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  • DAVID THORBURN: I want to begin by asking

  • what seems an obvious question, what is film?

  • I used to sometimes present it by saying, film as, dot, dot,

  • dot.

  • Film as what?

  • And it may be surprising to you, but one way

  • we could think about film is as chemistry.

  • Now how could that make sense?

  • Why would it make sense to think of film as a form of chemistry?

  • What this film got to do with chemistry?

  • In fact it's a very fundamental relation.

  • This is also true of still photography, as well as movies.

  • But what's the process by which they're made?

  • Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: Film really comes together from a--

  • DAVID THORBURN: Speak loudly so everybody can.

  • AUDIENCE: Film is made up of a lot of different components.

  • You have your lighting, your scene, your character.

  • And that all has to come together to make film.

  • Without even on component of it, you're

  • losing part of the experience.

  • DAVID THORBURN: You're right about that.

  • But that's a more general answer than I wanted.

  • There's something much more dramatically

  • fundamental about the way, about the connection

  • between chemistry and movies.

  • What is it?

  • AUDIENCE: The interaction between the audience and.

  • DAVID THORBURN: It doesn't have to do

  • with the experience of movies.

  • Come on.

  • It's technical.

  • AUDIENCE: Chemistry had to be developed

  • before you could have it.

  • DAVID THORBURN: It depends on chemistry.

  • Film is a form of applied chemistry.

  • Why?

  • Of course you're right.

  • AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

  • DAVID THORBURN: Yes.

  • What is a film?

  • There are certain emulsions that are put on piece of celluloid.

  • Light actually has to normally-- it can be any light,

  • but sunlight is best-- act, interacting

  • with those emulsions, causes the image to appear.

  • The actual, fundamental process by which film

  • is physically created is a chemical process.

  • And if you reflect on for a moment,

  • one of the things this suggests is

  • that then when we think about film in a much larger sense,

  • in the film as we experience in theaters, film,

  • as an engine of economic development,

  • as a provider of jobs, and careers, and so forth.

  • What we could say is that it is a form of applied chemistry

  • that is among the most profound uses of chemistry

  • that humankind has ever found.

  • Because if you think about the impact of movies on human life,

  • it is now a global phenomenon.

  • Is there any culture that is free of movies?

  • Maybe there are Taliban cultures that

  • dream of being free of movies.

  • But to my knowledge there's no culture in the world now

  • that's completely oblivious to film.

  • It's become a global phenomenon.

  • And it's more than a century old.

  • It is the distinctive, narrative form

  • of the 20th century, the signature form of storytelling

  • for the 20th century.

  • All of it derives from this chemical reaction, when

  • the emulsions are subjected to light,

  • the image appears on the celluloid.

  • There are even theoreticians of movies who have suggested

  • that there's a fundamental break of a kind that is subliminal,

  • unless obvious to many people.

  • But it's fundamental to our experience of text

  • when we moved from real film to digital forms of filmmaking.

  • Because nature is eliminated in digital form.

  • There's something natural, and in fact slow,

  • about the way when light works on those

  • emulsions to bring the images up.

  • And those of you who are amateur photographers

  • will know that you can control the clarity or the blurriness

  • of the image, the darkest of the lightness of the image, by how

  • long you leave the film paper in the emulsions.

  • You can control it, and still photographers

  • and creative movie directors actually

  • use those use that chemical principle in order

  • to create certain kinds of effects.

  • So one way to think about movies is

  • to think of it as a form of applied chemistry.

  • And one of the most profound uses of chemistry

  • that we could imagine in terms of its impact

  • on society, in terms of the vast number of people

  • who have been affected, and continue to be

  • affected by this invention.

  • So film is a form of chemistry.

  • What I'm suggesting, these different framings of what film

  • is, these different frameworks for understanding film.

  • One thing I'm trying to do is to suggest

  • some of the ways in which we might understand film

  • apart from what we're going to be doing in this course.

  • Now I don't know if one could justify

  • persuading a professor of chemistry

  • to teach a course in film.

  • That might be going too far.

  • But certain broad principles of photography,

  • and how they are linked to other photochemical processes,

  • might very well make a quite exciting and complicated course

  • in the chemistry department.

  • One can also think of film simply in a historical sense,

  • certainly, as a kind of novelty.

  • When film first appeared in the world,

  • and especially in the United States,

  • it was seen as a novelty that caused its first appearance

  • to take place in places like penny arcades.

  • Where people went to experience other kinds of public novelties

  • as well.

  • there would be machines in these penny arcades

  • that would guess you're weight.

  • And you put a penny in, if the machine

  • was right it kept your penny, if the machine was wrong would

  • give your penny back.

  • There were fortune telling machines

  • in these penny arcades.

  • In some of the more sleazy ones there were live peep shows.

  • Strip shows of various moderate kinds.

  • And of course, even at the very early stages,

  • film begin to replicate those live performances.

  • There were very trivial forms of burlesque

  • began to-- women stripping-- I don't think

  • there were any male strippers in this late Victorian era-- began

  • to appear in the penny arcades as well.

  • So one could say that film in its earliest stages

  • was also just a kind of novelty item, like a PEZ dispenser

  • or some equivalent kind of silly thing,

  • or baseball cards, or football cards, that kind of thing.

  • More profoundly of course, we could think of film

  • from another [INAUDIBLE], a manufactured object.

  • And this identity of film is incredibly important.

  • It's again, easy for us to forget,

  • because when we go to the movies today,

  • we see these complex and overwhelming--

  • we have these complex and overwhelming audiovisual

  • experiences.

  • And we might tend to forget what in fact is

  • the sort of industrial base on which movies were made

  • at a relatively early stage.

  • Part of what we want at least to be aware of in our course,

  • even though we won't study it systematically,

  • is the fact that the movies, the film,

  • is one of the first significant commodities

  • to become a mass-produced item.

  • And in fact, the same principles that

  • led to another manufacturing miracle

  • that we associate with the late 19th and early 20th century--

  • the automobile-- the same principles that

  • went to the production of the automobile

  • also worked in the production of film.

  • And in fact, both film and the automobile

  • could be seen as prototypical instances of this fundamentally

  • defining industrial capitalist behavior, capitalist activity,

  • which is mass production.

  • And especially, what does mass production depend upon?

  • The specialization of labor.

  • The rationalizing of the production

  • process into smaller, and smaller units.

  • So that particular people can do it quickly,

  • and you can create essentially an assembly line production.

  • You can create mass production.

  • I still find it very inspiring and important, significant,

  • the notion that film was created on an assembly line,

  • just like toasters or automobiles.

  • Seems a shocking and important insight.

  • Because they're still in some fundamental way

  • produced like this.

  • I don't mean that the same movie studios are churning out

  • 500 movies a year, which is what was churned out

  • during the great era of the Hollywood Studios,

  • from around 1930 through the end of the 1940s.

  • But the fact is the production of movies,

  • the manufacture of movies still depends on these principles

  • of the specialization of labor.

  • And I'm not simply talking about the way in which we

  • have actors, and directors, and cinematographers, and grips,

  • and best boys, and set dressers, and makeup people, and script

  • writers, and so forth.

  • All are relevant to this.

  • But I'm also talking about the way in which movies, still

  • to this day, are divided in their production principles

  • in three stages, a pre-production phase,

  • a production phase, and a post-production phase.

  • And there are specialists at each level, on each phase.

  • And a vast army of specialist is hired

  • to handle the problems that are connected

  • to the production of every single film.

  • So we can think of films as a really distinctive, signature,

  • instance of what mass production is capable of.

  • OK.

  • So we can say that the film is a manufactured object.

  • And not just a manufactured object,

  • but a product of mass production,

  • a product of essentially, assembly line principles.

  • And what makes this so remarkable to me,

  • still an idea that I have trouble fully absorbing

  • is that the mass-produced item that we're

  • talking about, unlike a toaster or even an automobile,

  • managed so fully to permeate our society and our world,

  • that it's infiltrated ourselves even into our dreams

  • and our fantasy life.

  • And finally, another way to think about film,

  • and I'm going to sort of enlarge in that.

  • And this is a way we'll be talking

  • about quite a lot in the course of our discussions

  • in this semester.

  • We can say that film, after it's elaborated, and established

  • itself in culture, it becomes a fundamental social form,

  • a fundamental social formation.

  • And experienced, widely practiced,

  • widely indulged in by a vast number of people

  • in the society.

  • So that one could say for example,

  • toasters are important, but they don't

  • generate the kind of social rituals

  • that are involved in going to the movies,

  • and of identifying with movie stars,

  • and of generating fans surround movies,

  • and ancillary, complex activities that we associate

  • with movie going.

  • And in fact, one might say that the great era of movie going

  • is already gone.

  • That it was really in the era of the Hollywood Studios

  • when they were before the internet and before television.

  • So we could also think of the film as a social form.

  • Not when it first appears, when it's just a novelty,

  • but after it goes through various phases.

  • When it embeds itself into the society the way the movies did,

  • it becomes a kind of social form.

  • And one might almost argue that it

  • becomes one of the most important social forms

  • in the society because it's so widely shared.

  • Most social activities in the society

  • are relatively limited in the circle of people they involve.

  • Even the number of automobile drivers

  • is controlled in a way that is contained or demarcated

  • in a way that's less true.

  • Movies appeal to children as well as adults.

  • And from there very beginning this

  • has been true of movies, especially

  • in the United States.

  • They've appealed across lines of social stratification,

  • across differences of gender, across differences of age,

  • across differences of race.

  • There's one book on the film, a rather overly optimistic one

  • that simplifies the pernicious or sinister aspect of movies

  • called "Film -- The Democratic Art.

  • And you can understand, even though I

  • think it's a simplification, why that's an interesting way

  • to think about movies.

  • Because it reached so widely across so many social barriers.

  • In that sense, film was the narrative form

  • that reached a wider audience than any other narrative

  • system that had been invented by human beings before it.

  • What's one explanation for why film would be so appealing,

  • be even more appealing than printed narrative?

  • It also is connected to why the movies grew

  • so quickly in their infancy.

  • Why they went from being a novelty

  • to being an embedded social form so quickly.

  • You probably know what the answer is.

  • AUDIENCE: That more people could see than could read.

  • DAVID THORBURN: Yes, that's the real answer, isn't it.

  • That it's mostly a visual medium.

  • It doesn't depend on language to the same degree.

  • And especially silent film, which

  • did not depend-- which it did depend on language,

  • it used intertitles and things, but it

  • depended on language minimally.

  • Why was this important?

  • Because when the film was in its infancy, there was also--

  • and this was a fundamental, enabling condition

  • for the development of movies-- there

  • was also in the United States a vast and growing

  • immigrant population in all the major cities, but especially

  • Chicago, New York, some of the other larger,

  • industrial cities.

  • And this new immigrant population, which many of them

  • didn't know English at all, had only a little bit

  • of money, disposable income, but they needed entertainment.

  • And the silent film was the perfect answer to this.

  • The film, relatively quickly becomes a profoundly embedded

  • social form.

  • To give you some sense of how monumental,

  • and how central, how important this

  • was in American society, what I can just simply remind you of

  • is that for most of the period in which the Hollywood

  • Studios were operating at full power, roughly the period

  • from the advent of sound film in the late '20s,

  • until the late '40s when television intervened,

  • even though there's a period when television is around

  • when the movie studios retain something

  • of their old character, but they begin

  • to decline without fully realizing if, that occurs

  • in the mid '50s sometime.

  • So in the period from roughly 1930 to say,

  • 1955, to be crude about it.

  • In this period, the vast majority of Americans

  • went to the movies every single week.

  • Think about that, every single week.

  • This was before television, which supplanted

  • that quality of movies.

  • In 1947 or 1948, 80 million Americans went to the movies

  • every week, every week.

  • That was like 2/3 of the population at that time.

  • So it was near to being a universal experience.

  • And not just the universal experience

  • that occurred occasionally, but a routine experience.

  • An experience that families, and individuals, and young,

  • and old, had regularly, as a fundamental part of their life,

  • as a part of their ordinary experience.

  • That's what I mean by an embedded social form.

  • That's an immensely important fact about the movies,

  • and especially about the classic movies.

  • And when that feature, the idea of the movies as something

  • routine in people's lives, something

  • they did regularly, not occasionally.

  • When that feature disappears, it disappears

  • in part because of the impact of television on society.

  • Television's in the house, so it's

  • a lot easier to retain, to establish

  • an habitual relation to television

  • than it is to the movie.

  • So the advent of this new technology

  • changed movies relation to its audience.

  • And this is the fact that to which

  • again we will return again, and again.

  • So we could also frame movies in other ways.

  • But these framings I think, are helpful to us in part

  • to remind us of some things that I'm not going to do.

  • One could certainly imagine a course

  • in the Department of Economics that looks simply

  • at the film as an economic engine,

  • at the number of jobs created by movies.

  • Not just the immediate jobs, the people who are actually

  • producing the film, but another kind of a accounting

  • that would take account of all the ancillary jobs.

  • The theater owners, the popcorn sellers,

  • the people who create the publicity for movies.

  • The whole entourage of hangers-on--

  • you're thinking of the TV show, aren't you?

  • The whole entourage of hangers-on that

  • follow the movie stars around.

  • It's an unbelievable engine of economic development

  • and economic growth.

  • And it is arguable, given the fact that the movies had

  • been a dominant industry in the Western world,

  • and especially in the United States,

  • since the early 20th century, one

  • could make an argument that it's one

  • of the most productive and central engines

  • of economic growth that capitalism has ever developed.

  • And one could teach a course in the movies that simply

  • emphasized its economic aspects, its power as an employer,

  • its role as a generator of wealth,

  • as a generator of resources.

  • And I mention this partly to clarify

  • the extent to which, in our course,

  • we're focusing on only aspects of what film might be.

  • But also, in order to remind you that we

  • need to be aware of this as a backdrop to the more cultural

  • and aesthetic concerns about the content of movies,

  • and about the way they developed, the way they

  • evolved, that will be the central energies

  • we will be committed to in our course.

  • Well, one thing you need to do in order

  • to experience these first weeks of this course in a really

  • effective way is to try to in a certain sense,

  • get outside of your own head, get outside of your own skin.

  • We live in such a visually saturated environment.

  • In which audio/visual messages are beamed at us constantly.

  • Some of us are connected to apparatus all the time.

  • We're connected to our cell phones.

  • We're connected to our computers.

  • It's almost as if we have audio visual signals bombarding us

  • 24/7.

  • It's almost as if you were entering a cave,

  • imagine that you're entering a cave.

  • What I want to do is think away your iPods.

  • Think away your cell phone.

  • Literally, think them away.

  • Imagine a world without them.

  • Imagine a world without movies, a world without television,

  • a world without radio.

  • I want you to imaginatively put yourself back

  • into the era when the first films began to appear.

  • And try to recover some of the excitement

  • and wonder that those earliest audiences must have felt when

  • they saw some of these images.

  • The most important thing in some sense

  • would be that they were immensely amazed,

  • they were taken aback by the simple, shocking, wonder

  • of movement captured on film.

  • It was if movement itself, something

  • they associate with reality, could suddenly

  • be recaptured in film.

  • Can we show some examples of this, Greg?

  • Some of you have seen one example of this.

  • Remember in the recitation section, when you

  • saw The Great Train Robbery.

  • Do you remember the moment in The Great Train Robbery--

  • which seems unconnected to the story--

  • in some prints of the film it comes at the end.

  • In some prints it came at the beginning.

  • In some prints it didn't occur at all.

  • Where was it in the film you saw?

  • AUDIENCE: Is it the guy?

  • DAVID THORBURN: Yes, yes.

  • When was that?

  • AUDIENCE: It was at the very end.

  • DAVID THORBURN: That was at the very end.

  • It's the moment where the guy pulls out his gun,

  • and points it at the camera and shoots him.

  • Did any of you find that odd?

  • I mean, I think you should have.

  • One reason is that it had nothing

  • to do with the narrative.

  • This is important film.

  • It used to be thought to be the very first story

  • film, the very first systematic narrative on film.

  • It's not that, there are earlier examples.

  • But it's one of the very first, and that's

  • why I wanted you see it.

  • It's one of the earliest story films.

  • It's one of the earliest film to tell a sequential story.

  • Although it seems very primitive to you guys,

  • it's actually a very sophisticated item.

  • And there has been a lot of filmmaking going on

  • before this film was made 1902.

  • We'll talk a little bit about that in a moment.

  • So this moment where he shoots the gun at the camera,

  • why is that disturbing to us or strange to us?

  • I'll answer my own question.

  • One, it's disturbing to us because it

  • breaks the narrative.

  • It seems unconnected to the narrative.

  • Why would they do it?

  • And then second, what's going on there?

  • Why is he doing it?

  • Does the filmmaker not like his audience?

  • What's the reason for it?

  • Why do you think it's there?

  • Who has an idea?

  • Why would be there?

  • Again enter the cave.

  • Think yourself back to an era before movie.

  • When people had never seen movies before.

  • What's the answer?

  • AUDIENCE: He couldn't engage the audience in the film.

  • DAVID THORBURN: Well, he does engage them,

  • but what else what does it do?

  • What does it call attention to?

  • AUDIENCE: It puts him into a situation

  • that they normally would not encounter, and probably would

  • not survive.

  • DAVID THORBURN: OK, that's right.

  • Yes, a way that's right.

  • And in fact, there are a lot of accounts of early films playing

  • these kinds of tricks, and audiences not yet sure

  • of what films were, reacting as if they

  • were looking at something real.

  • So there are at least reports of people seeing this film when

  • the guy shot the gun, people screaming and ducking

  • down under their seats.

  • And there are many stories like this about early films

  • where people would come to the-- and that's why they showed it.

  • They showed it because it's a very dramatic way

  • of dramatizing, of crystallizing the difference between reality

  • and movies.

  • And also, how realistic movies can be.

  • The movie's name's the most fundamental feature

  • of the movies.

  • It's a dead metaphor for us.

  • We don't even think about it when we say movie.

  • But think what it means, it means movement.

  • Films capture movement.

  • What don't you just show this in sequence

  • while I talk, Greg, OK.

  • These are a sequence of early films.

  • And you can see that all of them have in common

  • is a fascination with motion.

  • In other words, the novelty of motion

  • was so great in the beginning that the earliest film simply

  • did this.

  • There's an important principle here about the way

  • all media developed.

  • In their infancy, the first thing that happens

  • is that no one really much knows how a particular medium

  • we should be or could be developed.

  • And part of the reason for these early weeks

  • in the film for the first two or three weeks in this course

  • is to put you back into that situation.

  • To try to in a very crystallized and distilled way,

  • because there are thousands of films made in this era,

  • but in a very distilled and crystallized way,

  • I'm trying to recapture some of that excitement for you.

  • And in the case of both Chaplin and Keaton, what I've done

  • is choose some short films they made earlier,

  • and then show you a feature film.

  • So if you watch the Chaplain, Keaton films in sequence,

  • two shorts and then a feature film,

  • you'll see enacted in a kind of small compass

  • within the terms of a single director's career this larger

  • process that I'm saying was also enacted by movies themselves.

  • It was this period of the silent era,

  • was a period in which the movies discovered their identity,

  • or such identity as they have.

  • And I want to talk a bit more about that.

  • While all of these early, relatively primitive films

  • show us is a kind of-- this is one

  • of the earliest-- some people call this the first comedy

  • film.

  • The first joke in the movies.

  • The simplicity of it seems to us weird.

  • But if you think yourself back, if you go into the cave,

  • try to imagine a universe without audio/visual stimuli,

  • you could begin to understand why some of this stuff

  • was so interesting.

  • Motion itself captivated early audiences and filmmakers.

  • Waves on the shore for example.

  • There are a number of films that just show

  • waves lapping on the shore.

  • Many films of trains coming into stations, and of course,

  • this Fred Ott Sneeze.

  • Have we shown the kiss, or the electrocute?

  • Can we do that?

  • There were also risque or anarchic elements

  • that showed up in early film that I want you see.

  • Here is one of the most famous and scandalous of early films,

  • something called The Kiss.

  • And it was an unbelievable scandal when it came out.

  • It films a scene from a stage play.

  • Look how short it was.

  • It was banned in many cities.

  • It was thought to be scandalous.

  • Do you have the electrocute?

  • Many people would call this the first snuff film.

  • And this is a film called The Electrocution of an Elephant.

  • And think again what's going on here.

  • Part of it has to do with this wonder

  • that the film can capture actuality, in a way.

  • There's something bizarre and gross about this in some way.

  • This was a rogue elephant that was about to be put to death.

  • AUDIENCE: She had apparently stepped on a couple of handlers

  • and killed them.

  • DAVID THORBURN: So they were going

  • to electrocute the elephant, and they brought a camera there

  • to witness the electrocution.

  • And of course it's so dark, because this fragment of film

  • survives from over 100 years ago, more than 100 years.

  • He's supposed to collapse not to stand up, isn't he?

  • So there it is.

  • [AUDIENCE GASPS]

  • Grotesque, isn't it?

  • But also a part of early film.

  • This idea that film could capture reality

  • was itself so-- the novelty of this

  • was so powerful, that in the early stages

  • this was enough to cause great excitement for audiences.

  • One way to think about this problem,

  • and to think about-- the way I have for encapsulating,

  • or dramatizing in a kind of a distilled way,

  • all the elaborate processes that went

  • into the development or the evolution of film

  • is by-- the way I do this in part

  • is by reference to old Fred.

  • This film used to be thought to be the very first film,

  • it's not actually.

  • But it is one of the earliest films made and patented

  • in Edison's movie studio, the very first movie

  • studio in the United States in East Orange, New Jersey.

  • Probably, this made in 1894, at least

  • the copyright I think is of Fred Ott's Sneeze is in 1894.

  • And think of how simple it is, how ridiculous it is.

  • A camera sets up, they were still

  • working on the technology of the motion picture camera

  • at this stage, and they were testing it out.

  • And Fred Ott was an employee of the Edison Company.

  • And they said different, OK, Fred,

  • stand in front of the camera and take snuff.

  • And that's what he's doing.

  • We might think of Fred Ott's Sneeze

  • as, theoretically, symbolically, the first film,

  • even though there are earlier films.

  • Well, think of how unbelievably simple it is.

  • Shown it once more, Greg.

  • Can you freeze it?

  • GREG: Oh, yeah.

  • Hold on.

  • I'll get it.

  • DAVID THORBURN: So that Fred stays on the screen

  • while we're talking about this.

  • Look how short it is.

  • What is it?

  • It's two seconds long.

  • Think of this.

  • So this film is made in whatever it is,

  • 1894, 1895, this two-second long film was made in 1894, 1895,

  • by the 1920s, astonishingly complex narrative films

  • are being made, great works of art are being made.

  • What I call the Fred Ott principle

  • is this whole complex, social, and technical,

  • and technological, and artistic process,

  • the swirling of all of these energies going together.

  • Including the demographic fact of so many immigrants audiences

  • creating an environment that made

  • early film a very profitable activity, despite how crude

  • it was.

  • What happens in this period between 1900

  • and the end of the '20s is that film

  • goes from being a novelty separated off,

  • sharing a space in the penny arcades

  • with other forms of novelty, to being

  • one of the dominant industries, and one

  • of the dominant social experiences

  • of the American population.

  • This principle is replicated in some other European societies

  • as well, but not in all.

  • It's an advanced capitalist event.

  • And it occurs in other societies less fully industrialized

  • at later stages.

  • But there is an equivalent history

  • in some of the European cultures.

  • So in this period of fewer than 30 years,

  • film goes from being the most trivial and simplified kind

  • of novelty, to being one of the most complex narrative forms

  • human beings have ever devised.

  • What I mean by the Fred Ott principle

  • is that whole complex process that we

  • can go from something so simple to something so complex,

  • from something so marginal in society to something so central

  • in society in such a short time.

  • And I want to at least remind you of what

  • that principle involves.

  • I'm talking about all the technological,

  • cultural, demographic, and economic currents that

  • swirl together to create the movie industry that emerges--

  • really by the mid teens the movie industry essentially

  • is in place.

  • Variations will occur, new studios will appear,

  • but by 1915/1916 American movies have been established

  • on an assembly line basis.

  • Have been established on an assembly line basis,

  • and millions and millions of people

  • are now making it a regular habit to go to the movies.

  • And the movies are elaborating themselves

  • in a complex way that has to do with the way in which they

  • were industrialized.

  • There are three phases, I think, to what

  • we might call-- let's go back to the outline, Greg.

  • There are three phases to what we might call media evolution.

  • And this is another way of sort of dramatizing what I

  • mean by the Fred Ott principle.

  • The first phase is a phase of imitation and patent warfare.

  • A new technology appears.

  • Nobody yet knows how it would be applied.

  • How people will want to do.

  • Everything about the new technologies up for grabs.

  • So there are competitors who want

  • to sort of claim patents on the technology.

  • Questions about how long should films be?

  • Where she feels be shown?

  • How should films be distributed?

  • All of that's up for grabs.

  • All of that is rationalized and decided--

  • I put "decided" in quotes because no one sits down

  • and makes a decision.

  • It's really a function of the marketplace,

  • and of certain economic opportunities.

  • There's no question, for example, that the movies would

  • never have developed as they did were not

  • for those immigrant populations in cities like Chicago,

  • and New York, and Los Angeles.

  • And many other cities on the East Coast especially,

  • where they were very large immigrant

  • populations who needed.

  • And it was that financial infusion

  • that caused the immense amount of experimentation

  • and development to take place so quickly.

  • So in this first phase of imitation and patent warfare

  • many of these questions are not-- even

  • such simple questions as how long a film should be?

  • Some of the question of the length of the film

  • are technological, the very first films

  • had to be only 10 minutes long, because that

  • was as long as the film cartridges in which they

  • put in the cameras were capable of doing.

  • Later they were able to make two reelers, and three reelers.

  • That happens over a relatively short space of time.

  • So in this phase of imitation, one

  • the most important things that happens,

  • and this is the part I want you to become attentive to,

  • is that all of the ancestor systems that

  • lie behind the new technology are potential influences

  • on the new technology.

  • And in new films that you've seen already,

  • the silent films you saw in recitation,

  • you saw some examples of this.

  • For example, do you remember-- maybe we could show this, Greg.

  • The deaths in The Great Train Robbery.

  • Remember the deaths of The Great Train Robbery?

  • Why are you smiling?

  • AUDIENCE: Because there was a dummy.

  • DAVID THORBURN: Because they were still noticeably

  • what, false, fake?

  • Where do they come from?

  • The guy shoots, and the guy goes "ooh."

  • And he staggers around, and then he falls.

  • What's going on there?

  • Where does that tradition of performance come from?

  • AUDIENCE: Theater.

  • DAVID THORBURN: Yes, yes.

  • I'll let it play behind me.

  • Yes, it comes from theater.

  • Makes sense that one of the deep influences on early film

  • would be theater.

  • But now in the Fred Ott principle,

  • the most important sub idea in this theory, and this label,

  • the Fred Ott principle is the fact

  • that this process of development involves, among other things,

  • the capacity of filmmakers to discover

  • those features of the new medium that are unique or special

  • to the medium.

  • What makes the medium different from its ancestors?

  • Clearly, what was appropriate for books, or newspapers,

  • or theater, won't be perfectly appropriate for the new medium.

  • But nobody knows what the new medium's

  • capable of until things have been tried out.

  • So that's why I call it a phase of imitation.

  • And what one can say here especially

  • is that certain theatrical styles of acting are dominant.

  • Why our theatrical styles of acting so broad?

  • So unbelievable.

  • Why are they like that?

  • AUDIENCE: Because you're far away.

  • DAVID THORBURN: Yes, in the theater you're far away,

  • and you're in a fixed space.

  • But what's one genius of the movies?

  • One way the medium of the movies is different from theater

  • is that the camera can achieve a lover's closeness

  • to the action.

  • Or it can achieve a long view that's much longer and further

  • away than what.

  • Well, it's going to take time before this kind of thing

  • is figured out.

  • And one of the most decisive things we see an early films

  • is first, an acting style that seems derived from theater.

  • But some of you may have noticed that this begins

  • to change relatively quickly.

  • Can we show the fragment from A Beast at Bay?

  • Remember that silly film, A Beast at Bay,

  • that I had to watching it along with The Great Train Robbery?

  • Remember the ending of A Beast at Bay?

  • Something odd happens in this ending.

  • There's the monstrous, drooling, rapist-like figure.

  • He's always a convict or a low-life.

  • There are all kinds of social hierarchies

  • and established social prejudices that

  • get imported into early films.

  • And now we're going to have the rescue.

  • And so far it seems a conventional sort

  • of sleazy melodrama, in which there

  • is at least a hint of something morally disturbing

  • in the imminence of the rape.

  • It's as if the film makes a kind of sleazy appeal

  • to its audiences.

  • Here's a perfect example of such a moment.

  • It's interesting in fact, how one of the recurring

  • subjects of films always seems to be not just rape,

  • but violence against women.

  • It tells you something about the patriarchal societies

  • in which films emerge that those mythologies are replicated

  • in movies.

  • So he's going to be rescued here.

  • And what I want you to notice is what

  • happens at the very end of this sequence.

  • And can some of you remember what it is?

  • None of you remember?

  • It was so fast.

  • But it actually is very significant.

  • I think it shows us the emergence, the beginnings

  • of the emergence of a new style of acting

  • more appropriate to movies.

  • And also, something else, the development

  • of a total complexity that had not been in movies before.

  • Now the date of this film is early, 1907, 1908,

  • something like that.

  • You're going to see one other silent film by D.W. Griffith

  • tonight, The Lonedale Operator, made in 1912.

  • And I hope you'll be attentive to how much more complex

  • that film is.

  • I'll say a few words about that tonight.

  • I wish we were really just at the end, Greg.

  • I didn't really want to show the whole film.

  • OK, so here we're at the conclusion.

  • Now this is the part I wanted you to notice.

  • Look at this.

  • What's happening here?

  • The film has shifted over into a kind of silly comedy,

  • a kind of gentle comedy.

  • The woman said, kiss me hear, kiss me hear.

  • And in fact, if you notice she's not she's not saying,

  • kiss me here!

  • In other words, her gestures are more modulated to the nature

  • of movies.

  • What's beginning to happen there is two important things.

  • First, total complexity is entering in.

  • A melodrama has turned comic.

  • And acting style's beginning to.

  • Can we do the very end of Musketeers?

  • Here is the very end of a film by D.W. Griffith

  • called The Musketeers of Pig Alley.

  • Some people see it as one of the first urban crime films.

  • But what I want you to watch is this small actor here .

  • Watch his performance.

  • This is the emergence of a new kind

  • of acting, a non-theatrical kind of acting.

  • And it's happening very early, this film appeared in 1912.

  • That's Lillian Gish, the famous silent film star.

  • This gangster is socked that this woman would

  • choose his rival over him.

  • He says, you're nuts, lady.

  • I can't get it, but OK.

  • Look at this strutting peacock of a man.

  • Watch this.

  • He's a gangster, he's about to be arrested,

  • but the good guys will save him.

  • Oh, we lost it.

  • AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

  • DAVID THORBURN: One good turn deserves another.

  • But you see how much more restrained

  • the performances are here?

  • I mean, Lillian Gish became one of

  • the great silent-screen stars.

  • But I think it's this strutting peacock of an actor

  • who really begins to show what you can do on film.

  • And there are many film critics who

  • have seen this as a precursor of Edward G. Robinson's

  • performances.

  • He's also a diminutive actor, often plays gangsters.

  • But what you see, I think, in this moment,

  • and in this man's performance is the emergence, the beginnings

  • of an acting style that's more modulated,

  • that's appropriate to the nature of the film

  • So that kind of thing that's happening

  • is not just with acting, it has to do with all kinds of things.

  • It has to do with where you place

  • the camera, and such matters.

  • So what I mean then, by the Fred Ott principle

  • is this process of evolution that I want you to be aware of.

  • And really, in a certain sense experience

  • in distilled form in the short films

  • I've asked you to watch in this first week of classes.

  • The first phase is a phase of imitation and patent warfare.

  • In which all kinds of questions are up in the air.

  • How will the film be distributed?

  • How will it be exhibited?

  • How will it be produced?

  • There's nothing inherent in the nature of the technology that

  • requires the economic arrangements that developed

  • in the United States, and then we're replicated elsewhere,

  • for the distribution of movies.

  • In fact, Thomas Edison had a different idea

  • for how movies would be developed.

  • When he first conceived the apparatus,

  • he actually thought that movie projectors would

  • be owned by each individual.

  • In fact, what he was imagining was

  • the camcorder that occurs in a much later generation.

  • And there's nothing inherent in the technology

  • that would not permit that.

  • So one of the things we need to be aware of--

  • and I'll return to this matter either tonight

  • or in a later lecture.

  • We need to be aware of fact that the shape the technology takes

  • is not the only shape it might take.

  • It's not the technology itself that

  • drives its development so much as economic, and social,

  • and demographic factors.

  • And that's dramatically the case with the system

  • of distribution and access that was developed for the movies.

  • It's certainly theoretically possible for the apparatus

  • to be developed in a way that would

  • be sold to every individual.

  • What instead happened was a system

  • in which a professional elite becomes the production arm.

  • And these productions become very expensive,

  • and they are pumped out into the society for screening

  • at public theaters, which people will pay money to attend.

  • That economic structure, and that basic industrial structure

  • is not necessary to the technology.

  • It's not required by the technology.

  • The shape of film is at least as much cultural

  • as it is technological.

  • A very important point.

  • So the second phase after the phase of imitation

  • is the phase I call technical advance.

  • This phase occurs after some of the warfare is concluded.

  • Limited monopolies are established.

  • Some companies are more powerful than others,

  • or come up with a more successful product than others.

  • And they begin to dominate the marketplace.

  • They drive competitors out.

  • And what essentially happens is a kind of stability

  • is introduced in which the basic system is put in place.

  • Here's how we'll manufacture the item.

  • Here's how we'll distribute it.

  • Here's how long it will be.

  • That sort of thing.

  • And in this period of technical advance

  • what then happens once the stability sets in,

  • the particular, unique features of the medium

  • begin to be explored.

  • And these early films that I'm asking you to look at,

  • what I hope you'll watch for are moments

  • like the ones I was just pointing out this afternoon.

  • In which you see the emergence of a recognition of something

  • that is distinct or special in the nature of movie making.

  • I'll return to some of these matters again tonight.

  • But I want you to be aware of them.

  • So in the second phase, the phase of technical advance,

  • the system begins to learn what is unique about it.

  • How are movies different from their ancestors?

  • What does it mean that the camera can move close

  • to the object is photographing, or very far away from it?

  • What does it mean that the camera itself doesn't have

  • to be stable, that it can move?

  • You can see some of the early Griffith films really

  • experiment with a camera that's mounted

  • on something that's moving.

  • And then the final phase is the phase I call maturity.

  • And that's the phase that occurs really in silent film,

  • in the 1920s.

  • When the technical advances that are accomplished in phase two

  • are married to a serious subject matter.

  • The phase I call maturity is the phase in which feature

  • films are made, and in which some films become works of art.

  • And all films become more complex forms of narrative.

  • In which particular genre forms begin to emerge.

  • And audiences begin to choose particular kinds

  • of films that matter to them.

  • In other words, the system really

  • elaborates itself in a way that suggests

  • an immense variety of appeal to a range of audience.

  • That's the phase of maturity.

  • Why doesn't it go on forever?

  • What explains why the process doesn't continue?

  • What stopped this process?

  • So the Fred Ott principle encapsule

  • means going from Fred Ott's Sneeze

  • to going to Chaplin's Modern Times.

  • This immensely rich, complex narrative

  • film that we'll be looking at next week.

  • What explains why that moment of maturity

  • doesn't extend forever?

  • Why is this system not stable forever?

  • The simplest answer is capitalism

  • never allows for stability.

  • But the more exact answer is new inventions, new technologies

  • subvert the stability.

  • What happens at the end of the '20s

  • to subvert the confidence and stability of the system?

  • AUDIENCE: The introduction of sound.

  • DAVID THORBURN: The advent of sound.

  • Yes.

  • And the sound film doesn't completely

  • revolutionize movies, but it profoundly alters them.

  • It changes the nature of film.

  • And it changes the nature of the kinds of performers

  • that you need in film.

  • It profoundly enlarges and complicates what film is.

  • And then, something of the same principles

  • that I've talked about before happen in the sound era.

  • I'm sorry I'm running a little over,

  • but I promise you I'm almost done.

  • And normally, I will never run over even by a minute.

  • I promise.

  • I'll work for this.

  • Why doesn't the final phase continue?

  • Because of new technologies.

  • Because of new possibilities.

  • What happens at the end of the studio system?

  • The advent of television overturns

  • the stabilities that had been created and the old studio era.

  • And the intimate routine connection

  • to movies that had been established in the studio era

  • is finally obliterated by the presence of television.

  • And movies change their character

  • after television comes in.

  • We will return to this.

  • We will return to this matter.

  • , Well one way I can suggest for you to capture this imaginative

  • linkage, this imaginative connection to the world

  • of early film is by reminding you of a wonderful passage from

  • the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the great film critic James

  • Agee, which appeared posthumously in 1957.

  • And it distills for me what I mean--

  • and I hope for you-- what I mean in part

  • by film as a social form, film as a socially

  • embedded formation.

  • It helps to explain in less abstract terms what

  • I mean when I say that filled permeated American life.

  • Listen to the beginning of, this is from the first chapter.

  • And we're finished after this is over.

  • From the first chapter of A Death in the Family.

  • "At supper that night as many times before, his father said,

  • well, suppose we go to the picture show.

  • Oh, J, his mother said, that horrid, little man.

  • What's wrong with him?

  • His father asked.

  • Not because he didn't know what she would say, but so

  • she would say it.

  • He's so nasty, she said as she always did, so vulgar.

  • With his nasty little cane hooking up skirts and things,

  • and that nasty little walk."

  • Who is he talking about?

  • Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin, of course.

  • And this story takes place before Chaplin

  • was making feature films.

  • So the story takes place probably around 1915.

  • When comedy was still being made as shorts.

  • Comedies didn't become feature length

  • until sometime late in the '20s.

  • "His father laughed as he always did.

  • And Rufus felt that he had become rather an empty joke.

  • But as always, the laughter also cheered him.

  • He felt that the laughter enclosed him with his father.

  • They walked downtown in the light of mother of pearl

  • to the majestic," nice name for a theater--

  • "and found their seats by the light of the screen

  • in the exhilarating smell of tobacco, rank sweat, perfume,

  • and dirty drawers.

  • While the piano played fast music," right,

  • because violent films were never silent.

  • There was always music accompanying them.

  • "And galloping horses raised a grandiose flag of dust.

  • And there was William S. Hart--" the passage then

  • goes on to describe a western film with William S.

  • Hart, a silent film.

  • "And then the screen was filled with the city,

  • and with the sidewalk of a side street of a city,

  • and a long line of palms, and there was Charlie.

  • Everyone laughed the minute they saw him squatly

  • walking with his toes out and his knees apart as

  • if he were chafed.

  • Rufus's father laughed, and Rufus laughed, too.

  • This time Charlie stole a whole bag--" this time.

  • What does that imply about the audience?

  • And intimate familiarity with previous adventures

  • of this character, an ongoing routine connection.

  • "This time Charlie stole a whole bag of eggs.

  • And when a cop came along, he hid them

  • in the seat of his pants.

  • Then, he caught sight of a pretty woman,

  • and he began to squat and twirl his cane,

  • and make silly faces."

  • I'm going to skip it.

  • It's magnificent prose that captures

  • the essence of the film very wonderfully.

  • But I don't want to keep you longer than I already have.

  • And it shows Charlie sort of flirting with the girl.

  • And then finally, he flirts with her so much that she pushes him

  • and he falls back down.

  • "Then he walked back and forth behind her,

  • laughing and squatting a little.

  • And while he walked very quietly,

  • everybody laughed again.

  • Then, he flicked hold of the straight end of his cane,

  • and with the crooked end hooked up her skirt at the knee

  • in exactly the way that disgusted momma.

  • Looking very eagerly at her legs,

  • and everybody laughed very loudly.

  • And she pretended she had not noticed.

  • And then she pushes him over.

  • And there was Charlie, flat on his bottom on the sidewalk.

  • And the way he looked, kind of sickly and disgusted,

  • you could see that he suddenly remembered those eggs.

  • And suddenly you remembered them, too.

  • The way his face looked with his lip wrinkled

  • off the teeth and a little sickly smile,

  • it made you feel just the way those broken eggs must feel

  • against your seat, as queer and awful as that time

  • in the white PK suit."

  • He's also dramatizing how personal our relation to film

  • can be.

  • "When it ran down out of the pants' legs,

  • and showed all over your stockings, and you

  • had to walk home that way with everyone looking.

  • And Rufus's father nearly tore his head off laughing,

  • and so did everybody else.

  • But Rufus was sorry for Charlie, having so recently

  • been in a similar predicament.

  • But the contagion of laughter was too much for him,

  • and he laughed, too."

  • And the passage goes on to describe

  • the intimacy and the complexity of the relations

  • between audiences in 1915 and one

  • of the iconic figures of the movies.

  • In this idea, that Charlie mobilizes

  • this anarchic, liberating laughter,

  • and mobilizes this father-son relationship.

  • In that idea we recapture something

  • of what I mean by the notion that

  • film was an embedded social experience,

  • an embedded social form.

  • I'll see you tonight.

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