CINEMATOGRAPHY

Most historians consider the 1890s to be the birth of the motion picture. Photography had existed for several decades at this point, and two French brothers named Auguste and Louis Lumiere were instrumental in developing new techniques and processes to improve cameras and film stock. In 1894, the Lumieres were invited to Paris to witness a demonstration of the peephole kinetoscope, a new invention by the American Thomas Edison. The kinetoscope was a revolutionary camera that produced the illusion of moving photographs. This illusion is based on two optical phenomena:

Persistence of vision: The brain’s tendency to “retain images cast upon the retina of the eye for a fraction of a second beyond their disappearance from the field of sight.”

Phi phenomenon: The illusion of movement between images when they succeed each other rapidly.

.Edison’s kinetoscope was groundbreaking, but it only allowed one person to view the moving image (via the “peephole”) at any given time. The device was also so huge that it could not be easily moved. The Lumieres envisioned film exhibition on a grander scale and set out to create their own motion picture camera. The result was thecinematographe, where we get the term cinema.

Filming 16 frames (pictures) per second, the cinematographe was lightweight, portable, and allowed the Lumieres to film scenes both indoors and outside. Because of its mobility, the cinematographe became extremely popular in Europe, Japan, Russia, and across the rest of the globe. The cinematographe’s success encouraged Thomas Edison and the Americans to design new cameras in order to compete.

The First World War (1914-1918) produced some of the earliest examples of propaganda films to boost morale at home and overseas. But it wasn’t until the post-war economic boom of the 1920s that the film industry really hit its stride.

The sun shines in Los Angeles, California for almost 80% of the days in a year. More sunshine means more shooting days, faster productions, and lower costs. Little wonder, then, that LA became the home of a young industry on a seemingly endless upward trajectory. From 1912 onward, the Hollywood neighborhood became home to several movie studios: huge plots of buildings and land with stockpiles of men and materials needed to mount massive productions.

By the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth largest industry in the United States. It was around this time that the area became known as Tinseltown because of the glitz and glamor closely associated with the Roaring Twenties period. Movies made studio heads and producers extremely rich. The director developed into the most prominent “behind the scenes” production role, while the idea of “movie stars” brought many actors and actresses great fame and fortune. Following the First World War, European filmmakers like Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean Renoir arrived in Hollywood to collaborate with homegrown talent.

The late 1920s to the late 1950s are generally considered Hollywood’s Golden Age, although some have pushed the boundaries of this period to as late as the mid-1960s.The Jazz Singer (1927) was the beginning of the era where Hollywood hit a streak of major growth that laid the foundation for the American (and in some aspects, the global) film industry as we know it today.

The advent of sound in the 1920s greatly increased the kinds of stories that could be told. The western was one of the most popular films, representing a nostalgic view of America as a free land of promise and opportunity (for law-abiding whites, at least). Slapstick comedy, musicals, cartoons, and biopics (biographical pictures) were all popular. The rise of genre films was both an indication that audiences wanted to experience different kinds of stories, and more practically a result of studios churning out more movies each year so that unique, original ideas were in high demand to maintain a steady pipeline of hits.

The Depression Era saw fierce rivalries between competing studios. Directors and producers would attach themselves to certain studios, and to collaborate with any others was considered as good as treason. The competitive streak, however, resulted in many fantastic films. 1939 was a notable year for bringing us several hits, such asStagecoach, Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Wizard of Oz.

The Second World War, despite hurting Hollywood, actually gave the film industry a tremendous boost. Filmmakers like Frank Capra cut propaganda films to support the American war effort. We’ll touch on propaganda and foreign films of the era in more detail in next day’s episode.