Language and the Early Cinema

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Arnheim
Keyword(s):  
Early Cinema

Early Cinema in Scotland

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Audience

This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.

Reconfiguring the history of early cinema through the phonograph, 1877–1908

Film History ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Feaster ◽  
Jacob Smith
Keyword(s):  
Early Cinema ◽  
History Of

Machine–Humans and Body-Subjects

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cleo Hanaway-Oakley
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Charlie Chaplin ◽  
Human Interface ◽  
The World ◽  
Body Subject

This chapter presents an alternative to the popular critical vein that sees Joyce’s Ulysses and early cinema as conveying a mechanical, impersonal view of the world. It is argued that Ulysses and certain genres of early cinema were engaged—naively or otherwise—in a revaluation of Cartesian dualism, involving the reappraisal of mind/body and human/machine binaries. The physical comedy of Bloom and Charlie Chaplin is analysed with reference to phenomenological ideas on prosthesis and the machine–human interface, while other genres of early cinema, such as Irish melodrama and trick films, are considered in the light of phenomenological theories of gesture and embodiment. By comically mocking mind/body separation and depicting the inseparability of subjectivity and corporeality, Joyce and the early film-makers go beyond the ideas of Bergson and anticipate Merleau-Ponty’s later notion of the ‘body-subject’.

Realism and the Cinematic Gaze

2019 ◽  
pp. 591-603
Author(s):  
Nicolas S. Witschi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Literary Works

The technology for and, consequently, the artistic potential of cinema emerged at the end of the nineteenth century during a period roughly contemporaneous with the careers of many prominent realist authors. Despite this concurrence, early cinema was, by and large, of relatively little interest to the creators of realist literature. However, their literary works have proven immensely popular with filmmakers. After surveying the limited but ultimately telling responses to the new medium by a number of writers from the realist period, this chapter suggests, through a concluding analysis of three distinctive works of cinema that were based on realist fiction, that the two forms ultimately share an abiding and even structuring affinity for the power of realistic representations to define and direct the reader’s or viewer’s perspective.

Performance Practices and Music In Early Cinema outside Hollywood

2013 ◽  
pp. 610-619
Author(s):  
Kathryn Kalinak
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Cultural Interface ◽  
Silent Era

This chapterexamines the diversity of international practices in film music outside Hollywood during the silent film era. It describes performance practices around the globe and offers a broader context in which to consider American practices during this period. It suggests that music functioned as a cultural interface throughout the silent era in a way quite different from the sound era and that music in the silent era had an impressive power to interact with moving images in ways not controlled by films or their producers.

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