Media history
History of Cinema

 

 

Muybridge1820s -- Spindle viewers. Flip books and the Zoetrope (US), a.k.a., the Daedalum (England).

1838 -- Louis DaGuerre reveals photographic process at French Academy of Sciences. Early ³Daguerreotypes² required a 15 minute pose.

1877 -- Eadweard Muybridge-- Helped governor of California win a $25,000 bet that at some point when a horse was running, all four hooves would leave the ground. Used multiple camera technique. Photography at this point is very difficult. Glass negatives have to be sensitized in the field, developed in the field.

1884 -- George Eastman -- Invents celluloid film, Kodak still camera. Early cameras had to be sent back to the factory to have roll of film developed.

 

 

1891 -- Thomas Edison -- Uses celluloid film in a motion picture camera, applies for patents on the Kinetograph and the player, a Kinetoscope Exhibited at Chicago World¹s fair in 1893. Within a few years, Nicolodeons were appearing all over the country.

1895 -- Woodville Latham -- Virginia inventor developed 70 mm film camera and projector, but the project ended in financial disaster.

 

1895 -- Auguste and Louis Lumiere shoot first outdoor film, workers leaving factory. As opposed to Edison's "Black Maria" films, these were carefully composed, organized narratives, often shot outdoors.

 

1902 -- George Melies "Trip to the Moon" based on the Jules Verne book sets new standard for film narrative. (Or in the original French)

 

 

1903 -- Edwin S. Porter's Great Train Robbery

1915 -- D.W. Griffith produces "Birth of a Nation" -- Positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan and grossly prejudiced portrait of blacks contribues to vigilante violence in the South.

 

1908 -- Motion Picture Patents Co. created by Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Melies, Pathe and others.

1912 - 1919 Vaudeville suffers but movies become a new venue for stage performers

1912 -- Films themselves may be copyrighted (before, paper prints had to be submitted).

1913 -- Predecessors of Universal and Fox sue MPPC for antitrust violations. Independents win in court by 1915. Popular work of independents drives MPPC companies out of business.

1915 -- Mutual Film v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, Court said films are not protected by the First Amendment. The system of censorship through the Motion Picture Association of America survived numerous court challenges through the 1960s, then changed to a rating system: G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17.

1916 -- Charlie Chaplin becomes highest paid entertainer in history. Films like The Gold Rush and, in the 1930s, City Lights, delight audiences worldwide.

This clip is probably his most famous comic routine. It's the Oceana Roll, from the Gold Rush.

1920s -- Film begins to blossom as an art form. New techniques in storytelling, film as art. In Russia, film theory advances with Sergei Eisenstien. In Germany, expressionist movement. In the US, Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Walt Disney become stars.

1928 -- Jazz Singer, first łtalkie˛ with blackfaced actor Al Jolson. Caution: Jolson's blackface act is definitely offensive by modern standards, although meant more to be clownish at the time. Its interesting to compare this clip with the stills and script of The Eternal Jew . It probably ought to also be compared to the ugly sterotypes in American cinema and cartoons, but note the difference -- Americans made fun of African - Americans, but the Nazis seriously hated the Jews.

 

Golden age of Hollywood studios -- 1930s - 40s

New directions in film / color, sound, epic film. Stars powered the American studio system through to the post-war era. Studios like 20th-Century Fox (1935), Paramount (1912), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1924), Columbia Pictures (1920), and Warner Brothers (1923) held long-term contracts with directors and stars. Films include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. (all 1939)

1930s - 40s Genre films become popular -- westerns, comedies, musicals, dramas and cartoons. Also horror (Dracula, Frankenstien)

1933 -- Motion Picture Production Code begins to be enforced. Some King Kong special effect sequences, made in 1933, had to be cut by 1938 when the full picture was released, including one where Kong strips the stars clothes off like peeling a banana. Hells Angels by Howard Hughes (1930) is also too racy and runs into trouble.

1935 -- Triumph of the Will, a film about the Nazi party rally at Nuremburg, produced by Lani Riefenstahl. This patriotic glorification of the Nazis about the only image German people had of the Nazi party and greatly helps in Hitler's climb to power. Riefenstahl later claims she had no choice and in any event that artists are not responsible for the political problems their art causes.

1935 The Thirty-Nine Steps Alfred Hitchcock England

1936 -- Grand Illusion Jean Renoir France

1936 -- The last silent film, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times

1940 -- Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew stokes the bonfires of anti-Semetic hatred in Germany.Genocide is not possible without the active participation of the mass media.

1940s - Film Noir becomes popular -- Orson Welles's Citizen Kane and John Huston's The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogard, both (1941).

1940s -- "Why We Fight" film propaganda to unify country / Frank Capra and other original writers of Casablanca lend a hand. Other directors, writers and actors focus on movies that bolster morale during the war.

1945-- It's a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra about a guy who stayed on the home front.

1946 -- Open City Roberto Rossellini Italy About the aftermath of war in Italy.

WWII led to lighter entertainment and more escapism. Yankee Doodle Dandy, etc.

1947 -- House Unamerican Activities Committee investigates communist infiltration in Hollywood. Many innocent actors and writers are blackballed and forbidden from working. A few minor shreds of evidence concerning attempts by actual communists to actually influence Hollywood productions may have been uncovered, but the fear generated by the witch hunt causes far more damage than any real or imagined communist infiltration. The Hollywood Ten protested before the committee, but many actors, writers and directors were blacklisted, including Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, and Dalton Trumbo.

1948 - US v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. forced studios to sell off theater chains.

In the 1950s cold war paranoia is evident in themes such as invading armies of evil aliens, (Invasion of the Body Snatchers); and communist fifth columnists, (The Manchurian Candidate). TV is keeping audiences home so studios start to widen appeal for movies.

The1960s is characterized as the era of Post-classical cinema and saw the undermining of cultural hubris and a kind of artistic chaos. Heroes were seen as more mortals and life was depicted in many shades of gray instead of black and white. In some ways this was designed to keep audiences interested in movies. In others it was a genuine artistic reflection. Examples include Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and many others.

Two other major developments in the 1960s: minorities are more humanly represented (eg, Lillies of the Field with Sidney Poitier) and independent and underground films emerge apart from the studio system.

1970s -- beginning of the digital age / blockbuster era with films like Star Wars and Jaws.

The 1980s included a legal fight over videotape (Sony v. Universal City Studios, 1984) which allowed the advent of home video. Contrary to expectation, this greatly enhanced movie industry profits.

The 1990s and turn of the century have been marked by technological advances and visual extravaganza.