Drake Stutesman
THE NICKELODEON ERA BEGINS: ESTABLISHING THE FRAMEWORK FOR HOLLYWOOD'S
MODE OF REPRESENTATION
Author(s): Charles Musser
Source: Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, No. 22/23 (AUTUMN 1983), pp. 4-11
Published by: Drake Stutesman; Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44109881
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ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CINEMA: 8*
THE NICKELODEON ERA BEGINS:
ESTABLISHING THE FRAMEWORK
FOR HOLLYWOOD'S MODE OF
REPRESENTATION
The year 1907 was pivotal for the institution of American cinema.
While crises and fundamental changes occurred at almost every
level of the industry, perhaps the most important transformations
involved the inter-related modes of production and representation.
In effect, this article attempts to establish how and why
cinema moved from Life of an American Fireman to The Lonely
Villa.
A pertinent historical model is based on dialectical materialism
and focuses on the interaction between cinema's modes of production
and representation. In cinema, the mode of production involves
three essential practices or groups: film production, exhibition
and reception (the production companies, the showmen and
the spectators). While this mode is responsible for the films, these
can only be understood within a changing framework involving
additional elements: the mode of exhibition , concerned with the
showman's method of presentation and his relation to the films
made by the production companies, and the mode of appreciation,
concerned with the audience's strategies for understanding/enjoying,
and with their relationship to, the exhibited films.
Although this mode of cinema production, modified by other
socio-economic and cultural factors, determines the framework
for possible representational strategies, it is, of course, also determined
by them.
A brief overview of the first ten years of American cinema is
perhaps useful. During the late 1890s, after a short novelty period,
exhibitors usually purchased one-shot films from producers and
arranged/edited these into sequences and programmes - often accompanying
them with narration, music and sound effects. During
the early 1900s, editorial control shifted increasingly to the production
companies, coinciding to some degree with the rising
popularity of story films.1 By the end of 1904, two further
developments had taken place. First, 'features', usually acted
films of one-half to one reel in length, had become the industry's
dominant product. This does not mean that more acted films were
made than actualities, but the production companies' profits were
based principally on the sales of longer fictional films.2 Secondly,
the reel of film became the basic industry commodity. Previously,
exhibitors like Biograph, American Vitagraph, and Percival
Waters' Kinetograph Company rented an exhibition service to
vaudeville theatres, which included a projector, a motion picture
operator and a reel of film. In the Fall of 1904, Waters, recognizing
that the exhibition process had become quite simple, trained
theatre electricians to operate a projector and rented a reel of film
* We have changed the title of this section to avoid the invidious
distinction between film theory and practice
Waiting at the Church: Vesta Victoria singing the title song, Porter/Edison Jan 1907
to these vaudeville houses for a lower price.3 This was one reason
why he was able to win the Keith Circuit from Biograph in the Fall
of 1904. Exhibitors now became renters or film exchanges, while
the theatres became the actual exhibitors. Vitagraph and other services
followed suit, and by the beginning of 1905, the necessary
preconditions for the nickelodeon era had been met.
The nickelodeon era required a certain number of exhibition
outlets devoted primarily to moving pictures (store-front theatres)
plus an essentially interchangeable commodity (the reel of film)
plus sufficient variety in its supply (a certain number of new fictional
'headliners'). The onset of this era, however, had little immediate
impact on the rate of film production and the mode of
representation - at least at the Edison, Biograph and Lubin companies.
At Edison, the number of fictional features actually declined
during 1906 and the first six months of 1907 relative to 1905.
The Edison films which Edwin Porter made in 1906-07 became
more elaborate and sophisticated within the representational
system constructed in previous years. Only Vitagraph and Pathé
quickly recognised the implications of the nickelodeon era to any
degree. Vitagraph moved into production and film sales in the fall
of 1905 and both companies rapidly increased the number of films
they produced. A gap soon developed between the modes of production
and representation on one hand, and the mode of exhibition
and the system of distribution on the other. Film-making remained
a cottage industry while exhibition had become a form of
mass production. This contradiction was masked at first by the
success and rapid expansion of the nickel theatres. If the Edison
Company sold 71 prints of How a French Nobleman Got a Wife
Through the New York Herald 'Personal' Columns in 1904, it sold
182 copies of Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend in 1906. Such growth at
first appeared to affirm the existing methods of making films, a
situation which continued until approximately mid- 1907.
Prior to mid- 1907, the early or 'pre-Griffith' mode of representation
dominated the film industry. The films of this period were
non-linear. The narrative construction of Life of an American
Fireman or The Great Train Robbery , with their overlapping actions
and returnings to earlier points in time, continued to be used
although rarely in such extreme forms ( See Biograph's Wanted: a
Dog or Edison's Lost in the Alps (1907)). The tensions between
scenes perceived as self-contained wholes on the one hand and
their potential as part of a more complex sequence on the other is a
partial explanation for these narrative structures. While early
cinema generally moved from the first extreme to the second, it
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The Devil
was no
tion h
The m
unchan
narrat
plemen
the sp
When
popula
dience and cultural object than in most contemporaneous
literature and theatre, where it was assumed that audiences had no
fore-knowledge of the narrative's plot, characters, etc. Porter's
Night Before Christmas (December 1905) 4 'closely follows the time
honored Christmas legend by Clement Clarke Moore, and is sure
to appeal to everyone young and old".4 Biograph and Edison both
made films based on the hit song "Everybody Works But Father"
popularized by Lew Dockstader in 1905. Porter's Waiting at the
Church (July 1906) assumed spectator familiarity with the lyrics of
the hit song "Waiting at the Church", written by Fred W. Leigh
and popularized by Vesta Victoria. Porter did not simply illustrate
the song: a discrepancy between the lyrics and the film narrative is
an essential element of the film's humour.
The "Teddy" Bears (February 1907), one of Porter's personal
favourites, manipulated audience familiarity in particularly
sophisticated ways and demonstrated Porter's mastery of a mode
of representation about to be fragmented. The juxtaposition of
two different referents was an important element of its humour
and success. The film begins as an adaptation of Goldielocks and
the Three Bears and functions for the first two-thirds as a fairy-tale
film for children, with the life-sized Teddy Bears as the subject.
Suddenly the film moves outside the studio, changing moods and
referents. The bears chase Goldielocks across a snowy landscape
until a hunter, Teddy Roosevelt, intervenes, kills the two fullgrown
pursuers and captures the baby bear. The sudden appearance
of "Teddy" was based on a well-known incident when
President Roosevelt, on a hunting expedition in Mississippi, refused
to shoot a bear cub. This was in November 1902. Shortly
thereafter, Morris Michtom, a Russian immigrant who ran a small
toy store and would eventually start the Ideal Toy Corporation,
began to make and sell "Teddy's Bear" - a stuffed version of the
spared cub. The novelty became a craze by 1906-07, when
thousands of toy bears were being sold each week and music like
"The Teddy Bear March" (copyrighted 1907) was popular.5
Unless audiences appreciated this shift in referents, the killing of
the two endearing bears would seem bizarre and at odds with the
earlier part of the film. Simi somewhat wilfully missed the point in
his Variety review when he wrote:
The closing pictures showing the pursuit of the child by the
bear family is spoiled through a hunter appearing on the
scene and shooting two. Children will rebel against this position.
Considerable comedy is had through a chase in the
snow, but the live bears seemed so domesticated that the
deliberate murder in an obviously "faked" series left a
wrong taste of the picture as a whole.6
It is the shift in referents which reveals to the audience that The
' f Teddy " Bears is not simply a children's film but was aimed at
adults under the guise of a children's story. By judging the film
from the viewpoint of a child who could not be expected to grasp a
range of contemporary adult references, Simi postulated a relationship
between viewer and cultural object that would be applicable
to later cinema. In fact, Simi 's review indicates that
criteria for assessing films were changing and that films relying on
a prescient audience were received with less sympathy.
The extent to which the antecedents of American films can be
found in newspapers from this period suggests that most films
worked within a highly specific, well-known cultural framework.
Biograph 's Love Microbes (September 1907), in which Professor
Cupido isolates the love microbe and injects it into unsuspecting
victims, was inspired by Ella Wheeler Wilcox's headline pronouncement
that "The Love Microbe Did It". This precursor to
Dear Abby asserted that "I am thoroughly convinced that love is
composed of microbes, good and bad, 'benign' and 'pernicious'
". Her amused colleagues followed her editorial with cartoons
that literalized and burlesqued it.7 The Biograph Company
soon picked up the idea and knowledge of the antecedent enhanced,
but was not essential to, an understanding of the film.
A second group of strategies for facilitating audience
understanding involved the production company. During the
1890s, a few simple gag films and the magical films of producers
like Georges Méliès were among the few kinds of 'self-sufficient'
films. After 1903, two common structuring principles using narrative
redundancy proved efficacious in creating readily accessible
subjects: the accumulation of discrete scenes built around a unifying
theme, character or gag, and its corollary - the chase. Redun-
This
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dancy
Series
tinued
Lives o
of an
like m
T.E.Powers which ran in the New York American. The film and
the comic strip show two rivals fighting over the desirable woman.
In each scene, the rival escorting the girl is outwitted by his opponent,
who then takes possession of the beloved object. The situation
is then repeated with the characters reversed. When Porter
had enough scenes and wanted to achieve closure, he had the
woman leave both rivals for a third. This structuring principle of
repetition with slight variation was deeply indebted to the
repetitive structures of daily and weekly strips and was used in
most films where a humourous effect was desired. Biograph' s
Mr. Butt-In (released February 1906), based on a cartoon series in
the New York World , uses a similar structure. After the requisite
number of incidents in which Mr. Butt-In interferes with other
people's business, he is taken to an insane asylum, ending the succession
of disruptions and the film. Other surviving films utilising
this structure include Biograph' s If You Had a Wife Like This
(February 1907), Hepworth's That Fatal Sneeze (June 1907), Urban's
Diablo Nightmare (October 1907), Eclipse's Short-Sighted
Cyclist and Gaumont's Une Femme vraiment bien (1908).
While the chase also utilized a repetitive structure, it achieved
new levels of clarity through a simple opposition between pursuers
and pursued which could be expressed compositionally, by
foregrounding first one group then the next, and through movement,
as the pursued and pursuers came toward and past the
camera. Biograph's Personal (1904), The Escaped Lunatic (1903)
and The Lost Child (1904) are pure chase films. By 1906-07 chase
sequences were often integrated into longer narratives: Biograph's
The Elopement (released December 1907) and Edison's Kathleen
Mavourneen (May 1906) are two examples. Porter, like many of
his contemporaries, combined the chase with other forms of narrative
redundancy in comedies like The Terrible Kids (April 1906)
and Getting Evidence (September 1906). The Terrible Kids begins
with a series of scenes in which two unsocialised boys and their dog
harass various adults, until society (the local police and the victims
of the pranksters) responds by chasing and eventally catching the
culprits., In Getting Evidence , a detective is beaten each time he
tries to photograph a young couple kissing. When he succeeds, the
private eye is "pursued by a crowd, caught and ducked thoroughly
in the surf".8 This method of narrative construction was simple,
effective and allowed for the production of one-reel features
without complex stories.
Severe limitations were placed on other kinds of self-sufficient
narratives in the pre-1907 period. If a story was unfamiliar and
complicated, how was the spectator to know if the succeeding shot
was backwards or forwards in time? The temporal/spatial and
narrative relationships between different characters and lines of
action were often vague, or worse - confusing. Visual cues like
repeated action were helpful, but often not possible. The producer
occasionally used intertitles but this practice was not universally
accepted. Generally the film-maker had to tell a relatively simple
story or count on the exhibitor's intervention to clarify the nar-
rative.
A third group of representational strategies was used by the exhibitor
to clarify screen narratives. One way to facilitate audience
comprehension, as Views and Film Index pointed out with regard
to Kathleen Mavourneen , was through sound effects:
Recently a film was seen in which a young couple were coming
across a field. They stopped and stood with bowed heads
for a few seconds, then proceeded on their way, much to the
mystification of the audience. But when the same picture
was shown at another theatre, the mystery was solved; for a
second before they stopped a church bell tolled; as they
seemed to hear it they stood with lowered heads. The realism
was pretty and very touching - it made a hit and occasioned
comment among the audience.9
Sound effects alone could not solve the problem of narrative clarity
in most instances. Kathleen Mavourneen and other ambitious
Edison projects challenge Nicholas Vardac's assertion in Stage and
Screen that stage melodrama could be readily adapted to silent
film because dialogue was a non-essential part of the play. The
standard version of the script for the play Kathleen Mavourneen is
wordy, relying on dialogue for essential information and the story
line: the absence of words was strongly felt by producers, exhibitors
and viewers.
The lecture accompanying a film continued to be an option used
by many travelling exhibitors. At least one such exhibitor considered
the lecture to be essential for Porter's Daniel Boone
(December 1906), a 1000ft dramatic film starring Florence
Lawrence. 10 This form of assistance, however, was not offered in
all theatres. Perhaps Porter assumed audience familiarity with
these plots since Kathleen Mavourneen and Daniel Boone were
both based on well-known stage plays. Whether Porter misjudged
this, wanted the film to be shown with a commentary or failed to
achieve the level of self-sufficient clarity he originally intended is
difficult to determine. This problem (faced by many film-makers)
was underscored by a writer for Views and Film Index in
September 1906:
MOVING PICTURES - FOR AUDIENCES, NOT FOR
MAKERS
Regardless of the fact that there are a number of good moving
pictures brought out, it is true that there are some which,
although photographically good, are poor because the
manufacturer, being familiar with the picture and the plot,
does not take into consideration that the film was not made
for him, but for the audience. A subject recently seen was
very good photographically, and the plot also seemed to be
good, but could not be understood by the audience.
If there were a number of headings on the film it would
have made the story more tangible. The effect of the picture
was that some people in the audience tired of following a
picture which they did not understand, and left their seats.
Although the picture which followed was fairly good, the
people did not wait to see it.
Manufacturers should produce films which can be easily
understood by the public. It is not sufficient that the makers
understand the plot - the pictures are made for the
public.11
The need to respond to such criticism, however, was not
strongly felt by production companies, which were then experiencing
unprecedented prosperity. This soon changed.
By mid- 1907 the nickelodeon frontier was disappearing, as
almost every town and city had its local movie theatre. In many
areas the number of movie houses had reached saturation point as
competition for patrons intensified. Heady optimism and seemingly
unlimited growth were giving way to new insecurities. For the
producers, the contradictions between the established modes of
representation and the new system of mass entertainment were
becoming inescapable. New production companies were created
each month to profit from the demand for story films. Production
had to expand at companies like Edison, Biograph and Lubin if
they were to maintain their standing in the industry. Here production
efficiency and maximum profits were directly and indirectly
related to the problem of narrative efficiency and cinematic
strategies.
The repertoire of cinematic strategies in use at the beginning of
the nickelodeon era proved inadequate. Narrative redundancy did
not provide enough diversity to generate sufficient stories without
boring audiences. While companies continued to use simple stories
and variations on a single gag as the basis for film narratives during
1908-09, producers had to turn to more complex stories.
The explosion in film production and the rapidly expanding
audience, however, meant that reliance on prescient spectators
was becoming outmoded. When Kalem produced The Merry
Widow in late 1907, it presented a condensed, silent version of the
Broadway hit. Variety observed that
The film is photographically excellent, but the Merry
Widow would seem to have its greatest value in the advertising
opportunities it affords, in cities where the vogue of the
Savage productions, in New York and Chicago, is a matter
of general knowledge; but it is a question whether it would
be of any value whatever to an exhibitor in the average city
or town.12
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Getting
Subse
tures
were
ror c
(Jun
plot
levell
jectio
direc
cums
was o
to Po
on which the film was based and was able to follow the film's narrative,
imagining the spoken lines and judging the acting and sets
in relation to the play which for five cents he was able to reexperience.
While Honig was very pleased with the film, he was accompanied
by an "intelligent friend" who had never seen the play
and who started asking Honig questions about the storyline, forcing
him into the role of personal narrator. Without the necessary
frame of reference the friend's enjoyment of the film was
spoiled.14
Reliance on audience foreknowledge was doomed in two
respects. First, there was a limited number of specific stories, hit
songs, successful plays and crazes familiar to most Americans and
these had in most instances already been used. Secondly, these
items usually had a more limited audience than the films which
were inspired by them. This created problems for renters and exhibitors
who served ā mass audience. This gap between what the
film-maker expected the audience to know and what the audience
actually knew was either filled by the exhibitor or led to confusion.
There were two possible solutions. First, narrative clarity could be
facilitated by the exhibitor introducing live sound through a lecture
or behind the screen dialogue. Secondly, the producer could
employ cinematic strategies which made the narrative more accessible
without involving the exhibitor.
The lecture, always an important strategy in the exhibitor's
repertoire, was the focus of renewed interest by early 1908. This
was encouraged by the breakdown of the strategies relying on a
prescient audience and facilitated by the theatre's new role as exhibitor.
The manager or someone else connected with the theatre
could interpret the film without necessarily adding to the
overhead. In fact the competition between small theatres encouraged
up-to-date showmen to clarify inaccessible films. It was a
way to personalize their theatres and turn grateful patrons into
steady customers. W. Stephen Bush, former travelling exhibitor
and frequent contributor of articles and reviews to Moving Picture
World , considered the lecture "a creative aid to the moving picture
entertainment". Often lecturing at church functions, his approach
to cinema was that of the traditionalist who wanted to instruct as
well as entertain. Bush condemned the uneducated exhibitor who
showed a Shakespeare play on film without a lecture and
"bewildered his patrons who might have been thrilled and
delighted with a proper presentation of the work". To combat
these and similar failings, Bush prepared and offered to sell
"special lectures with suggestions as to music and effects for every
feature turned out by the Edison Licensees".15
Beginning with Evangeline (released in February 1908), the
Kalem Company, an Edison licensee, began to issue lectures to be
read with its films. Referring to Evangeline , Show World observed
that "Shown as a straight picture this film is certain to be of interest;
but it presents excellent opportunities for a lecturer of ability
to further increase its interest by the recitation of those portions
of the poem (which naturally accompany the scene depicted)".16
Porter's Colonial Virginia (made in May 1907 but not released by
Edison until November 1908) was gently praised by the Dramatic
Mirror as "an interesting and instructive representation of early
Colonial life in Virginia". A more critical review in Moving Picture
World felt the film needed "to be presented with a lecture for
the spectator to fully understand and appreciate the scenes that are
presented".17
Stephen Bush argued that a skilled lecturer would more than
offset the cost of his salary by increasing patronage and turnover.
He asked exhibitors, "Why do many people remain in the moving
picture theatre and look at the same pictures two or even three
times? Simply because they do not understand it the first time; and
this is by no means a reflection of their intelligence. Once it is made
plain to them, their curiosity is gratified and they are pleased to
go".18 In another article on "The Value of the Lecture", Van C.
Lee claimed surprise that "the managers are just awakening to the
fact that a lecture adds much to the realism of a moving picture".
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Ingoma
filmi
cepti
speci
Talki
medi
poten
were
ticula
of lif
best
reaso
much
effec
chang
perio
tors
curre
tions
to rev
of th
(dive
three
The m
main
and t
tion.
main
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clarif
Title
made
Whil
integ
aband
(Octo
action
Pathé
panie
wo
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ur
Th
tent basis with Fireside Reminiscences (January 1908). The
Dramatic Mirror, however, demanded even more elaborate titles if
they were deemed necessary. The Edison film Romance of a War
Nurse (July 1908) was strongly criticised because it "is not as clearly
told in the pictures as we would like to see . . . love wins in the end
and all are reconciled though how they do it and what was at the
bottom of the story we must confess our inability to discover". It
was suggested that "The Edison Company would do well in producing
complicated dramatic stories of this kind if it would insert
descriptive paragraphs at the proper points in the films so the spectators
might gain a knowledge of what the actors are about".35
The Mirror actually represented the most advanced trends in the
industry. More traditional critics like Stephen Bush often praised a
film like Romance of a War Nurse. What the Mirror found confusing,
others might praise for the opportunities they offered exhibitors
to intervene. Thus the Mirror faulted Porter's The Devil
for inadequate titling: "In producing this film an attempt is made
to make it intelligible by inserting descriptive paragraphs, but these
are not numerous enough to be of much assistance".36 Edison's
Ingomar and Vitagraph's Richard III (both September 1908) were
criticised along similar lines.37 Although Griffith's effective use of
titles was rarely singled out for specific praise, it was an important
factor which contributed to the clarity of his films. His Barbarian
Ingomar (September 1908) was praised because it "reads to the
spectator like a printed book".38
The motion picture industry was moving toward a relationship
between film production and exhibition in which the showman was
acting as a businessman/programmer who simply presented the
already complete works of the production companies. To the extent
that Porter's films resisted this trend, he had come to represent
the industry's old guard. His continued reliance on the exhibitor
and a mode of representation associated with the prenickelodeon
era is perhaps most apparent in his refusal to abandon
a conception of temporality which was being jettisoned by his con-
temporaries.
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Like B
if it i
least on
subjec
substa
aid. T
strate
among
Talking pictures', the technique of endowing screen
characters with live dialogue went back, at least, to stereoption
"picture plays" like Miss Jerry , for which Alexander Black changed
his voice as he assumed different parts. As far back as 1897,
Lyman Howe's success was "largely due to his well-trained
assistants who presented dialogue behind the screen".20 Porter,
who had become familiar with this procedure at the Eden Musée
while projecting the Opera of Martha (1899), photographed a
minstrel performance for Havez and Youngson's show, Spook
Minstrels. The resulting film was never copyrighted but recently
turned up at the Museum of Modern Art as part of its collection.
Havez and Youngson's act opened in Pittsburg on June 9, 1905 at
the Grand Opera House and reach New York City's Circle Theatre
on February 13, 1906 where it was reviewed:
A distinct novelty on the bill was the first appearence here of
Havez and Youngson's Spooks Minstrels, in which moving
pictures are used in a novel way. The pictures show a
minstrel company going through a performance, and as the
various numbers are presented the songs, jokes and dances
are given by men who stand behind the screen and follow the
motions of the men in the picture very accurately. The act is
original and novel and was highly appreciated.21
The same principle was used in January 1907 when Porter filmed
another version of Waiting at the Church for the Novelty Song
Company. Vesta Victoria was photographed singing "Waiting at
the Church" in a wedding gown that was part of her vaudeville act.
Afterwards she sang "Poor John". The song was used in the
novelty company's theatres, where a singer would stand behind the
screen and sing synchronously with the picture, giving audiences
the impression of witnessing an amazingly life-like performance by
Vesta Victoria.22
Talking pictures, however, did not become a 'craze' in new
York until the Spring of 1908. Advocates felt that "the dialogue
helps the less intelligent to fully understand the plot, for no matter
how skillfully worked out, there are always passages which require
something more than mere pantomime to fully explain the situation".23
By July 1908, at least three businesses were supplying
behind the screen actors and films to theatres. Len Spenser, a
'pioneer' in supplying slides, singers and operators to moving picture
managers on a systematic basis could now also furnish trained
competent screen actors to do the talking behind the screen.24
The Humanovo Producing Company, run by Will H. Stevens and
owned by Adolph Zukor, had as many as 22 companies on the
road.25 One of the groups Stevens hired included J. Frank Mackey
and Theressa Rollins. Before they moved into talking pictures, the
two had often travelled with road shows doing theatrical comedies
like Raffles the Burglar. Mackey had also done vaudeville routines
as part of Mackey and Clark and also Quigg, Mackey and Nickerson
- in both cases as comedy musical artists. Starting off with
Zukor's Humanovo Company, Mackey broke off and formed his
own "original" Humanuva Company with a stock of old films, including
either Porter's Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Lubin imitation.
A programme in one theatre26 included:
1. Bennett's Orchestra
2. Silent Pictures
3. Illustrated Songs
4. Silent Pictures
5. Talking Pictures
Intermission - 5 minutes
6. Silent Pictures
7. Illustrated Songs
8. Talking Pictures
9. Bennett's Orchestra
The third major company, the Actologue Company, was owned
by the National Film Company of Detroit and the Lake Shore Film
and Supply Company of Cleveland. Edison films, particularly
College Chums (November 1907) and Gentlemanly Burglar (May
1908), were among the most commonly used.27 Porter's film of
Molnar's The Devil was particularly suited for this exhibition
strategy which avoided the need for prescient audiences.28
Talking pictures had several limitations. There was a lack of
standardization: quality and effectiveness varied from theatre to
theatre. The Dramatic Mirror felt that "The possibilities of this
sort of thing with trained actors and painstaking rehearsals are admitted,
but the manner in which the idea was carried out in the
houses visited by The Mirror representative were grotesque and a
drawback to the pictures themselves. The odd effect of the voice of
a barker trying to represent several voices, some of them women
and children, and in one case a dog, may be amusing as a freak exhibition,
but can hardly add to the drawing power of the house".29
If trained actors and lecturers were expensive and their aid was not
always necessary or even desirable, the customary daily change of
programmes prevented the local exhibitor from becoming sufficiently
familiar with his material. Nor were many people up to performing
12 to 16 times a day. High-class talking picture companies
and many of the more experienced lecturers worked outside the
renting system set up by the exchanges. They provided a speciality
service that toured different towns with films, as the travelling exhibitor
had done. While additional expenses may have been
recouped by higher admission prices, as middle-class audiences
were drawn to a more customized and "refined" entertainment,
these talking pictures were never a realistic option for most
storefront nickel theatres.
Another kind of talking pictures relied exclusively on the
mechanical reproduction of image and sound. This reached new
levels of technical sophistication and commercial success in the
nickelodeon era, beginning with Gaumont's Chronophone, first
advertised in the New York Clipper on September Ì8, 1907. 30 The
National Cameraphone Company, based in Bridgeport, Connecticut
with a studio at 43rd Street and 11th Avenue in New York,
was a domestic competitor which became active in the Spring of
1908. By July they were showing films in 45 first-class houses and
claimed to have contracts for 140 more. Subject matter generally
consisted of vaudeville acts and bits of dramatic plays. Creative
control was fully centralised in the production companies.31
Vaudeville houses often showed pre-recorded talking pictures
as a commercial response to competition from small nickelodeons.
In 1908, they gave a higher tone to larger moving picture theatres
like the Unique, which had once shown vaudeville and theatrical
dramas. Mechanised talking pictures were an attempt to differentiate
the large first-class houses from the local store-front theatres
just as in the early 1950s, Cinemascope was intended to widen the
gap between commercial movie theatres and television.
The diffusion of the Cameraphone and other recorded sound
systems was inhibited by cost and technical limitations. The quality
of reproduction often undercut the illusion of reality which
synchronous sound was supposed to push to new heights (painfully
apparent when a film was projected out of sync, a relatively
frequent occurrence). Technical considerations also restricted
producers to relatively simple, short situations at the very moment
when mainstream "silent" cinema was beginning to make frequent
use of more complex narratives. Finally, the cost of
materials and resulting limitations on the market meant that
mechanised talking pictures were never integrated into the system
of production, distribution and exhibition established by the
Edison and Biograph licensees.32
Both types of talking pictures were part of an emphasis on
heightened naturalism which was particularly intense during
1906-08. Hale's Tours, which suddenly became successful early in
1906, placed the viewer in a mock railway car with simulated train
rocking and appropriate sound effects. (Adolph Zukor's
capitalisation on talking pictures was perhaps not so coincidental
given his initial involvement in cinema through Hale's Tours.)
Pathé's hand colouring process using stencils and the slightly later
Smith/Urban Kinemacolor, with its first public showing in May
1908, achieved startlingly naturalistic effects - in contrast to
earlier uses of hand-tinting which heightened the fantastic
elements of films like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Voyage à
travers l'impossible ,33 These attempts to expand the range of
perception to include sound, colour and bodily sensation further
heightened the illusion of film as a transparent medium. The
popular perception of film was shifting from an emphasis on the
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An e
1908
Bows
in th
ing o
reflec
units
mon,
most
linea
elimi
Vitag
Doing
space
linear
by strategies like a match cut on action. In these films the
inevitable forward movement of time, often in conjunction with
intertitles, meant that viewers no longer had to wonder if action
shown in a given scene occurred before or after a previously shown
action. This is the foundation on which the mode of representation
associated with Hollywood would be constructed.
A second phase employed new representational strategies based
on this new form of temporality. Pathé's The Runaway Horse
(Chevale embrolle ), made in late 1907, explicitly acknowledged a
linear temporality through its use of parallel editing. At this stage,
however, the procedure served as the basis for a series of tricks:
shot 1 exterior-man with horse cart arrives outside city apartment
bldg.
shot 2 man goes up the stairs
shot 3 a very scrawny horse begins to eat from a bag of oats
shot 4 man goes up the stairs
shot 5 man goes into family dining room and makes a
delivery
shot 6 horse eating - less oats in bag
shot 7 delivery man talks to man and woman (same as shot 5)
and leaves
shot 8 delivery man goes down the stairs
shot 9 delivery man stops to talk to concierge
shot 10 horse eating - much less grain in bag
shot 1 1 man says good-bye to concierge
shot 12 delivery man comes outside - horse attached to cart
is stong, healthy and well-fed - the delivery man and
cart quickly leaves as owner comes out and chases
them away.
By cutting back and forth between two lines of action, the French
director was able to manipulate the size of the bag of oats and
substitute a dashing steed for a scrawny nag without having to
resort to stop action. There is a rigorous advancement in time and
a rapid alternation between activities in two spaces, which provided
the basis for effective comedy. Nothing so extensive happens in
other available films made in late 1907 or early 1908 but
Biograph' s Old Issacs, the Pawnbroker (written by Griffith,
directed by McCutcheon in March 1908) cuts away from activities
in the pawnshop, where a girl is trying to sell a few miserable
belongings, to her sick mother at home - and then back again to
the pawnshop. McCutcheon (and Griffith) conveyed a strong
sense of linear temporality as simultaneous actions are shown in a
parallel rather than successive manner. Old Issacs stops short,
however, of the rigorous A-B-A-B structures which is the
paradigm for parallel editing.
The limited selection of surviving films from late 1907 and early
1908 nonetheless suggests that The Runaway Horse and Old
Issacs anticipate the period when strategies of parallel editing or
matching action could be executed readily by film-makers and
accepted by spectators. This moment seems to have come in the
summer of 1908 around the time Griffith was making The Fatal
Hour (July 1908). The Fatal Hour involves a last-minute rescue
where the forward march of time becomes the subject of the film,
as a pistol is mounted on a clock that will shoot the heroine when
the minute hand reaches twelve. The Mirror described The Fatal
Hour as "a wholly impossible story, with a series of inconsistent
situations, and yet the wild drive to the rescue while the clock slowly
approaches the hour of twelve, brings a thrill that redeems the
picture".39 The emotional intensity here is much greater than Lost
in the Alps which has a similar rescue but lacked a narrative structure
based on cross-cutting and the pressure of time moving inevitably
forward.
In films like Life of an American Fireman and Lost in the Alps,
time was primarily manipulated pro-filmically, through the contraction
of action occuring off-screen. In The Fatal Hour time was
accelerated by filmic manipulation through cross-cutting. Griffith
was able to move the clock forward whenever he cut to the rescue
party (just as Zecca greatly reduced the sack of oats whenever he
cut to the driver in the apartment house). While both strategies for
condensation (filmic and pro-filmic) appear frequently in Griffith's
films of 1908 - as one might expect of this transitional
period - Griffith increasingly elaborated on the former and
gradually eliminated the latter.
Griffith's films from the Summer and Fall of 1908, particularly
Betrayed by a Handprint (August 1908) and The Guerilla (October
1908) give an increasingly strong impression of matching action
between contiguous spaces.40 By The Lonely Villa (April-May
1909), Griffith was matching action in most situatipns with comparative
ease. His use of such procedures specified a rigorous
linear temporality. In such films, the shot ceased to act as a discrete
unit on any level. The shot is completely subservient to the one reel
feature, to the narrative and linear flow of events. Action moves
across shots, not within them.
The use of linear temporality, parallel editing and matching action
both demanded and created a more efficient narrative structure.
The dances, rodeo tricks and peripheral incidents common to
so many films of the pre- 1907 period were disappearing or being
pushed into the background. In the terminology of Sergei Eisenstein,
film-makers were editing on the dominant (orthodox montage),
making editorial choices that emphasised the drama of the
narrative. From late 1907 onward, directors at Pathé, Vitagraph,
Biograph and elsewhere were developing strategies which would
provide the basic framework for classic narrative cinema. Porter,
however, barely participated in this shift toward a seamless, selfsufficient,
linear narrative structure.
Parallel editing and match cuts were not incompatible with the
lecture or behind the screen dialogue. As these editorial strategies
were elaborated by producers, however, the exhibitor's intervention
was less essential. Given the economic and cultural system in
which American and European cinema were operating, the decline
of these exhibitor initiated strategies was gradual but inevitable.
As a result, the reel of film came much closer to being a pure commodity
- a goal which would be achieved only when all exhibition
procedures (music, projection speed) were completely standardised
and dictated by the production companies. This final event, of
course, only happened at the beginning of the sound era.
A few observations can be made from this historical
framework. First, Hollywood cinema has its basis in the nickelodeon
era, in cinema's rapid emergence after 1905 as a form of mass
entertainment. I must disagree with my colleague Tom Gunning in
certain important details.41 He tends to see the transformation
from pre- 1907 to post- 1907 representational strategies as principally
influenced by the desire for respectability and the wooing
of potential middle class patrons. Gunning, like Noel Burch,42 sees
a shift toward a bourgeois cinema as fundamental to this period.
Without wanting to dismiss the influence exerted by reformers insisting
on respectability and producers hoping to attract a better
class of spectators, I feel their influence was not nearly as important
as Gunning suggests. The desire and need for respectability
can not account for the increasing popularity of complex narrative,
although such pressures did affect the types and treatment
of subject matter, encouraging the adaptation of plays, poetry and
high culture. Nor can these pressures account for the cinematic
strategies exploited most effectively by Griffith. The lecture, for
instance, had the support of critics and reformers: it gave the exhibitor
opportunities to underline a clear moral lesson. In fact,
film-makers in 1908 were exploring many different ways of making
cinema. While the approach associated with Griffith won out for
many reasons, standardisation, narrative efficiency and the maximisation
of profits were among the most crucial determinants.
In my analysis, the transformation in the mode of representation
was dialectically related to the changing mode of production
inaugurated by the rise of the nickelodeon. There was a shift from
an industrial (petit bourgeois) mode to one based on mass production.
Before and after 1907, the values expressed in cinema are
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The Terr
prima
the ol
class i
tive, t
those
their
Charles Musser
Footnotes
1 Charles Musser, The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter', Cinema Journal
, Fall 1979, p. 1-38; Charles Musser, 'The Edwin Musee in 1898:
The Exhibitor as Creator', Film and History , December 1981, pp.
73-83 + . These developments are also explored in Charles Musser's
film Before the Nickelodeon.
2 In 1904 the Edison Company sold two prints of Inter-Collegiate
Regatta (750ft), 34 prints of Elephants Shooting the Chutes No. 2
(75ft), 29 prints of Fire and Flames , Luna Park (165ft), one print of
Parade, N.Y. Fire Department (290ft), 6 Prints of Opening
Ceremonies, New York Subway (300ft) but 71 prints of How a
French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald "Personal"
Columns (675ft). Using Robert Allen's method of analysis,
actuality subjects dominated Edison's production (Robert C. Allen,
'Film History: the Narrow Discourse', Film Studies Annual, Part 2,
1977, pp. 9-17). In fact the company sold 47,925 feet of French
Nobleman and only 10,925 feet of the other five films.
3 Albert E. Smith, Testimony, 14 November 1913, Equity No. 5-167,
U.S. Circuit Court, Southern District of New York, Printed Record,
p. 1702.
4 Edison Films (Edison Manfuacturing Company: Orange, N.J., July
1906), p. 70.
5 Peter Bull, The Teddy Bear Book (New York: Random House, 1970).
6 Variety , 9 March 1907, p. 8.
7 New York Evening Journal , 3, 4, and 13 May 1907.
8 Views and Film Index , 10 November 1906, p. 3.
9 Film Index , 13 October 1906, p. 3.
10 Van C. Lee, 'The Value of a Lecture', Moving Picture World , 8
February 1908, p. 9.
11 Film Index , 1 September 1906, p. 10.
13 New York Dramatic Mirror , 4 and 1 1 July 1908.
14 Film Index , 3 October 1908, p. 4.
1 5 Stephen Bush, 'Lecture on Moving Pictures' , Moving Picture World ,
22 August 1908, p. 136-137; and Stephen Bush, Advertisement,
Dramatic Mirror, 9 January 1909.
16 Show World, 8 February 1908, p. 12.
17 Dramatic Mirror, 28 November 1908; Moving Picture World,
December 1908, p. 398.
18 Bush, Moving Picture World, 27 August 1908, p. 137.
19 Van C. Lee, Moving Picture World, 8 February 1908, p. 93.
20 Moving Picture World, 16 May 1908, p. 431; and Dramatic Mirror,
14 November 1908, p. 11.
21 Dramatic Mirror, 25 February 1906, p. 18.
22 New York Clipper, 20 August 1907, p. 246.
23 Moving Picture World, 16 May 1908.
24 Dramatic Mirror, 13 June 1908, p. 10.
25 Dramatic Mirror, 18 July 1908, p. 10.
26 Bennett Theatre, Program, 1 March 1909 (?), Mackey and Rollins
Collection, Harvard Theatre Collection.
27 Moving Picture World, 4 July 1908, p. 9. See also 'Motion Picture
Notes' in the Dramatic Mirror for this period.
28 Dramatic Mirror, 19 September 1908.
29 Dramatic Mirror , 6 June 1908.
30 Clipper, 18 September 1907, p. 808.
31 New York Dramatic Mirror, 4 July 1908.
32 Dramatic Mirror , 26 December 1908, p. 8.
33 "Clippings", Charles Urban Papers, Vol. 1, Science Museum
Library, Imperial College.
34 Film Index , 1 August 1907, p. 3.
35 Dramatic Mirror, 5 September 1908, p. 8.
36 Dramatic Mirror, 19 September 1908.
37 Dramatic Mirror, 26 September and 10 October 1908.
38 Dramatic Mirror , 24 October 1908.
39 Dramatic Mirror , 29 August 1908.
40 From about 1903, film-makers occasionally employed match cuts in
highly specialised situations (cut-ins, changing camera angle, etc.).
Such early instances of linear temporality coexisted with many other
examples of non-liner narrative construction.
41 Tom Gunning, 'Weaving a Narrative: Style and Economic
Background in Griffith's Biograph Films', Quarterly Review of Film
Studies, Winter 1981, pp. 11-25.
42 Noel Burch, 'Porter or Ambivalence', Screen, Winter 1978/79, pp.
11-15.
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