for expounding the narrative opens a space for a face that is inscrutable. Sternberg’s films release the face for spectacle without thereby surrendering it to the gaze of the moviegoer: in its independence of the enclosed world of a narrative, Dietrich’s face is in a position to look out and back at the spectator. Contrasting Morocco with An American Tragedy (in which Dietrich does not appear), the Introduction argues that there is thus an image of autonomy that Sternberg and Dietrich construct and that contributes an (often overlooked) ethical dimension to their cinema of spectacle.
Megan Feeney
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226593555
- eISBN:
- 9780226593722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226593722.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving ...
More
This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving pictures arrived in Havana just as Cubans achieved independence from Spain and founded their own nation. But, by forcing the Platt Amendment into Cuba’s constitution, the United States assured that Cuba was only “semi-sovereign” in relation to US power, exerted in the form of military occupations, political tinkering, trade policies, investors, and a flood of US-made goods. Among those goods were US-made films, which began to monopolize Havana’s multiplying moving picture halls especially during World War I, which saw the rise of Hollywood’s studio system and its global dominance. The big Hollywood studios had each opened a distribution office in Havana by the early 1920s, and a number operated their own “picture palaces,” to the dismay of local distributors and exhibitors. This chapter finds that Havana’s early cinemas—and the business and print cultures emerging around them—were sites where Cubans continued to forge their national identity through complex negotiations with US power. They were not just sites for the conveyance of US influence but also for the continued promotion of revolutionary Cuban nationalism.Less
This chapter covers film distribution, exhibition, and reception in Havana during the era of silent cinema and of Cuba’s first republic, which roughly overlapped. At the turn-of-the-century, moving pictures arrived in Havana just as Cubans achieved independence from Spain and founded their own nation. But, by forcing the Platt Amendment into Cuba’s constitution, the United States assured that Cuba was only “semi-sovereign” in relation to US power, exerted in the form of military occupations, political tinkering, trade policies, investors, and a flood of US-made goods. Among those goods were US-made films, which began to monopolize Havana’s multiplying moving picture halls especially during World War I, which saw the rise of Hollywood’s studio system and its global dominance. The big Hollywood studios had each opened a distribution office in Havana by the early 1920s, and a number operated their own “picture palaces,” to the dismay of local distributors and exhibitors. This chapter finds that Havana’s early cinemas—and the business and print cultures emerging around them—were sites where Cubans continued to forge their national identity through complex negotiations with US power. They were not just sites for the conveyance of US influence but also for the continued promotion of revolutionary Cuban nationalism.
Louise Hornby
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190661229
- eISBN:
- 9780190661250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190661229.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines how early filmmakers had to invent what motion looked like on screen, imagining it as distinct from stillness, legibility, or clarity. The images of motion in early film are ...
More
This chapter examines how early filmmakers had to invent what motion looked like on screen, imagining it as distinct from stillness, legibility, or clarity. The images of motion in early film are blurred and impressionistic—ocean waves, clouds of dust, puffs of steam and smoke—which render motion itself a kind of obscurity and reveal how film is itself an ephemeral medium of dust and smoke. The precursor to film’s absent materiality is found in photography’s own representation of motion as blur in Etienne-Jules Marey’s strange late nineteenth-century photographs of smoke fillets and the movements of air. These images, lesser known than his other motion studies, reveal how film casts back to its still antecedent to imagine motion in blurred terms of smoke and dust, even as it resists photographic arrest.Less
This chapter examines how early filmmakers had to invent what motion looked like on screen, imagining it as distinct from stillness, legibility, or clarity. The images of motion in early film are blurred and impressionistic—ocean waves, clouds of dust, puffs of steam and smoke—which render motion itself a kind of obscurity and reveal how film is itself an ephemeral medium of dust and smoke. The precursor to film’s absent materiality is found in photography’s own representation of motion as blur in Etienne-Jules Marey’s strange late nineteenth-century photographs of smoke fillets and the movements of air. These images, lesser known than his other motion studies, reveal how film casts back to its still antecedent to imagine motion in blurred terms of smoke and dust, even as it resists photographic arrest.
Andrew A. Erish
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780813181196
- eISBN:
- 9780813181202
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813181196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
For more than a century, the origin story of the American film industry has been that the founders of Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that ...
More
For more than a century, the origin story of the American film industry has been that the founders of Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these three companies (along with the heads of MGM and Warner Bros.) were responsible for developing the multi-billion-dollar business we now know as Hollywood. Unfortunately for history, this is simply not true. Andrew A. Erish's definitive history of this important but oft-forgotten studio compels a reassessment of the birth and development of motion pictures in America. Founded in 1897, the Vitagraph Company of America (later known as Vitagraph Studios) was ground zero for American cinema. By 1907, it was one of the largest film studios in America, with notable productions including the first film adaptation of Les Misérables (1909); The Military Air-Scout (1911), considered to be one of the first aviation films; and the World War I propaganda film The Battle Cry of Peace (1915). In 1925, Warner Bros. purchased Vitagraph and all of its subsidiaries and began to rewrite the history of American cinema. Drawing on valuable primary material overlooked by other historians, Erish challenges the creation myths marketed by Hollywood's conquering moguls, introduces readers to many unsung pioneers, and offers a much-needed correction to the history of commercial cinema.Less
For more than a century, the origin story of the American film industry has been that the founders of Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these three companies (along with the heads of MGM and Warner Bros.) were responsible for developing the multi-billion-dollar business we now know as Hollywood. Unfortunately for history, this is simply not true. Andrew A. Erish's definitive history of this important but oft-forgotten studio compels a reassessment of the birth and development of motion pictures in America. Founded in 1897, the Vitagraph Company of America (later known as Vitagraph Studios) was ground zero for American cinema. By 1907, it was one of the largest film studios in America, with notable productions including the first film adaptation of Les Misérables (1909); The Military Air-Scout (1911), considered to be one of the first aviation films; and the World War I propaganda film The Battle Cry of Peace (1915). In 1925, Warner Bros. purchased Vitagraph and all of its subsidiaries and began to rewrite the history of American cinema. Drawing on valuable primary material overlooked by other historians, Erish challenges the creation myths marketed by Hollywood's conquering moguls, introduces readers to many unsung pioneers, and offers a much-needed correction to the history of commercial cinema.
Keith Williams
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474402484
- eISBN:
- 9781474490917
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402484.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book investigates how the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from popular media predating film. It explores Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' as a key creative driver of ...
More
This book investigates how the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from popular media predating film. It explores Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' as a key creative driver of Joyce’s experimental fiction, showing how his style and themes share the cinematograph’s roots in Victorian optical entertainment and science. The book’s scope reveals and elucidates Joyce's references to optical toys, shadowgraphs, magic lanterns, panoramas, photographic analysis and film peepshows; while abundant close analysis shows how his techniques elaborated and critiqued their effects on modernity’s ‘media-cultural imaginary’, making Joyce’s writing appear in advance of the narrative forms of early film itself.
The introduction historicises the visual culture during Joyce’s youth, as well as optical science, Dublin’s first screenings and the context of his Volta Cinematograph. Chapter 1 focuses on the key role of magic lantern themes and techniques in Dubliners’ breakthrough into Modernist style and form. Chapter 2 how experiments in photographic analysis and reanimation of movement furnished a model for Joyce’s representation of the dynamic development of consciousness through the three versions of A Portrait of the Artist. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Joyce created a literary equivalent to the moving panorama in Ulysses, providing an influential template for immersive representations of the city in both Modernist fiction and film. Finally, a Coda qualifies ‘radiophonic’ readings of Finnegans Wake arguing instead that it extends Joyce’s interest in the history and future of cinematicity, through ‘verbal dissolves’ and engaging with the emergent medium of television.Less
This book investigates how the cinematic tendency of Joyce’s writing developed from popular media predating film. It explores Victorian culture’s emergent 'cinematicity' as a key creative driver of Joyce’s experimental fiction, showing how his style and themes share the cinematograph’s roots in Victorian optical entertainment and science. The book’s scope reveals and elucidates Joyce's references to optical toys, shadowgraphs, magic lanterns, panoramas, photographic analysis and film peepshows; while abundant close analysis shows how his techniques elaborated and critiqued their effects on modernity’s ‘media-cultural imaginary’, making Joyce’s writing appear in advance of the narrative forms of early film itself.
The introduction historicises the visual culture during Joyce’s youth, as well as optical science, Dublin’s first screenings and the context of his Volta Cinematograph. Chapter 1 focuses on the key role of magic lantern themes and techniques in Dubliners’ breakthrough into Modernist style and form. Chapter 2 how experiments in photographic analysis and reanimation of movement furnished a model for Joyce’s representation of the dynamic development of consciousness through the three versions of A Portrait of the Artist. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Joyce created a literary equivalent to the moving panorama in Ulysses, providing an influential template for immersive representations of the city in both Modernist fiction and film. Finally, a Coda qualifies ‘radiophonic’ readings of Finnegans Wake arguing instead that it extends Joyce’s interest in the history and future of cinematicity, through ‘verbal dissolves’ and engaging with the emergent medium of television.
Katherine Roeder
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617039607
- eISBN:
- 9781626740112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039607.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
Chapter two focuses ona groundbreaking, self-reflexive episode of Little Sammy Sneeze, a comic which follows a boy whose potent sneezes leave mayhem in his wake. Sammy's sneezes even shatter the ...
More
Chapter two focuses ona groundbreaking, self-reflexive episode of Little Sammy Sneeze, a comic which follows a boy whose potent sneezes leave mayhem in his wake. Sammy's sneezes even shatter the frame that contains him, dismantling the divide between viewer and subject. Here McCayexplores time and motion within the narrative space of the comic strip, as well as sneezing as a disruptive social practice, that acts on the body much the way the comic strip interrupts the sober narrative of the newspaper. While employing humor as a strategy for critiquing societal norms, McCay drew upon assorted popular visual art forms, including vaudeville and early film, to create an anarchic response to consumer culture. With Sammy Sneeze and The Story of Hungry Henrietta, McCay was instrumental in creating an audience for comics, by both acclimating them to the visual language of comics, and dismantling these selfsame conventions before their eyes.Less
Chapter two focuses ona groundbreaking, self-reflexive episode of Little Sammy Sneeze, a comic which follows a boy whose potent sneezes leave mayhem in his wake. Sammy's sneezes even shatter the frame that contains him, dismantling the divide between viewer and subject. Here McCayexplores time and motion within the narrative space of the comic strip, as well as sneezing as a disruptive social practice, that acts on the body much the way the comic strip interrupts the sober narrative of the newspaper. While employing humor as a strategy for critiquing societal norms, McCay drew upon assorted popular visual art forms, including vaudeville and early film, to create an anarchic response to consumer culture. With Sammy Sneeze and The Story of Hungry Henrietta, McCay was instrumental in creating an audience for comics, by both acclimating them to the visual language of comics, and dismantling these selfsame conventions before their eyes.
Nathan Platte
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199371112
- eISBN:
- 9780199371136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199371112.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
This chapter begins with David Selznick’s apprenticeship in silent cinema under his father, Lewis J. Selznick, in New York. As with other directors and producers who learned film in the silent era, ...
More
This chapter begins with David Selznick’s apprenticeship in silent cinema under his father, Lewis J. Selznick, in New York. As with other directors and producers who learned film in the silent era, Selznick’s early experiences shaped his attitude to cinema, even long after the introduction of sound. This chapter argues that musical traces from Lewis J. Selznick’s films, such as sheet-music tie-ins from War Brides (directed by Herbert Brenon, 1916), and the father’s tense relationship with New York’s musically effusive exhibitor, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, are critical for understanding David Selznick’s use of music in later films as means for reconciling aesthetic and commercial aims. The chapter concludes with Selznick’s work at Paramount, the studio at which Selznick gleaned many important lessons concerning music in early sound films. A discussion of Selznick’s Four Feathers and The Dance of Life prepares the stage for the producer’s bolder musical operations at RKO.Less
This chapter begins with David Selznick’s apprenticeship in silent cinema under his father, Lewis J. Selznick, in New York. As with other directors and producers who learned film in the silent era, Selznick’s early experiences shaped his attitude to cinema, even long after the introduction of sound. This chapter argues that musical traces from Lewis J. Selznick’s films, such as sheet-music tie-ins from War Brides (directed by Herbert Brenon, 1916), and the father’s tense relationship with New York’s musically effusive exhibitor, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, are critical for understanding David Selznick’s use of music in later films as means for reconciling aesthetic and commercial aims. The chapter concludes with Selznick’s work at Paramount, the studio at which Selznick gleaned many important lessons concerning music in early sound films. A discussion of Selznick’s Four Feathers and The Dance of Life prepares the stage for the producer’s bolder musical operations at RKO.