Countdown 46

Humanities
Fine Arts - Film

Notes from Chapters 1, 2, 3 "A Short History of Film" by Wheeler Winston Dixon & Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Films I've actually seen highlighted in bold.

1878 Edward Muybridge creates motion studies using a series of cameras triggered by wires and settles a bet about horses having all four legs in the air while galloping.

1895 Louis and Auguste Lumiere make the 1st commercial breakthrough by combining a photographic and projection device in one machine.

1898 Thomas Edison creates the first case of "censorship" with Ella Lola. Her body display was obscured to cover offending portions of the anatomy.

Edison creates sensationalist films appealing the basest appetites of sex and violence with The Kiss and Rat Killing. Creates sequels with "Rat & Terrier #2, Rats and Terrier #3, Rats and Weasel". Edison also creates the first paid advertisement: "Dewar's: It's Scotch"

1902 Georges Melies "A Trip to the Moon" (starts "Sci-Fi" genre) creates a series of special effects that would dominate cinema until the digital age: double exposures, dissolves, mattes, reverse motion, cutting, etc.

Frenchwoman, Alice Guy, becomes one of the inventors of narrative film.

1903 Edwin S. Porter "The Great Train Robbery" uses intercutting and camera angles for suspense and action (starts "The Western" genre)

1908 Thomas Edison attempts to monopolize industry and creates the Motion Picture Patents Company aka "The Trust".

Carl Laemmle manages to lure away the alluring actress Florence Lawrence away from the Trust and signs her up with his company IMP. She becomes known as the IMP girl. Thus setting the scene for actors and get name billing, popularity and higher salaries -- the Star System. He also creates "spin" by setting a rumor that the girl had been killed. He creates a publicity campaign to debunk this silly lie. By 1915, Edison's monopoly is broken.

Rise of the Studios: Universal 1912 (IMP), Fox 1915 (20th Century), MGM 1924

1913 - Mack Sennett creates Keystone Kops and Charlie Chaplin's his biggest star.

Early movie stars:
Mary Pickford / Pollyanna
Theda Bara / Femme Fatale - A Fool There Was
Buster Keaton / The General / Great Stoneface
Rudolph Valentino / The Sheik
Lon Chaney / Hunchback of Notre Dame
Rin Tin Tin
Laurel & Hardy

1914 - 1918 Movies move out west to better weather. America produces movies in Hollywood while rest of the world is concentrated on fighting WWI

1914 Winsor McCay, newspaper cartoonists animates "Gertie the Dinosaur"

1915 DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" runs 2.5 hrs with an astounding admission price of $2. Average salary was $25/week. KKK used film as a recruiting tool.

1922 The Code - Will H. Hays heads MPPDA "Hays Office" to police the private life of stars.
1922 Robert Flaherty / Nanook of the North -- the first staged doc-dramas (new genre: documentaries)
1923 Cecil B DeMille / The 10 Commandments -- one can get away with greed, sin and decadence provided there's a moral ending.

Race films: 1910's onwards catering to African American audiences. Oscar Micheaux, African American filmmaker made more than 20 silent films but was criticized for depicting blacks as well off and well educated.

Late 1920's the move to sound.
Warner Bros embraces sound and creates the Jazz Singer with Al Jolson

Rest of the world
1915 German Paul Wegener creates Gothic Horror fantasy with the Golem
1918 Russian's revolution - Lenin senses the power of cinema to mold the populace and creates "agit-prop" trains to generate propaganda.
1922 German FW Murnau / Nosferatu with Max Schreck
1925 German Fritz Lang "Metropolis"
1925 Russian Sergei Eisenstein / Battleship Potemkin "The Odessa Steps" and the famous baby carriage. / Alexander Nevsky / Ivan the Terrible
1928 Danish Carl Theodor Dreyer / The Passion of Joan of Arc
1929 An Andalusian Dog, surreal film by Dali and Bunuel causes riots with its shocking sequences: slitting eyeball with a razor, ants spilling out of decayed hand.
1931 French Rene Clar /A Nous La Liberte with music by George Auric
Elvira Notari, Italian filmmaker inventor of Neorealistic cinema, shot on location often using nonprofessional actors.
1930's Alfred Hitchcock adapts from silent films to talkies.