A Brief History of Early Film & Cinema HIST 3323: American Indian History

Main Points  Historical Antecedents  Early Films & Technologies  Films and Urbanization, Industrialization & Immigration  Popular Culture & Mass Entertainment  Modern Movie Industry, 1930s – 1950s

Historical Background  Plays, theater, dance, opera, sports and spectator entertainment  Photography  “Capture” an image and moment in time  Reproduction technologies  Distribution abilities  Civil War  1847, Keokuk (Sac & Fox)  Thomas Easterly

Daguerreotype Kit

Hand Held Still Cameras  Civil War necessitated smaller, mobile cameras  1870s U.S., France, Germany developing dry processes for fixing images on “film”  No glass or large plates  In the 1880s Kodak Eastman mass produced film & technologies such as shutter speed, snapshot, and system for developing film

Early Moving Film Technology  Industrial Revolution  Advancements from cameras & still images  Thomas A. Edison  Built upon inventions in France & Germany  Kinetoscope   Kinetograph, 1891  Instantaneous images placed on 35 mm film strip  Individual viewing

Kinetescope Parlor, San Francisco (1894)

Charles Francis Jenkins The Phantoscope Backlit projection 1894 public viewing Smooth “motion pictures” Basic approach for modern movies

The Cinematograph  Louis & Auguste Lumiere  Cinematographe’  Filmed images  Developed them  Projection  Paris 1895

Silent Films  Technology to synchronize film and sound did not exist until 1923  Piano player/organist  Films evolved from short clips incorporated in vaudeville shows, to full length features by  Great Train Robbery, 1903  # #  Westerns

Films, Urbanization & Immigration  Great migrations from 1880s-1920  Industries & wage labor  Population growth  Expendable income & leisure  Ethnic communities  Cultural persistence & Americanization  Nickelodeons  Short films  Pittsburgh, 1905

Movies and Moral Reform  The Progressive Era  Theatres were spaces where ethnic groups, immigrants, both sexes, could interact socially.  Moral reformers worried that theatres were unhealthy and bred vice  Scorned the content and “wasted time” in theatres

Movies and Mass Culture  A form of Americanization  Experience of going to the movies  Marker of status  Films “educated” people about social realities  Entertainment & escapism  National identity & history  The Birth of a Nation  DW Griffith, 1915

Modern Film Industry  Post-WWI Expansion  Entertainment & distraction  William Fox & Adolph Zuker  Working class immigrants with expendable income  Art, entertainment & social commentary for the masses  Moved the industry center to Hollywood, CA  Low cost, fast production  Movie Stars

Hollywoodland Production moved to Los Angeles, CA Weather Paramount, MGM, Fox, Universal Studios, United Artists, Warner Brothers Hays Code of self- regulation and censorship Large corporations with huge influence on American Society

Popular Movies / Stars  Charlie Chaplin  Will Rogers  Tom Mix  Rudolph Valentino  John Wayne, Haunted Gold (1932)  Clara Bow  The Squaw Man, 1914  Cecile B. DeMille  First feature length movie filmed in Hollywood  Last of the Mohicans, 1920  Arthur Wellen  The Paleface, 1922  Buster Keaton, Dir/star John Dix, Vanishing American (1925)

Contemporary Legacies  On the Warpath  Indian Giver  One red cent  Off the reservation  We need to powwow  Geronimo!!!!  Tomahawk Chop  Circle the Wagons

Conclusions  Movies became a powerful force for entertainment and socio-cultural identity formation  Reflected AND contributed popular culture  Assimilated immigrants and educated them about America  Movies can also provide a space for social and political commentary and critique  Indigenous peoples are central to the creation of American identity, as contrasts and antagonists  Rarely portrayed as “modern peoples” outside of the wild west 19 th century