The Oxford History of World Cinema (16 page)

The more powerful members of the industry, such as the Motion Picture Patents

Company, often encouraged the incorporation of health and safety requirements into local

ordinances dictating the construction of new exhibition venues and the upgrading of old

ones. The New York City ordinance of 1913, specifying in detail such matters as the

number of seats, aisle width, and air flow, represented the culmination of efforts to make

exhibition venues more salubrious, that is, bearing a stronger resemblance to legitimate

theatrical houses. In fact, in that year and in that city, the first 'movie palaces' appeared.

These large and well-appointed theatres contrasted strongly with the nickelodeons. With

seats for up to 2,000 patrons, architecture mimicking Egyptian temples or Chinese

pagodas, large orchestras, and uniformed ushers, these theatres provided environments

nearly as fantastic as those projected on to their screens.

Vitagraph's The Life of Moses ( 1909), one of the first 'feature' films.

It was not only in the United States that film houses faced criticism and opposition in this

period. Permanent exhibition sites appeared in Germany in 1910, a few years later than in

the United States, but the rapid growth and increasing popularity of the new medium

attracted the attention of state officials and private reform groups concerned about film's

possible malign influence upon susceptible audiences and the nation's culture. The Berlin

Police Commission instituted an official pre-censorship plan in 1906, a year earlier than

their Chicago counterparts. As in the United States, children were perceived as

particularly vulnerable and in need of protection. Teachers and clergymen produced

several studies testifying to cinema's deleterious effect upon the young while teachers'

associations and other groups for popular and continuing education denigrated the use of

the cinema for amusement and urged increased production of scientific films for teaching

purposes. In 1907 reformers joined together in the cinema reform movement

(Kinoreformbewegung)
and touted the new medium's potential both for child and adult

education. Supported in their efforts by the trade press, who saw co-operation as a way to

avoid more official censorship, the cinema reformers were successful in persuading the

German industry to produce educational films, or
Kulturfilme,
that dealt with natural

sciences, geography, folklore, agriculture, industry, technology and crafts, medicine and

hygiene, sports, history, religion, and military affairs.

In 1912, literary intellectuals became interested in the by then predominant fiction film,

urging adherence to aesthetic standards to elevate the story film to art rather than'mere'

amusement. The industry responded with the
Autorenfilm,
or author film, the German

version of the
film d'art.
The first
Autorenfilm, Der Andere (The Other One),
was adapted

from a play by Paul Lindau about a case of split personality and starred the country's most

famous actor, Albert Bassermann. The prestigious theatre director Max Reinhardt

followed with filmed versions of two popular plays, Eine venezianische Nacht (
A

Venetian night
', 1913) and Insel der Seligen (' Island of the blessed', 1913).

Britain had no real equivalent to the American nickelodeon period, although debates

about cinema's cultural and social status paralleled those taking place across the Atlantic.

By 1911, when film rental and permanent exhibition sites became standard, most cinemas

mimicked the up-market accoutrements of the legitimate theatre. Before this, films were

exhibited in a variety of locations-the music halls and fairgrounds that had constituted the

primary venues of the early period as well as the so-called 'penny gaffs'. Although never

as numerous and often more transient than the nickelodeons, these store-front shows were

equivalent to their American counterparts in being unsanitary and unsafe. The first theatre

devoted entirely to film exhibition seems to have been established in 1907, and, between

the following year and the advent of the World War, films were increasingly exhibited in

'picture palaces', the equivalent of the American 'movie palaces', replete with uniformed

ushers and red plush seating for up to 1,000 or even 2,000 customers. While prices

remained low enough to permit former patrons to continue to attend, all these amenities

served to distance the cinema from its previous associations with the music halls and the

working class, to attract, as the trade press fervently hoped, a 'better' class of customer.

Like their transatlantic counterparts, British filmmakers also pursued respectability

through more positive tactics. In 1910 producer Will Barker paid the eminent theatrical

actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree £1,000 for appearing in a film version of

Shakespeare's Henty VIII. Rather than selling the film outright to distributors, as was still

the dominant practice, Barker gave one distributor exclusive rights to rent, but not to sell,

the film, claiming that its high production costs and high cultural status required special

treatment. Barker produced other films of a similar nature, establishing the .exclusive' or

'quality' picture, the adjectives referring to both the films and their distribution. Hepworth

and other producers followed Barker's lead, adapting contemporary plays and literary

classics that would appeal to the customers now patronizing the up-market theatres. In

1911 the Urban Company issued a catalogue of films suitable for use in schools. In the

same year, the trade paper Bioscope urged the industry to persuade government

authorities to recognize the educational value of film, even arranging a film screening for

members of the London County Council.

French
films d'art
provided the model for film producers in other countries, in their quest

for cultural respectability. French film-makers also emulated the narrative strategies of

more respectable entertainments, imitating the stories in popular illustrated family

magazines such as
Lectures pour tous
. Upon taking the position as chief producer-director

at Gaumont in 1907, Louis Feuillade wrote an advertisement for the studio's new serial,

Scènes de la vie telle qu'elle est
( Scenes from Real Life), claiming that the films would

elevate the position of the French cinema by affiliating it with other respectable arts.

'They represent, for the first time, an attempt to project a realism on to the screen, just as

was done some years ago in literature, theatre, and art.'

EPILOGUE: TRANSITION TO FEATURE FILMS

By about 1913 the American film industry's strategies for attaining respectability --

emulating respectable entertainments, internal censorship, and improved exhibition

venues -- had begun to pay off. Conditions were very different from what they had been

in 1908 when the medium had been the centre of a cultural crisis. Now a mass audience

sat comfortably ensconced in elaborate movie palaces, watching the first true mass

medium. And the films they watched were beginning to change as well, telling longer

stories through a different deployment of formal elements than had been the case in 1908

or even 1912. A few years later, by 1917, the situation had changed yet again. The

majority of important and powerful studios were located in Hollywood, by now the centre

not only of American film-making but of world film-making, largely as a result of the

First World War disruption of the European industries. Hollywood production and

distribution practices now set the norm for the rest of the world. The films themselves had

grown from one reel to an average length of sixty to ninety minutes, as film-makers

mastered the demands of constructing lengthier narratives and codified into standard

practices the formal conventions experimented with during the transitional years.

The industry called these lengthier films 'features', adopting the vaudeville term referring

to a programme's main attraction. They were descended from the multiple reel films

produced by the members of the Motion Picture Patents Company and the independents

during the transitional period, as well as from foreign imports. Although film historians

have characterized the MPPC's business practices as somewhat retrograde, the honour of

producing the first American multi-reeler goes to Trust member Vitagraph. In 1909 and

1910 Vitagraph released the biblical blockbuster The Life of Moses; a five-reel film

depicting the story of the Hebrew leader from his adoption by the Pharaoh's daughter to

his death on Mount Sinai. Vitagraph continued to produce multi-reelers, and the other

studios adopted the policy. Biograph, for example, released the two-reel Civil War story

His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled, in 1911. Clearly, then, elements within the American

film industry had begun to chafe at the 1,000foot or fifteen-minute limit, finding it

increasingly impossible to tell a story within these constraints.

Existing distribution and exhibition practices, however, militated against conversion to

the multi-reel film. The limited seating of most nickelodeons dictated short programmes

featuring a variety of subjects in order to ensure rapid audience turnover and a profit. The

studios, therefore, treated each reel of the multi-reelers separately, releasing them to the

exchanges according to the agreed schedule, sometimes weeks apart, and the

nickelodeons, except in rare instances, showed only one reel in any specific programme,

charging the same admission price as they did for all their other films. For this reason, the

impetus for the transition to the feature film came from the European, and specifically

Italian, films imported into the country. Multi-reel foreign imports were distributed

outside the control of the Trust and the independents, with rental prices keyed to both

negative costs and boxoffice receipts. Instead of playing the nickelodeons, these features

were 'roadshowed' as a theatrical attraction, shown in legitimate theatres and opera-

houses.

Films from other countries, such as Queen Elizabeth ( Louis Mercanton, 1912), played a

part in establishing feature films as the norm, but it was the spectacular Italian costume

films whose profits and popularity persuaded the American industry to compete with

longer films of its own. In 1911 three Italian productions, the fivereel Dante's Inferno

(Milano Films, 1909), the two-reel Fall of Troy ( 1910,, Giovanni Pastrone), and the four-

reel The Crusaders or Jerusalem Delivered ( 1911), treated American audiences to a

pictorial splendour seldom seen in domestic productions -- elaborate sets and huge casts

enhanced through the use of deep space. Released in the United States in the spring of

1913, the nine-reel Quo vadis? ( Enrico Guazzoni , Cines, 1913), running for more than

two hours and exhibited exclusively in legitimate theatres, really sparked the craze for the

spectacular feature film. Adapted from the best-selling novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, the

film boasted 5,000 extras, a chariot race, and real lions, as well as clever lighting and

detailed set design. The 1914 Cabiria ( Giovanni Pastrone, Italia) capped the trend. The

twelve-reel depiction of the Second Punic War contained such visually stunning scenes as

the burning of the Roman fleet and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. Pastrone enhanced the

film's spectacle through extended tracking shots (unusual at this time) that created a sense

of depth through movement rather than through set design.

Quo vadis? inspired a host of imitators, not least D. W. Griffith's own multi-reel biblical

spectacular, Judith of Bethulia ( 1913), which was made against the wishes of a Biograph

front office still committed to the one-reel film. But Griffith's own historical costume

drama epic, The Birth of a Nation ( 1915), excelled all previous features in length and

spectacle, while dealing with a truly American subject, the Civil War and Reconstruction.

It was this film that began to establish the feature as the norm rather than the exception.

Prior to the film's January 1915 release, Griffith's publicity department had hyped its

expense, huge cast, and historical accuracy, creating great public anticipation for the