1. The Emergence of Cinema as an
Institution
Chapter 1
John Belton, American Cinema, American Culture
Clip: [Brief] History of the Motion Picture

2. • From 1929 to 1949: 80 to 90 million Americans viewed movies weekly
• Movies resembled a religious institution, but primarily a social institution
“THE CATHEDRAL OF THE MOTION
PICTURE”

3. Developing Systems: Society & Technology
• Film as an institution
• Q: What is an institution?
• A: An established, custom, practice, or relationship in society (American Heritage
Dictionary) Examples: government, military, church, school
• Economic: Purpose = make money (e.g., Edison's Kinetoscope only one
voyeur at a time, pun intended), but developed into a product marketed
and sold the audiences. Star system and genre system are commodities
• Social: Promoted social interaction among Americans; Leisurely activity;
Examples: church, clubs, bars
• Technological: marvel attracted crowds, dependence on products of the
Industrial Revolution (celluloid, sound, etc.)
• Psychological: Appeals to emotions, makes us want to go to the movies;
escapism, enjoyment, contemporary times vary greatly from the past
when movie-going was akin to our TV habits today.

4. Edison & the Kinetoscope

5. Edison & the Kinetoscope (cont’d)
• Capturing Time: an age of
many new inventions, which
impacted cultural shifts. First
motion picture camera
• Introduced new concept of time
(along with the photograph &
phonograph)
• A commodity - reproduced and
sold
• Objectified, infinitely re-
experienced
• Viewed by one person at a time
• Designed to maximize profit

6. Kinetoscope Parlor

7. • Invention of projection (1895-1896)
• Changed viewer's relationship to the image was no longer private, but a
public experience
MASS PRODUCTION, MASS CONSUMPTION

8. The Nickelodeon: A Collective Experience
• Working class attraction
• 5¢ movies
• “For the first time in American
history all races, genders, social
and ethnic groups shared a
collective experience”
• A step toward the creation of a
homogeneous middle-class
American culture

9. Cleaning Up: The Benefits of Respectability
• Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC)
• Result of mass consumption and need for stabilization
• Interested in profit and market expansion
• Goal: attract upper class viewers
• Objectives
• Eliminate ethnic films
• Increase price of admission
• Produce films based on literary, historical, or biblical sources (Poe, Dickens,
Tolstoy, Shakespeare)

10. • The Camera as Recorder
• The Camera as Narrator
• The Feature Film
SPECTACLE AND STORYTELLING: FROM
PORTER TO GRIFFITH

11. The Camera as Recorder
• „bourgeoisification of the movies‟
• Post-1908, exhibitionist in nature,
theatrical
• Middle-class demand for more
advanced/complex narratives
• Focus on perfection of narrative skills
• Edwin S. Porter's use of showing same
action from different perspectives
successively
• Two versions of The Life of an American
Fireman (1903)
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0gJ7BnLc

12. The Camera as Narrator
• Active narration used to shape audience's perception
• Griffith's use of parallel editing or cross-cutting
• Creates suspense
• Psychological development of characters

13. The “Feature” Film
• More complex narratives
• Multiple-reel
• Financial success
• D.W. Griffith's historical epic, The
Birth of a Nation (1915)
• 12 reels, 3 hours long
• Extreme racism overtly presented and
exposes the power of the motion picture as
a medium to communicate ideological
arguments
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=32hMZP0K
2wM

14. “Garden of Dreams” & The Great Showmen
• Change from uncomfortable, modest theaters to spacious, luxurious movie palaces
• From theater attendants to concierge service
• Middle class experience the luxuries of the rich
PRESENTING…THE MOVIE PALACE

15. AN EVOLVING INSTITUTION
• What began as a technological marvel at the turn of the century has
changed in countless ways
• Stylistic and technological developments
• A shifting in American consciousness
• Continues to be an efficient system of storytelling
• “The cinematic institution of Hollywood past has
disappeared…transformed into a new institution designed to
serve…contemporary audiences” (19).
• Goal: “to recover a sense of the experience that previous generations
had when they went to the movies” (20).