I love action movies, with lots of explosions, blood, and curse words. But I have to admit that the movies we have been watching for this class are not as nearly boring as I have imagined they would be.
Of course that as a Film History student we are supposed to study more than just old movies. We also need to study the old studios and old star. But wait! Even though movies started to be produced in the late 1890 the stars only started to shine in 1909 with Florence Lawrence, one of the first movie stars. And why that is even possible? Well, I think that a lot of things happened to result a "no-movie-star-industry." Things like: no close-up were used for a long time on cinema, what made difficult to identify the actor. However, one very important factor was that the studios didn't sell the movies based on the actors. They would sell the movies based in new technology, innovation.
As Ty Burr says in his book Gods like us "The early film studios didn't think in terms of star because the cinema was, in order, a scientific discovery, a novelty, a bust, and an industrial product aimed at a lower-class, socially undesirable audience."
Going through a quick view on the studios side, we had the Edison Trust - Motion Picture Patents Company. "The Trust was serious business, prosecuting perceived infringement - i.e., anyone else making a movie on his own and trying to get it seen - with lawsuits and hired goons" - explain Ty Burr, in Gods like us. This shows us that even in the beginning people weren't happy about competition. Did The Trust won the fight against Independent filmmakers? Burr makes a very clear statement about it: "Look to the corporate credits of almost every Hollywood movie we see today: Paramount, Universal, Fox, and MGM were all started by the men who opposed the Trust."
Still looking at the studios the three most famous film producers were The Lumière Brothers, Edison Studios, and Méliès. And even with the industry so young we can notice huge differences on their way of creating films. The Lumiere Brothers are also know as the firsts documentarists. Their films were based in day-to-day activities. Méliès in the other hand used all his creativity to create fantasy movies, he became known as the first special effects director. And Edison created short entertaining pieces.
In An introduction to world cinema, Aristides Gazetas points the differences between the Lumière and Méliès:
"Two contrasting and important cinematic practices flourished at this early stage of film history. Films shot in documentary style from 1895 to 1905 were not edited. Like the Lumière films, they 'rendered the world as it is' in their presentation of news stories of the day. Meanwhile, the development of fantasy films by Georges Méliès, with 'in-film,'stop-motion editing, enabled some directors to create a 'magic realism' for their narrative. These films recreated the world according to the filmmaker's imagination. Both tendencies influenced other directors in film production as the demand to tell simple narratives held the interest of the audience and helped them to identify with characters in the filmed events."
Jumping from studios to their creations: the movies. One of the films we had to watch this week as a course assignment was The Great Train Robbery (1903), and this movie is considered to be a break-through film because it was one of the first movies to use editing. As Gazetas says in his book An introduction to world cinema "With The Great Train Robbery, Porter's editing strategies were a turning point in the art of film narration, completely altering the power motion pictures would have in contemporary society."
References:
Burr, Ty. Gods Like Us - on Movie Stardom and Modern Fame. 2012. PANTHEON BOOKS, New York.
Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema. 2008. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London.
Porter, Edwin S. The Great Train Robbery. 1903.
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