Post on 12-Jan-2015
description
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).