Chapter 1

John Belton, American Cinema, American Culture

Clip: [Brief] History of the Motion Picture

The Emergence of Cinema as an Institution

“THE CATHEDRAL OF THE MOTION PICTURE”

• From 1929 to 1949: 80 to 90 million Americans viewed movies weekly

• Movies resembled a religious institution, but primarily a social institution

Developing Systems: Society & Technology

• Film as an institution

• Q: What is an institution?

• A: An established, custom, practice, or relationship in society (American Heritage Dictionary) Examples: government, military, church, school

• Economic: Purpose = make money (e.g., Edison's Kinetoscope only one voyeur at a time, pun intended), but developed into a product marketed and sold the audiences. Star system and genre system are commodities

• Social: Promoted social interaction among Americans; Leisurely activity; Examples: church, clubs, bars

• Technological: marvel attracted crowds, dependence on products of the Industrial Revolution (celluloid, sound, etc.)

• Psychological: Appeals to emotions, makes us want to go to the movies; escapism, enjoyment, contemporary times vary greatly from the past when movie-going was akin to our TV habits today.

Edison & the Kinetoscope

• Capturing Time: an age of many new inventions, which impacted cultural shifts. First motion picture camera

• Introduced new concept of time (along with the photograph & phonograph)

• A commodity - reproduced and sold

• Objectified, infinitely re-experienced

• Viewed by one person at a time

• Designed to maximize profit

Edison & the Kinetoscope (cont’d)

Kinetoscope Parlor

MASS PRODUCTION, MASS CONSUMPTION

• Invention of projection (1895-1896)

• Changed viewer's relationship to the image was no longer private, but a public experience

The Nickelodeon: A Collective Experience

• Working class attraction

• 5¢ movies

• “For the first time in American history all races, genders, social and ethnic groups shared a collective experience”

• A step toward the creation of a homogeneous middle-class American culture

Cleaning Up: The Benefits of Respectability

• Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC)

• Result of mass consumption and need for stabilization

• Interested in profit and market expansion

• Goal: attract upper class viewers

• Objectives

• Eliminate ethnic films

• Increase price of admission

• Produce films based on literary, historical, or biblical sources (Poe, Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare)

SPECTACLE AND STORYTELLING: FROM PORTER TO GRIFFITH

• The Camera as Recorder

• The Camera as Narrator

• The Feature Film

The Camera as Recorder

• ‘bourgeoisification of the movies’

• Post-1908, exhibitionist in nature, theatrical

• Middle-class demand for more advanced/complex narratives

• Focus on perfection of narrative skills

• Edwin S. Porter's use of showing same action from different perspectives successively

• Two versions of The Life of an American Fireman (1903)

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0gJ7BnLc

The Camera as Narrator

• Active narration used to shape audience's perception

• Griffith's use of parallel editing or cross-cutting

• Creates suspense

• Psychological development of characters

The “Feature” Film

• More complex narratives

• Multiple-reel

• Financial success

• D.W. Griffith's historical epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915)

• 12 reels, 3 hours long

• Extreme racism overtly presented and exposes the power of the motion picture as a medium to communicate ideological arguments

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=32hMZP0K2wM

PRESENTING…THE MOVIE PALACE

“Garden of Dreams” & The Great Showmen

• Change from uncomfortable, modest theaters to spacious, luxurious movie palaces

• From theater attendants to concierge service

• Middle class experience the luxuries of the rich

AN EVOLVING INSTITUTION

• What began as a technological marvel at the turn of the century has changed in countless ways

• Stylistic and technological developments

• A shifting in American consciousness

• Continues to be an efficient system of storytelling

• “The cinematic institution of Hollywood past has disappeared…transformed into a new institution designed to serve…contemporary audiences” (19).

• Goal: “to recover a sense of the experience that previous generations had when they went to the movies” (20).