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Introduction Film history meets translation history: The lure of the archive

Jean-François Cornu

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This introductory chapter highlights how film translation history is a new discipline, a coming together of film history and translation history. It provides a definition of film translation as ... More

This introductory chapter highlights how film translation history is a new discipline, a coming together of film history and translation history. It provides a definition of film translation as encompassing all the conventional modes of film translation of the silent and talking periods. Because of the polysemiotic nature of the film medium, film translation includes related interventions of all kinds, such as editing changes and image and sound manipulation. The chapter also emphasises how this volume is driven by a multidisciplinary and international approach to film translation history, and contributes to scholarship seeking to transnationalise film history. It details the aims and structure of the book, and shows how crucial archival and access issues are to understanding the evolution of film translation, and to raising awareness about the nature of the films we watch and listen to.Less

Paul and Early Film History

Ian Christie

in Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema

Paul was an active member of many organisations dedicated to promoting interest in science generally and especially electrical engineering, His major contribution to the 1931 Faraday Centenary ... More

Paul was an active member of many organisations dedicated to promoting interest in science generally and especially electrical engineering, His major contribution to the 1931 Faraday Centenary exhibition, although largely anonymous, offered a hands-on survey of the history of electrical instrumentation. During the 1930s, he was drawn into recording his role in early film, giving a 1936 speech which appeared in print in Britain and America. However, when the history of British cinema began to be written in the late 1940s, his achievements started to be questioned, except by the French historian Georges Sadoul. Later British historians have challenged Paul’s account of his collaboration with Acres, and in the absence of any records, have attributed much of his more ambitious production to the work of employees.Less

‘A splendid innovation, these English titles!’ The invention of subtitling in the USA and the UK

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This chapter offers the first account of the beginning of subtitling in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The release of foreign-language films with superimposed English titles began in ... More

This chapter offers the first account of the beginning of subtitling in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The release of foreign-language films with superimposed English titles began in both countries in the course of 1931, and became generalised in 1932. The chapter discusses early experiments in titling, including the use of interpolated titles after the fashion of silent films. It also raises a number of methodological problems, including the difficulty of interpretation of press data. This difficulty means that as yet we have only a provisional picture of early subtitling practices in the UK and USA, and for several of these early subtitled versions the nature and extent of the titling is not known. The chapter also discusses the question of survival of the material artefacts of these subtitled versions.Less

The Politics of Polarisation: Affluence, Anxiety and the Cold War

Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith

in Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader

This chapter discusses films in the 1950s — a decade of contradictions in society as well as cinema, a decade in which ideals such as a middle-class lifestyle, the model home, and marriage and ... More

This chapter discusses films in the 1950s — a decade of contradictions in society as well as cinema, a decade in which ideals such as a middle-class lifestyle, the model home, and marriage and parenthood were complicated and undermined by anxieties over gender roles and cross-generational tensions. The nuclear family ideal was of particular importance in the postwar period as a site of hope and regeneration. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Popular Films and Colonial Audiences: The Movies in Northern Rhodesia’ by Charles Ambler, which focuses on the ‘Copperbelt’ mining district of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia following independence in 1964), in order to assess the circumstances in which American cinema, and by extension Western culture as constructed by the Hollywood dream factory, was consumed by a specific African audience.Less

Early titling on films and Pathé’s innovative and multilingual strategies in 1903

Claire Dupré La Tour

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

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

Panorams, Motels, and Pirates: The Origins of Adult Video

Peter Alilunas

in Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video

Chapter one examines the early history of adult video from a variety of technological, cultural, and industrial perspectives beginning with the Panoram, a device invented in the 1940s and completely ... More

Chapter one examines the early history of adult video from a variety of technological, cultural, and industrial perspectives beginning with the Panoram, a device invented in the 1940s and completely unintended for pornography. Following is an analysis of the adult motel landscape of Southern California, an early site of adult video distribution. The chapter concludes with a history of the early pioneers of adult video, including George Atkinson, who created the first video rental store in the United States.Less

Nationalism, Trade and Market Domination

Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith

in Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader

This chapter discusses the international scope and status of early cinema, and the particular significance of European production companies. While Europe dominated world film markets in the first ... More

This chapter discusses the international scope and status of early cinema, and the particular significance of European production companies. While Europe dominated world film markets in the first decade of the twentieth century, the situation began to change as the business organisation of the American film industry was streamlined, and the Hollywood studio system developed. In the emerging history of Hollywood, the established powers of the Motion Picture Patents Company positioned themselves against a growing lobby of independent producers, distributors, and exhibitors in a fight for market control. It was from this struggle that the industrial and aesthetic dominance of the American studio system would emerge and come to assert itself in national and international terms. The chapter also includes the study, ‘The Perils of Pathé, or the Americanization of Early American Cinema’ by Richard Abel, which examines the means by which cinema became a contested site of Americanization.Less

Establishing Classical Norms

Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith

in Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader

This chapter shows that classical norms were not fixed rules or structures, but set particular boundaries within which innovation could take place. In essence, classical film style rejected formal ... More

This chapter shows that classical norms were not fixed rules or structures, but set particular boundaries within which innovation could take place. In essence, classical film style rejected formal techniques that were purposely disruptive or jarring to the audience. While it is sometimes implied that classical norms emerged simultaneously with the studio system, it is important to note that the aesthetic principles of classical Hollywood cinema preceded the studio system. The development of film style in this sense (classical norms) did not emerge in the very same historical instant as the mode of production that gave it institutional shape (the studio system). Instead, the relation between the two would develop a gradual symbiosis, such that classical norms would become synonymous with the studio system as it emerged more fully after the First World War. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Mass-produced Photoplays: Economic and Signifying Practices in the First Years of Hollywood’ by Janet Staiger, which examines how production practices in the early 1910s influenced the way that films were developed and made.Less

Framing Taiwan Cinema:: Perspectives on History in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times

James Wicks

in Transnational Representations: The State of Taiwan Film in the 1960s and 70s

The first chapter of this book, “Framing Taiwan Cinema: Perspectives on History in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times”, which is intended to be read alongside a screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 2005 film ... More

The first chapter of this book, “Framing Taiwan Cinema: Perspectives on History in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times”, which is intended to be read alongside a screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 2005 film Three Times, provides an accessible introduction to Taiwan cinema by synthesizing in one location key moments in Taiwan’s film history. While the locus of this chapter is Taiwan’s Mandarin state films, the chapter includes intersections with other national film traditions and describes how Mandarin film gradually replaced the vibrant Taiwanese-dialect film (taiyu pian) tradition in the 1970s. In order to do so, it traces the era’s prominent figures, movements, and dates. This includes a summary of Taiwan film in the early 1960s, the influence of Hong Kong film, especially in 1963, with director Li Hanxiang’s The Love Eterne (Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai), a brief account of Taiwan’s so-called “golden age” film in the early 1970s, patriotic war films of the mid-1970s, and adaptations of nativist literature by the state in late 1970s films. Overall, this chapter provides an overview of Taiwan cinema and places in position a scaffolding of historical details and information essential for the analyses presented in the following chapters.Less

Film Restoration: A New Way of Seeing Film History

Janna Jones

in The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film

This chapter is an investigation of what film restorationists do and how they think and talk about their work. Current restoration discourse and practices literally assemble and help to shape cinema ... More

This chapter is an investigation of what film restorationists do and how they think and talk about their work. Current restoration discourse and practices literally assemble and help to shape cinema history and reveal how the moving image archive influences the ways that a film history is understood. Focusing on several film restoration case studies and in-depth interviews with some of the country's foremost film restorationists, and the analysis of restoration commentary on the DVD version of Lost Horizon, my aim is not to critique the current methods of film restoration, but to interpret the way restorationists and the archival community both conceptualize film restoration and practice the piecing together of history. This knowledge helps us to better understand how restorationists regard the cinematic object as historical artifact and how the contemporary culture of the archive engages its relationship with the past. The work of restorationists and their particular kind of film-remaking show us the trench work of (re) constructing cinematic history. The restored film should be understood as new type of film born from the cinematic and archival sensibilities at the turn of the twenty-first century.Less

Allen Smithee, the Anti-auteur: Matters of Property and Matters of Propriety

Marco Deseriis

in Improper Names: Collective Pseudonyms from the Luddites to Anonymous

This chapter focuses on Alan Smithee, a pseudonym introduced by the Directors Guild of America to allow film directors to work outside of their reputation. The chapter shows how the accumulation of ... More

This chapter focuses on Alan Smithee, a pseudonym introduced by the Directors Guild of America to allow film directors to work outside of their reputation. The chapter shows how the accumulation of negative reputation in the name of Smithee ultimately undermined the DGA’s ability to preserve its original function within the regulated field of Hollywood labor relations.Less

Competing with Hollywood: National Film Industries Outside Hollywood

Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich, and Sharon Monteith

in Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader

This chapter discusses the competitors of the American film industry. The German film industry competed most successfully with America in that its domestic productions outweighed foreign imports in ... More

This chapter discusses the competitors of the American film industry. The German film industry competed most successfully with America in that its domestic productions outweighed foreign imports in the 1920s, and Britain put up a very good fight at the box office, with 1927 its annus mirabilis. However, protectionist measures would characterise a decade in which national cinemas sought to hold their own against Hollywood's incursions into other national cinemas. The American challenge to European and other cinemas was also underwritten by the federal support that the American film industry received from the US Government's Commerce Department, designed to support a developing industry. The chapter also includes the study, ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema’ by Thomas Elsaesser, a revisionist study that pays tribute to two classic film studies of the era — Siegfried Kracauer's sociological From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Lotte Eisner's aesthetic study The Haunted Screen (1969). Elsaesser critiques what had become their ‘consensus’ view of the cinema of the period.Less

Introduction: Film Authorship as Place Making

Dennis Lo

in The Authorship of Place: A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas

The introduction advances a theoretical framework for interpreting how New Chinese Cinema auteurs shoot on-location as a mode of “place making,” the experiencing and imaging of rural shooting ... More

The introduction advances a theoretical framework for interpreting how New Chinese Cinema auteurs shoot on-location as a mode of “place making,” the experiencing and imaging of rural shooting locations as places. Drawing from poststructural cultural geography, production culture studies, environmental psychology, and critical tourism studies, I demonstrate how production environments are more than blank canvases, but places where cultural meanings are being continually contested. As cultural elites, auteurs make coherent disorienting social changes by engaging in production as lived experiences of nation building, homecoming, and cultural salvage. The rural is thus a stage for auteurs to perform their aspirations for social activism, while location shooting constitutes an embodied and performative practice through which auteurs make meaningful sense of their ever-shifting and often precarious roles of authorship. Consequently, images and representations of the rural in the resulting films cannot simply be classified as signifying one cultural logic or another. Rather, they bear traces of the institutional politics, social tensions, and geopolitical ambivalences negotiated by auteurs during production, thus confounding distinctions between the ideologically complicit and subversive, a reductive binary too often mobilized by scholars when periodizing Chinese and Taiwanese film histories.Less

Dario Argento: Doing Violence on Film

L. Andrew Cooper

in Dario Argento

This book explores the extreme violence that pervades Dario Argento's films, and particularly the ways in which they push the limits of visual and auditory experience by offending, confusing, ... More

This book explores the extreme violence that pervades Dario Argento's films, and particularly the ways in which they push the limits of visual and auditory experience by offending, confusing, sickening, and baffling the viewers. It looks at Argento's approach to his work over more than four decades of filmmaking, and his commitment to innovation that is evident in two closely related genres whose disturbing violence reaches previously unrecorded levels of pain, suffering, and mental anguish: crime thriller and supernatural horror. From his directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), to Giallo (2009), Argento's films challenge a viewer's accepted ideas about film spectatorship, meaning, storytelling, and genre. This book also looks at the centrality of collaboration, particularly with family, in Argento's work by analyzing sixteen films that feature him as writer and director. Finally, it discusses how Argento's films function as rhetorical interventions against dominant views on film criticism, interpretation, narrative, and conventions through an examination of interpretive possibilities that connect the films to broader tendencies in film history.Less