Approaches to understanding the moment of cinema’s birth

1. THE CINEMA IMAGE the most basic technical features

2. PREHISTORY Proto-cinematic technologies -fooling the eye

3. SPECTATORS- describing the modern subject - how life in modern times was thought to impact human experience

4. EXHBITION - how early films were watched

5. FILMS Watching at the films themselves

main features of the CINEMATIC IMAGE:

1. Illusion of motion2. Produces Depth - 2D image appears 3D3. Projected light4. Photographic image

1. Illusion of motion depends upon a shuttered intermittent motion

machine

• synchronized to the exact failures of our visual perception

• illusion exploits the threshold of seen and unseen

• flicker fusion + apparent motion• we’re in the dark

The speed of flash is imperceptible +

seeing motion where there is none (fill in the blanks)

Depth Cues

• Movement within the frame• Movement of camera through space• Linear perspective: Photographic technology

produces an image consistent with how depth has been represented for almost 700 years of art

• Overlap and size diminution

Renaissance perspective

Photographic image

1. The realism of the image -- not only looks close to life but made from life.

2. Technology depends upon serial photography

- film starts when flexible celluloid ground possible

Bazin’s photograph- physical imprint of reality, transfer, imprint, a tracing of life….not just about likeness, or being realistic in appearance.

- his metaphors (death masks, shroud of turin).

We are aware that the photograph of a tree can’t exist without a specific tree being put in front of the camera.

There’s a physical connection btwn the photograph and the objects it depicts.

• automatically generated, unconscious• For the first time, representation is not

routed through a human mind

Bazin’s photograph

Bazin’s photograph- spooky, occult qualities, necromancy, mummies

- the image has a living presence, an uncanny lifelike quality

- violate the given order of time the wonder of being able to capture time’s constant passage, human compulsion to preserve time, repeatable

- The photograph “hands down to future ages a picture of the sunshine of yesterday” (an early philosopher of photography)

The exhibition environment of Early Cinema

• Lecturer/explainer/ showman• Various musicians• Boisterous and heckling audience• Doors left open (no clear starting or ending)• Projection technologies are on display, a key

attraction is the machine (not hidden/disavowed as in CHN)

• distraction

Precursors to a culture dominated by

screen images

Pre-cinematic Screen and Projection

Technologies• - magic lantern shows• - shadow performances• - painted panoramas• - the camera obscura• - increasingly elaborate stage special effects

Pepper’s Ghost

Seeing is believing

• Vision serves as the ground for knowledge• Truth comes via the senses• Vision as the basis of empiricism (all

knowledge is derived from the senses -- leads to scientific method and experimentation)

Interest in the Fallibility of Vision

• 19th-Century obsession with how vision fails us

• Our eyes are easy to trick• Persistence of vision -- the retinal retention

of after-images, the blur

19th C. Cultural Obsession with

the Limits of Visual Perception• Magic tricks, parlor tricks, slight of hand• Stereoscopes• Spinning Disc toys

(e.g., Zoetrope pictured in B&T)• Flip book toys

Littau

• Those who attended the first Lumiere screenings, even before seeing their first film, “were already seeing protocinematically.”

• She doesn’t mean only because of these vision technologies and toys

Modern LifeUrban living

• Fast, intoxicating, onrushing stimuli• Restless succession of sensations• Everything always in flux• Being in the crowd (overpopulation)• Machinization of everyday life• Shopping, window displays, barrage of signage• Travel, speed of travels and trolleys• Timekeeping -- standardization of time, schedules• Artificial lighting -- night brightened

New Modern Sensibility

• Historical shift in what it means to be Human• Sensibility = more than a mindset or set of

attitudes• Effects the human at their deepest core• A new mode of being human, experiencing life• Impact on sensation, nervous system, attention

spans, perception, how humans engaged with the world

The Human in Modernity(the conditions of Modern life)

• Under assault • Everything is fleeting, rushing past us• Must live with fragmentation, seeing things in fragments,

“endless series of partial impressions”• Anonymous -- driven to observation• Eyes never allowed to rest -- the constant onslaught of the

visual • Live in contingency -- sudden shifts, accidents, the

unexpected

The Modern Subject

• Nervous, agitated, nervous system = fried• Body jostled, one day = a series of shocks• Overwhelmed with vibrations, velocity,

rhythms• Drained of energy and focus• Eyes strained• Overloaded and overwhelmed

Experience of Cinema = the Experience of Modern

Everyday Life• “rapid crowd of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the

grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions.” (Simmel in Littau, 47)

• Film is a response to modernity. – Rapidity disallows contemplation. (Kracauer)– Shocks of life shaped into a formal system (film).The rhythm of the “conveyer belt is the basis of the rhythm of

reception in the film.” (Benjamin)

Eye-Hunger

• Constant thirst for new sensations• B/c of modern life’s constant onslaught of

sensations, the modern viewer needed more and more, stronger and stronger impressions

“Cinema of Attractions”• Movies are not only an extension of novels or theater. • Early cinema is more akin to amusement park rides than

in literature or drama. • Thrill rides --- managed fear• Sensations of acceleration and falling, but security

guaranteed by machine.• Heritage in dangerous body stunts of vaudeville, travel and

porn postcards, the circus

“Cinema of Attractions”Not about absorption in narrative world (story), as we assume

today.Early films = largely non narrative,A “cinema of instants” -- direct visual impactAggressive -- the image confronts and tries to shock the viewer.

Collisions, crashes, accidents, deaths.Display, astonishment, quick views, shows offObsessed with showing off spectacular sights, and spectacular

points of viewTendency towards showmanship and exhibitionismCircus-like atmosphere

C of A• Spectator is not lulled into a dreamy state (like in CHNs)• Spectator = continually startled and astonished by thrilling

displays• Privileges distraction over contemplation

– just seeing over understanding• Spectator: cheers, screams, flinching in terror or delight• CofA persists in action spectacles today• Littau’s argument what’s missing in the history of cinema

is a history of these attractions afforded by all films, even the most overtly contemplative.

Edison’s Kinetoscope