Research Methodology and Thesis Writing (Fall, 2006)

Silent Films and Screaming Audiences
Karin Littau

1.
 Context
‧History of Cinema, Life style in1900, Modernity
‧The Cinema Was On Its Way Long before1895

1.1

 Characteristics of modern age

 
1.1.1
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth.

 
immensely more irritable

 
1.1.2
 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century.

 
railway→disasters

 
1.1.3
 Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Pet in the Era of High Capitalism.

 
traffic→shocks and collisions

 
1.1.4
 Emily Zola’s novel, The Ladies’ Paradise.

 
department→sucking in the population from the four corners of Paris

 
1.1.5
 Quotation of Nietzsche Philosophy and Truth.

 
Man unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside

 
1.1.6
 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life.

 
modernity is the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent.

 
1.1.7
 O. Winter, “The Cinematograph”. New Review 1896.

 
an endless series of partial impressions

 
1.1.8
 Anne Friedburg, “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition.” Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film.

 
mobilized gaze

 
1.1.9
 Edgar Allen Poe, The Man of the Crowd.

 
the protagonist came to terms with the experiences of modernity

 
1.1.10
 Russell Reynolds, Traveling: Its Influence on Health.

 
(qtd. in Wolfgang Schivelbusch.)

 
summed up the experience of industrialized age

 
1.1.11
 Victor Hugo

 
(qtd. in Ian Christie)

 
In a flash, the landscape recedes and what the traveler sees are no longer flowers, but flecks, or rather streaks of red and white.

 
1.1.12
 Wolfgang Schivelbusch

 
filmic perception

 
1.1.13
 Charney and Swartz, Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life.

 
defined cinema as the juncture of movement and vision

 
1.1.14
 George Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life.

 
correlation between city life and the cinematic experience

 
1.1.15
 Siegfried Kracauer, Cult of Distraction.

 
tcinematic experience

 
1.1.16
 Friedrich Nietzsche

 
immensely more irritable(x2)

 
1.1.17
 Walter Benjamin

 
film itself is a response to modernity

 
2.
 Analysis

2.1

 Arrival of the Cinema at the Railway Station

 
2.1.1
 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film.

 
They captured ”life at its least controllable and most unconscious moments.

 
2.1.2
 Maxin Gorky, Review.

 
suddenly a strange flicker passes through the screen and the picture stirs to life

 
2.1.3
 Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in Early American Film.

 
viewpoint of the camera

 
2.1.4
 Yuri Tsivian, Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception.

 
the other kind of viewpoint

 
2.1.5
 Quotation of Gorky, Review.

 
his experience of seeing Lumiere’s films

 
2.1.6
 Richard de Cordova, From Lumiere to Pathe: The Break Up of Perspectival Space. Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative.

 
Frame, discomposition of space

 
2.1.7
 Martin Loiperdinger,” Lumieres Ankunft des Zugs: Grundungsmythos eines neuen Mediums.”

 
movement

 
2.1.8
 Melies

 
(qtd. in Stephen Bottomore, The Panicking Audience? Early Cinema and the Train Effect.” Historical Journey of Film, Radio, and Television)

 
recalled the dashing of the train

 
2.1.9
 Quotation of Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art.

 
explain the idea above

 
2.1.10
 George Brunel.

 
(qtd. in Stephen Bottomore)

 
the train was actually going to hit you and run you over

 
2.1.11
 Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (in)Credulous Spectator.” Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film

 
particularly modern entertainment of thrill: roller coaster

 
2.1.12
 Tom Gunning, “Heard Over the Phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde Tradition of the Terrors of Technology.” Screen Histories: A Screen Reader

 
cinema of attractions

 
2.1.13
 Tom Gunning, D.W. Griffth and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at the Biograph.

 
rather than telling stories, but show something

 
2.1.14
 Tom Gunning, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Temporary of the Cinema of Attractions.” Silient Film

 
reactions of the audience, citation of William Wordsworth

 
2.1.15
 Maxin Gorky, “Gorky on the Film”

 
sense no simple impressions, but only exiting ones

 
2.1.16
 Friedrich Freska.

 
(qtd. and tran. in Littau)

 
cinematograph feeds eye-hunger

 

2.2

 Reactions to Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

 
2.2.1
 qtd. in Bottomore (French newspaper)

 
2.2.2
 qtd. in Christie (British newspaper)

 
2.2.3
 qtd. in Tsivian (Russian)

 
2.2.4
 qtd. In Bottomore (Switzerland)

 
2.2.5
 qtd. In Gunning, “Aesthetic.”

 
physical responses

 
2.2.6
 qtd. In Bottomore

 
other kind of reactions in French reviewers

 
2.2.7
 Andre Gaudreault, “Showing and Telling: Image and Word in Early Cinemma”

 
the environment of films being displayed

 
2.2.8
 Alexander Voznesenky

 
(qtd. In Tsivian)

 
calming assurances

 
2.2.9
 Michael Chanan, The Dream That Kicks: The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain.

 
Audiences didn’t see the screen as screen.

 
2.2.10
 Yuri Tsivian

 
support Michael’s opinion

 
2.2.11
 Martin Loiperdinger

 
promotion,exaggeration

 
2.2.12
 Tom Gunnin, “Aesthetic”

 
thrilled by the new invention, not the film

 
2.2.13
 Quotation of Tom Gunnin, “Aesthetic”

 
as above

 

 

 series of questions combined with various citations

 
2.2.14
 Tom Gunnin, “Aesthetic”

 
2.2.15
 Tsivian, Chanan

 
2.2.16
 Martin Loiperdinger

 
2.2.17
 Tom Gunnin, “Aesthetic”

 
2.2.18
 Kracauer, Theory of Film

 
instinctive, rather than meditation

 

 

 critics of instincts or meditation

 
2.2.19
 Miriam Hansen (get-thrills-quick theatres)

 
2.2.20
 Quotation of Margaret Cohen.(physical reactions)

 
2.2.21
 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.

 
2.2.22
 Mary Ann Doane

 
2.2.23
 Gorky, “Gorky on the Film.”

 
2.2.24
 Walter Serner, “Kino und Schaulust.” Kino-Debatte: Texte zum Verhaltnis von Literatur und Film 1909-1929

 
2.2.25
 Friedrich Freska, “Vom Werte und Umwerte des Kinos.”1912. Kein Tag ohne Kino

 
eye hunger

 
2.2.26
 Friedrich Nietzsche

 
merely react to stimuli from outside (x2)

 
3.
 Conclusion

3.1

 Kracauer, Theory of Film.

physiological tempests

3.2

 Kant

Disinterestedness (the distance between art and the audience

3.3

 Kracauer,”Cult of Distrction”

early cinema didn’t allow reflection and contemplation

3.4

 Heidegger

Eye hunger does not seek the leisure of tarrying observantly, but rather seeks restlessness and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounter.

3.5

 Theodor Adorno

cultural industry

3.6

 Hans Robert Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermenuetics.

reawaken our primary levels of aesthetic experience

 

 

Tom Gunning, The Cinema of Attractions.
Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde

1.
 Possibilities of cinema before 1906

1.1

 Fernand Leger, “A critical essay on the plastic qualities of Abel Grance’s film: The Wheel.”

 

 The unique power of cinema was a matter of making images seen.
2.
actuality film plays an important role in early film production

2.1

 Robert C. Allen, Vaudeville and Film:1895-1915

 

 Actuality films outnumbered fictional films until 1906.

2.2

 Quotation of George Melies,”Importance du scenario”
3.
differences between the Lumiere brothers and Melies
4.
precise definition of film of attractions
(to show something)
5.
exhibitionism becomes literal in the series of erotic films
6.
recalls Melies’ quote about trick film
(plotless, a series of transformations strung together with little connection and certainly no characterization)
7.
Modes of exhibition in early cinema also reflect this lack of concern with creating a self-sufficient narrative world upon the screen

7.1

 Musser, ”American Vitagraph 1897-1901”, Cinema Journel

7.2

 Raymond Fielding, ”Hale’s tours: Ultrarealism in the pre-1910 motion picture.” in Fell, Film Before Griffth.

 

 The relation between films and the emergence of the great amusement park
8.
exhibition of technology

8.1

 Ben Brewster

 

 the enlargement, close-up itself is an attraction
9.
the term attractions

9.1

 Eisenstein, “How I Became a film director”, in Notes of a Film Director.

 

 the source of the term

9.2

 Eisenstein, “The Montage of Attractions”, in S. M. Eisenstein,, Writtings 1922-1934.

9.3

 Ibid.

9.4

 Yon Barna, Eisenstein

 

 attraction v.s fairground
10.
cinema and the bourgeoisie

10.1

 Marineti, “The Variety Theater 1913” in Umbro Apollonio, Futurist Manifestos

 

 Film appeared to as one attraction on the vaudeville programme
11.
the attack of middle-class reform group

11.1

 Michael Davis, The Exploitation of Pleasure.

 

 Vaudeville depends upon an artificial rather than a natural human and developing interest, these acts having no necessary and as a rule, no actual connection.
12.
1907-1913 represents the true narrativization of the cinema
13.
chase film:film of attractions and narrative

13.1

David Levy, “Edison sales policy and the continuous action film 1904-1906”, in Fell, Film Before Griffith

 

 Edison’s chase films
14.
titles of film are also attracting

14.1

 Nicholas Vardac, From Stage to Screen: Theatrical Method from Garrick to Griffith

 

 certain titles of films
15.
 conclusion

 

 
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