Oliveratom

Silent Cinema

1. Silent cinema is a huge subject that this course can scarcely do justice to, although it will be mentioned in a few different lessons
2. The early history of the motion picture,like the early history of aviation, is immensely complicated and confusing, because there were so many people in so many counties working on the basic problems at once
a. Despite the WrightBrothers’ fame for being the “first to fly,” it really all depends on how you define “first to fly”; and it is much more difficult than that to pinpoint the first motion picture
b. We saw in the earlierclass on Early Photography how photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey experimented with capturing motion through quick successions of photographs
c. Throughout the late1880s and early 1890s, a number of film pioneers made films using a variety of processes, and many patents were taken out on various motion picture making and screening devices
d. The key countries werethe United States (Thomas Edison and his team in particular), Great Britain, Germany, and France, which is where we’ll concentrate this lesson
3. The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis(1864-1948) – “Light Brothers,” how great is that? – were accomplished photographic innovators, as well as being among the earliest film-makers
a. They created a method of taking color photographs,the Autochrome, that became widely popular
i. IMAGE: Louis Lumiere – Woman with an Umbrella (Autochrome)
ii. WEB LINK: Autochromes Lumiere – La photographie des couleurs – 1907-1935
b. In 1895,they began shooting 50 second “actuality” films, and in early 1896 they publicly screened a program of 10 of these
i. The documentary The Lumiere Brothers’ First Films, narrated by the contemporaryFrench film director Bertrand Tavernier, includes many of these early films with interesting commentary
ii. VIDEO: The Lumiere Brothers’ First Films – Part 1
4. Another Frenchman, Georges Melies...