Read Online The Oxford History of World Cinema by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
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also created an 'imperfect' match cut, The Sick
Kitten ( 1903), cutting from a long view of two children giving a kitten medicine to a
closer view of the kitten licking the spoon.
During this period, film-makers also experimented with cinematically fracturing the space
of the pro-filmic event, primarily to enhance the viewers' visual pleasure through a closer
shot of the action rather than to emphasize details necessary for narrative comprehension.
The Great Train Robbery includes a medium shot of the outlaw leader, Barnes, firing his
revolver directly at the camera, which in modern prints usually concludes the film. The
Edison catalogue, however, informed exhibitors that the shot could come at the beginning
or the end of the film. Narratively non-specific shots of this nature became quite common,
as in the British film Raid on a Coiner's Den ( Alfred Collins , 1904), which begins with a
close-up insert of three hands coming into the frame from different directions, one
holding a pistol, another a pair of handcuffs, and a third forming a clenched fist. In
Porter's own oneshot film Photographing a Female Crook, a moving camera produces the
closer view as it dollies into a woman contorting her face to prevent the police from
taking an accurate mug shot.
Even shots that approximate the point of view of a character within the fiction, and which
are now associated with the externalization of thoughts and emotions, were then there
more to provide visual pleasure than narrative information. In yet another example of the
innovative film-making of the Brighton school, Grandma's Reading Glasses ( G. A.
Smith, Warwick Trading Company, 1900), a little boy looks through his grandmother's
spectacles at a variety of objects, a watch, a canary, and a kitten, which the film shows in
inserted close-ups. In The Gay Shoe Clerk ( Edison/ Porter, 1903) a shoeshop assistant
flirts with his female customer. A cut-in approximates his view of her ankle as she raises
her skirt in tantalizing fashion. This close-up insert is an example not only of the visual
pleasure afforded by the 'cinema of attractions' but of the early cinema's voyeuristic
treatment of the female body. Despite the fact that their primary purpose is not to
emphasize narrative developments, these shots' attribution to a character in the film
distinguishes them from the totally unmotivated closer views in The Great Train Robbery
and Raid on a Coiner's Den.
The editing strategies of the pre- 1907 'cinema of attractions'were primarily designed to
enhance visual pleasure rather than to tell a coherent, linear narrative. But many of these
films did tell simple stories and audiences undoubtedly derived narrative, as well as
visual, pleasure. Despite the absence of internal strategies to construct spatial-temporal
relations and linear narratives, the original audiences made sense of these films, even
though modern viewers can find them all but incoherent. This is because the films of the
'cinema of attractions' relied heavily on their audiences' knowledge of other texts, from
which the films were directly derived or indirectly related. Early film-makers did learn
how to make meaning in a new medium, but were not working in a vacuum. The cinema
had deep roots in the rich popular culture of the age, drawing heavily during its infant
years upon the narrative and visual conventions of other forms of popular entertainment.
The pre-1907 cinema has been accused of being 'non-cinematic' and overly theatrical, and
indeed film-makers like Mélièlis were heavily influenced by nondramatic theatrical
practices, but for the most part lengthy theatrical dramas provided an inappropriate model
for a medium that began with films of less than a minute, and only became an important
source of inspiration as films grew longer during the transitional period. As the first
Edison Kinetoscope films illustrate, vaudeville, with its variety format of unrelated acts
and
Kitten ( 1903), cutting from a long view of two children giving a kitten medicine to a
closer view of the kitten licking the spoon.
During this period, film-makers also experimented with cinematically fracturing the space
of the pro-filmic event, primarily to enhance the viewers' visual pleasure through a closer
shot of the action rather than to emphasize details necessary for narrative comprehension.
The Great Train Robbery includes a medium shot of the outlaw leader, Barnes, firing his
revolver directly at the camera, which in modern prints usually concludes the film. The
Edison catalogue, however, informed exhibitors that the shot could come at the beginning
or the end of the film. Narratively non-specific shots of this nature became quite common,
as in the British film Raid on a Coiner's Den ( Alfred Collins , 1904), which begins with a
close-up insert of three hands coming into the frame from different directions, one
holding a pistol, another a pair of handcuffs, and a third forming a clenched fist. In
Porter's own oneshot film Photographing a Female Crook, a moving camera produces the
closer view as it dollies into a woman contorting her face to prevent the police from
taking an accurate mug shot.
Even shots that approximate the point of view of a character within the fiction, and which
are now associated with the externalization of thoughts and emotions, were then there
more to provide visual pleasure than narrative information. In yet another example of the
innovative film-making of the Brighton school, Grandma's Reading Glasses ( G. A.
Smith, Warwick Trading Company, 1900), a little boy looks through his grandmother's
spectacles at a variety of objects, a watch, a canary, and a kitten, which the film shows in
inserted close-ups. In The Gay Shoe Clerk ( Edison/ Porter, 1903) a shoeshop assistant
flirts with his female customer. A cut-in approximates his view of her ankle as she raises
her skirt in tantalizing fashion. This close-up insert is an example not only of the visual
pleasure afforded by the 'cinema of attractions' but of the early cinema's voyeuristic
treatment of the female body. Despite the fact that their primary purpose is not to
emphasize narrative developments, these shots' attribution to a character in the film
distinguishes them from the totally unmotivated closer views in The Great Train Robbery
and Raid on a Coiner's Den.
The editing strategies of the pre- 1907 'cinema of attractions'were primarily designed to
enhance visual pleasure rather than to tell a coherent, linear narrative. But many of these
films did tell simple stories and audiences undoubtedly derived narrative, as well as
visual, pleasure. Despite the absence of internal strategies to construct spatial-temporal
relations and linear narratives, the original audiences made sense of these films, even
though modern viewers can find them all but incoherent. This is because the films of the
'cinema of attractions' relied heavily on their audiences' knowledge of other texts, from
which the films were directly derived or indirectly related. Early film-makers did learn
how to make meaning in a new medium, but were not working in a vacuum. The cinema
had deep roots in the rich popular culture of the age, drawing heavily during its infant
years upon the narrative and visual conventions of other forms of popular entertainment.
The pre-1907 cinema has been accused of being 'non-cinematic' and overly theatrical, and
indeed film-makers like Mélièlis were heavily influenced by nondramatic theatrical
practices, but for the most part lengthy theatrical dramas provided an inappropriate model
for a medium that began with films of less than a minute, and only became an important
source of inspiration as films grew longer during the transitional period. As the first
Edison Kinetoscope films illustrate, vaudeville, with its variety format of unrelated acts
and
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