History of film - Free

History of film
This article is about the History of film as an artistic
medium. For the history of motion-picture technology,
see History of film technology.
.
what came to be called “chase films”. The first use of animation in movies was in 1899. The first feature length
multi-reel film was a 1906 Australian production. The
first successful permanent theatre showing only films was
“The Nickelodeon” in Pittsburgh in 1905. By 1910, actors began to receive screen credit for their roles, and the
way to the creation of film stars was opened. Regular
newsreels were exhibited from 1910 and soon became a
popular way for finding out the news. Overall, from about
1910, American films had the largest share of the market
in Australia and in all European countries except France.
New film techniques were introduced in this period including the use of artificial lighting, fire effects and lowkey lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame
is dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes.
As films grew longer, specialist writers were employed
to simplify more complex stories derived from novels or
plays into a form that could be contained on one reel and
be easier to be understood by the audience - an audience
that was new to this form of storytelling. Genres began to
be used as categories; the main division was into comedy
and drama, but these categories were further subdivided.
During the First World War there was a complex transition for the film industry. The exhibition of films changed
from short one-reel programs to feature films. Exhibition
venues became larger and began charging higher prices.
By 1914, continuity cinema was the established mode
of commercial cinema. One of the advanced continuity techniques involved an accurate and smooth transition
from one shot to another.
D. W. Griffith had the highest standing among American
directors in the industry, because of the dramatic excitement he conveyed to the audience through his films. The
American industry, or "Hollywood", as it was becoming
known after its new geographical center in California,
gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since:
film factory for the world and exporting its product to
most countries. By the 1920s, the United States reached
what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing
an average of 800 feature films annually or 82% of the
global total. During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz
Singer, with the first synchronized dialogue (and singing)
in a feature film. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was
almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems
(soon to be standardized). Sound saved the Hollywood
studio system in the face of the Great Depression (Parkinson, 1995).
Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France
The History of film began in the 1890s, when motion
picture cameras were invented and film production companies started to be established. Because of the limits of
technology, films of the 1890s were under a minute long
and until 1927 motion pictures were produced without
sound. The first decade of motion picture saw film moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films became several minutes long
consisting of several shots. The first rotating camera for
taking panning shots was built in 1897. The first film studios were built in 1897. Special effects were introduced
and film continuity, involving action moving from one sequence into another, began to be used. In the 1900s, continuity of action across successive shots was achieved and
the first close-up shot was introduced (that some claim The desire for wartime propaganda created a renaissance
D. W. Griffith invented). Most films of this period were in the film industry in Britain, with realistic war dramas.
1
2
2 BIRTH OF MOVIES
The onset of American involvement in World War II also
brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and
propaganda. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood in the early 1950s. During
the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was
also threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some film theatres would
bankrupt and close. Following the end of World War II
in the 1940s, the following decade, the 1950s, marked a
'Golden Age' for non-English world cinema.
1
Early period
Main articles: Silent film and Sound film
In the 1890s, films were seen mostly via temporary
storefront spaces and traveling exhibitors or as acts in
vaudeville programs. A film could be under a minute
long and would usually present a single scene, authentic
or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event
or slapstick. There was little to no cinematic technique,
the film was usually black and white and it was without
sound.
But the novelty of realistically moving photographs was
enough for a motion picture industry to blossom before
the end of the century, in countries around the world.
“The Cinema was to offer a cheaper, simpler way of providing entertainment to the masses. Filmmakers could
record actors’ performances, which then could be shown
to audiences around the world. Travelogues would bring
the sights of far-flung places, with movement, directly to
spectators’ hometowns. Movies would become the most
popular visual art form of the late Victorian age”[1]
The Berlin Wintergarten theater hosted an early movie
presentation in front of an audience, shown by the
Skladanowsky brothers in 1895.
The Melbourne
Athenaeum started to screen movies in 1896. Movie theaters became popular entertainment venues and social
hubs in the early 20th century, much like cabarets and
other theaters.
Until 1927, motion pictures for films were produced without sound. This era is referred to as the silent era of
film. To enhance the viewers’ experience, silent films
were commonly accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, and sometimes sound effects and
even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. In most countries, intertitles came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing
with narrators, but in Japanese cinema human narration
remained popular throughout the silent era. The technical
problems were resolved by 1923.
Illustrated songs were a notable exception to this trend
that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as
late as the late 1930s in film theaters.[2] Live performance
or sound recordings were paired with hand-colored glass
A scene from "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) by Georges Méliès.
slides projected through stereopticons and similar devices. In this way, song narrative was illustrated through
a series of slides whose changes were simultaneous with
the narrative development. The main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they
were highly successful with sales reaching into the millions for a single song. Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were used as filler material preceding films
and during reel changes.[3]
There was a non-commercial attempt to combine the motion picture with a combination of slides and synchronize the resulting moving picture with audio. The film
included hand-painted slides as well as other previously
used techniques. Simultaneously playing the audio while
the film was being played with a projector was required.
This monumental production, released in 1915, was entitled "The Photo-Drama of Creation" and lasted eight
hours.
2 Birth of movies
The first eleven years of motion pictures show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large-scale
entertainment industry. The films represent a movement
from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one
person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by
large companies in something like industrial conditions.
The year 1900 conveniently marks the emergence of the
first motion pictures that can be considered as 'films’ - at
this point, film-makers begin to introduce basic editing
techniques and film narrative.[4]
2.1
2.1
Invention and advancement of the camera
3
Invention and advancement of the
camera
A scene inset inside a circular vignette showing a “dream vision”
in Santa Claus (1899).
Georges Méliès (left) painting a backdrop in his studio.
Early movie cameras were fastened to the head of their
tripod with only simple levelling devices provided. These
cameras were thus effectively fixed during the course of
the shot, and hence the first camera movements were the
result of mounting a camera on a moving vehicle. The
Lumière brothers shot a scene from the back of a train in
1896.
The first rotating camera for taking panning shots was
built by Robert W. Paul in 1897, on the occasion of
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. He used his camera
to shoot the procession in one shot. His device had the
camera mounted on a vertical axis that could be rotated
by a worm gear driven by turning a crank handle, and Paul
put it on general sale the next year. Shots taken using such
a “panning” head were also referred to as ‘panoramas’ in
the film catalogues of the first decade of the cinema.[5]
The other basic technique for trick cinematography was
the double exposure of the film in the camera. This was
pioneered by George Albert Smith in July 1898 in England. The set was draped in black, and after the main
shot, the negative was re-exposed to the overlaid scene.
His The Corsican Brothers was described in the catalogue of the Warwick Trading Company in 1900: “By
extremely careful photography the ghost appears *quite
transparent*. After indicating that he has been killed by
a sword-thrust, and appealing for vengeance, he disappears. A ‘vision’ then appears showing the fatal duel in
the snow.”
G.A. Smith also initiated the special effects technique of
reverse motion. He did this by repeating the action a second time, while filming it with an inverted camera, and
then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the
first.[9] The first films made using this device were Tipsy,
Georges Méliès built one of the first film studios in May Topsy, Turvy and The Awkward Sign Painter. The earliest
surviving example of this technique is Smith’s The House
1897. It had a glass roof and three glass walls constructed
after the model of large studios for still photography, and That Jack Built, made before September 1900.
it was fitted with thin cotton cloths that could be stretched Cecil Hepworth took this technique further, by printing
below the roof to diffuse the direct rays of the sun on the negative of the forwards motion backwards frame by
sunny days.[6] Beginning in 1896, Méliès would go on to frame, so producing a print in which the original action
produce, direct, and distribute over 500 short films. The was exactly reversed. To do this he built a special printer
majority of these films were short, one-shot films com- in which the negative running through a projector was
pleted in one take. Méliès drew many comparisons be- projected into the gate of a camera through a special lens
tween film and the stage, which was apparent in his work. giving a same-size image. This arrangement came to be
He realized that film afforded him the ability (via his use called a “projection printer”, and eventually an “optical
of timelapse photography) to “produce visual spectacles printer”.
not achievable in the theater.[7]
The use of different camera speeds also appeared around
The Execution of Mary Stuart, produced by the Edison Company for viewing with the Kinetoscope, showed
Mary Queen of Scots being executed in full view of the
camera. The effect was achieved by replacing the actor
with a dummy for the final shot.[8] Georges Méliès also
utilized this technique in the making of Escamotage d’un
dame chez Robert-Houdin (The Vanishing Lady). The
woman is seen to vanish through the use of stop motion
techniques.
1900 in the films of Robert W. Paul and Hepworth. Paul
shot scenes from On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus (1899) with the camera turning very slowly.
When the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per
second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed.
Hepworth used the opposite effect in The Indian Chief
and the Seidlitz Powder (1901). The Chief’s movements
are sped up by cranking the camera much faster than 16
frames per second. This gives what we would call a “slow
4
2 BIRTH OF MOVIES
motion” effect.
2.2
Film editing and continuous narrative
The first films to consist of more than one shot appeared
toward the end of the 19th century, a notable example was
the French film of the life of Jesus Christ. These weren't
represented as a continuous film, the separate scenes were
interspersed with lantern slides, a lecture, and live choral
numbers, to increase the running time of the spectacle to
about 90 minutes. Another example of this is the reproductions of scenes from the Greco-Turkish war, made by
Georges Méliès in 1897. Although each scene was sold
separately, they were shown one after the other by the
exhibitors. Even Méliès’ Cendrillon (Cinderella) of 1898
contained no action moving from one shot to the next one.
To understand what was going on in the film the audience
had to know their stories beforehand, or be told them by
a presenter.
The two scenes making up Come Along, Do!
Real film continuity, involving action moving from one
sequence into another, is attributed to British film pioneer
Robert W. Paul's Come Along, Do!, made in 1898 and
one of the first films to feature more than one shot.[10] In
the first shot, an elderly couple is outside an art exhibition
having lunch and then follow other people inside through
the door. The second shot shows what they do inside.
Paul’s 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' of 1895 was the
first camera to feature reverse-cranking, which allowed
the same film footage to be exposed several times and
thereby to create super-positions and multiple exposures.
This technique was first used in his 1901 film Scrooge, or,
Marley’s Ghost.
The further development of action continuity in multishot films continued in 1899 at the Brighton School in
England. In the latter part of that year, George Albert
Smith made The Kiss in the Tunnel. This started with a
shot from a “phantom ride” at the point at which the train
goes into a tunnel, and continued with the action on a set
representing the interior of a railway carriage, where a
man steals a kiss from a woman, and then cuts back to
the phantom ride shot when the train comes out of the
tunnel. A month later, the Bamforth company in Yorkshire made a restaged version of this film under the same
title, and in this case they filmed shots of a train entering
and leaving a tunnel from beside the tracks, which they
joined before and after their version of the kiss inside the
train compartment.
The first two shots of As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), with
the telescope POV simulated by the circular mask.
In 1900, continuity of action across successive shots
was definitively established by George Albert Smith and
James Williamson, who also worked in Brighton. In that
year Smith made As Seen Through a Telescope, in which
the main shot shows street scene with a young man tying
the shoelace and then caressing the foot of his girlfriend,
while an old man observes this through a telescope. There
is then a cut to close shot of the hands on the girl’s foot
shown inside a black circular mask, and then a cut back
to the continuation of the original scene. Even more remarkable is James Williamson's Attack on a China Mission Station (1900). The first shot shows Chinese Boxer
rebels at the gate; it then cuts to the missionary family
in the garden, where a fight ensues. The wife signals to
British sailors from the balcony, who come and rescue
them. The film also used the first “reverse angle” cut in
film history.
G.A Smith pioneered the use of the close-up shot in his
1900 films As Seen Through a Telescope and Grandma’s
Reading Glass. He further developed the ideas of breaking a scene shot in one place into a series of shots taken
from different camera positions over the next couple of
years, starting with The Little Doctors of 1901. In a series of films he produced at this time, he also introduced
the use of subjective and objective point-of-view shots,
the creation of dream-time and the use of reversing. He
summed up his work in Mary Jane’s Mishap of 1903, with
repeated cuts in to a close shot of a housemaid fooling
around, along with superimpositions and other devices,
before abandoning film-making to invent the Kinemacolor system of colour cinematography. His films were
the first to establish the basics of coherent narrative and
what became known as film language, or "film grammar".[11][12]
James Williamson concentrated on making films taking
action from one place shown in one shot to the next shown
in another shot in films like Stop Thief!, made in 1901,
and many others. He also experimented with the closeup, and made perhaps the most extreme one of all in The
Big Swallow, when his character approaches the camera
and appears to swallow it. These two film makers of the
Brighton School also pioneered the editing of the film;
they tinted their work with color and used trick photography to enhance the narrative. By 1900, their films were
extended scenes of up to 5 minutes long.[13]
Most films of this period were what came to be
2.3
Animation
called “chase films”. These were inspired by James
Williamson's Stop Thief! of 1901, which showed a tramp
stealing a leg of mutton from a butcher’s boy in the first
shot, then being chased through the second shot by the
butcher’s boy and assorted dogs, and finally being caught
by the dogs in the third shot. Several British films made
in the first half of 1903 extended the chase method of
film construction. These included An Elopement à la
Mode and The Pickpocket: A Chase Through London,
made by Alf Collins for the British branch of the French
Gaumont company, Daring Daylight Burglary, made by
Frank Mottershaw at the Sheffield Photographic Company, and Desperate Poaching Affray, made by William
Haggar. Haggar in particular innovated the first extant
panning shots; the poachers are chased by gamekeepers and police officers and the camera pans along, creating a sense of urgency and speed.[14] His films were also
recognised for their intelligent use of depth of staging and
screen edges, while film academic Noël Burch praised
Haggar’s effective use of off-screen space.[15] He was also
one of the first film makers to purposefully introduce violence for entertainment; in Desperate Poaching Affray
the villains are seen firing guns at their pursuers.
5
nevertheless it was a greater success than them due to its
Wild West violence. “The Great Train Robbery” served
as one of the vehicles that would launch the film medium
into mass popularity.[7]
The Pathé company in France also made imitations and
variations of Smith and Williamson’s films from 1902 onwards using cuts between the shots, which helped to standardize the basics of film construction. An influential
French film of the period was Méliès’s 14 minute long
A Trip to the Moon.[16] It was extremely popular at the
time of its release, and is the best-known of the hundreds
of films made by Méliès. It was one of the first known
science fiction films, and used innovative animation and
special effects, including the well-known image of the
spaceship landing in the Moon’s eye. The sheer volume
of Pathé's production led to their filmmakers giving a further precision and polish to the details of film continuity.
2.3 Animation
The first use of animation in movies was in 1899, with
the production of the short film Matches: An Appeal by
British film pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper- a thirtysecond long stop-motion animated piece intended to encourage the audience to send matches to British troops
fighting the Boer War. The film contains an appeal to
send money to Bryant and May who would then send
matches to the British troops which were fighting in the
Boer War in South Africa. It was shown in December
1899 at The Empire Theatre in London. This film is the
earliest known example of stop-motion animation. Little
puppets, constructed of matchsticks, are writing the appeal on a black wall. Their movements are filmed frame
by frame, movement by movement.
Still from The Great Train Robbery, produced by Edwin S.
Porter.
Other filmmakers took up all these ideas including the
American Edwin S. Porter, who started making films for
the Edison Company in 1901.Porter, a projectionist, was
hired by Thomas Edison to develop his new projection
model known as the Vitascope. Porter wanted to develop
a style of filmmaking that would move away from the oneshot short films into a “story-telling [narrative]" style.[7]
When he began making longer films in 1902, he put a
dissolve between every shot, just as Georges Méliès was
already doing, and he frequently had the same action repeated across the dissolves. His film, The Great Train
Robbery (1903), had a running time of twelve minutes,
with twenty separate shots and ten different indoor and
outdoor locations. He used cross-cutting editing method
to show simultaneous action in different places. The time
continuity in The Great Train Robbery was actually more
confusing than that in the films it was modeled on, but
A single frame from the Humorous Phases of Funny Faces animation, showing the use of cut-out technique
The relative sophistication of this piece was not followed
up for some time, with subsequent works in animation
being limited to short, two or three frame effects, such
as appeared in Edwin Stanton Porter's 1902 short “Fun
in a Bakery Shop”, where a lump of dough was made to
6
3
MATURATION
smile over the course of a three-frame sequence. Works
rivaling the British short in length did not appear until
1905, when Edwin Porter made How Jones Lost His Roll,
and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog. Both of
these films had intertitles which were formed by the letters moving into place from a random scattering to form
the words of the titles. This was done by exposing the
film one frame at a time, and moving the letters a little bit
towards their final position between each exposure. This
is what has come to be called “single frame animation" or
“object animation”, and it needs a slightly adapted camera that exposes only one frame for each turn of the crank
handle, rather than the usual eight frames per turn.
In 1906, Albert Edward Smith and James Stuart Blackton
at Vitagraph took the next step, and in their Humorous
Phases of Funny Faces,[17] what appear to be cartoon
drawings of people move from one pose to another. This
is done for most of the length of this film by moving
jointed cut-outs of the figures frame by frame between
the exposures, just as Porter moved his letters. However,
there is a very short section of the film where things are
made to appear to move by altering the drawings themselves from frame to frame, which is how standard animated cartoons have since been made up to today.
The technique of single frame animation was further developed in 1907 by Edwin S. Porter in The Teddy Bears
and by J. Stuart Blackton with Work Made Easy. In the
first of these the toy bears were made to move, apparently
on their own, and in the latter film building tools were
made to perform construction tasks without human intervention, by using frame-by-frame animation. The technique got to Europe almost immediately, and Segundo
de Chomon and others at Pathé took it further, adding
clay animation, in which sculptures were deformed from
one thing into another thing frame by frame in Sculpture moderne (1908), and then Pathé made the next step
to the animation of silhouette shapes. Also in France,
Émile Cohl fully developed drawn animation in a series
of films starting with Fantasmagorie (1908), in which humans and objects drawn as outline figures went though
a series of remarkable interactions and transformations.
In the United States the response was from the famous
strip cartoon artist Winsor McCay, who drew much more
realistic animated figures going through smoother, more
naturalistic motion in a series of films starting with the
film Little Nemo, made for Vitagraph in 1911. In the next
few years various others took part in this development of
animated cartoons in the United States and elsewhere.
2.4
Feature film
See also: Feature film
Films at the time were no longer than one reel, although
some multi-reel films had been made on the life of Christ
in the first few years of cinema. The first feature length
multi-reel film in the world was the 1906 Australian production called The Story of the Kelly Gang.[18]
Poster for a Biograph Studios release from 1913.
It traced the life of the legendary infamous outlaw and
bushranger Ned Kelly (1855–1880) and ran for more than
an hour with a reel length of approximately 4,000 feet
(1,200 m).[19] It was first shown at the Athenaeum Hall
in Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia on 26 December
1906 and in the UK in January 1908.[20][21]
3 Maturation
3.1 Film business
The first successful permanent theatre showing only films
was “The Nickelodeon”, which was opened in Pittsburgh
in 1905. By then there were enough films several minutes
long available to fill a programme running for at least half
an hour, and which could be changed weekly when the
local audience became bored with it. Other exhibitors in
the United States quickly followed suit, and within a couple of years there were thousands of these nickelodeons in
operation. The American experience led to a worldwide
boom in the production and exhibition of films from 1906
onwards.
By 1907 purpose-built cinemas for motion pictures were
being opened across the United States, Britain and
France. The films were often shown with the accompaniment of music provided by a pianist, though there could
be more musicians. There were also a very few larger
3.1
Film business
cinemas in some of the biggest cities. Initially, the majority of films in the programmes were Pathé films, but
this changed fairly quickly as the American companies
cranked up production. The programme was made up of
just a few films, and the show lasted around 30 minutes.
The reel of film, of maximum length 1,000 feet (300 m),
which usually contained one individual film, became the
standard unit of film production and exhibition in this period. The programme was changed twice or more a week,
but went up to five changes of programme a week after
a couple of years. In general, cinemas were set up in the
established entertainment districts of the cities. In 1907,
Pathé began renting their films to cinemas through film
exchanges rather than selling the films outright.
7
Bee Film Company, Vim Comedy Company, Norman
Studios, Gaumont Studios and the Lubin Manufacturing Company. Comedic actor and Georgia native Oliver
“Babe” Hardy began his motion picture career here in
1914. He starred in over 36 short silent films his first year
acting. With the closing of Lubin in early 1915, Oliver
moved to New York then New Jersey to find film jobs.
Acquiring a job with the Vim Company in early 1915,
he returned to Jacksonville in the spring of 1917 before
relocating to Los Angeles in October 1917. The first motion picture made in Technicolor and the first featurelength color movie produced in the United States, The
Gulf Between, was also filmed on location in Jacksonville
in 1917.
Jacksonville was especially important to the African
American film industry. One notable individual in this
regard is the European American producer Richard Norman, who created a string of films starring black actors
in the vein of Oscar Micheaux and the Lincoln Motion
Picture Company. In contrast to the degrading parts offered in certain white films such as The Birth of a Nation,
Norman and his contemporaries sought to create positive
stories featuring African Americans in what he termed
“splendidly assuming different roles.”
An early film, depicting a re-enactment of the Battle of Chemulpo
Bay (Film produced in 1904 by Edison Studios)
By about 1910, actors began to receive screen credit for
their roles, and the way to the creation of film stars was
opened. Films were increasingly longer, and began to feature proper plots and development.
The litigation over patents between all the major American film-making companies led to the formation of a trust
to control the American film business, with each company in the trust being allocated production quotas (two
reels a week for the biggest ones, one reel a week for
the smaller). However, although 6,000 exhibitors signed
up to the trust, about 2,000 others did not and began to
fund new film producing companies. By 1912 the independents had nearly half of the market and the government defeated the trust by initiating anti-trust action at
the same time.
Jacksonville’s mostly conservative residents, however,
objected to the hallmarks of the early movie industry,
such as car chases in the streets, simulated bank robberies
and fire alarms in public places, and even the occasional
riot. In 1917, conservative Democrat John W. Martin
was elected mayor on the platform of taming the city’s
movie industry. By that time, southern California was
emerging as the major movie production center, thanks
in large part to the move of film pioneers like William
Selig and D.W. Griffith to the area. These factors quickly
sealed the demise of Jacksonville as a major film destination.
Another factor for the industry’s move west was that up
until 1913, most American film production was still carried out around New York, but due to the monopoly of
Thomas A. Edison, Inc.'s film patents and its litigious attempts to preserve it, many filmmakers moved to Southern California, starting with Selig in 1909. The sunshine
and scenery was important for the production of Westerns, which came to form a major American film genre
with the first cowboy stars, G.M. Anderson (“Broncho
Billy”) and Tom Mix. Selig pioneered the use of (fairly)
wild animals from a zoo for a series of exotic adventures,
with the actors being menaced or saved by the animals.
Kalem Company sent film crews to places in America and
abroad to film stories in the actual places they were supposed to have happened. Kalem also pioneered the female action heroine from 1912, with Ruth Roland playing
starring roles in their Westerns.
In the early 20th century, before Hollywood, the motion
picture industry was based in New York City. In need
of a winter headquarters, moviemakers were attracted to
Jacksonville Florida due to its warm climate, exotic locations, excellent rail access, and cheaper labor, earning the
city the title of “The Winter Film Capital of the World.”
New York-based Kalem Studios was the first to open
a permanent studio in Jacksonville in 1908. Over the In France, Pathé retained its dominant position, followed
course of the next decade, more than 30 silent film com- still by Gaumont, and then other new companies that appanies established studios in town, including Metro Pic- peared to cater to the film boom. A film company with
tures (later MGM), Edison Studios, Majestic Films, King
8
3
MATURATION
a different approach was Film d'Art. This was set up at
the beginning of 1908 to make films of a serious artistic nature. Their declared programme was to make films
using only the best dramatists, artists and actors. The
first of these was L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duc de Guise), a historical subject set
in the court of Henri III. This film used leading actors
from the Comédie-Française, and had a special accompanying score written by Camille Saint-Saëns. The other
French majors followed suit, and this wave gave rise to the
English-language description of films with artistic pretensions aimed at a sophisticated audience as “art films”. By
1910, the French film companies were starting to make
films as long as two, or even three reels, though most were
still one reel long. This trend was followed in Italy, Den- La Caduta di Troia (The Siege of Troy) (1911).
mark, and Sweden.
In Britain, the Cinematograph Act 1909 was the first
primary legislation to specifically regulate the film industry. Film exhibitions often took place in temporary
venues and the use of highly flammable cellulose nitrate
for film, combined with limelight illumination, created a
significant fire hazard. The Act specified a strict building code which required, amongst other things, that the
projector be enclosed within a fire resisting enclosure.[22]
Regular newsreels were exhibited from 1910 and soon became a popular way for finding out the news - the British
Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole was filmed for
the newsreels as were the suffragette demonstrations that
were happening at the same time. F. Percy Smith was
an early nature documentary pioneer working for Charles
Urban and he pioneered the use of time lapse and micro
cinematography in his 1910 documentary on the growth
of flowers.[23][24]
3.2
New film producing countries
With the worldwide film boom, yet more countries now
joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in
serious film production. In Italy, production was spread
over several centres, with Turin being the first and biggest.
There, Ambrosio was the first company in the field in
1905, and remained the largest in the country through
this period. Its most substantial rival was Cines in Rome,
which started producing in 1906. The great strength of
the Italian industry was historical epics, with large casts
and massive scenery. As early as 1911, Giovanni Pastrone's two-reel La Caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy)
made a big impression worldwide, and it was followed by
even bigger spectacles like Quo Vadis? (1912), which ran
for 90 minutes, and Pastrone’s Cabiria of 1914, which ran
for two and a half hours.
Italian companies also had a strong line in slapstick
comedy, with actors like André Deed, known locally
as “Cretinetti”, and elsewhere as “Foolshead” and “Gribouille”, achieving worldwide fame with his almost surrealistic gags.
The most important film-producing country in Northern
Europe up until the First World War was Denmark. The
Nordisk company was set up there in 1906 by Ole Olsen,
a fairground showman, and after a brief period imitating
the successes of French and British filmmakers, in 1907
he produced 67 films, most directed by Viggo Larsen,
with sensational subjects like Den hvide Slavinde (The
White Slave), Isbjørnenjagt (Polar Bear Hunt) and Løvejagten (The Lion Hunt). By 1910, new smaller Danish
companies began joining the business, and besides making more films about the white slave trade, they contributed other new subjects. The most important of these
finds was Asta Nielsen in Afgrunden (The Abyss), directed by Urban Gad for Kosmorama, This combined the
circus, sex, jealousy and murder, all put over with great
conviction, and pushed the other Danish filmmakers further in this direction. By 1912, the Danish film companies were multiplying rapidly.
The Swedish film industry was smaller and slower to get
started than the Danish industry. Here, the important
man was Charles Magnusson, a newsreel cameraman for
the Svenskabiografteatern cinema chain. He started fiction film production for them in 1909, directing a number
of the films himself. Production increased in 1912, when
the company engaged Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller
as directors. They started out by imitating the subjects
favoured by the Danish film industry, but by 1913 they
were producing their own strikingly original work, which
sold very well.
Russia began its film industry in 1908 with Pathé shooting some fiction subjects there, and then the creation of
real Russian film companies by Aleksandr Drankov and
Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. The Khanzhonkov company
quickly became much the largest Russian film company,
and remained so until 1918.
In Germany, Oskar Messter had been involved in filmmaking from 1896, but did not make a significant number of films per year till 1910. When the worldwide film
boom started, he, and the few other people in the German film business, continued to sell prints of their own
9
films outright, which put them at a disadvantage. It was
only when Paul Davidson, the owner of a chain of cinemas, brought Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad to Germany
from Denmark in 1911, and set up a production company, Projektions-AG “Union” (PAGU), for them, that
a change-over to renting prints began. Messter replied
with a series of longer films starring Henny Porten, but
although these did well in the German-speaking world,
they were not particularly successful internationally, unlike the Asta Nielsen films. Another of the growing German film producers just before World War I was the
German branch of the French Éclair company, Deutsche
Éclair. This was expropriated by the German government, and turned into DECLA when the war started. But
altogether, German producers only had a minor part of
the German market in 1914.
Overall, from about 1910, American films had the largest
share of the market in all European countries except
France, and even in France, the American films had just
pushed the local production out of first place on the eve
of World War I. So even if the war had not happened,
American films may have become dominant worldwide.
Although the war made things much worse for European producers, the technical qualities of American films
made them increasingly attractive to audiences everywhere.
in 1910 in Vitagraph’s Back to Nature. Insert shots were
also used for artistic purposes; the Italian film La mala
planta (The Evil Plant), directed by Mario Caserini had
an insert shot of a snake slithering over the ‘Evil Plant’.
As films grew longer, specialist writers were employed
to simplify more complex stories derived from novels or
plays into a form that could be contained on one reel.
Genres began to be used as categories; the main division
was into comedy and drama, but these categories were
further subdivided.
Intertitles containing lines of dialogue began to be used
consistently from 1908 onwards, such as in Vitagraph’s
An Auto Heroine; or, The Race for the Vitagraph Cup and
How It Was Won. The dialogue was eventually inserted
into the middle of the scene and became commonplace
by 1912. The introduction of dialogue titles transformed
the nature of film narrative. When dialogue titles came
to be always cut into a scene just after a character starts
speaking, and then left with a cut to the character just
before they finish speaking, then one had something that
was effectively the equivalent of a present-day sound film.
4 During World War I
See also: 1910s in film
3.3
Film technique
4.1 Industry
The years of the First World War were a complex transitional period for the film industry. The exhibition of
films changed from short one-reel programmes to feature
films. Exhibition venues became larger and began charging higher prices.
In the United States, these changes brought destruction
to many film companies, the Vitagraph company being
an exception. Film production began to shift to Los Angeles during World War I. The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was formed in 1912 as an umbrella
company. New entrants included the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company, and Famous Players, both formed in
A.E. Smith filming The Bargain Fiend in the Vitagraph Studios 1913, and later amalgamated into Famous Players-Lasky.
The biggest success of these years was David Wark Grifin 1907. Arc floodlights hang overhead.
fith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith followed this
New film techniques that were introduced in this period up with the even bigger Intolerance (1916),but due to the
include the use of artificial lighting, fire effects and Low- high quality of film produced in the USA the market for
key lighting (i.e. lighting in which most of the frame is their films was high.
dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes.
In France, film production shut down due to the general
Continuity of action from shot to shot was also refined,
such as in Pathé's le Cheval emballé (The Runaway Horse)
(1907) where cross-cutting between parallel actions is
used. D. W. Griffith also began using cross-cutting in the
film The Fatal Hour, made in July 1908. Another development was the use of the Point of View shot, first used
military mobilization of the country at the start of the war.
Although film production began again in 1915, it was on
a reduced scale, and the biggest companies gradually retired from production. Italian film production held up
better, although so called “diva films”, starring anguished
female leads were a commercial failure. In Denmark,
10
4 DURING WORLD WAR I
the Nordisk company increased its production so much
in 1915 and 1916 that it could not sell all its films, which
led to a very sharp decline in Danish production, and the
end of Denmark’s importance on the world film scene.
man. The use of anamorphic (in the general sense of distorted shape) images first appears in these years with Abel
Gance’s la Folie du Docteur Tube (The Madness of Dr.
Tube). In this film the effect of a drug administered to
The German film industry was seriously weakened by the a group of people was suggested by shooting the scenes
war. The most important of the new film producers at reflected in a distorting mirror of the fair-ground type.
the time was Joe May, who made a series of thrillers and Symbolic effects taken over from conventional literary
adventure films through the war years, but Ernst Lubitsch and artistic tradition continued to make some appearalso came into prominence with a series of very successful ances in films during these years. In D. W. Griffith’s
comedies and dramas.
The Avenging Conscience (1914), the title “The birth of
Because of the large local market for films in Russia, the the evil thought” precedes a series of three shots of the
industry there was not harmed by the war at first, although protagonist looking at a spider, and ants eating an insect.
the isolation of the country led many Russian films to de- Symbolist art and literature from the turn of the century
velop peculiarly distinctive features. In 1919, after the also had a more general effect on a small number of films
Bolshevik Revolution, an exodus of talent from the coun- made in Italy and Russia. The supine acceptance of death
try took place and film production was drastically cur- resulting from passion and forbidden longings was a major feature of this art, and states of delirium dwelt on at
tailed.
length were important as well.
4.2
New techniques
Insert shot in Old Wives for New (Cecil B. DeMille, 1918)
Complex vignette shot in die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster
Princess).
At this time, studios were blacked out to allow shooting
to be unaffected by changing sunlight. This was replaced
with floodlights and spotlights. The widespread adoption
of irising-in and out to begin and end scenes caught on
in this period. This is the revelation of a film shot in a
circular mask, which gradually gets larger till it expands
beyond the frame. Other shaped slits were used, including
vertical and diagonal apertures.
A new idea taken over from still photography was "soft
focus". This began in 1915, with some shots being intentionally thrown out of focus for expressive effect, as in
Mary Pickford’s Fanchon the Cricket.
It was during this period that camera effects intended to
convey the subjective feelings of characters in a film really began to be established. These could now be done
as Point of View (POV) shots, as in Sidney Drew’s The
Story of the Glove (1915), where a wobbly hand-held shot
of a door and its keyhole represents the POV of a drunken
The use of insert shots, i.e. close-ups of objects other
than faces, had already been established by the Brighton
school, but were infrequently used before 1914. It is really only with Griffith’s The Avenging Conscience that a
new phase in the use of the Insert Shot starts. As well
as the symbolic inserts already mentioned, The Avenging
Conscience also made extensive use of large numbers of
Big Close Up shots of clutching hands and tapping feet as
a means of emphasizing those parts of the body as indicators of psychological tension.
Atmospheric inserts were developed in Europe in the late
1910s. This kind of shot is one in a scene which neither
contains any of the characters in the story, nor is a Point
of View shot seen by one of them. An early example
is in Maurice Tourneur’s The Pride of the Clan (1917),
in which there is a series of shots of waves beating on a
rocky shore to demonstrate the harsh lives of the fishing
folk. Maurice Elvey's Nelson – England’s Immortal Naval
Hero (1919) has a symbolic sequence dissolving from a
picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II to a peacock, and then to a
battleship.
4.4
Hollywood triumphant
By 1914, continuity cinema was the established mode
of commercial cinema. One of the advanced continuity techniques involved an accurate and smooth transition from one shot to another. Cutting to different angles within a scene also became well-established as a technique for dissecting a scene into shots in American films.
If the direction of the shot changes by more than ninety
degrees, it is called a reverse-angle cutting. The leading
figure in the full development of reverse-angle cutting was
Ralph Ince in his films, such as The Right Girl and His
Phantom Sweetheart
11
In Russia, Yevgeni Bauer put a slow intensity of acting
combined with Symbolist overtones onto film in a unique
way.
In Sweden, Victor Sjöström made a series of films that
combined the realities of people’s lives with their surroundings in a striking manner, while Mauritz Stiller developed sophisticated comedy to a new level.
In Germany, Ernst Lubitsch got his inspiration from the
stage work of Max Reinhardt, both in bourgeois comedy
and in spectacle, and applied this to his films, culminating
in his die Puppe (The Doll), die Austernprinzessin (The
The use of flash-back structures continued to develop in Oyster Princess) and Madame Dubarry.
this period, with the usual way of entering and leaving
a flash-back being through a dissolve. The Vitagraph
company’s The Man That Might Have Been (William 4.4 Hollywood triumphant
Humphrey, 1914), is even more complex, with a series
of reveries and flash-backs that contrast the protagonist’s At the start of the First World War, French and Italian
real passage through life with what might have been, if cinema had been the most globally popular. The war
his son had not died.
came as a devastating interruption to European film inAfter 1914, cross cutting between parallel actions came
to be used - more so in American films than in European
ones. Cross-cutting was often used to get new effects of
contrast, such as the cross-cut sequence in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Whispering Chorus, in which a supposedly
dead husband is having a liaison with a Chinese prostitute in an opium den, while simultaneously his unknowing wife is being remarried in church.
4.3
Film art
The general trend in the development of cinema, led from
the United States, was towards using the newly developed
specifically filmic devices for expression of the narrative
content of film stories, and combining this with the standard dramatic structures already in use in commercial
theatre. D. W. Griffith had the highest standing amongst
American directors in the industry, because of the dramatic excitement he conveyed to the audience through
his films. Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat (1915), brought
out the moral dilemmas facing their characters in a more
subtle way than Griffith. DeMille was also in closer touch
with the reality of contemporary American life. Maurice
Tourneur was also highly ranked for the pictorial beauties of his films, together with the subtlety of his handling of fantasy, while at the same time he was capable
of getting greater naturalism from his actors at appropriate moments, as in A Girl’s Folly (1917).
dustries. The American industry, or "Hollywood", as it
was becoming known after its new geographical center in
California, gained the position it has held, more or less,
ever since: film factory for the world and exporting its
product to most countries on earth.
By the 1920s, the United States reached what is still its
era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800
feature films annually,[25] or 82% of the global total (Eyman, 1997). The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster
Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to cite just a few
examples, made these performers’ faces well-known on
every continent. The Western visual norm that would become classical continuity editing was developed and exported – although its adoption was slower in some nonWestern countries without strong realist traditions in art
and drama, such as Japan.
This development was contemporary with the growth
of the studio system and its greatest publicity method,
the star system, which characterized American film for
decades to come and provided models for other film industries. The studios’ efficient, top-down control over all
stages of their product enabled a new and ever-growing
level of lavish production and technical sophistication.
At the same time, the system’s commercial regimentation
and focus on glamorous escapism discouraged daring and
ambition beyond a certain degree, a prime example being
the brief but still legendary directing career of the iconoclastic Erich von Stroheim in the late teens and the ‘20s.
Sidney Drew was the leader in developing “polite comedy”, while slapstick was refined by Fatty Arbuckle and
Charles Chaplin, who both started with Mack Sennett's 5 Sound era
Keystone company. They reduced the usual frenetic pace
of Sennett’s films to give the audience a chance to appreciate the subtlety and finesse of their movement, and the Main article: Sound film
cleverness of their gags. By 1917 Chaplin was also intro- See also: 1930s in film
ducing more dramatic plot into his films, and mixing the
During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz Singer,
comedy with sentiment.
12
6 WORLD WAR II AND ITS AFTERMATH
which was mostly silent but contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and
singing) in a feature film; but this process was actually
accomplished first by Charles Taze Russell in 1914 with
the lengthy film The Photo-Drama of Creation. This
drama consisted of picture slides and moving pictures
synchronized with phonograph records of talks and music. The early sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone
were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods like Fox
Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone.
The trend convinced the largely reluctant industrialists
that “talking pictures”, or “talkies”, were the future. A
lot of attempts were made before the success of The Jazz
Singer, that can be seen in the List of film sound systems.
The change was remarkably swift. By the end of 1929,
Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized). Total
changeover was slightly slower in the rest of the world,
principally for economic reasons. Cultural reasons were
also a factor in countries like China and Japan, where
silents co-existed successfully with sound well into the
1930s, indeed producing what would be some of the most
revered classics in those countries, like Wu Yonggang's
The Goddess (China, 1934) and Yasujirō Ozu's I Was
Born, But... (Japan, 1932). But even in Japan, a figure
such as the benshi, the live narrator who was a major part
of Japanese silent cinema, found his acting career was
ending.
Sound further tightened the grip of major studios in numerous countries: the vast expense of the transition overwhelmed smaller competitors, while the novelty of sound
lured vastly larger audiences for those producers that remained. In the case of the U.S., some historians credit
sound with saving the Hollywood studio system in the
face of the Great Depression (Parkinson, 1995). Thus
began what is now often called “The Golden Age of Hollywood”, which refers roughly to the period beginning
with the introduction of sound until the late 1940s. The
American cinema reached its peak of efficiently manufactured glamour and global appeal during this period.
The top actors of the era are now thought of as the classic film stars, such as Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn,
Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, and the greatest box office draw of the 1930s, child performer Shirley Temple.
5.1
Creative impact of sound
Creatively, however, the rapid transition was a difficult
one, and in some ways, film briefly reverted to the conditions of its earliest days. The late '20s were full of static,
stagey talkies as artists in front of and behind the camera struggled with the stringent limitations of the early
sound equipment and their own uncertainty as to how to
utilize the new medium. Many stage performers, directors and writers were introduced to cinema as producers sought personnel experienced in dialogue-based storytelling. Many major silent filmmakers and actors were
unable to adjust and found their careers severely curtailed
or even ended.
This awkward period was fairly short-lived. 1929 was a
watershed year: William Wellman with Chinatown Nights
and The Man I Love, Rouben Mamoulian with Applause,
Alfred Hitchcock with Blackmail (Britain’s first sound
feature), were among the directors to bring greater fluidity to talkies and experiment with the expressive use
of sound (Eyman, 1997). In this, they both benefited
from, and pushed further, technical advances in microphones and cameras, and capabilities for editing and postsynchronizing sound (rather than recording all sound directly at the time of filming).
Sound films emphasized black history and benefited
different genres more so than silents did. Most obviously, the musical film was born; the first classicstyle Hollywood musical was The Broadway Melody
(1929) and the form would find its first major creator
in choreographer/director Busby Berkeley (42nd Street,
1933, Dames, 1934). In France, avant-garde director
René Clair made surreal use of song and dance in comedies like Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) and Le Million (1931). Universal Pictures begin releasing gothic
horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931).
In 1933, RKO released Merian C. Cooper's classic “giant monster” film King Kong. The trend thrived best
in India, where the influence of the country’s traditional
song-and-dance drama made the musical the basic form
of most sound films (Cook, 1990); virtually unnoticed by
the Western world for decades, this Indian popular cinema would nevertheless become the world’s most prolific.
(See also Bollywood.)
At this time, American gangster films like Little Caesar and Wellman’s The Public Enemy (both 1931) became popular. Dialogue now took precedence over “slapstick” in Hollywood comedies: the fast-paced, witty banter of The Front Page (1931) or It Happened One Night
(1934), the sexual double entrendres of Mae West (She
Done Him Wrong, 1933) or the often subversively anarchic nonsense talk of the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup,
1933). Walt Disney, who had previously been in the short
cartoon business, stepped into feature films with the first
English-speaking animated feature Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs; released by RKO Pictures in 1937. 1939,
a major year for American cinema, brought such films as
The Wizard of Oz and Gone with The Wind.
6 World War II and its aftermath
Main article: 1940s in film
The desire for wartime propaganda created a renaissance
in the film industry in Britain, with realistic war dramas
like 49th Parallel (1941), Went the Day Well? (1942),
The Way Ahead (1944) and Noël Coward and David
13
Lean's celebrated naval film In Which We Serve in 1942,
which won a special Academy Award. These existed
alongside more flamboyant films like Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel
Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944) and A Matter
of Life and Death (1946), as well as Laurence Olivier's
1944 film Henry V, based on the Shakespearean history Henry V. The success of Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs allowed Disney to make more animated features
like Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941)
and Bambi (1942).
leased, usually considered the last film of this type.
In the late 1940s, in Britain, Ealing Studios embarked
on their series of celebrated comedies, including Whisky
Galore!, Passport to Pimlico, Kind Hearts and Coronets
and The Man in the White Suit, and Carol Reed directed
his influential thrillers Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and
The Third Man. David Lean was also rapidly becoming a force in world cinema with Brief Encounter and his
Dickens adaptations Great Expectations and Oliver Twist,
and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger would experience the best of their creative partnership with films like
The onset of US involvement in World War II also Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.
brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and
propaganda. American propaganda films included Desperate Journey, Mrs. Miniver, Forever and a Day and 7 1950s
Objective Burma. Notable American films from the war
years include the anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine (1943),
scripted by Dashiell Hammett; Shadow of a Doubt Main article: 1950s in film
(1943), Hitchcock’s direction of a script by Thornton The House Un-American Activities Committee invesWilder; the George M. Cohan biopic, Yankee Doodle
Dandy (1942), starring James Cagney, and the immensely
popular Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart
would star in 36 films between 1934 and 1942 including
John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941), one of the first
films now considered a classic film noir. In 1941, RKO
Pictures released Citizen Kane made by Orson Welles. It
is often considered the greatest film of all time. It would
set the stage for the modern motion picture, as it revolutionized film story telling.
The strictures of wartime also brought an interest in
more fantastical subjects. These included Britain’s
Gainsborough melodramas (including The Man in Grey
and The Wicked Lady), and films like Here Comes Mr.
Jordan, Heaven Can Wait, I Married a Witch and Blithe
Spirit. Val Lewton also produced a series of atmospheric
and influential small-budget horror films, some of the
more famous examples being Cat People, Isle of the Dead
and The Body Snatcher. The decade probably also saw
the so-called “women’s pictures”, such as Now, Voyager,
Random Harvest and Mildred Pierce at the peak of their
popularity.
1946 saw RKO Radio releasing It’s a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra. Soldiers returning from the war
would provide the inspiration for films like The Best Years
of Our Lives, and many of those in the film industry had
served in some capacity during the war. Samuel Fuller's
experiences in World War II would influence his largely
autobiographical films of later decades such as The Big
Red One. The Actor’s Studio was founded in October
1947 by Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Cheryl Crawford,
and the same year Oskar Fischinger filmed Motion Painting No. 1.
A production scene from the 1950 Hollywood film Julius Caesar
starring Charlton Heston.
tigated Hollywood in the early 1950s. Protested by the
Hollywood Ten before the committee, the hearings resulted in the blacklisting of many actors, writers and
directors, including Chayefsky, Charlie Chaplin, and
Dalton Trumbo, and many of these fled to Europe, especially the United Kingdom.
The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a type of nearparanoia manifested in themes such as invading armies
of evil aliens, (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The War
of the Worlds); and communist fifth columnists, (The
Manchurian Candidate).
During the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was also threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some film theatres would bankrupt and close. The demise of the “studio system” spurred the self-commentary of films like
Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful
In 1943, Ossessione was screened in Italy, marking the
(1952).
beginning of Italian neorealism. Major films of this type
during the 1940s included Bicycle Thieves, Rome, Open In 1950, the Lettrists avante-gardists caused riots at the
City, and La Terra Trema. In 1952 Umberto D was re- Cannes Film Festival, when Isidore Isou's Treatise on
Slime and Eternity was screened. After their criticism
14
7
1950S
of Charlie Chaplin and split with the movement, the 7.1 Golden Age of Asian cinema
Ultra-Lettrists continued to cause disruptions when they
showed their new hypergraphical techniques. The most Main article: Asian cinema
notorious film is Guy Debord's Howls for Sade of 1952.
Following the end of World War II in the 1940s, the
Distressed by the increasing number of closed theatres,
studios and companies would find new and innovative
ways to bring audiences back. These included attempts to widen their appeal with new screen formats.
Cinemascope, which would remain a 20th Century Fox
distinction until 1967, was announced with 1953’s The
Robe. VistaVision, Cinerama, and Todd-AO boasted
a “bigger is better” approach to marketing films to a
dwindling US audience. This resulted in the revival of
epic films to take advantage of the new big screen formats. Some of the most successful examples of these
Biblical and historical spectaculars include The Ten Commandments (1956), The Vikings (1958), Ben-Hur (1959),
Spartacus (1960) and El Cid (1961). Also during this period a number of other significant films were produced
in Todd-AO, developed by Mike Todd shortly before his
death, including Oklahoma! (1955), Around the World
in 80 Days (1956), South Pacific (1958) and Cleopatra
(1963) plus many more.
Gimmicks also proliferated to lure in audiences. The fad
for 3-D film would last for only two years, 1952–1954,
and helped sell House of Wax and Creature from the Black
Lagoon. Producer William Castle would tout films featuring “Emergo” “Percepto”, the first of a series of gimmicks that would remain popular marketing tools for Cas- Satyajit Ray, Indian Bengali film director.
tle and others throughout the 1960s.
In the U.S., a post-WW2 tendency toward questioning the
establishment and societal norms and the early activism
of the Civil Rights Movement was reflected in Hollywood films such as Blackboard Jungle (1955), On the Waterfront (1954), Paddy Chayefsky's Marty and Reginald
Rose's 12 Angry Men (1957). Disney continued making animated films, notably; Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan
(1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and Sleeping Beauty
(1959). He began, however, getting more involved in live
action films, producing classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), and Old Yeller (1957). Television began competing seriously with films projected in theatres,
but surprisingly it promoted more filmgoing rather than
curtailing it.
Limelight is probably a unique film in at least one interesting respect. Its two leads, Charlie Chaplin and Claire
Bloom, were in the industry in no less than three different
centuries. In the 19th Century, Chaplin made his theatrical debut at the age of eight, in 1897, in a clog dancing
troupe, The Eight Lancaster Lads. In the 21st Century,
Bloom is still enjoying a full and productive career, having appeared in dozens of films and television series produced up to and including 2013. She received particular
acclaim for her role in The King’s Speech (2010).
following decade, the 1950s, marked a 'Golden Age'
for non-English world cinema,[26][27] especially for Asian
cinema.[28][29] Many of the most critically acclaimed
Asian films of all time were produced during this decade,
including Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), Satyajit
Ray's The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959) and The Music Room
(1958), Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1954) and Sansho
the Bailiff (1954), Raj Kapoor's Awaara (1951), Mikio
Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955), Guru Dutt's Pyaasa
(1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), and the Akira Kurosawa films Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Throne of Blood (1957).[28][29]
During Japanese cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s,
successful films included Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) and The Hidden Fortress (1958) by Akira
Kurosawa, as well as Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953)
and Ishirō Honda's Godzilla (1954).[30] These films have
had a profound influence on world cinema. In particular,
Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai has been remade several times
as Western films, such as The Magnificent Seven (1960)
and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), and has also inspired
several Bollywood films, such as Sholay (1975) and China
Gate (1998). Rashomon was also remade as The Outrage
(1964), and inspired films with "Rashomon effect" storytelling methods, such as Andha Naal (1954), The Usual
Suspects (1995) and Hero (2002). The Hidden Fortress
was also the inspiration behind George Lucas' Star Wars
15
(1977). Other famous Japanese filmmakers from this period include Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Inagaki and Nagisa Oshima.[28] Japanese cinema later became one of the main inspirations behind the New Hollywood movement of the 1960s to 1980s.
During Indian cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, it
was producing 200 films annually, while Indian independent films gained greater recognition through international film festivals. One of the most famous was The Apu
Trilogy (1955–1959) from critically acclaimed Bengali
film director Satyajit Ray, whose films had a profound
influence on world cinema, with directors such as Akira
Kurosawa,[31] Martin Scorsese,[32][33] James Ivory,[34]
Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut,[35]
Steven Spielberg,[36][37][38] Carlos Saura,[39] Jean-Luc
Godard,[40] Isao Takahata,[41] Gregory Nava, Ira Sachs,
Wes Anderson[42] and Danny Boyle[43] being influenced
by his cinematic style. According to Michael Sragow
of The Atlantic Monthly, the “youthful coming-of-age
dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties
owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy”.[44] Subrata
Mitra's cinematographic technique of bounce lighting
also originates from The Apu Trilogy.[45] Other famous
Indian filmmakers from this period include Guru Dutt,[28]
Ritwik Ghatak,[29] Mrinal Sen, Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy,
K. Asif and Mehboob Khan.[46]
cation in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad,
such as Pinewood in the UK and Cinecittà in Rome.
“Hollywood” films were still largely aimed at family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films
that produced the studios’ biggest successes. Productions
like Mary Poppins (1964), My Fair Lady (1964) and The
Sound of Music (1965) were among the biggest moneymakers of the decade. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the
power of individual actors also contributed to the decline
of traditional Hollywood studio production.
There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema in America during this period. During
the late 1950s and 1960s, the French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard produced films such as Les quatre cents coups, Breathless and
Jules et Jim which broke the rules of Hollywood cinema’s
narrative structure. As well, audiences were becoming
aware of Italian films like Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita
and the stark dramas of Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman.
In Britain, the “Free Cinema” of Lindsay Anderson, Tony
Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and
innovative dramas including Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, A Kind of Loving and This Sporting Life. Other
British films such as Repulsion, Darling, Alfie, Blowup and
Georgy Girl (all in 1965-1966) helped to reduce prohibiThe cinema of South Korea also experienced a 'Golden tions sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and
Age' in the 1950s, beginning with director Lee Kyu- violence of the James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No
hwan’s tremendously successful remake of Chunhyang- in 1962 would render the series popular worldwide.
jon (1955).[47] That year also saw the release of Yangsan During the 1960s, Ousmane Sembène produced several
Province by the renowned director, Kim Ki-young, mark- French- and Wolof-language films and became the 'faing the beginning of his productive career. Both the qual- ther' of African Cinema. In Latin America, the domiity and quantity of filmmaking had increased rapidly by nance of the “Hollywood” model was challenged by many
the end of the 1950s. South Korean films, such as Lee film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino
Byeong-il’s 1956 comedy Sijibganeun nal (The Wedding called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast
Day), had begun winning international awards. In con- to Hollywood and the European auteur cinema.
trast to the beginning of the 1950s, when only 5 films
were made per year, 111 films were produced in South Further, the nuclear paranoia of the age, and the threat of
an apocalyptic nuclear exchange (like the 1962 close-call
Korea in 1959.[48]
with the USSR during the Cuban missile crisis) prompted
The 1950s was also a 'Golden Age' for Philippine cinema, a reaction within the film community as well. Films like
with the emergence of more artistic and mature films, and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe with
significant improvement in cinematic techniques among Henry Fonda were produced in a Hollywood that was
filmmakers. The studio system produced frenetic activ- once known for its overt patriotism and wartime propaity in the local film industry as many films were made ganda.
annually and several local talents started to earn recognition abroad. The premiere Philippine directors of the era In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of
included Gerardo de Leon, Gregorio Fernández, Eddie Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as
well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like In
Romero, Lamberto Avellana, and Cirio Santiago.[49][50]
the Year of the Pig about the Vietnam War by Emile de
Antonio. By the late 1960s however, Hollywood filmmakers were beginning to create more innovative and
8 1960s
groundbreaking films that reflected the social revolution
taken over much of the western world such as Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), 2001: A Space
Main article: 1960s in film
Odyssey (1968), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969) and The Wild Bunch
During the 1960s, the studio system in Hollywood de(1969). Bonnie and Clyde is often considered the beginclined, because many films were now being made on lo-
16
9
ning of the so-called New Hollywood.
In Japanese cinema, Academy Award winning director
Akira Kurosawa produced Yojimbo (1961), which like
his previous films also had a profound influence around
the world. The influence of this film is most apparent
in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Walter
Hill's Last Man Standing (1996). Yojimbo was also the
origin of the "Man with No Name" trend.
Meanwhile, in India, the Academy Award winning
Bengali director Satyajit Ray wrote a script for The Alien
in 1967, based on a Bengali science fiction story he himself had written in 1962. The film was intended to be
his debut in Hollywood but the production was eventually cancelled. Nevertheless, the script went on to influence later films such as Steven Spielberg's E.T. (1982) and
Rakesh Roshan's Koi... Mil Gaya (2003).
9
1970s
Main article: 1970s in film
The New Hollywood was the period following the decline of the studio system during the 1950s and 1960s
and the end of the production code, (which was replaced
in 1968 by the MPAA film rating system). During the
1970s, filmmakers increasingly depicted explicit sexual
content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that included graphic images of bloody deaths - a good example
of this is Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972).
Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling of the New Hollywood producers. The new methods of drama and characterization played upon audience
expectations acquired during the classical/Golden Age
period: story chronology may be scrambled, storylines
may feature unsettling "twist endings", main characters
may behave in a morally ambiguous fashion, and the lines
between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred.
The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen
in 1940s and 1950s film noir films, in films such as Rebel
Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock’s Psycho. 1971
marked the release of controversial films like Straw Dogs,
A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection and Dirty
Harry. This sparked heated controversy over the perceived escalation of violence in cinema.
During the 1970s, a new group of American filmmakers emerged, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, and
Robert Altman. This coincided with the increasing popularity of the auteur theory in film literature and the media, which posited that a film director’s films express their
personal vision and creative insights. The development
of the auteur style of filmmaking helped to give these directors far greater control over their projects than would
have been possible in earlier eras. This led to some great
critical and commercial successes, like Scorsese’s Taxi
1970S
Driver, Coppola’s The Godfather films, William Friedkin's The Exorcist, Altman’s Nashville, Allen’s Annie Hall
and Manhattan, Malick’s Badlands and Days of Heaven,
and Polish immigrant Roman Polanski's Chinatown. It
also, however, resulted in some failures, including Peter
Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and Michael Cimino's
hugely expensive Western epic Heaven’s Gate, which
helped to bring about the demise of its backer, United
Artists.
The financial disaster of Heaven’s Gate marked the end
of the visionary “auteur” directors of the “New Hollywood”, who had unrestrained creative and financial freedom to develop films. The phenomenal success in the
1970s of Spielberg’s Jaws originated the concept of the
modern "blockbuster". However, the enormous success
of George Lucas’ 1977 film Star Wars led to much more
than just the popularization of blockbuster film-making.
The films revolutionary use of special effects, sound editing and music had led it to become widely regarded as
one of the single most important films in the medium’s
history, as well as the most influential film of the 1970s.
Hollywood studios increasingly focused on producing a
smaller number of very large budget films with massive
marketing and promotional campaigns. This trend had
already been foreshadowed by the commercial success of
disaster films such as The Poseidon Adventure and The
Towering Inferno.
During the mid-1970s, more pornographic theatres, euphemistically called “adult cinemas”, were established,
and the legal production of hardcore pornographic films
began. Porn films such as Deep Throat and its star Linda
Lovelace became something of a popular culture phenomenon and resulted in a spate of similar sex films. The
porn cinemas finally died out during the 1980s, when the
popularization of the home VCR and pornography videotapes allowed audiences to watch sex films at home. In the
early 1970s, English-language audiences became more
aware of the new West German cinema, with Werner
Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders
among its leading exponents.
In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the
popularity of martial arts films, largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee, who departed from the artistic style of
traditional Chinese martial arts films and added a much
greater sense of realism to them with his Jeet Kune Do
style. This began with The Big Boss (1971), which was
a major success across Asia. However, he didn't gain
fame in the Western world until shortly after his death
in 1973, when Enter the Dragon was released. The film
went on to become the most successful martial arts film in
cinematic history, popularized the martial arts film genre
across the world, and cemented Bruce Lee’s status as a
cultural icon. Hong Kong action cinema, however, was
in decline due to a wave of "Bruceploitation" films. This
trend eventually came to an end in 1978 with the martial arts comedy films, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and
Drunken Master, directed by Yuen Woo-ping and star-
17
ring Jackie Chan, laying the foundations for the rise of lish him as one of the most critically acclaimed American
Hong Kong action cinema in the 1980s.
film makers of the era. Also during 1983 Scarface was
While the musical film genre had declined in Hollywood released, was very profitable and resulted in even greater
by this time, musical films were quickly gaining popular- fame for its leading actor Al Pacino. Probably the most
ity in the cinema of India, where the term "Bollywood" successful film commercially was vended during 1989:
was coined for the growing Hindi film industry in Bombay Tim Burton's version of Bob Kane's creation, Batman,
(now Mumbai) that ended up dominating South Asian exceeded box-office records. Jack Nicholson's portrayal
cinema, overtaking the more critically acclaimed Bengali of the demented Joker earned him a total of $60,000,000
after figuring in his percentage of the gross.
film industry in popularity. Hindi filmmakers combined
the Hollywood musical formula with the conventions of British cinema was given a boost during the early 1980s
ancient Indian theatre to create a new film genre called by the arrival of David Puttnam's company Goldcrest
"Masala", which dominated Indian cinema throughout Films. The films Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Killing
the late 20th century.[51] These “Masala” films portrayed Fields and A Room with a View appealed to a “midaction, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all at dlebrow” audience which was increasingly being ignored
once, with "filmi" song and dance routines thrown in. by the major Hollywood studios. While the films of
This trend began with films directed by Manmohan Desai the 1970s had helped to define modern blockbuster moand starring Amitabh Bachchan, who remains one of the tion pictures, the way “Hollywood” released its films
most popular film stars in South Asia. The most popular would now change. Films, for the most part, would preIndian film of all time was Sholay (1975), a “Masala” film miere in a wider number of theatres, although, to this
inspired by a real-life dacoit as well as Kurosawa’s Seven day, some films still premiere using the route of the
Samurai and the Spaghetti Westerns.
limited/roadshow release system. Against some expectaThe end of the decade saw the first major international tions, the rise of the multiplex cinema did not allow less
marketing of Australian cinema, as Peter Weir's films mainstream films to be shown, but simply allowed the maPicnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and Fred jor blockbusters to be given an even greater number of
Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith gained critical screenings. However, films that had been overlooked in
acclaim. In 1979, Australian filmmaker George Miller cinemas were increasingly being given a second chance
also garnered international attention for his violent, low- on home video.
budget action film Mad Max.
10
1980s
Main article: 1980s in film
During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching films on their home VCRs. In the early part of that
decade, the film studios tried legal action to ban home
ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which
proved unsuccessful. Eventually, the sale and rental of
films on home video became a significant “second venue”
for exhibition of films, and an additional source of revenue for the film industries.
The Lucas–Spielberg combine would dominate “Hollywood” cinema for much of the 1980s, and lead to much
imitation. Two follow-ups to Star Wars, three to Jaws,
and three Indiana Jones films helped to make sequels
of successful films more of an expectation than ever
before. Lucas also launched THX Ltd, a division of
Lucasfilm in 1982,[52] while Spielberg enjoyed one of the
decade’s greatest successes in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
the same year. 1982 also saw the release of Disney’s
Tron which was one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively. American independent cinema struggled more during the decade, although Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), After Hours
(1985), and The King of Comedy (1983) helped to estab-
During the 1980s, Japanese cinema experienced a revival, largely due to the success of anime films. At the
beginning of the 1980s, Space Battleship Yamato (1973)
and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), both of which were unsuccessful as television series, were remade as films and
became hugely successful in Japan. In particular, Mobile Suit Gundam sparked the Gundam franchise of Real
Robot mecha anime. The success of Macross: Do You
Remember Love? also sparked a Macross franchise of
mecha anime. This was also the decade when Studio Ghibli was founded. The studio produced Hayao Miyazaki's
first fantasy films, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
(1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986), as well as Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988), all of which were
very successful in Japan and received worldwide critical acclaim. Original video animation (OVA) films also
began during this decade; the most influential of these
early OVA films was Noboru Ishiguro's cyberpunk film
Megazone 23 (1985). The most famous anime film of
this decade was Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk film Akira
(1988), which although initially unsuccessful at Japanese
theaters, went on to become an international success.
Hong Kong action cinema, which was in a state of decline due to endless Bruceploitation films after the death
of Bruce Lee, also experienced a revival in the 1980s,
largely due to the reinvention of the action film genre by
Jackie Chan. He had previously combined the comedy
film and martial arts film genres successfully in the 1978
films Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master. The next step he took was in combining this com-
18
12 RECENT YEARS
edy martial arts genre with a new emphasis on elaborate
and highly dangerous stunts, reminiscent of the silent film
era. The first film in this new style of action cinema was
Project A (1983), which saw the formation of the Jackie
Chan Stunt Team as well as the “Three Brothers” (Chan,
Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao). The film added elaborate, dangerous stunts to the fights and slapstick humor,
and became a huge success throughout the Far East. As
a result, Chan continued this trend with martial arts action films containing even more elaborate and dangerous
stunts, including Wheels on Meals (1984), Police Story
(1985), Armour of God (1986), Project A Part II (1987),
Police Story 2 (1988), and Dragons Forever (1988). Other
new trends which began in the 1980s were the "girls with
guns" subgenre, for which Michelle Yeoh gained fame;
and especially the "heroic bloodshed" genre, revolving
around Triads, largely pioneered by John Woo and for
which Chow Yun-fat became famous. These Hong Kong
action trends were later adopted by many Hollywood action films in the 1990s and 2000s.
ginning of film and video distribution online. Animated
films aimed at family audiences also regained their popularity, with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin
(1992), and The Lion King (1994). During 1995, the first
feature length computer-animated feature, Toy Story, was
produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by
Disney. After the success of Toy Story, computer animation would grow to become the dominant technique
for feature length animation, which would allow competing film companies such as DreamWorks Animation
and 20th Century Fox to effectively compete with Disney with successful films of their own. During the late
1990s, another cinematic transition began, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Meanwhile,
DVDs became the new standard for consumer video, replacing VHS tapes.
12 Recent years
Main articles: 2000s in film and 2010s in film
11
1990s
The documentary film also rose as a commercial genre
for perhaps the first time, with the success of films such
Main article: 1990s in film
The early 1990s saw the development of a commercially as March of the Penguins and Michael Moore's Bowling
for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. A new genre was
created with Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of
Iraq, when 150 inexpensive DV cameras were distributed
across Iraq, transforming ordinary people into collaborative filmmakers. The success of Gladiator led to a revival
of interest in epic cinema, and Moulin Rouge! renewed interest in musical cinema. Home theatre systems became
increasingly sophisticated, as did some of the special edition DVDs designed to be shown on them. The Lord of
the Rings trilogy was released on DVD in both the theCinema admissions in 1995
atrical version and in a special extended version intended
only for home cinema audiences.
successful independent cinema in the United States. AlIn 2001, the Harry Potter film series began, and by its end
though cinema was increasingly dominated by specialeffects films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in 2011, it had become the highest-grossing film franchise
of all time until the Marvel Cinematic Universe passed it
Jurassic Park (1993) and Titanic (1997), the latter of
which became the highest-grossing film of all time at the in 2015.
time up until "Avatar", also directed by James Cameron, More films were also being released simultaneously to
independent films like Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and IMAX cinema, the first was in 2002’s Disney animation
Videotape (1989) and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs Treasure Planet; and the first live action was in 2003’s
(1992) had significant commercial success both at the The Matrix Revolutions and a re-release of The Matrix
cinema and on home video. Filmmakers associated with Reloaded. Later in the decade, The Dark Knight was the
the Danish filmmovement Dogme 95 introduced a man- first major feature film to have been at least partially shot
ifesto aimed to purify filmmaking. Its first few films in IMAX technology.
gained worldwide critical acclaim, after which the move- There has been an increasing globalization of cinema durment slowly faded out.
ing this decade, with foreign-language films gaining popMajor American studios began to create their own
“independent” production companies to finance and produce non-mainstream fare. One of the most successful independents of the 1990s, Miramax Films, was bought by
Disney the year before the release of Tarantino’s runaway
hit Pulp Fiction in 1994. The same year marked the be-
ularity in English-speaking markets. Examples of such
films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Mandarin), Amelie (French), Lagaan (Hindi), Spirited Away
(Japanese), City of God (Portuguese), The Passion of the
Christ (Aramaic), Apocalypto (Mayan), Slumdog Millionaire (parts in Hindi), and Inglourious Basterds (multiple
19
European languages).
• List of years in film
Recently there has been a revival in 3D film popularity the
first being James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss which
was released as the first full-length 3-D IMAX feature
filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera
system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and
was built for Cameron by Emmy nominated Director of
Photography Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same
camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3D: Game Over
(2003), Aliens of the Deep IMAX (2005), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005).
• Lists of film topics
After James Cameron’s 3D film Avatar became the
highest-grossing film of all time, 3D films have gained increasing popularity with many other films being released
in 3D, with the best critical and financial successes being
in the field of feature film animation such as DreamWorks
Animation's How To Train Your Dragon and Walt Disney
Pictures/Pixar's Toy Story 3. Avatar is also note-worthy
for pioneering highly sophisticated use of motion capture technology and influencing several other films such
as Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
• Women’s cinema
As of 2010, the largest film industries by number of feature films produced are those of India, the United States,
China, Nigeria and Japan.[53] Beginning in 2008 with Iron
Man and The Dark Knight, superhero films have greatly
increased in popularity and financial success, with films
based on Marvel and DC comics regularly being released
every year up to the present.[54]
13
See also
• B film
• Cinema of the world
• Cinema of West Bengal
• Newsreel
• Runaway production
• Silent film
• Sound film
• The Story of Film: An Odyssey
14 References
[1] Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristen. (2003) “Film
History An Introduction”. New York: McGraw-Hill
Company Inc.p.13
[2] Witmark, Isidore; Goldberg, Isaac (1939). The House of
Witmark. New York: New York OOO. p. 116. ISBN
0-306-70686-5. ASIN B001DZ8MP6.
[3] Abel, Richard; Rick Altman (2001). lpg=PA 143 That
Most American of Attractions, The Illustrated Song Check
|url= value (help). Indiana University Press. pp. 143–153.
ISBN 0-253-33988-X.
[4] “The genesis of cinematography distinguishes two dates:in
1888 the technology became available and from 1900 onwards film language developed.”. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
[5] “The cine camera which began the National Cinematography Collection”. National Media Museum.
[6] Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 1. The
H. W. Wilson Company. 1987. pp. 747-765.
[7] Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema.
Jefferson: McFarland Company, Inc, 2000. Print.
• Cinema of Bengal
[8] “The execution of Mary Stuart 1895”.
• Culture history
[9] “Santa Claus (1898)". BFI Screenonline.
• Experimental film
• Fictional film
• Film & History
• Film noir
• History of science fiction films
• Kammerspielfilm
• List of books on films
• List of cinematic firsts
• List of color film systems
• List of film formats
[10] Brooke, Michael. “Come Along, Do!". BFI Screenonline
Database. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
[11] Brooke, Michael. “As Seen Through a Telescope”. BFI
Screenonline Database. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
[12] Fisher, David. “As Seen Through a Telescope”. Brightonfilm.com. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
[13] “The Brighton School”. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
[14] “Desperate Poaching Affray (1903)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
[15] Hayes, Christian. Phantom Rides, BFI Screen Online.
Accessed 30 August 2011.
[16] Hammond, Paul (1974). Marvellous Méliès. London:
Gordon Fraser. p. 141. ISBN 0900406380.
20
14
REFERENCES
[17] Beckerman, Howard (2003-09-01). Animation: the whole
story. Skyhorse Publishing Inc. p. 16. ISBN 978-158115-301-9. Retrieved 16 August 2011.
[36] Ray, Satyajit. “Ordeals of the Alien”. The Unmade Ray.
Satyajit Ray Society. Archived from the original on 200804-27. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
[18] Chichester, Jo. “Return of the Kelly Gang”. The UNESCO
Courier (UNESCO) (2007 #5). ISSN 1993-8616.
[37] Neumann P. “Biography for Satyajit Ray”. Internet Movie
Database Inc. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
[19] Ray Edmondson and Andrew Pike (1982) Australia’s Lost
Films. P.13. National Library of Australia, Canberra.
ISBN 0-642-99251-7
[38] Newman J (2001-09-17). “Satyajit Ray Collection receives Packard grant and lecture endowment”. UC Santa
Cruz Currents online. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
[20] The Argus, 27 December 1906
[21] Ina Bertrand and Ken Robb (1982) “The continuing saga
of...The Story of the Kelly Gang.” Cinema Papers, No.
36, February 1982, p.18-22
[22] Gardiner, Juliet (2010). “Prologue”. The Thirties - an
Intimate History. London: Harper Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780-00-724076-0.
[23] Dixon, Bryony. “Smith, Percy (1880-1945)".
Screenonlinee. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
BFI
[24] “Percy Smith”. wildfilmhistory.org. Retrieved 2011-0424.
[25] Film History of the 1920s
[39] Suchetana Ray (March 11, 2008). “Satyajit Ray is this
Spanish director’s inspiration”. CNN-IBN. Retrieved
2009-06-06.
[40] André Habib. “Before and After: Origins and Death in the
Work of Jean-Luc Godard”. Senses of Cinema. Archived
from the original on 2006-06-14. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
[41] Daniel Thomas (January 20, 2003). “Film Reviews:
Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka)". Retrieved 200905-30.
[42] “On Ray’s Trail”. The Statesman. Archived from the original on 2008-01-03. Retrieved 2007-10-19.
[43] Alkarim Jivani (February 2009). “Mumbai rising”. Sight
& Sound. Archived from the original on 1 February 2009.
Retrieved 2009-02-01.
[26] “The Golden Age of the Foreign Film”. Film Forum.
Archived from the original on 19 June 2008. Retrieved
2009-05-29.
[44] Sragow, Michael (1994). “An Art Wedded to Truth”. The
Atlantic Monthly (University of California, Santa Cruz).
Archived from the original on 12 April 2009. Retrieved
2009-05-11.
[27] Tracy K. Daniels (January 11, 2008). “Hybrid Cinematics: Rethinking the role of filmmakers of color in American Cinema”. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2014-11-04.
[45] “Subrata Mitra”. Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
[28] Kevin Lee (2002-09-05). “A Slanted Canon”. Asian
American Film Commentary. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
[29] Totaro, Donato (January 31, 2003). “The “Sight &
Sound” of Canons”. Offscreen Journal (Canada Council
for the Arts). Retrieved 2009-04-19.
[30] Dave Kehr, Anime, Japanese Cinema’s Second Golden
Age, The New York Times, January 20, 2002.
[31] Robinson, A (2003). Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The
Biography of a Master Film-Maker. I. B. Tauris. p. 96.
ISBN 1-86064-965-3.
[32] Chris Ingui. “Martin Scorsese hits DC, hangs with the
Hachet”. Hatchet. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
[33] Jay Antani (2004). “Raging Bull: A film review”.
Filmcritic.com. Archived from the original on 14 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
[34] Sheldon Hall. “Ivory, James (1928-)". Screen Online.
Retrieved 2007-02-12.
[35] Dave Kehr (May 5, 1995). “THE 'WORLD' OF SATYAJIT RAY: LEGACY OF INDIA'S PREMIER FILM
MAKER ON DISPLAY”. Daily News. Archived from
the original on 15 September 2009. Retrieved 2009-0606.
[46] “2002 Sight & Sound Top Films Survey of 253 International Critics & Film Directors”. Cinemacom. 2002. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
[47] Jon Marshall. “A Brief History of Korean Film”. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
[48] Darcy Paquet. “1945-1959”. Korean Film Page. Retrieved 2009-05-22.
[49] Is the Curtain Finally Falling on the Philippine Kovie Industry?. Accessed January 25, 2009.
[50] Aenet: Philippine Film History. Accessed January 22,
2009.
[51] K. Moti Gokulsing, K. Gokulsing, Wimal Dissanayake
(2004). Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural
Change. Trentham Books. pp. 98–99. ISBN 1-85856329-1.
[52] THX Milestones at the Wayback Machine (archived
November 9, 2006)
[53] Brenhouse, Hillary (2011-01-31). “As Its Box Office
Booms, Chinese Cinema Makes a 3-D Push”. Time. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
[54] Helmore, Edward (1 November 2014). “They’re here to
save the world: but how many superhero movies can we
take?". The Guardian (Guardian News and Media Limited). Retrieved 29 November 2015.
21
15
Further reading
• Munslow, Alun (December 2007). “Film and
history: Robert A. Rosenstone and History on
Film/Film on History”. Rethinking History 4 (11):
565–575.
• Abel, Richard. The Cine Goes to Town: French
Cinema 1896-1914University of California Press,
1998.
• Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema,
1896 to the Present. London: B.T. Batsford, 1991.
• Barnes, John. The Cinema in England: 1894-1901
(5 Volumes) University of Exeter Press, 1997.
• Basten, Fred E. Glorious Technicolor: The Movies’
Magic Rainbow. AS Barnes & Company, 1980.
• Robin van Gils met zijn baardje School 2009.
• Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film Noir.” Film Comment, 1984.
• Steele, Asa (February 1911). “The Moving-Picture
Show: ... How The Films Are Made, Who Writes
The “Plots”, Who Censors The Plays, And What It
All Costs”. The World’s Work: A History of Our
Time XXI: 14018–14032. Retrieved 2009-07-10.
• Tsivian, Yuri. Silent Witnesses: Russian Films 19081919 British Film Institute, 1989.
• Unterburger, Amy L. The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the Other Side of
the Camera. Visible Ink Press, 1999.
• Usai, P.C. & Codelli, L. (editors) Before Caligari:
German Cinema, 1895-1920 Edizioni Biblioteca
dell'Immagine, 1990.
• Bowser, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema
1907-1915 (History of the American Cinema, Vol. \ Jones. Based on the book (above); written by Basten &
2) Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990.
Jones. Documentary, (1998).
• Rawlence, Christopher (1990). The Missing Reel:
The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of Moving Pictures. Charles Atheneum. ISBN 978-0689120688.
16 External links
• Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film, 2nd
edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.
• Film History
• Cousins, Mark. The Story of Film: A Worldwide
History, New York: Thunder’s Mouth press, 2006.
• Cinema: From 1890 To Now
• Dixon, Wheeler Winston and Gwendolyn Audrey
Foster. A Short History of Film, 2nd edition. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013.
• Film history by decade
• The History of the Discovery of Cinematography
An Illustrated Chronology by Paul Burns
• What is a Camera Obscura?
• King, Geoff. New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
• Museum Of Motion Picture History, Inc.
• Merritt, Greg. Celluloid Mavericks: A History
of American Independent Film. Thunder’s Mouth
Press, 2001.
• Origins of Cinema Documentary
• Musser, Charles (1990). The Emergence of Cinema:
The American Screen to 1907. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons. ISBN 0-684-18413-3.
• An Introduction to Early cinema
• Reality Film at the Wayback Machine (archived
February 4, 2008)
• History of Film Formats
• Film Sound History at FilmSound.org
• Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. The Oxford History of
World Cinema. Oxford University Press, 1999.
• List of Early Sound Films 1894-1929 at Silent Era
website
• Parkinson, David. History of Film. New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1995. ISBN 0-500-20277-X
• Early History of Wide Films - American Cinematographer, January, 1930
• Rocchio, Vincent F. Reel Racism. Confronting
Hollywood’s Construction of Afro-American Culture.
Westview Press, 2000.
• Hollywood Movies History
• Salt, Barry. Film Style and Technology: History and
Analysis 2nd Ed. Starword, 1992.
• Salt, Barry. Moving Into Pictures Starword, 2001.
• Latinos in the movies
• Technicolor History
• A Brief, Early History of Computer Graphics in
Film
22
17
17
17.1
TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES
Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses
Text
• History of film Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_film?oldid=697006023 Contributors: Tobias Hoevekamp, TwoOneTwo,
WojPob, The Anome, Koyaanis Qatsi, Eclecticology, Danny, Edward, Jazz77, Kchishol1970, Infrogmation, Michael Hardy, Modster,
Jahsonic, MartinHarper, Yann, Ee79, Tregoweth, Ron Davis, Kragen, Alex756, Gh, GRAHAMUK, Andrevan, Zoicon5, Haukurth, CBDunkerson, Peregrine981, Kaare, K1Bond007, Phys, Phoebe, Thomasedavis, Topbanana, Mackensen, Camerong, Lumos3, Robbot, RedWolf, Altenmann, Naddy, Postdlf, FredR, Nateji77, Timrollpickering, Sunray, Wikibot, Michael Snow, Mdrejhon, Alan Liefting, Adhib,
DocWatson42, Rossrs, Pretzelpaws, Inkling, Tom harrison, Everyking, No Guru, Leonard G., Mboverload, Hiphats, WorthyDan, LiDaobing, Formeruser-81, Quadell, The Singing Badger, Lockeownzj00, BozMo, Kusunose, Kaldari, Cape cod naturalist, 1297, Girolamo
Savonarola, Supadawg, Sam Hocevar, Kmweber, Rellis1067, Neutrality, Sam, Jcw69, Mike Rosoft, Sdicht, KNewman, Alexrexpvt, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough, Guanabot, Narsil, Bender235, Sc147, Violetriga, RJHall, Ylee, CanisRufus, LordHarris, Kwamikagami,
Adambro, Arancaytar, Tgeller, Bobo192, Infocidal, FoekeNoppert, Hooverbag, Cmdrjameson, B Touch, Shaka~enwiki, Jason One, Jumbuck, Tlinsenm, Storm Rider, Alansohn, Gary, LtNOWIS, Ben davison, JoaoRicardo, Valiantis, BernardH, Snowolf, BanyanTree, Uucp,
Cburnett, Grenavitar, Ianblair23, Zosodada, Jun-Dai, Bastin, Stephen, Bacteria, Joriki, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), Kelly Martin,
The JPS, Rorschach, Woohookitty, Mathmo, Commander Keane, BlankVerse, WadeSimMiser, Mutt, Trödel, Bkwillwm, MechBrowman,
Okc~enwiki, Jbarta, D.Holt, Mandarax, SteveCrook, Graham87, BD2412, Tradnor, FreplySpang, Bikeable, Grammarbot, Dpv, Dvyost,
Drbogdan, Noirish, Rjwilmsi, Koavf, Rogerd, Lockley, Michael Wells, ABot, NeonMerlin, JButler, Algebra, FlaBot, Nihiltres, Harmil,
Who, Mark83, Elmer Clark, RexNL, Otets, Jay-W, Tysto, Gareth E. Kegg, King of Hearts, Visor, Metropolitan90, DVdm, Bartleby,
Kralahome, Kjlewis, UkPaolo, YurikBot, Wavelength, Quentin X, Kollision, Cláudio Aarão Rangel~enwiki, Priest4hire, RussBot, Piet
Delport, Djmorris1984, CambridgeBayWeather, Rhindle The Red, Gram123, Barkeep49, NawlinWiki, Wiki alf, Paki.tv, Aeusoes1, Janke,
ErkDemon, Welsh, ONEder Boy, Robchurch, Schrei, Irishguy, Moe Epsilon, Sfnhltb, Aaron Schulz, Nescio, Pegship, Tetracube, Mütze,
PTSE, Closedmouth, Jwissick, Darthtuttle, Th1rt3en, Chaleur, JoanneB, Tryptofeng, Curpsbot-unicodify, Allens, Katieh5584, The Wookieepedian, Attilios, SmackBot, EvilCouch, Bobet, Mister X, Reedy, DCGeist, McGeddon, Jagged 85, Gjs238, Hbackman, Gandalf Drûg,
Srnec, Commander Keane bot, Yamaguchi , Gilliam, Ohnoitsjamie, Oscarthecat, Durova, Anwar saadat, Valley2city, Kurykh, Nakul
Datar, MK8, Cattus, Victorgrigas, Bazonka, Sadads, Wutschwlllm, Gutworth, Nbarth, Kasyapa, Colonies Chris, John Reaves, George
Ho, Mahlered, Nerrolken, KaiserbBot, MeekSaffron, RJohnstn, TKD, SundarBot, Radagast83, Jwy, Viewdrix, Dream out loud, Josh cavan, Jan.Kamenicek, Tehw1k1, Mukadderat, ArglebargleIV, Kuru, John, Rigadoun, Filmcom, Gobonobo, Norensberg, Lazylaces, Breno,
Putnamehere3145, Ckatz, Rizzleboffin, A. Parrot, Across.The.Synapse, Werdan7, Avs5221, Grandpafootsoldier, LACameraman, Dicklyon, Doczilla, E-Kartoffel, Agent 86, Hu12, DabMachine, OnBeyondZebrax, Nehrams2020, ILovePlankton, NativeForeigner, Ludo716,
FairuseBot, Tawkerbot2, Polzer, Signinstranger, S Hunter Haggard, Train guard, ShakespeareFan00, JForget, CmdrObot, Svenecarlsson,
Amalas, JohnCD, Bmxer1364, Donaldd23, ShelfSkewed, Chantessy, Alton, MikeWren, Jac16888, Lugnuts, Tawkerbot4, Lee, PaulBurns,
Epbr123, Faigl.ladislav, Canada Jack, Ackatsis, Philippe, Sherick, Trencacloscas, Mgerb, AntiVandalBot, CPWinter, StringRay, Dr.
Blofeld, Tjmayerinsf, Kromber, Sreejithk2000, Alphachimpbot, Pixelface, JAnDbot, WANAX, Samar, MER-C, The Transhumanist,
Arch dude, AlmostReadytoFly, MegX, Promus Kaa, Freshacconci, James317a, Sangak, Casmith 789, Magioladitis, Connormah, Jaysweet,
VoABot II, Appliance matt, AtticusX, JNW, Confiteordeo, Schily, Nick Cooper, KConWiki, BilCat, Allstarecho, Andevaesen, Hoverfish,
DerHexer, JaGa, Textorus, AVRS, Skarioffszky, Magnus Bakken, MartinBot, Questulent, Useraccount5566, Keith D, R'n'B, CommonsDelinker, Koplimek, Manticore, J.delanoy, Markhh, Wichm, Karanacs, MichaelAWilson, Katalaveno, FruitMonkey, Dfoofnik, Samtheboy,
AntiSpamBot, Fullback-legend, NewEnglandYankee, SJP, Donteatyellowsnow, MarioMario348, Juliancolton, DorganBot, TheNewPhobia,
Deor, Caspian blue, VolkovBot, Yellowpurplezebra, CWii, Mkunert, Streetlightspark, Bovineboy2008, Aparhizi, Philip Trueman, DoorsAjar, Albert Isaacs, Vipinhari, Aymatth2, Qxz, Bass fishing physicist, LeaveSleaves, Monkey C Monkey P, 1904.CC, Jalberti, Ddavidmurray,
Cazadordemolinos~enwiki, FKmailliW, Weber8, Warriorofthedarkness, D. Recorder, SieBot, K. Annoyomous, Scarian, WereSpielChequers, Callipides~enwiki, Til Eulenspiegel, Flyer22 Reborn, TitanOne, Yerpo, Oxymoron83, Lightmouse, Fratrep, Termer, JohnnyMrNinja, BlueVelvet86, Curtdbz, Bpeps, Denisarona, Tautologist, Neznanec, Henry Merrivale, ImageRemovalBot, Soporaeternus, Martarius,
ClueBot, Roninfilm, Barrysalt, Wikievil666, DionysosProteus, Enthusiast01, Ukabia, Santiago023, Mild Bill Hiccup, Dolhijn, Rainexpert,
Rungbachduong, Excirial, Quercus basaseachicensis, Lartoven, Arjayay, RamarMana, SchreiberBike, Audaciter, Pherdy~enwiki, Ahoycoil, Thingg, Lord Cornwallis, Xasmaster, DumZiBoT, XLinkBot, Staticshakedown, Will-B, Rmillard, Jean Fex, Ejosse1, Gggh, Arturo57,
Addbot, Lewis512, Ronhjones, Moosehadley, CanadianLinuxUser, Mac Dreamstate, Norman21, Tassedethe, 84user, Tide rolls, JEN9841,
Ben Ben, Legobot, Yobot, 2D, Fizbit, Hohenloh, I didn't push her, Kjell Knudde, THEN WHO WAS PHONE?, Eric-Wester, AnomieBOT,
DemocraticLuntz, Rubinbot, Jim1138, Human4321, Zxabot, Materialscientist, Citation bot, Amit6, Digitaldomain, OllieFury, Lovasember, Aliceguyjr, Transity, IsleofPlan, Gregsc1, DJWolfy, Kmcdm, Augenis, Doctorx0079, Omnipaedista, The Interior, Amaury, Hnismokehash, MerlLinkBot, DITWIN GRIM, Erik9, Mattjuden, Thehelpfulbot, FrescoBot, Tobby72, Dine club, JuniperisCommunis, Melnuk12,
Skull33, DivineAlpha, Citation bot 1, PigFlu Oink, Starstruckloner, SuperJew, Perfectionaintperfect, Slobodan Grasic, Biker Biker,
Pinethicket, I dream of horses, Jonesey95, Contrebast, Spidey104, Michitaro, Calmer Waters, Icemerang, A8UDI, Ɱ, Horst-schlaemma,
Cnwilliams, Rv.000, Jzana, Ys reddy16, Jeffrd10, Jamietw, Electrified Fooling Machine, RjwilmsiBot, Kendra.mitchell1, In ictu oculi,
Davejohnsan, Raradee, Evenflow357, Sillysong12, Dewritech, Winner 42, Wikipelli, K6ka, ZéroBot, Josve05a, Knight1993, LionFosset,
Pooh4913, Azendel, RolaPL, Steave77, H3llBot, SporkBot, DeadManWlkng, Marina Tigrik, Dagko, SatMi9, L Kensington, AVarchaeologist, Fages, Lingam-en, Noodleki, Jbergste, Polisher of Cobwebs, Anderrena, DASHBotAV, Sonicyouth86, AlWisher, Petrb, Hmonley,
ClueBot NG, Macarenses, Rtucker913, Another n00b, Delusion23, Fidias, Rezabot, Widr, WikiPuppies, Peaceonmotherearth, JordoCo,
Oddbodz, Helpful Pixie Bot, Wikidogooder, HMSSolent, Titodutta, BG19bot, Neptune’s Trident, And Adoil Descended, MusikAnimal,
Cogmaster23, Gauravgoyal66, Iamthecheese44, Area18hanger51, Keanu777, Jvecci, Snow Blizzard, Ashley.porciuncula, Stockholminsurancegroup, Danorust, Spoorti133, Victorian ghost, SSchmader, BattyBot, Justincheng12345-bot, Helbgal, Tooboomooshoo, Ryanfootball67, Alexcarter01, Mdann52, Balaghiridharr, B2i3r4d5M6a7n8, Cyberbot II, Mh8384, ChrisGualtieri, Rachelbieber12, Ulissipus, Tohler, Trixie Balise, Leanne jamieson, Arin333, Mogism, Geremy.Hebert, Lugia2453, Jamesx12345, Kevin12xd, Serge Ottaviani, Epicgenius, Seqqis, Swlody, Emilybelonje, BRatey, PraetorianFury, Tentinator, Kaseygreen, DavidLeighEllis, Yorkmba99, Film ed,
JustBerry, Ginsuloft, Bmahoney827, Kaslasdge, Pandmhitt, Stamptrader, Monkbot, Swag1346363263543, TJWaterman, Aledownload,
Samuel Williscroft, Mlfcomp, Crystallizedcarbon, Therealslimshady219021, Jensmith2710, Sujinthan, Darkroar360, Beautifully 001, Infinite0694, Leo 6869, Ljmarti2, Landonandersonn, Khytul Abaiz, CAPTAIN RAJU, Layyah.m, Vaniabhambri1, CedricO, Hellbound Hound
2, Rhi.cxwdy and Anonymous: 730
17.2
Images
17.2
23
Images
• File:1995cinema_admissions.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/1995cinema_admissions.png License: Public domain Contributors: Anwar saadat Original artist: Anwar saadat
• File:Battle_of_Chemulpo_Bay_edison.ogv Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Battle_of_Chemulpo_
Bay_edison.ogv License: Public domain Contributors: This image from the American Memory Collections is available from the United
States Library of Congress's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division under the digital ID mtfmi.frntr3.
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.
Original artist: Thomas A. Edison, Inc
Photographer: Edwin S. Porter.
• File:Biograph_poster2.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Biograph_poster2.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Library of Congress[1] Original artist: Cleveland : A.B.C. Co. (poster publisher)
• File:CadutaW1.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/CadutaW1.gif License: Public domain Contributors:
? Original artist: ?
• File:Charlton_Heston_as_Antony_in_Julius_Caesar,_B&W_image_by_Chalmers_Butterfield.jpg
Source:
https:
//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Charlton_Heston_as_Antony_in_Julius_Caesar%2C_B%26W_image_by_Chalmers_
Butterfield.jpg License: CC BY 2.5 Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Oxyman using CommonsHelper.
Original artist: Sba2 at English Wikipedia
• File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original
artist: ?
• File:DemillW1.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/43/DemillW1.gif License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist:
?
• File:Humorous_Phases_of_Funny_Faces_screenshot.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Humorous_
Phases_of_Funny_Faces_screenshot.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces Original artist: J. Stuart
Blackton
• File:Institut_Lumière_-_CINEMATOGRAPHE_Camera.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/
Institut_Lumi%C3%A8re_-_CINEMATOGRAPHE_Camera.jpg License: CC BY-SA 4.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist:
Victorgrigas
• File:Le_Voyage_dans_la_lune.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Le_Voyage_dans_la_lune.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Roger-Viollet Original artist: Georges Méliès
• File:Melstud2.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Melstud2.gif License: Public domain Contributors: ?
Original artist: ?
• File:Oyster1.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/Oyster1.gif License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
• File:Paul3.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Paul3.gif License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
• File:SantaW1.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5b/Santa_Claus%2C_1898.gif License: PD-US Contributors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmSJ5SAXHws Original artist:
George Albert Smith (film pioneer) (1864–1959)
• File:Satyajit_Ray.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Satyajit_Ray.jpg License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Transferred from en.wikipedia; Transfer was stated to be made by User:Padawane Original artist: Rishiraj Sahoo
• File:Telesc4.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f6/Telesc4.gif License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
• File:The_Great_Train_Robbery_0018.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/The_Great_Train_
Robbery_0018.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work (Screenshot) Original artist: Edwin S. Porter
• File:Video-x-generic.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Video-x-generic.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
• File:VitstuW1.gif Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/VitstuW1.gif License: PD-US Contributors: ? Original artist:
?
17.3
Content license
• Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0