Film Analysis and

History II
Birth of cinema

• No one person invented cinema.

However, in 1891 the Edison Company
successfully demonstrated a prototype of
the Kinetoscope, which enabled one
person at a time to view moving pictures.

• The first public Kinetoscope

demonstration took place in 1893. By
1894 the Kinetoscope was a commercial
success, with public parlours established
around the world.
Early American cinema
• For the first half of the twentieth century- from 1896 to 1946- movies
were the most popular and influential medium of culture in the US. They
were the first of the modern mass media, and they rose to the surface of
cultural consciousness from the bottom up, receiving their principal
support from the lowest and most invisible classes in American society.
(Robert Sklar, Movie-made America).
• In 1893, came Edison’s kinetoscope peep show and in 1896, large-screen
motion picture projection. The movies moved into vaudeville houses and
penny arcades, and within a decade had found a secure and profitable
home in working-class neighborhoods.
• Edison was not the only man in the late nineteenth century who thought
that the illusion of motion - to be as lifelike as possible, with a human-
size picture, synchronized sound, color and three-dimensionality.
• The French film critic Andre Bazin has called this desire “the myth of
total cinema”- the quest for a medium that could re-create the world in
its own image, record and preserve human lives and events in as realistic
a manner as possible.
• For Bazin the goal of every mechanical reproduction device was
ultimately, in a psychoanalytic sense, to overcome the fact of death, in
the same way that the Egyptians embalmed their dead.
• The flickering black and white images that appeared on theatre screens in
the first years of the 20th century were a far cry from the “myth of total
cinema” that Edison and others had foreseen – even from the
heightened pictorial realism that theatrical producers and critics, caught
up in the late 19th century aesthetic of realism, hoped to gain from
motion pictures.
• They were instead, as one or two of the early writers on motion pictures
began to explain, merely a series of two-dimensional still photographs, to
which the viewer through their own senses and imagination gave depth,
motion and continuity.
A Craze for the
Nickelodeon
• Early motion-picture theater, so named because
admission typically cost a nickel.
• Nickelodeons offered continuous showings of
one- and two-reel films, lasting from 15 minutes
to one hour and accompanied by a piano.
• The success of the Pittsburgh nickelodeon
established in 1905 by Harry Davis made it the
model for their rapid proliferation throughout
the U.S.
• By 1910 they numbered 10,000, fueling a huge
demand for silent films and projection
equipment and providing the impetus for the
development of the modern motion-picture
industry.
 • Optical toys form a group of devices with some
entertainment value combined with a scientific,
optical nature. Many of these were also known as
"philosophical toys" when they were developed in
the 19th century.
• People must have experimented with optical
phenomena since prehistoric times and played with
objects that influenced the experience of light, color
Optical and shadow. In the 16th century some experimental
optical entertainment - for instance camera obscura
illusions and demonstrations - were part of the cabinets of
scientific curiosities that emerged at royal courts. Since the
17th century optical tabletop instruments such as the
experiments compound microscope and telescope were used for
parlour entertainment in richer households .
• Other, larger devices - such as peep shows - were
usually exhibited by travelling showmen at fairs.
• The phenakistiscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope and flip
book are often seen as precursors of film, leading to
the invention of cinema at the end of the 19th
century.
Phenakistiscope

The phenakistiscope was the first widespread

animation device that created a fluent illusion
of motion.

Dubbed Fantascope and Stroboscopische

Scheiben ('stroboscopic discs') by its
inventors, it has been known under many
other names until the French product name
Phénakisticope became common (with
alternative spellings).

The phenakistiscope is regarded as one of the

first forms of moving media entertainment
that paved the way for the future motion
picture and film industry.
 Zoetrope
• A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation
devices that produce the illusion of motion by
displaying a sequence of drawings or
photographs showing progressive phases of that
motion.
• It was basically a cylindrical variation of the
phénakisticope, suggested almost immediately
after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in
1833.
• The definitive version, with easily replaceable
picture strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton
Bradley in 1866 and became very successful.
Praxinoscope • The praxinoscope was an animation device,
the successor to the zoetrope.
• It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-
Émile Reynaud.
• In 1888 Reynaud developed the Théâtre
Optique, an improved version capable of
projecting images on a screen from a longer
roll of pictures. From 1892 he used the system
for his Pantomimes lumineuses: a show with
hand-drawn animated stories for larger
audiences.
• It was very successful for several years, until
it was eclipsed in popularity by the
photographic film projector of the Lumière
brothers.
The invention of motion pictures

• Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer known for

his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and
early work in motion-picture projection.
• In 1872, Leland Stanford was looking to settle a bet. The
businessman and racehorse owner had wagered that a horse in
trot had all four legs off the ground for a brief moment in time,
one that passed too quickly for the naked eye to see. Stanford
sought out a well-known California-based photographer to see if
this relatively new technology could help him win the wager.
• Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” opened up an entirely new
way of thinking about photography, human and animal
movement, and even the concept of time.
 24 Frames per second
• 24 frames per second is the standard. That's because this frame rate feels the most cinematic and looks the
most natural to the human eye. It's the standard for any feature film.
• Early silent films had stated frame rates anywhere from 16 to 24 frames per second (fps), but since the
cameras were hand-cranked, the rate often changed during the scene to fit the mood. Projectionists could
also change the frame rate in the theater by adjusting a rheostat controlling the voltage powering the film-
carrying mechanism in the projector.
• Film companies often intended that theaters show their silent films at higher frame rates than they were
filmed at. These frame rates were enough for the sense of motion, but it was perceived as jerky motion. To
minimize the perceived flicker, projectors employed dual- and triple-blade shutters, so each frame was
displayed two or three times, increasing the flicker rate to 48 or 72 hertz and reducing eye strain.
• Thomas Edison said that 46 frames per second was the minimum needed for the eye to perceive motion:
"Anything less will strain the eye." In the mid to late 1920s, the frame rate for silent film increased to
between 20 and 26 FPS.
 The Lumière Brothers:
Auguste and Louis Lumière
• The first to present projected moving pictures to a
paying audience were the Lumière brothers in
December 1895 in Paris, France. They used a device of
their own making, the Cinématographe, which was a
camera, a projector and a film printer all in one.
• Their screening of a single film on 22 March 1895 for
around 200 members of the Society for the
Development of the National Industry in Paris was
probably the first presentation of projected film.
• Their first commercial public screening on 28
December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and
invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the
birth of cinema.
 • The Lumières gave their first paid public screening on 28 December 1895, at
Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This presentation consisted of the
following 10 short films:

1. La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the

Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title,
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory), 46 seconds

The Lumière 2. Le Jardinier (L'Arroseur Arrosé) (The Gardener, or The Sprinkler

Sprinkled), 49 seconds
3. Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon (The
actualities 4.
Photographical Congress Arrives in Lyon), 48 seconds
La Voltige (Horse Trick Riders), 46 seconds
5. La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
6. Les Forgerons (The Blacksmiths), 49 seconds
7. Repas de bébé (Baby's Breakfast (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
8. Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
9. Place des Cordeliers à Lyon (Cordeliers' Square in Lyon), 44 seconds
10. La Mer (The Sea), 38 seconds
 Georges Melies
• A French illusionist, actor, and film director.
• When the first films, made by the Lumière brothers, were shown in Paris in 1895,
Georges Méliès, a professional magician and manager-director of the Théâtre
Robert-Houdin, was among the spectators. The films were scenes from real life
having the novelty of motion, but Méliès saw at once their further possibilities. He
acquired a camera, built a glass-enclosed studio near Paris, wrote scripts, designed
ingenious sets, and used actors to film stories. With a magician’s intuition, he
discovered and exploited the basic camera tricks: stop motion, slow motion,
dissolve, fade-out, superimposition, and double exposure.
• From 1899 to 1912 Méliès made more than 400 films, the best of which combine
illusion, comic burlesque, and pantomime to treat themes of fantasy in a playful and
absurd fashion. He specialized in depicting extreme physical transformations of the
human body (such as the dismemberment of heads and limbs) for comic effect.
• His films included pictures as diverse as Cléopâtre (1899; Cleopatra’s Tomb), Le
Christ marchant sur les eaux (1899; Christ Walking on Water), Le Voyage dans la
lune (1902; A Trip to the Moon), Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904; The
Voyage Across the Impossible), and Hamlet (1908). He also filmed studio
reconstructions of news events as an early kind of newsreel.
Film pioneers and their films
• Some of the most notable silent movies of all time are:
i. Georg Melies: A trip to the Moon (1902)
ii. Edwin S Porter: The Great Train Robbery (1903)
iii. Sidney Olcott & Frank Oakes Rose: Ben-Hur (1907)
iv. D.W. Griffith: Intolerance (1916)
v. F. W Murnau: Nosferatu (1922),
vi. Raol Walsh: The Thief of Bagdad (1923),
vii. Sergei Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin (1925),
viii. Fritz Lang: Metropolis (1927)
ix. Carl Theodore Dreyer: The Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928).
 Early film pioneers in India
Harishchandra S. Bhatvadekar aka Save Dada
who shot a wrestling match with a Lumière
camera in 1896.
Hiralal Sen from Calcutta – Ali Baba film,
imported foreign films and exhibited them for
local zamindars and elites.
F.B. Thanawalla- Splendid New Views of
Bombay (1900).
R.G Torney’s Pundalik (1912).
Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra
(1913).
Many of these films were exotic panoramic
shots of cities, local scenes, the people of India.
 Sound comes to cinema: The Jazz
Singer
• A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or
sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent
film.
• The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema
were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s.
• At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue,
known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively
shorts.
• The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound
included only music and effects. The first feature film
originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited
sound sequences) was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on
October 6, 1927.
• A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the
time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-
on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking
pictures.