It’s a well known story that took place in Paris, Grand Cafe.

Lumierre brothers projected the

first movie of the history that called “l ‘arrivee d un train a la ciotat” in 1895. It was a unique
experience for the spectators and to realize the admiration and the reaction of the hall we
should focus on the historical background of an era.

In 19th century, the mode of production had changed because of the industrial revolution .
Daily life was faster than it had ever been and that new production system was resulted in a
philosophy depends on “speed”. Everything was changing and the space and the time were
being recreated.

New technological inventions made daily life easier, but ambiguity of the future made them
scared too. Science fiction novels , especially the ones written by H.G.Welles in the late 19th
century, gave signs of the fear of that ambiguity. New inventions had the possibility of
causing big troubles for humanity and that novels saw that as an important subject. “Time
Machine” by Welles is a significant example for that .

Also the mode of production and the new capitalist system crystallized class differences and
the othering became a big deal for people who suffer from quick changes of that era. Bram
Stoker’s Dracula was written in 1897 and it’s a good example for othering and resisting the
things incoming(stranger). For example David Pirie states that Dracula stand for Victorian
libido trying to break through it’s chains. That era mentions the stressful period of dramatical
changes and the reactions of people who set against these sudden changes.

In the first period of 19th century photograph was invented and that affected the painting.
Photograph substituted the royal painters for royalty. That changed the conditions of painting
market. Also during that period photography affected art (usage of light, instantaneous,
perception of the artist) An art movement called Impressionism appeared .They preferred to
focus on the perception of mind. They created paintings and worked outdoor to take
advantage of sunshine. Cezanne, Van gogh, Monet are the representatives of that art
movement.

Late of 19th century nation-state concept became a very important reality for people. Nations
had created their own values and enemies to strengthen their cores. They redesigned the
concept of city. New citizen profiles were created called flaneur and flaneuse who travel
around the city just for their own pleasures. People were reformed respect to city life and
every citizen seemed as consumers and couraged to participate in city life.

In New York, there were many immigrants came from different cultures and spoke different
languages. There were many cosmopolit cities like New York. There had to be a global
medium to form a new community. That medium would be cinema. The movie “From Hell”
emphasizes that era. Discourse of the movie is that the power of visual reporting will form a
new society and a new world. Media will manipulate everything to convince ordinary people
and person who tries to reach the truth will be the character who take opium(Johnny Depp).
The new era will begin with cinema.

The period called early cinema started from the invention of cinematograph and continued
until the emergence of cinema industry. First films were actuality films which were very
suitable for new city culture. People roamed around the city and filmed what they saw. They
recorded the history. Films were non narrative and non representative at that period. That
period would be followed by national cinema and emergence of film industry and we would
see representative films that big film companies made respect to some industrial standards .
They had the power of representing community and they were using to transform the things
by processes for forming spectators.

In early cinema, the cinema was frontal, perspective was ignored and by that reasons
spectators had difficulties in believing what they spectated. It did not make sense. Because
there were no tools to create films which were very similitude to reality. It emphasized what
you were watching were just magic. You were feeling the frame because of the disclosure of
mise an scene. Dawid Wark Griffith would make convincing films after that period ended.

The period of early cinema was a little bit experimental. It was the cinema of tech enthusiasts
and that period would be ended by the formation of film companies . It was an individual
effort and non standard methods were being preferred in early cinema. This period was ended
because the film companies (Lumierre, Edison) formulized and standardized cinema and
patent rights(MPPC) restricted amateurs.

Cinema was an activity that reshaped the public sphere. Silent film was gathering people from
different ethnic groups in halls. Normally female spectators were not watching the things
that shows man body but a boxing game record took attention of many people and lots of
them were woman. That’s about the magic of cinema, cinema created a new reality and there
was a distance between the reality that spectators were in and the reality of the boxing game
record. That’s new reality gave a chance to woman to participate. Films like “The Sheik”
focused on both man pleasure and woman gaze. The star of the movie -Rudolpho Valentino
was an italian and throughout his career impersonated men from exotic countries. By
technology people started to travel easier than before and that attracted them to see countries
from “orient”. The attraction of unknown was the key factor of successful Valentino films.

German expressionism was a post war art movement(from 1910s to 30s). The defeat of
Germany affected the nation negatively. People in dispear reflected their moods and some
experts claim that expressionism was the reflection of nightmares that were the outcomes of
German subconscious. Indeed, the usage of shadows , mise an scenes, perspective and
decoration impressed people negatively. The atmosphere of that films inspired some genres
like horror, sci-fi, whodunnit, fantasy etc. German films were divided into three main
categories except expressionism in 1910s:

Some advanture-spy films that were based on exotic stories. It was a very popular genre.

Educational movies that can be named as sex exploitation movies. They were producted for
the sexual education of post-war society. there were many prostitutes and homosexuals in
society and society must be informed about sex according to German government.

Historical epics with crowded casts. The directors of that epics would transfer to Hollywood.

“The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” was the first German expressionist movie. The script was
written by two people that had participated in war and it was obvious that they had been
deeply affected by war . Therefore World War II had considerable effect on film. Caligari was
a criticism of the system . It claimed that the power holders (who governed the nation) could
be our real enemies. Surgeon general of the asylum –Caligari who treated people suffer from
mental diseases , metaphorically radicals in society, was a great metaphor for that. That was
also a great metaphor for Weimar Republic. Weimar republic was formed for maintaining the
prosperity of German nation. Expressionist films all reflected that era and subliminal
messages were all about collective subconscious of post war German society. Weimar
republic claimed to establish the social peace but unexpected things happened. Comunist
coalition party did not find the legal regulations enough so people especially whose political
view were communism protested the government. Government established a new police force.
It was a similar story with Paris Commune; city was being recreated and the architect was the
authority.

In addition to these, Westerns were reflecting the social identity, too. western was the
narration of a nation’s history like German expressionist films.

The Weimar Republic would be ended by Hitler and that was also the end of German
expressionism.

Expressionist films and westerns were the films that made us feeling someone was telling us a
story. This story contained the depiction of evil and friendly forces. This narration was
containing an ideology and some young french directors put response to that idealized cinema
form. They were writing film critics in a journal called “cahiers du cinema”. They got bored
with the narrative style of Hollywood and rebel against the fabricated films and they created a
new art movement called “nouvelle vague”. Jean Luc Godard , François Truffaut, Alain
Resnais were the main representatives of that movement. They were shooting the scene in real
places not in studios , characters were choosen casually and every move of characters did not
have a meaning, city was used as background of the film and there was a skeptical approach
to the authority in contrast to narrative films.

That was not a protest for only American film makers. They saw that style of film making as a
problematic approach so that they protested against French directors prefered narrative film
making , too. Shot, mise en scene and the other factors of scene were being used to transfer
the ideas of narrator to the spectator.

Leading representatives of that movement changed their style of film making by time. There
is no doubt that the directors of nouvelle vague did not share the same point of view. Some of
them made narrative films after the movement.

Cinema appeared in a chaotic environment that the nations and cities were recreating
themselves. Cinema served these creation processes. It was used to generate the discourse and
gather the people of city. This new medium reflected the conditions and dominant ideology
of it’s era . Narrative cinema focused on that but some reformist movements appeared to
break this loop. Nowadays someone is still telling us a story , nothing has changed but there
are people who tries to make difference too. It is not a large group of people . However , it is
nice to know they are still here.