THE HISTORY OF THE CINEMA
“Arrest in
“Carmencita” 1894
“Sandow” 1894
One of
Meanwhile, in France Louis and Auguste Lumiere developed the Cinematographe in 1892, the first real film projector, earning them the title, “The Founding fathers of modern film.”
Magician
Georges Méliès
(1861-1938) produced the first real film with a narrative story in
This film is so important to the history of the Cinema, that I am showing it in its entirety, all 12 minutes of it. Notice that Melies incorporated surrealistic special effects, trick photography, disolves, wipes, “magical” super-impositions and double exposures, the use of mirrors, trick sets, stop motion,slow motion, and fade-outs/fade-ins.
In
As no soundtrack for this film survived, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a few selections from other western films. It will be shown complete, on the next slide.
“The Great Train Robbery” was shot out of chronological sequence, and used parallel cross-cutting between two simultaneous events. It also used rear projection (the image of a train seen through a window) and panning. It was the first real motion picture smash hit and proved that one could make money with movies.
It also featured Bronco Billy Anderson (1880-1971), the first great film star, winner of an honorary Academy Award in 1958 as “motion picture pioneer.”
For the past ten years he’s been the subject of a film
festival at the Edison Theatre in
The next real film Pioneer is D. W. Griffith (1875 –1948), who used the camera in new, more functional, mobile ways, with composed shots, splitscreens, flashbacks, cross-cutting, frequent closeups to observe details, fades, irises, dissolves, changing camera angles, soft focus, lens filters, experimental lighting, shading, and tinting.
Birth of a Nation (1915), despite its unfortunate theme, was the first truly epic motion picture, and it is often listed among critics’ choices for the top ten films of all time.
This great close-up shows the pathos in “birth,” emotions
not really seen before.
Not everything
Based on a story from Thomas Burke’s Limehouse
Nights, with the incredibly racist title, “The Chink and the Child”, Broken
Blossoms tells the story of Cheng Huan (Barthelmess), who left
Large studios were soon being built. Carl Laemmle (1867-1939) started off by buying Nickelodeons, and by 1909 founded the company that would become Universal Studios, home of the great horror films.
Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, The
Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon
In his silent days, Carl Laemmle introduced the world to one of its greatest actors, Lon Chaney (1883-1930), The Man of 1,000 faces.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923
The Phantom of the Opera 1925
In Shadows (1922), Chaney played an elderly Chinese man tormented by racist children.
Thomas Harper Ince (1882-1924), founded the company that became Paramount. He introduced the first serious western actor.
William S. Hart (1864-1946), a former Shakespearian actor, was the first “adult western” hero, who portrayed a realistic picture of the west.
Tumbleweeds is William S.
Hart’s masterpiece. Short on action and
heavy on plot, it concerns the famous
Ince was the subject of one of
It involved Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, and William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst, the most powerful man in
In 1924, while on a cruise hosted by Ince, Hearst discovered that Davies was having a sexual relationship with Chaplin.
Although Hearst had the power to hush things up in the press, and the exact truth will never be known, the most evidence supports this story: Hearst tried to shoot Chaplin when he caught him with Davies, and ended up accidentally shooting Ince in the head, who died shortly thereafter.
The incident was the subject of a recent film, The Cat’s Meow.
Davies' secretary, Abigail Kinsolving, claimed that Ince raped her that weekend on board the yacht. Several months later, the unmarried Kinsolving delivered a baby, and died shortly after, in a mysterious car accident near the Hearst ranch. Her baby, a girl, was conveniently sent to an orphanage supported by Marion Davies.
Witness Louella Parsons was
apparently rewarded her for her silence. After the Ince
affair, Hearst gave her a lifetime contract and expanded her syndication. Her
legendary power over
D.W. Griffith always said: "All you have to do to make Hearst turn white as a ghost is mention Ince's name. There's plenty wrong there, but Hearst is too big."
Ince and Griffith teamed up with
Mack Sennett (1880-1960) in 1915, forming Triangle
Pictures.
Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, Marie Dressler, The Keystone Cops, Mabel Normand, Gloria Swanson, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin.
Let’s look at a few comic moments:
It’s Payday and Chaplin’s wife (Marie Dressler) is waiting for money.
In “Modern Times,” Chaplin works on a machine too long.
“The Great Dictator” (1940) was Chaplin’s masterpiece. His first talking picture took advantage of the physical similarity between Hitler and The Little Tramp.
The fascist dictator dreams of taking over the whole world.
In 1940, many Americans supported Adolph Hitler. (Nobody knew about the Holocaust at that time, but Chaplin was hated by such pro German Americans as Henry Ford, William Randolph Hearst, Irénée Du Pont, Charles Lindbergh, and Prescott Bush (The President’s Grandfather) who is alleged to have supported Hitler financially via The Union Bank.)
Because of his depiction of the
treatment of Jews in Germany, as well as the sentiments expressed in the film’s
final speech, Chaplin was mistakenly believed to be both Jewish and a
Communist. In 1952, he was forced to leave
For my money, the greatest comic who ever lived was Buster Keaton (1895-1966), “The Great Stone Face.”
Captured by Native Americans in “The Paleface” (1922), Keaton shows his lifelong war against bosses, generals, cops, and “the man” in general.
In “The Boat” (1921) Keaton tells the tale of a married man who builds his own yacht.
The storm scene in “Steamboat Bill Jr.” (1928) included some of the most dangerous stunts ever captured on film.
“Cops” (1922) was a short film that satirized the police and included one of the two greatest chase sequences ever filmed. (The best was in Keaton’s masterpiece, The General in 1927) I cut out the plot, which involves Keaton trying to win a girl’s love by getting a job as a delivery man, to focus on his athletic agility.
By the end of World War I, the studio system had been established. Eventually, five major studios emerged:
1923: Warner Brothers had Rin Tin Tin, the first talkies, gangster films, Bugs Bunny and other cartoons.
1927:
1928: RKO (a subsidiary of RCA) had Astaire-Rodgers musicals, King Kong (1933), and Citizen Kane (1941), once owned by Howard Hughes
1924: Metro-Goldwin-Mayer was the biggest studio, with Irving Thalberg as head of production 1924-36.
Irving Thalberg (1899 –1936) was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff, and make very profitable films. Sadly, he died at 37.
Thalberg was responsible for some of the greatest films ever made including: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Greed, Ben-Hur, Flesh and the Devil, Anna Christie, Trader Horn, Tarzan the Ape Man, Tugboat Annie, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, A Night at the Opera, Maytime, A Day at the Races, The Good Earth, Marie Antoinette, and the classic B film, Let Us Be Gay, with Norma Shearer, Marie Dressler, and Rod La Rocque.
MGM’s star studded actors included Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, James Stewart, Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, Kathryn Hepburn, Lassie, Elizabeth Taylor, and countless others.
1912: 20th Century Fox, headed by Darryl Zanuck, was famous for Betty Grable Musicals, Theda Bara, Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor, Shirley Temple, and Star Wars. It also produced some controversial films.
In Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Gregory Peck decides
to pretend he’s a Jew in order to write an article about anti-semitism in
In Pinky (1949), Jeanne Crain is Ethel Waters’
daughter, who is pretending to be white, without understanding her place in her
own culture. (note:
Three smaller, minor studios were dubbed “The Little Three.” These were smaller primarily because they did not own their own theatres and had to sell their films to theatre managers.
1912: Universal Pictures was known for horror films, W. C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Woody Woodpecker, and the fabulous Flash Gordon serials.
(I grew up with this guy, as did George Lucas . . .)
1919: United Artists was formed by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith.
1920: Columbia Pictures gave us Frank Capra, It Happened One Night (1934), Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Lost Horizon (1937), The Jolson Story (1946), and Batman Serials.
Sorry,
Flash’s girlfriend, Jean Rogers
Batman’s girlfriend, Shirley Patterson
A few independent studios were on “Poverty Row.” Three of them were:
1935: David O. Selznick opened Selznick Studios . . .
In 1939, Selznick produced Gone With the Wind.
1935: Herbert B. Yates founded Republic studios.
Republic gave us Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne.
Two of
Nicknamed “
She married Douglas Fairbanks and they named their estate “Pickfair.”
These included The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood
(1922), The Thief of
Among the other stars of the period were Joan Crawford . . .
. . . the incredibly beautiful Louise Brooks . . .
. . . Greta Garbo . . .
. . . and Norma Shearer.
“
For her work in Seventh Heaven, Janet Gaynor received the very first academy award in 1927.
Charles Ferrell is the one who really deserved the Oscar. With all those steamy love scenes, nobody noticed he was a homosexual.
The most famous male filmstar of the twenties, and perhaps of all time, was Rudolph Valentino (1897-1926).
He taught the whole world to appreciate the Tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 1921.
The Sheik (1921) was so popular, it became part of our language. A “stud” or “jazzbo” was now called a “sheik” by young women (Flappers). There were even “Sheik” Cigars.
Valentino’s last film, considered by many to be his best work is The Son of the Sheik, in which he plays the dual role of father and son.
In Son of the Sheik (1926) Rudy shows us the proper way to handle a woman . . .
Rudolph Valento died at the age of 31, of a ruptured appendix.
Over 100,000 people attended his funeral. There were suicides and breakdowns among his fans. To this day, women still leave flowers by his grave. Like Elvis Presley, many people believe he never died at all.
Valentino said, “Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams."
With The Jazz Singer in 1928, sound films were
born.