Name that movie house

Kathryn Helgesen Fuller has some details on that Essanay naming contest that gave the world the “photoplay” (1). It could have been “kinorama”or “mutodramic” (!) or even the race-inspired “photodrome” – but instead it was the submission of one Edgar Strakosch, from California,

theater owner whose own nickelodeons were named Dreamland, Bijou, and Wonderland.

Fuller also has looked at naming conventions for nickelodeons and what they reveal about early cinema’s cultural position and acceptance strategies: escapism (Amuse-U) , exoticism (Alhambra), lights (Star), cheap prices (Nickelette) — but also names that aimed to inscribe cinemas within very local contexts : as civic centers (Town Hall), or as family centers (Family Moving Picture Parlor).
Still others named their theater with names of places that had some sort of allure :

Chicago, besides having a Boston theater, was also home to a California Theater years before the film industry moved there.

Another instance of myths guiding reality…

UPDATE 31/07/09:
The curious may scroll down the list of theater names operating in Toledo, Ohio, as of 1919 (2), for confirmation: status (“Grand”, “Bijou”, “Empress” or “Princess” or “Duchess” or etc.), drama (“Quo Vadis”, “Ivanhoe”), civic (“Colonial” or “Liberty” or “National”), entertainment (“Pastime”), exotic (“Japanese Garden”, “Orient”, “Mystic”), or familiar (“Home”), etc.

(1) At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (1996)
(2) Phelan, Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercial Amusement in Toledo, Ohio (1919)

Chutzpah

Lewis J. Selznick writes to the Czar of all Russia, on his recent demotion:

NICHOLAS ROMANOFF
PETROGRAD, RUSSIA
WHEN I WAS POOR BOY IN KEIV SOME OF YOUR POLICEMENT WERE NOT KIND TO ME AND MY PEOPLE STOP I CAME TO AMERICA AND PROSPERED STOP NOW HEAR WITH REGRET YOU ARE OUT OF A JOB OVER THERE STOP FEEL NO ILLWILL WHAT YOUR POLICEMAN DID SO IF YOU WILL COME NEW YORK CAN GIVE YOU FINE POSITION ACTING IN PICTURES STOP SALARY NO OBJECT STOP REPLY MY EXPENSE STOP REGARDS YOU AND FAMILY
SELZNICK
NEW YORK
(Ramsaye, Million and One Nights, 1926, p. 766)

Now, after the reports of Trotsky as a Vitagraph actor, this would have made for quite a crowded market of Russian extras !

(Sternberg’s 1928 The Last Command has of course this exact plot…)

“Kids today can’t concentrate!”

In what ought to be a series all on its own, the plus ça change series, this item from Life. Sept. 27, 1917:

THE DEATH OF CONCENTRATION

Who Killed Concentration ?

Concentration was dead, and all the birds of the air and all the forces of the earth came to do him honor.

“I,” said the Lady, “I did it with my social functions and my yearly trips to Europe. I killed Concentration.”

“I did it,” said the Highbrow, “with my lectures and reading and my uplift, not to mention my philosophical systems and vague superiorities — I was the one who killed Concentration.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” said the Parents, “but we reallly did it. We insisted upon having so many distracting things in the house, not to mention putting on more style day by day, that we were the chief, if humble, instruments in the hands of an all-wise Providence who did away with Concentration — we are the proud authors of his dissolution.”

“I did it,” said the Tango, “with my restless midnight spirit; of course I did it. I killed Concentration.”

“Which reminds me that I am the one,” remarked the Movies. “Yes, I did it with my cheap realism; how could Concentration live after I came on the stage? The mere suggestion is absurd. I accomplished the demise.”

“Pooh!” sang the Phonograph. “Wasn’t I before you? I started his death, all right. I guess I know. I killed Concentration myself!”

And then they all bowed low, and took a back seat as the real author came.

“I did it, ,didn’t I?” said the School System, and Concentration , rising out of his coffin, reparked posthumously:

“Believe me, it was you, all right.”

SMITHER Roger (1993)

SMITHER Roger: “‘A wonderful idea of the fighting’: the question of fakes in ‘The Battle of the Somme’.”Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 13, 1993: 149-168.

Etudie en détail l’authenticité des séquences du film Battle of the Somme (1916). 

3 critères pour l’authenticité: 

 - le film est conforme à ce qu’annonce les intertitres (intertitres en gros conformes aux exigences de la guerre, notamment pas bcp de détails pour éviter de donner des renseignements militaires), 

 - le film repose sur une solide base documentaire (les dope sheets renseignent sur certaines séquences, la biographie de Malins n’est pas en revanche une base très solide), 

- enfin le film est conforme à la vérité historique.  (p. 154)

Au passage, note que le film BBC The Great War (1964) qui a remis au goût du jour les séquences tournées pendant la 1ère guerre mondiale n’a pas hésité devant les manipulations d’images. Mon exemple préféré:

“film was reversed to ensure that on the whole the Allies advance left-to-right across the screen and the Central Powers right-to-left as on maps of the western front, even if this resulted in whole regiments of left-handed soldiers” (p. 153)

Conclue que Malins et les autres caméramen du newsreel ont surtout cherché à améliorer leurs images, en demandant aux soldats d’accomplir certains gestes, en faisant rejouer d’autres scènes de combat en sécurité, etc.  Le nombre de séquences jugées inauthentiques reste faible – et ce ne sont pas forcément (sauf la séquence de sortie des tranchées) les plus dramatiques ou les plus intéressantes du film.

HAGGITH Toby (2002)

HAGGITH Toby: “Reconstructing the Musical Arrangement for “The Battle of the Somme” (1916).” Film History. 14, no. 1, 2002: 11-24.

Toby Haggith a reconstitué l’accompagnement suggéré par J. Morton Hutcheson (colonne “Music in the Cinema” publiée à l’époque dans la revue The Bioscope), en tentant d’identifier et de retrouver toutes les partitions (pas toujours facile: certaines ont disparu, d’autres survivent mais dans d’autres arrangements…). Hutcheson recommande pas moins de 33 morceaux différents, et choisit surtout des morceaux que le public pourra reconnaître (seuls 9 morceaux du 19è siècle).

Comparaison avec d’autres arrangements, modernes (notamment du pianiste Andrew Youdell qui avait enregistré la musique du DVD du film en 1993): plus de musiques différentes dans la version de Hutcheson, plus de marches militaires, un message portant sur la nécessité du sacrifice plus clair, mais aussi des passages tout autant élégiaques, ou émouvants, notamment sur les images des morts. 

Rôle de la musique pas négligeable: aide le message de propagande (la nécessité, la noblesse du sacrifice consenti gaiement), et aide la structure du film (en renforçant la narration: la musique permet d’éviter notamment un sentiment de répétition entre Part 1 et Part 5).

Battle Music

From Pictures and the Picturegoer, 7 oct. 1916, p. 25, Fred Adlington’s take on the music for Battle of the Somme (1916):

KOBEL Peter (2007)

KOBEL Peter: Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and The Triumph of Movie Culture. New York, Boston, Londres, Little, Brown and Company, 2007

1. Sources: la littérature critique plutôt que des souvenirs personnels (comme Parade Gone By de Brownlow). Une introduction très générale qui tente d’éviter les généralisations (ainsi lorsqu’il discute le MPPC et la Guerre des Brevets (Patents’ War) des années 1910, Kobel fait remarquer que le MPPC avait aussi commencé à filmer en Californie, tout comme les Indépendants.
2. Chapitre sur les genres est le moins abouti: pas clair sur la popularité de chaque genre, mélange les films US et non US et ne dit rien du mélodrame, ou du drame. Semble avoir choisi de se concentrer sur les genres attendus aujourd’hui dans la discussion des films muest. Reprend des vues traditionnelles (Hart est un “fou de réalisme”, stickler for realism sans autre contextualisation , hormis l’indication que Hart est né dans l’Ouest). 
3. Surtout concentré sur les années 1910s. Une question sur les années 1920 n’occupent qu’une ou deux lignes (là où la discussion du traitement de l’Indien dans les films des années 1910 occupe plusieurs paragraphes par exemple.)
4. Très intéressant pour le matériau reproduit en illustrations: posters, courriers de refus de scénarios, matériaux publicitaires — la plupart du temps ce matériau seul pourrait fournir la base pour un autre livre. Ainsi le livre est plus un catalogue, avec une introduction générale présentation les documents exposés.
5. Autre vue commune reprise sans critique (p. 95): “As filmmakers developped their craft in the twenties, howeer, titles became less necessary.” L’exemple donné (The Last Laugh, Murnau) est une exception, pas la règle ! La plupart des films dans les années 20 ont pleins de titres et il n’est pas clair que le cinéma américain ait vraiment cherché à se débarasser des titres. Plutôt à les intégrer dans une stratégie narrative unifiée mêlant mots et images. Ce sont plutôt les films des années 1910 qui avaient très peu d’intertitres, comparés aux films des années 1920 !
6. Pas assez d’attention portée aux problèmes esthétiques. Ainsi p. 98. l’argument “illusion de réalité” est invoqué pour expliquer la vogue des décors réalistes: dans les années 1910, alors que la caméra commence à filmer les extérieurs (?), de meilleurs décors auraient été nécessaires afin de ne pas créer de contraste entre ll’artificialité des décors et les extérieurs naturels. Mais c’est plutôt une question esthétique: cf. expressionisme, films d’horreur, films russes pour des cinémas qui ne craignent pas ce contraste. (ou cf. les maquettes dans les films américains, d’ailleurs).

Pordenone diary – day five

Slowly catching up…

The affaire du jours, as The Bioscope notes, was the showing of The Watermelon Patch, a 1905 Edison film with so much blatant racism as to make you want to throw your chair at the screen. It’s not often that a film asks you to share a laugh by showing Blacks locked in their home by Whites who proceed to set fire to it. Amazing, yes, that the catalog described this as a purely formal exercise in alternate cutting – though I’d respectfully disagree with Urbanora that the film ought not to have been shown. I’m certainly all the wiser (read, the more disgusted) for having seen it — and I’d love to see a program entirely devoted to racial relations in early cinema, as one comment at the Bioscope suggests. 

from Blotto Online International

The grand affair of the day, to me, was the evening concert. Jean Darling, Donald Sosin, Joanna Seaton – and you think I’m not there ! Jean Darling…I had discovered her last year at Pordenone, both on screen in some Our Gang short comedies (she started when she was 4 years old) and in person on stage at the festival (she was then…), and if you’ve never seen a real, old-time Hollywood pro – and not a fancy-smart-pants modern-day celebrity – you’ve got to see Jean Darling today. She’s beyond good. Give the woman a mike, a chair, and a stage, and she’ll ham it up as best she can – and she’s good at that, too. I didn’t say I’d like her for my grand-mother, but on stage ? Any time, any day. She lives 200% more on a stage.

So she came back this year, and sang an evening of early 1910 (and a few 1920) popular songs that dealt with “the movies”, alternating with Joanna Seaton at the mike, and even Sosin took a turn singing ! With such gems as a naughty “Take your girlie to the movies / if you can’t make love at home”

you can do a lot in seven reels

or the ethnic “When Sarah Saw Theda Bara”, and 15 other songs, and the good humor that went on on the stage between the three performers, it was quite an evening. And the songs were a brilliant, and to me moving, reminder of cinema’s popular attraction: sex, escapism, youth, a sense of freedom, a dose of enchantment, and a large helping of self-aware silliness, you could sense the revolution of the dark room on the march in those songs. Why do we still like cinema today, if not because we like stories, we like colors, we like music, we like taking our s.o. out, we like holding hands, etc. etc. etc. just like they did, one hundred years ago.

And Jean Darling, bosom-twisting:

The things you can get away with when you’re old !

“When you’re old”, yes, Jean, but mostly when you’re good ! Here’s hoping we see you next year, too.

The Trey o’ Hearts (1914)

Per imdb.com: a 1914 serial from Universal, with Wilfred Lucas directing.

Although lost, this historical serial has been reconstructed in book form using the original novel and existing action photo stills as part of the Serial Squadron Lost Serial Photonovel re-creations.(this message appeared in 2005 on movieserialmessageboards.yuku.com, but see comment for update!)

Couldn’t find a trace of the Serial Squadron edition (but see comment: a new edition should be out July 2009!), so I’m re-posting the stills included in the orginal, published 1914 from Grosset & Dunlap and available through Google Books…

melodrama’s very modern modernity

1914. Wow:

“Wait!” the latter admonished in a half-whisper. “Look there!” 
Barcus followed the direction of his gesture, and 
was transfixed by sight of a rocket appearing into 
the night-draped sky from a point invisible beyond 
the headland. The two consulted one another with 
startled and fearful eyes. 
As with one voice they murmured one word : “Judith!” (p. 103)

A little later (p. 131), Alan climbs up an unfinished skyscraper:

a colossal apartment structure, the gaunt iron skeleton rearing a web of steel stencilled against the shining sky. (…) The ladders were 
crazily constructed and none too securely poised, 
but at length he gained the gridiron of girders on 
a plane with the lighted window across the way, and 
crept along one of these, gingerly on his hands and 
knees, until he came to its end, and might, if he 
cared to, look down a hundred feet to the sidewalks. 

And still later (p. 159), Alan is picked up by a plane:

Out of the very sky dropped a hydroplane, cutting the water with a long graceful curve that brought it, almost at a standstill, directly to the head of the swimmer. and at the same time forced the police-boat to sheer wildly off in order to escape collision. 

And though the first transcontinental flight had been achieved a mere three years before, this does not seem to bother our Alan Law:

Promptly Alan called up the Aviation Fields at 
Hempstead Plains and got into communication with 
a gentleman answering to the surname of Coast, 
the same bird-man who had come to Alan’s rescue 
with his hydroplane. Their arrangements were 
quickly consummated, Coast agreeing to wait for 
Alan with his biplane in Van Cortlandt Park from 
midnight till daybreak, prepared if need be to undertake 
a trans-continental flight. 

(other takes on Trey o’ Hearts here or here or here)

The transformation of the melodrama…spectacle

How often have we seen this scene in films:

“They’ve made a torpedo-boat out of that tender “
He sprang upon the rail, steadying himself with
a stay. “Ready?” he asked. “Look sharp!”
The two dived as one, and not until three hundred
feet or more separated them from the schooner did
either dare pause for a backward glance.
Then the impact of the launch against the Sea-
venture’s side rang out across the waters, and with a
roar the launch blew up, spewing skyward a widespread
fan of flame. There followed a crackling
noise, and bright flames licked out all over the
schooner from stem to stern.

(Trey o’ Hearts, p. 66 — after a forest fire through Maine, two rapids, and life-defying moments galore. A second boat explosion is p. 114. A car crash p. 116. A car explodes p. 145. There’s a train crash on a trestle above some Western gully p. 184))

The transformation of the melodrama … metaphor

In opposition to what I wrote here, this:

Within the hour Rose Trine stood before her father
in that sombre room whose sinister colour-scheme
of crimson and black was the true livery of the
passion for vengeance that alone kept warm the
embers of his deathlike life.

the metaphorical use of colors that is pretty heavy-handed here, film melodramas (colors in Written on the Wind for instance) will do effortlessly.

(still from Trey o’ Hearts, p. 39)

the transformation of the melodramatic hero

The Troy o’ Hearts: a motion-picture melodrama, Joseph Louis Vance, 1914

Take this description:

He was a young man and had been personable.
Just now his face was crimson with congested blood
and streaked with sweat and grime; his lips were
cracked and swollen, his eyes haggard, his hands
bleeding. (. 31)

Note to Hollywood, c. 1914: how do you fit this into an entertaining, attractive formula ? It’s going to take some penetration of realistic styles before this purple-prose battering of the hero can find its equivalent on the not-so-forgiving film image. (It’s easy to uglyfy your hero by words; but on the screen?) And indeed, notice how the face is anything but “crimson”, “haggard” and the like:

How long before serials would show “crimson” for what it is ?

The Red Ace, which began its run in February 1917, represents a milestone of sorts: it is the first serial, as far as I know, that began showing profuse amounts of blood during fight scenes. All previous serials were bloodless (although one does not notice the absence when watching them). The blood greatly intensified the graphic violence critics of sensational melodrama found so objectionable. (Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, p. 217)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a night at the movies – 1912

just found this browsing the New York Times archives today: a sultry night at the movies

(anyone with info on “Married the Third Year”?)

who called it “photoplay” ?

“[ in 1910] The term “photoplay’ had just been suggested by Mr. Edgar Strakosch as a result of an effort on the part of the Essanay Film Company of Chicago to obtain an appropriate classification for its releases then gradually assuming a plane higher than in previous years.”

(Robert Grau, The theatre of science: a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914) — thank you, yet again, Bioscope)

And indeed Terry Ramsaye in 1926 is of the same opinion (maybe he was using Grau as his source of information) in his essay “Movie Jargon” (published in 1926 in American Speech), but adds a lot more to the verbal history of the movies (a term, he insists, that Hollywood producers disliked as being much too slangy and undignified, even into the 1920s):

“Pictureplay first appeared in an effort of Alexander Black to describe his invention of an art form comprising steropticon slide photographs of phases of dramatic action, which, assisted by his spoken obligato, conveyed an illusion of motion. Black’s pictureplay appeared October 9, 1894, a few months after the Edison peepshow went to the public and nearly a half a year before the birth of the projected film picture on the screen. Black’s play in pictures evolved from his experiences as a writer and lecturer on the then new art of making snapshots in the early ’90’s. It had no conscious relation to the film of the motion picture. Black followed the language of the word and became a novelist, while the motion picture film followed a career of novelty which had to be exhausted before it turned to narration. Pictureplay did not come into the motion picturre language until nearly ten years later, springing up then, not from the Black concept, but independently as a synonym for Photoplay.

The motion picture was at considerable pains to arrive at Photoplay. At the birth of the screen in 1895-6 there was some confusion with “living pictures,” a term used to describe the then common stage tableaux or “living statuary” presentations ranging from “Napoleon at Lodi” to “Pygmalion and Galatea” with the limelight accent on Galatea. “Pictures in Life Motion” appeared on the blacktent film theatres of the carnival circuits. “The Great Train Robbery,” the classic parent screen drama, and its immediate successors were discussed as “story pictures” to differentiate them from the mere record and novelty pictures. When Sigmund Lubin of Philadelphia advertised “The Bold Bank Robbery” in 1904, he declared that it was in “30 Motion Tableaux.” When in 1908, Kessel and Baumann, able ex-bookmakers from Sheepshead Bay race tracks, engaged in film production they announced “Bison Life Motion Pictures. Vitagraph boasted contemporaneously of “Life Portrayals.” In 1912 the Essanay concern in Chicago, formed five years earlier by Max Aronson, now G. M. Anderson, star of “The Great Train Robbery” and George K. Spoor, grew militant against the word movie. They offered the wide world a prize of $25 for a new name for the art. Edgar Strakosch, a California musician, coined Photoplay and got the money. Then within a few months Photoplay Magazine was founded in Chicago and spread the word to the industry and the public.” (p. 358-359)

The Forbidden City (1918)

Grapevine, 2004 DVD, running time 62 minutes.Here it is, the whole 554 shots of this Norma Talmadge vehicle ! A very thin plot, but gorgeous sets and lots of iris compositions. Use this shot by shot breakdown of the film as you see fit. Full stats to follow.

Naked Hands (1918)

Naked Hands (1918) – Humanity (1916)

A 5 reeler originally, it was reissued as a 2-reeler as Broncho Billy Anderson was attempting a comeback in 1918. It is tight, quick, and interestingly rough. The characters move in all directions in the frame, but whenever you’re given depth of field you can bet your six-gun that they’re going to be moving from background to foreground at some point. There’s a heck of a fight scene with Billy bleeding from a nasty cut to the head and not a vase safe in the house. It’s packed, to say the least.

But I don’t need to tell you. You can see the whole shot list for the film here, with some comments (in French!), courtesy of yours truly.

Chaplin defeats the Kaiser !

it’s the drama, stupid, now as then

We have found out it isn’t necessary for a photodrama to have only one dramatic scene, but each scene must be a drama in itself. The whole picture must be made up of a series of small dramas. This makes the completed drama a mosaic of little ones. Scenes that have no dramatic value in them, or say nothing, must be eliminated. So the scenario writer must bear in mind at all times not what he can put into a picture, but what he can leave out. If each scene has a why and a wherefore and an excuse for being, then you get a perfect continuity.
Jeanie Macpherson, Moving Picture World, 11 july 1917

women writers in early silent days

“Gene Gauntier has written as many one-reel dramas as any writer living. She will go down in history as the author, adapter or what you will of ‘From the Manger to the Cross’, but she is far more important than any one story.
But while there were others of those early days, it is not practicable to list them all in separate paragraphs. Mention of Miss Gauntier, very first of the women writers, brings us to others who have made good. Mrs Beta Breuil, or Mrs Hartmann Breuil, was a Vitagraph editor and still a prominent freelance. Mrs Catherine Carr, now of the North American, is another Vita graduate, as is Miss Peggy O’Neill, of the same company. Mrs Louella Parsons, of Essanay, has written little, but many promising writers owe much to her helpful advice.
Miss Hetty Gray Baker gave up a job as a law librarian to become editor for Jack London (Bosworth, Inc.), which is not altogether photoplay’s gain, for, in spite of the excellence of her adaptations of this most difficult author, she did better original work, having the imagination of a real creator. Miss Cora Drew has lately come to the fore as a woman writer. Mrs Lillian Sweetser, of Maine, is another and Mrs Betty Fitzgerald, of Gasden, Ala., has the distinction of having won the top price for a regular script from Griffith, of the Reliance, solely for the excellence of her work. Mrs Marguerite Bertsch, the present editor of the Biograph, is a woman writer whose stories show keen insight into affairs, and Miss Maibelle Heikes Justice, a novelist and short story writer, is one of the Selig stars. Her work is exceptional in many ways. Lois Weber (Mrs Phillips Smalley) is another prolific writer of strength and versatility.
Miss Mary Fuller has written some of the smartest stories in which she has appeared, but if we started to list the Edison players who are also writers, we would have to give the complete roster.”

(E.W. Sargent, Moving Picture World, july 11, 1914

Historical film or melodrama ?

Not sure we’d see the difference today. But Epes Winthrop Sargent certainly did back in 1914:

His best work [Charles Kiener of the Kalem company] has been some historicals on the early California days, but he has also done some excellent melodramas
(Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914)

Old Wives for New (1918)

Un autre candidat à l’étude. Old Wives for New sort en 1918. D’après le livret d’accompagnement du DVD, Lasky aurait incité Cecil B. DeMille à sortir du genre costumé pour faire un film moderne, touchant à des questions contemporaines, et donc un film qui allait être plus populaire. Qu’est-ce qui, selon Lasky, allait faire de ce film un film à succès ? La peinture honnête de moeurs contemporaines, sans doute.
DeMille sort un film étonnant — un peu comme on en faisait à l’âge réformiste dans les années 1910, mais avec cette différence que le propos n’est pas vraiment de dénoncer (le happy end se charge de réconcilier tous les points de vue), mais plutôt de représenter fidèlement une situation maritale que le premier intertitre nous assure être commune. Prémisse réaliste: nous avons tous vécu cela.