- Background of historical films. /20
The history of film began in the 1890s, when motion picture cameras were invented and film production companies started to be established. Because of the limits of technology, films of the 1890s were under a minute long and until 1927 motion pictures were produced without sound. The first decade of motion picture saw film moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films became several minutes long consisting of several shots. The first rotating camera for taking panning shots was built in 1897. The first film studios were built in 1897.
Special effects were introduced and film continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, began to be used. In the 1900s, continuity of action across successive shots was achieved and the first close-up shot was introduced (that some claim D. W. Griffith invented). Most films of this period were what came to be called “chase films”. The first use of animation in movies was in 1899. The first feature length multi-reel film was a 1906 Australian production. The first successful permanent theatre showing only films was “The Nickelodeon” in Pittsburgh in 1905. By 1910, actors began to receive screen credit for their roles, and the way to the creation of film stars was opened. Regular newsreels were exhibited from 1910 and soon became a popular way for finding out the news. Overall, from about 1910, American films had the largest share of the market in Australia and in all European countries except France.
During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching films on their home VCRs. In the early part of that decade, the film studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which proved unsuccessful. Eventually, the sale and rental of films on home video became a significant “second venue” for exhibition of films, and an additional source of revenue for the film industries.
The Lucas–Spielberg combine would dominate “Hollywood” cinema for much of the 1980s, and lead to much imitation. Two follow-ups to Star Wars, three to Jaws, and three Indiana Jones films helped to make sequels of successful films more of an expectation than ever before. Lucas also launched THX Ltd, a division of Lucas film in 1982,[56] while Spielberg enjoyed one of the decade’s greatest successes in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial the same year. 1982 also saw the release of Disney’s Torn which was one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively. American independent cinema struggled more during the decade, although Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), After Hours (1985), and The King of Comedy (1983) helped to establish him as one of the most critically acclaimed American film makers of the era. Also during 1983 Scarface was released, was very profitable and resulted in even greater fame for its leading actor Al Pacino. Probably the most successful film commercially was vended during 1989: Tim Burton’s version of Bob Kane’s creation, Batman, exceeded box-office records. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the demented Joker earned him a total of $60,000,000 after figuring in his percentage of the gross.
The first films to consist of more than one shot appeared toward the end of the 19th century, a notable example was the French film of the life of Jesus Christ. These weren’t represented as a continuous film, the separate scenes were interspersed with lantern slides, a lecture, and live choral numbers, to increase the running time of the spectacle to about 90 minutes. Another example of this is the reproductions of scenes from the Greco-Turkish war, made by Georges Méliès in 1897. Although each scene was sold separately, they were shown one after the other by the exhibitors. Even Méliès’ Cendrillon (Cinderella) of 1898 contained no action moving from one shot to the next one. To understand what was going on in the film the audience had to know their stories beforehand, or be told them by a presenter.
In the 1890s, films were seen mostly via temporary storefront spaces and traveling exhibitors or as acts in vaudeville programs. A film could be under a minute long and would usually present a single scene, authentic or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event or slapstick. There was little to no cinematic technique, the film was usually black and white and it was without sound. The novelty of realistically moving photographs was enough for a motion picture industry to blossom before the end of the century, in countries around the world. “The Cinema was to offer a cheaper, simpler way of providing entertainment to the masses. Filmmakers could record actors’ performances, which then could be shown to audiences around the world. Travelogues would bring the sights of far-flung places, with movement, directly to spectators’ hometowns. Movies would become the most popular visual art form of the late Victorian age.
The very first moving photographic images were filmed in 1888. Louis Le Prince, using a camera he had invented himself, recorded approximately two seconds of ‘actuality’ footage known as Roundhay Garden Scene in Leeds, England. Le Prince also projected his footage, from a paper filmstrip, using projectors he designed himself. Le Prince built his first projector in Paris in 1887, and produced two further models in Leeds later that year. His projectors were patented in 1888.
Projection speeds for silent films were not standardized. Each of Le Prince’s devices projected at a different rate: twelve, sixteen, and twenty frames-per-second. As early cameras and projectors were hand-cranked, frame-rate consistency was not always maintained, though sixteen frames-per-second is accepted as an industry average for silent films. Subsequently, twenty-four frames-per-second became the standard speed for sound films.
Cinema’s exponential technological advancement was demonstrated in 1900 by Raoul Gromoin-Sanson, who unveiled his Cinerama system. Cinerama featured an enormous panoramic screen, onto which were projected ten simultaneous images sides by side. The result was certainly spectacular, though the flammability of nitrate film reels, coupled with the logistics of synchronizing ten projectors, curtailed the system’s commercial potential. It would later influence Abel Gance’s Napoleon and Hollywood’s Cinerama process.
In the 1930s, the hardships of the Depression were temporarily replaced by the glamour of Technicolor. Gone with the Wind (produced by David O Selznick for his own studio) and The Wizard of Oz (from MGM), both directed by Victor Fleming in 1939, are the greatest films of this period. Gone with the Wind is a sumptuous, epic romance, resplendent in three-strip Technicolor, following the hand-coloring of the 1900s, the tinting of the 1910s, and the two-strip Technicolor of the 1920s. The Wizard of Oz is particularly memorable for the moment when its sepia-tinted prologue in Kansas is transformed into the Technicolor paradise of the Land of Oz the first feature-length Technicolor production was The Gulf Between (Wray Bartlett Physioc, 1917), though this is now a lost film.
The most important film of the decade was unquestionably Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles in 1941. With its deep-focus photography, stylized lighting, and overlapping dialogue, amongst other innovations, Kane is perhaps America’s most significant contribution to the development of the cinema. Furthermore, it was Welles’s cinematic debut, directed when he was a mere twenty-six years old. Previous to Kane, Welles had directed and starred in The War of the Worlds, often cited as the world’s greatest radio production. Although he was given total artistic control over Citizen Kane, his later films (including The Magnificent Amber sons from 1942 and The Lady from Shanghai from 1947) were often re-edited by studios without his supervision.
The 1950s were overwhelmed by science-fiction B-movies, some good, some bad, and some so bad they’re good: The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby, 1951; produced by Howard Hawks), The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Eugene Lourie, 1953), the Japanese Gojira (an exercise in cryptozoology by Ishiro Honda, 1954, spawning the Kaiju-Eiga genre of Japanese monster films), The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1956), and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956). The cycle was initiated by producer George Pal’s Destination Moon (Irving Pichel, 1950), though the exploitative ‘mock buster’ Rocket ship X-M (Kurt Neumann, 1950) was released before Pal’s film.
Government subsidy of the Film Development Corporation in Australia financed such films as Picnic At Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975), though the revival of Australia’s film industry is credited to a more unlikely source – crude yet popular ‘Ozploitation’ (Australian exploitation) films such as Stork (Tim Burstall, 1971).A new generation of Polish directors, led by Krysztof Zanussi (Constans, 1980), made films with a strongly social-reformist agenda (highlighting the moral bankruptcy of contemporary society), a style which they called Kino Moral ego Niepokoju (Cinema of Moral Anxiety). In Turkey, actor and director Yilmaz Guney led a Young Turkish Cinema movement with Umut (1970), inspired by Italian Neo-Realism.
A new generation of directors from film-schools, including Scorsese and Coppola, established a New Hollywood following the collapses of the Hays Code and the studio system. Indeed, Coppola established his own studio, American Zoetrope, with George Lucas in 1969 (though he sold it in 1984). The New Hollywood directors also introduced an unprecedented authenticity into American cinema, evident, for example, in the no-holds-barred language and violence of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. This unrestrained attitude, free from the previous Production Code restrictions, was also demonstrated by William Friedkin in his urban crime thriller The French Connection (1971) and his shocking supernatural horror film The Exorcist (1973).
A major new studio, DreamWorks SKG, was established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. After several years of construction delays, DreamWorks began active film production in 1997 and quickly became one of the most successful film studios in Hollywood. Its greatest commercial successes were the digital animations it produced to compete with Pixar, including Shrek (Andrew Adamson, 2001). Shrek was notable for its conscious attempts to appeal to both children and adults, and it also contained several thinly-disguised Disney parodies (following Jeffrey Katzenberg’s split with Disney and several Pixar/Disney collaborations). DreamWorks was acquired by Paramount in 2005.
Online video streaming led to a decline in video sales and rentals, and Hollywood turned once again to 3D as a gimmick to attract cinema audiences. (3D had been employed in the 1950s when Hollywood was challenged by TV; fifty years later, it was the internet that threatened to usurp viewers from both Hollywood and television.) The 3D revival was led by James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), which became the most expensive and commercially successful film ever made. As modern 3D required digital cameras and projectors, there was a dramatic shift in film production and distribution from analogue to digital.
At the turn of the 21st century, cinema was transforming into an increasingly digital medium, converging with the realms of video games and computer graphics. This process effectively began in the 1970s: when home computers were first available, computer motion graphics sequences were programmed as Demoscene clips. It then became possible to record a character’s progression through computer game levels, as a demo or replay: filmed demonstrations of fast game-completion were known as Speed runs, the most famous being Quake Done Quick (Matthias Belz, Yonatan Donner, and Nolan Pflug; 1997). The first narrative-based demo was Diary of a Camper (Matthew van Sickler, 1996), also featuring footage from the game Quake. The game/cinema convergence later intensified, resulting in Machinima films with sustained narratives featuring game characters interacting within 3D graphic environments. The term Machinima was coined by Hugh Hancock and Anthony Bailey, who released Quad God in 2000, featuring footage from the game Quake III.
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