American Film History The Editors

Cynthia Lucia is Professor of English and Director of Film and Media Studies at Rider University. She is author of Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial in Film (2005) and writes for Cineaste film magazine, where she has served on the editorial board for more than two decades. Her most recent research includes essays that appear in A Companion to Woody Allen (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Modern British Drama on Screen (2014), and Law, Culture and Visual Studies (2014).

Roy Grundmann is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Boston University. He is the author of Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (2003) and the editor of A Companion to Michael Haneke (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is Contributing Editor of Cineaste and has published essays in a range of prestigious anthologies and journals, including GLQ, Cineaste, Continuum, The Velvet Light Trap, and Millennium Film Journal. He has curated retrospectives on Michael Haneke, Andy Warhol, and Matthias Muller.¨

Art Simon is Professor of Film Studies at Montclair State University. He is the author of Dangerous Knowl- edge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film (2nd edition, 2013). He has curated two film exhibitions for the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York City and his work has been published in the edited collection “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (2007) and in the journal American Jewish History.

Together they are the editors of the four-volume collection The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film (2012) and American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present (2016), both published by Wiley-Blackwell. American Film History Selected Readings, Origins to 1960

Edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon This edition first published 2016

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc, except for Chapter 16 © 1999 University of Texas Press; Chapter 18 © 1989 James Naremore; and Chapter 26 © 1981 Cambridge University Press

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American film history : selected readings / edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Arthur Simon. volume cm Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. Origins to 1960 – ISBN 978-1-118-47513-3 (paperback) 1. Motion pictures–United States–History–20th century. I. Lucia, Cynthia A. Barto (Cynthia Anne Barto), editor. II. Grundmann, Roy, 1963- editor. III. Simon, Arthur, editor. PN1993.5.U6A8656 2015 791.430973–dc23 2015015486

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Top: Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, Red Dust, 1932. Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy. Bottom: Intolerance, 1916. Photo: Wark Production Company/Album/akg-images.

Set in 10/12pt BemboStd by Aptara Inc., New Delhi, India

1 2016 Contents

Volume I: Origins to 1960

Acknowledgments xii Preface xiii

Part I Origins to 1928 1 Setting the Stage: American Film History, Origins to 1928 3 References 16 2 D. W. Griffith and the Development of American Narrative Cinema 18 Charlie Keil Notes 34 References 34 3 Women and the Silent Screen 36 Shelley Stamp References 51 4 African-Americans and Silent Films 54 Paula J. Massood Notes 68 References 68 5 Chaplin and Silent Film Comedy 70 Charles J. Maland References 84 6 Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille: Early Hollywood and the Discourse of Directorial “Genius” 85 Gaylyn Studlar Notes 97 References 97 7 The Star System 99 Mark Lynn Anderson Notes 112 References 113 8 Synchronized Sound Comes to the Cinema 115 Paul Young Notes 128 References 129 vi CONTENTS

Part II 1929–1945 9 Setting the Stage: American Film History, 1929–1945 133 Note 151 References 151 10 Era of the Moguls: The Studio System 153 Matthew H. Bernstein References 173 11 “As Close to Real Life as Hollywood Ever Gets”: Headline Pictures, Topical Movies, Editorial Cinema, and Studio Realism in the 1930s 175 Richard Maltby Notes 194 References 198 12 Early American Avant-Garde Cinema 200 Jan-Christopher Horak Notes 214 References 214 13 “Let ’Em Have It”: The Ironic Fate of the 1930s Hollywood Gangster 215 Ruth Vasey Notes 230 References 230 14 Landscapes of Fantasy, Gardens of Deceit: The Adventure Film between Colonialism and Tourism 231 Hans Jurgen¨ Wulff Notes 245 References 246 15 Cinema and the Modern Woman 248 Veronica Pravadelli Notes 262 References 262 16 Queering the (New) Deal 264 David M. Lugowski Notes 280 References 280 17 There’s No Place Like Home: The Hollywood Folk Musical 282 Desiree´ J. Garcia Notes 295 References 296 18 The Magician: Orson Welles and Film Style 297 James Naremore Notes 309 References 310 CONTENTS vii

19 Classical Cel Animation, World War II, and Bambi 311 Kirsten Moana Thompson Notes 324 References 325 20 Mapping WhyWeFight: Frank Capra and the US Army Orientation Film in World War II 326 Charles Wolfe Notes 339 References 339 21 A Victory “Uneasy with Its Contrasts”: The Hollywood Left Fights World War II 341 Saverio Giovacchini Notes 356 References 359 22 Hollywood as Historian, 1929–1945 361 J. E. Smyth Notes 377 References 377

Part III 1945–1960 23 Setting the Stage: American Film History, 1945–1960 383 References 397 24 Taking Stock at War’s End: Gender, Genre, and Hollywood Labor in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 398 Roy Grundmann Notes 419 References 421 25 Natalie Wood: Studio Stardom and Hollywood in Transition 423 Cynthia Lucia Notes 444 References 446 26 The Politics of Force of Evil: An Analysis of Abraham Polonsky’s Preblacklist Film 448 Christine Noll Brinckmann Notes 467 References 469 27 The Actors Studio in the Early Cold War 471 Cynthia Baron & Beckett Warren Notes 485 References 485 28 Authorship and Billy Wilder 486 Robert Sklar Notes 501 References 501 viii CONTENTS

29 Cold War Thrillers 503 R. Barton Palmer References 519 30 American Underground Film 520 Jared Rapfogel Note 535 References 535

Index 537

Also in the same series

Volume II: 1960 to the Present

Acknowledgments xii Preface xiii

Part I 1960–1975 1 Setting the Stage: American Film History, 1960–1975 3 Notes 21 References 22 2 Adults Only: Low-Budget Exploitation 23 Eric Schaefer Note 35 References 35 3 Black Representation in Independent Cinema: From Civil Rights to Black Power 37 Alex Lykidis Notes 52 References 54 4 Cinema Direct and Indirect: American Documentary, 1960–1975 56 Charles Warren Notes 70 References 70 5 Comedy and the Dismantling of the Hollywood Western 72 Teresa Podlesney Note 86 References 86 6 The New Hollywood 87 Derek Nystrom Notes 103 References 103 CONTENTS ix

7 “One Big Lousy X”: The Cinema of Urban Crisis 105 Art Simon References 118 8 Nashville: Putting on the Show: Or, Paradoxes of the “Instant” and the “Moment” 120 Thomas Elsaesser Notes 131 References 132

9 Cinema and the Age of Television, 1946–1975 134 Michele Hilmes Notes 146 References 146

Part II 1976–1990 10 Setting the Stage: American Film History, 1976–1990 151 Notes 173 References 173

11 Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry 175 Thomas Schatz Notes 188 References 188

12 Independent Film: 1980s to the Present 190 Geoff King References 204

13 Reclaiming the Black Family: Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and the “L.A. Rebellion” 205 Janet K. Cutler Notes 218 References 221

14 Feminism, Cinema, and Film Criticism 223 Lucy Fischer References 238

15 American Avant-Garde Cinema from 1970 to the Present 241 Scott MacDonald Note 258 References 258

16 A Reintroduction to the American Horror Film 259 Adam Lowenstein Note 274 References 274 x CONTENTS

17 Back to the Future: Hollywood and Reagan’s America 275 Susan Jeffords References 285 18 “Stayin’ Alive”: The Post-Studio Hollywood Musical 286 Karen Backstein Notes 301 References 302

Part III 1991 to the Present 19 Setting the Stage: American Film History, 1991 to the Present 307 Notes 329 References 329 20 The Queer 1990s: The Challenge and Failure of Radical Change 330 Michael Bronski Notes 344 References 346 21 24/7: Cable Television, Hollywood, and the Narrative Feature Film 347 Barbara Klinger Notes 360 References 360 22 Plasmatics and Prisons: The Morph and the Spectacular Emergence of CGI 362 Kristen Whissel References 375 23 Mainstream Documentary since 1999 376 Patricia Aufderheide References 391 24 Truthiness Is Stranger than Fictition: The “New Biopic” 393 Michael Sicinski Notes 407 25 “Asia” as Global Hollywood Commodity 408 Kenneth Chan Notes 421 References 422 26 The Blockbuster Superhero 423 Bart Beaty Notes 437 References 437 27 Limited Engagement: The Iraq War on Film 438 Susan L. Carruthers Notes 453 References 453 CONTENTS xi

28 The Biggest Independent Pictures Ever Made: Industrial Reflexivity Today 454 J. D. Connor Notes 468 References 469 29 Writing American Film History 471 Robert Sklar References 481

Index 483

Additional online resources such as sample syllabi, which include suggested readings and filmographies for both general and specialized courses, are available at www.wiley.com. Acknowledgments

These volumes would not have been possible with- to whom we owe our thanks. We also acknowledge out the outstanding research and scholarship of our the support of Rider University summer fellowships respected cinema and media colleagues whose essays and research leaves that were instrumental in helping appear on these pages. We thank them, along with us complete both the hardcover and paperback other scholars whose advice has been invaluable along editions. the way. We are deeply grateful to Wiley-Blackwell We deeply appreciate the support of our families editor Jayne Fargnoli, who was instrumental in help- and friends through the years we’ve spent on this ing initiate this project and whose continued support project, without whom we could not have sustained and advice have been crucial. We also thank the our efforts. We remain forever grateful to Barbara highly professional and supportive Wiley-Blackwell Berger, Isaac Simon, and Tillie Simon; Mark Hen- editorial team, including Julia Kirk, Mary Hall, Mark nessey; and Ray Lucia for their love, patience, and Graney, Annie Jackson, Brigitte Lee Messenger, and support. so many others who have devoted their time and We especially want to acknowledge Robert Sklar. effort to designing these volumes. We also are grateful Bob’s contribution to these volumes goes well beyond to Colin Root, Robert Ribera, Virginia Myhaver, the two essays that appear here. His mentorship, and Nicholas Forster of Boston University who scholarship, and friendship meant so much to us over assisted in completing the four-volume hardcover the years. It is with great respect and gratitude that we edition from which this two-volume paperback dedicate these volumes to his memory. edition is drawn. And there are so many others – both colleagues and students – at Rider University, The Editors Boston University, and Montclair State University Preface

In many ways, this project began in the classroom. syllabi for survey courses in American film history and When organizing American film history courses, syllabi using these volumes to create more focused often taught over two semesters, we encountered “special topics” courses. the recurring problem of how best to select readings With the classroom in mind, new and expanded for our students. A strong narrative history seemed introductions address historical time periods marked essential and several of these are available. But because by each section division. These introductions, it of their scope and synthesis, these texts do not have must be noted however, do not pretend to be space for lengthy discussions of important events, film all-inclusive treatments of their particular periods nor cycles, or artists. We wanted to create a collection of do they systematically survey every essay within each essays that would provide such in-depth discussions. volume – that task is performed by the overviews We also wanted original treatments of “bread-and- accompanying individual essays. Rather, the intro- butter topics” – the rise of the star system, the place ductions function as a type of establishing long shot, of specific genres like the musical and gangster a perspective on some of the more significant events, film, the operations of classical-era studios and their individuals, films, and developments in a given era, executives – as well as less frequently discussed topics. with collected essays providing closer, more detailed As a means of introducing new areas of inquiry into views. We also acknowledge that lines of demarcation our courses and the larger field of film scholarship, from section to section, period to period, should we especially wanted essays that would cover film always be understood as permeable, never rigid. As production on the margins, such as the avant-garde such, we do discuss films in the introductory essays and documentary, and films made by and on topics that, from time to time, cross these flexible boundary associated with underrepresented groups – whether lines. women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, or As with every such collection, and with narrative gays and lesbians. Although we gladly reprinted accounts of film history, we were forced to make several important essays, we mostly asked scholars difficult decisions about those topics and essays to contribute new work, extending arguments they from the 2012 edition that we would include or had made elsewhere or tackling entirely new areas. omit. Undoubtedly, readers will wonder about the The result was The Wiley-Blackwell History of American inclusion of some subjects and the absence of others. Film, published in 2012, in four-volume hardback This is perhaps particularly the case when it comes and online editions. to individual artists. There are essays here devoted to The book in front of you is part of a two-volume Griffith, Capra, and Wilder but not to Ford, Hawks, paperback collection of essays selected from the four- and Hitchcock. All historians are painfully aware of volume hardback/online edition. New material has who and what gets left out. Moreover, the essays been added, including expanded introductions and focusing on individuals certainly favor directors over brief overviews of individual essays, designed to guide screenwriters or cinematographers. On the other students by highlighting key concepts and separately hand, the critical importance of the star is addressed in listing “additional terms, names, and concepts” of several essays, many of which simultaneously take up importance. Overviews also reference related essays the issue of genre. Our choices grew from the desire to in the paperback and hardback/online editions,1 create volumes that could most usefully be integrated encouraging readers to expand their understanding into American film history courses as they typically and further their research. Professors adopting this are taught. Although our expanded introductions aim paperback volume(s) also will have access to peda- to fill in gaps, we acknowledge that more than afew gogically oriented materials online, including sample gaps do, inevitably, remain. xiv PREFACE

Two approaches to American film history have Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American guided the best work in the field over the past Movies, 30 years. The first is a cultural history approach offer- ing an account that combines attention to the industry We need to be wary of postulating a direct correspon- and its development with a focus on the political dence between society and cinema or condemning its and cultural events central to US history in the late absence. Film subjects and forms are as likely – more likely – to be determined by the institutional and cul- nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. A tural dynamics of motion picture production than by the second approach undertakes a far more intensive study most frenetic of social upheavals.3 of the film industry’s production, distribution, and exhibition strategies, tracing the emergence of a “clas- With this in mind, we have found it useful to think sical” language and recording the shifting authorial in terms of groups or clusters of films, closely examin- forces within the industry. This has been accompa- ing patterns or cycles that form a cinematic landscape. nied by important work inside studio archives and Such clusters or groupings, whether folk musicals of with the professional/personal papers of key artists. In the 1930s and 1940s or comic Westerns of the 1960s, writing a history of American film, both approaches form a coherent field that past audiences had encoun- are indispensable. tered over a relatively concentrated period of time. With the 2012 Wiley-Blackwell History of American Essays built along such lines can serve the needs of Film and this two-volume edition, we have sought scholars, students, and teachers who may have time to add a third, vital component – one that pays to see or show only one film in class. The significance closer attention to the films themselves. Because the of that single film hopefully will be illuminated when best narrative American film histories have limited placed in dialogue with other films with which it is space for elaborate, close readings of the films they grouped in any one of our essays. reference,2 we believe there is room in historical Not all of the essays published here, however, studies for attention to the relationship between cover clusters of films. Industry practices, significant representational or formal strategies of specific films moments of experimentation, and various modes of and their narrative or thematic concerns. At the same documentary and independent filmmaking also are time, we recognize that a call to include close reading considered, some as parts of larger cycles and some in historical analysis is not without its problems. The not. Indeed, the scope of these volumes and the larger wider historical picture can sometimes get lost in 2012 collection permits us to place, side by side, a studies too focused on one film or a narrow selection variety of approaches to American film history. We of films. Furthermore, interpretive claims about a are pleased to showcase the varied methods employed film do not lend themselves to the type of verification and the range of material now being examined by film offered by work that draws significantly on archival historians. We also are gratified to publish the work sources. Still, we believe that close reading is an of so many people in our field, from senior, well- essential activity and makes a significant contribution. established scholars to those whose important work Although the essays published here adopt a “selected has garnered attention over the past several years. topics” approach, we believe they strike a rewarding Our hope is that, in moving through each volume balance between close readings that contribute to and in a relatively methodical fashion, students and schol- those that complement the cultural history and history ars will discover a rich collage that will open new of industry approaches to American film history. lines of inquiry and contribute to an ever-expanding It is commonplace by now to understand cinema knowledge of American film history. not as simple reflection but rather as a form of media- The Editors tion that produces a perspective on, but by no means a transparent window onto, the world – a world it also simultaneously helps to construct. The relation- Notes ship between the cinema and the world it represents travels a nuanced route that first passes through 1. University libraries and individuals can get information the conventions and pressures of the film industry about accessing the online edition at: http://onlinelib itself. As Robert Sklar has argued in his seminal text rary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9780470671153 PREFACE xv

2. We do not mean so much the type of formal analy- of specific techniques – mise-en-scene,` camerawork, sis of systems offered in a work like David Bordwell, lighting,editing,etc.–asdeployedinafilmorsetof Janet Staiger, and Kristen Thompson’s The Classical films. Hollywood Cinema (1985) with its analysis that theorizes 3. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History an entire mode of production, but, rather, historical writ- of American Movies. Revised and updated. New York: ing that includes interpretive claims about the function Vintage Books (1994), p. 322.

Part I

Origins to 1928

1 Setting the Stage American Film History, Origins to 1928

The origin of almost every important cultural form is price. To be sure, the cinema did not erase divisions a result of converging histories and rests at the inter- of race and gender, and its democratizing impulse did section of intellectual, technological, and sociological not redraw the class boundaries in America. But one changes. In the case of the American cinema, these of the most remarkable aspects to the story of early origins are located toward the end of the nineteenth American cinema is how it emerged at a moment century and pivot around a series of developments when the nation could have drifted toward greater in the economic, scientific, and artistic history of the fragmentation, when the influx of immigrants from nation: the tremendous growth of cities and the arrival eastern and southern Europe could have created a of millions of immigrants between 1880 and 1920; the disunited states, and how the cinema, and later radio consolidation of business and manufacturing practices as well, countered such forces. Indeed, it is perhaps that maximized production and created a new means the supreme irony of the movie industry that mem- by which to advertise goods and services; the contin- bers of this very same immigrant population would uation, and in some cases culmination, of experiments be the ones to build and steer the industry through devoted to combining photography and motion, most the first decades of the twentieth century and beyond. notably those of French scientist Etienne-Jules´ Marey In the process, they, and the artists they employed, and American photographer Eadweard Muybridge; would produce a unifying set of myths that incorpo- and the emerging power of the United States and its rated and rivaled the historical myths of the nation. place within the world economy. Accompanied by its own icons and symbols, from This period is characterized by the remarkable movie stars to corporate logos of roaring lions and penetration of cinema into the life of a nation. snow-capped mountains, and with its own version of Between 1896 and 1928, the movies were the holidays in the form of national premieres and award primary force behind a unifying transformation in ceremonies, the movie industry created a visual the United States, turning people separated by region language that transformed citizens into moviegoers. and class, educational and ethnic background, into a This language, rather quickly internalized by audi- national audience that, by the late 1920s, consumed ences, formed the scaffolding on which a genre-based the same spectacles on the East Coast as the West, mass medium developed. The consistent means by and in theaters in which every seat sold for one ticket which time and space were organized on-screen was

American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960, First Edition. Edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 4 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 accompanied by a consistent array of settings and own complex history. The name that for many years stories: legends of the Old West, urban crime, family was most attached to the “invention” of the movies melodramas, slapstick comedy, and, later, tales of was Thomas Edison. But as early as the 1960s, his- horror and love stories set to song and dance. torians began debunking the various myths around This is not to suggest that in its early years all movies Edison’s claim to be the father of the movies, setting were the same or their tendencies conservative – far the record straight as to how the Wizard of Menlo from it. While the movies functioned as a powerful Park placed his name and his patent on devices and tool of assimilation, they also presented a serious chal- ideas, some produced under his employ, others pur- lenge to the prevailing values of the nineteenth cen- chased from beyond it, but all of which culminated in tury and the white Protestantism that was its anchor. the most widely marketed moving picture machines. The emerging cinema helped create and represent a Specifically, credit has since been given to W. K.L. new American cosmopolitan society, represented the Dickson, who, working for Edison, developed the working class and its struggles, contested nineteenth- Kinetograph, a camera that drew film through the century sexual mores, and helped dislodge the cul- device at a stop-and-go speed appropriate for expo- tural officials of an earlier era. One need only think of sure using small perforations cut along its edges. His- the genius of Mack Sennett and his slapstick render- torians have noted that Edison’s original intention was ing of law enforcement to see the medium’s potential to use the movies to accompany his phonograph. Edi- for undermining authority. The nickelodeon opened son’s first machine for watching movies was a stand- its doors to women and offered business opportuni- alone peep box, the Kinetoscope, which ran a 50- ties to new citizens. The larger movie houses to fol- foot loop of film, and therefore first defined spectator- low, and the content of their projections, as Richard ship as a solitary activity. Dickson’s Kinetograph stood Butsch argues in the hardcover/online edition, would in stark contrast to the Cinematographe,´ the much be shaped by, but also contribute considerably to, the lighter camera (that also functioned as a printer and reshaping of the American middle class. And yet the projector) developed in France by the Lumiere` Broth- history of the film industry over its initial 30 years is ers, and which may have convinced Edison that the also remarkable for the stability it achieved, for its suc- future of the medium rested in projection. Indeed, it cessful instituting of a shared set of conventions with would be just two years between the appearance of the respect to on-screen content and visual style, as well first Kinetoscope parlors in New York in April 1894 as production and exhibition methods. In this sense and the exhibition, in April 1896, of Edison’s Vitas- the movies reflected many of the wider patterns of cope movie projector, presumably a response to the American capitalism: modest experimentation so as to Lumieres’` 1895 projection of movies in New York differentiate product, within a system of stability that City. The Vitascope benefited from Edison’s acquisi- maintained levels of output and consumer expecta- tion of a projection machine developed by C. Francis tions while seeking to maximize profits. Jenkins and Thomas Armat and from the incorpora- tion of what came to be known as the Latham Loop – developed by Woodville Latham and his sons – a The Nickelodeon Era technique whereby the film is pushed into a short arc before descending down past the projection bulb. This period, beginning with film’s rapid journey The loop, which also arcs the film after projection from Kinetoscope parlor to vaudeville house to on its way to the take-up reel, stabilizes the drag on nickelodeon, as outlined by Richard Abel in the the filmstrip to prevent it from breaking. In short, hardcover/online edition, and ending with the any account of the invention of the movies in Amer- changeover to talkies, is characterized by several over- ica must be framed as a collaboration among indi- arching factors. The first has to do with developments viduals, some working together, some working far in the machines of moving picture photography and apart, a synthesis of ideas and experiments – with the projection. The years of intense experimentation with recognition that stories about origins are often revised the production of moving images cover the last three to fit the exigencies of history writing and ofthe decades of the nineteenth century and make up their marketplace. SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 5

The second overarching development has to do language by which Griffith advanced film narration with the films themselves. In just one generation, the developed within a specific context, responding to movies went from short actualities or simple stories, pressures from the emerging industry and the society often screened as multifilm programs, to feature- into which his films were being released (1994, 7). length films running, in some cases, close totwo Griffith advanced the language of storytelling while hours. In the process, the film frame and the space maintaining – one might even argue enhancing – within it became consolidated around the human fig- the pleasure of the senses so attractive to the earli- ure, rather than around more abstract pursuits, and the est moviegoers: “Griffith’s films preserved a hedo- properties of mise-en-scene` (including set and cos- nistic experience, providing thrills that middle-class tume design, lighting, and movement and behavior of audiences learned to accept and desire” (Gunning characters), camerawork, and editing were integrated 1994, 90). Griffith’s experimentation culminated in into the telling of legible and coherent narratives. his 1915 epic, The Birth of a Nation, a film in which Pioneer filmmakers such as Edwin S. Porter came to his nineteenth-century racial politics collided with his understand that the “basic signifying unit of film,” to twentieth-century cinematic artistry. use David Cook’s phrase, “the basic unit of cinematic Prompted in part by the importation of European meaning,” was not the dramatic scene but rather the films running well over an hour, the American indus- shot. In other words, a given scene could be presented try expanded to include the production of multi- across an unlimited number of shots (Cook 1996, reel features. During the mid-teens, producers, most 25). Charles Musser, in the hardcover/online edition, notably perhaps Universal and the French company provides a detailed analysis of Porter’s narrative inno- Pathe,´ created an in-between format, the serial, in vations in such groundbreaking films as The Execution which a story would be told through weekly install- of Czolgosz (1901), Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), ments two to three reels in length. In the late 1910s The Great Train Robbery,andThe Life of an American and into the 1920s, the industry moved increasingly Fireman (both 1903). Ordering of shots – to create the toward feature production. With one reel consisting illusion of continuous action, to alternate the visual of approximately a thousand feet of film, a four-reel perspective on an action, or to create clear temporal feature would run (at the silent speed of 16 frames markers for events unfolding on-screen – thus became per second) roughly 48 minutes. Four- and five-reel the defining factor in telling a story on film. This features thus allowed the industry to offer its grow- essential concept of the shot could then be shaped by ing middle-class audience stories with the scope and cinematographic elements such as lighting, camera complexity approximating that which it had come to angle, temporal duration, and the organization of the expect on the legitimate stage. space within the frame. Filmmakers like D. W. Grif- The development of the American film language fith, most notably, came to understand the relation- was thoroughly enfolded with the methods of mass ship between the scale of a given shot – long, medium, production created to meet the almost insatiable or close-up – and access to the psychology of their fic- demand for new films during the first two decades of tional characters and thus the chains of identification the twentieth century. Charles Musser has argued that between spectator and narrative action, as Charlie the development of increasingly complex narratives Keil points out in this volume. This simple insight, must be attributed not only to the industry’s desire to that greater visual intimacy was linked to understand- appease middle-class reformers, but even more to the ing the emotions and motivations of the characters demands of “standardization, narrative efficiency and on-screen, opened the door to longer, more complex maximization of profits” (1999, 272). film narratives, complete with multiple locations and The factory system that evolved to full maturation characters drawn over a longer period of time. in the 1910s came to rely increasingly on a detailed Over the course of hundreds of films made between division of labor and came to recognize the need for 1908 and 1914, Griffith not only brought his charac- real estate to hold studios, production facilities, and ters closer to the camera, but also refined the use of theaters; the need for the development or purchase of parallel editing so as to clearly articulate the time frame new technologies; and the need for vast amounts of of specific actions. As Tom Gunning has argued, the capital to cover these and other expenses. Within two 6 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 decades of the first film exhibition, the movies had become big business. Censorship Battles As a consequence, the early American film indus- try fell prey to the logic of that system, in particular If control over the production and distribution of the tendency toward combinations and monopoly. In movies became one recurring story for the history 1908, the 10 largest film production companies, led of American film, another would be the battle over by Edison and Biograph, formed the Motion Picture their content and exhibition. From their earliest days, Patents Company (MPPC). Combining the patents the movies were a site of struggle between filmmakers they held on film technology with an exclusive deal and the custodians of American morality. In Decem- with Eastman Kodak, the Trust, as it came to be ber 1908, New York City Mayor George McClellan known, sought to exert full control over the pro- ordered all nickelodeons in the city closed. It was the duction and distribution of movies. Such control was most dramatic official response so far to a decade’s- short-lived, however, as a group of independent pro- long chorus of concerns about the moral propriety of ducers – Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, and William on-screen images, their violence and sexual content, Fox – successfully resisted MPPC control and gained and the conditions of their exhibition. While theater a foothold in the industry. Indeed, these men, whose owners successfully challenged McClellan’s actions, national and religious heritage set them starkly apart the industry as a whole sought to protect itself from from the lords of the Trust, would ultimately not only future incursions by moving quickly to a strategy it surpass their rivals, but also go on to found the Amer- would pursue, in one form or another, for decades – ican movie business as it would come to be known self-regulation. Seven years after the McClellan affair, thereafter – Hollywood. By the time the legality of the the matter went before the United States Supreme Trust and its trade practices came before US courts, Court. During that time the industry’s National Board it had already lost its dominance. But it would not be of Censorship had been established (its name subse- the last time the movie business would be challenged quently changed to the National Board of Review) by fair trade laws, and the independents of one age in order to certify the moral status of new films and would become the monopolists of another. Indeed, defuse local censorship. one of the recurring tropes of American film history In Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of is the drift toward market domination by a handful of Ohio, the court found in favor of the state and declared companies or the conglomeration of the film industry that Ohio’s power to censor film content outweighed by even still larger corporate enterprises. Mutual’s claims to free speech or its argument that In the 1910s, the center of film production shifted Ohio’s regulating standards were inconsistent. (The from the East Coast to southern California, taking Ohio censorship mechanism had, in fact, been estab- advantage of its good climate, proximity to a variety lished at the urging of the Ohio Exhibitors League.) of natural locations, and, perhaps most importantly, its But the court’s ruling said as much about the status of inexpensive real estate and nonunion labor. By 1922, the movies at this point in history as it did about the over 80 percent of film production was centered in or rights of state or local review boards. The movies were near Los Angeles. But in some ways the movies never first and foremost a business, the court said, anddo left New York. The studios maintained their business not function as “part of the press of the country or as offices in the nation’s financial capital where, starting organs of public opinion” (Sklar 1994, 128). Produc- in the mid-teens, they had established important rela- ers may well have understood their product in sim- tionships with Wall Street and the giants of American ilar terms. Their opposition to censorship came less banking. Well into the 1920s, producers continued from aspirations toward art and its protection than to use production facilities in and around New York. from aspirations for profits and the threat posed by D. W. Griffith would make important films, includ- an unevenly applied set of regionally enforced moral ing Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm standards. (1921), at his studio in Mamaroneck, just north of the The content of films troubled some in local com- city. And studio back lots frequently included a New munities, particularly after the trial of Fatty Arbuckle, York street, complete with tenements, front stoops, indicted in 1921 for manslaughter in the death of and shop windows (Koszarski 1994, 102). a young woman at a Hollywood party. Despite his SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 7 acquittal, the case scandalized the nation, but this and several hundred as Richard Abel and Richard Butsch other sordid aspects of the movie business did not cur- point out in the hardcover/online edition. In April tail its immense popularity. Between 1917 and 1928, 1914, The Strand, New York’s first picture palace the producers released an average of 600 films per year catering directly to the middle-class audience, opened (Lewis 2008, 70). In the early teens, it was still com- with a seating capacity of 3,500. Many more palaces monplace for theaters to change their programs on a were to open across the country over the next decade, daily basis and even into the 1920s many exhibitors ushering in a long period of urban moviegoing amidst would have a new film playing every week. When, vast, ornately designed theaters with plush seating and in 1922, the industry established its trade organiza- sparkling chandeliers. Although not always profitable tion, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors ventures for exhibitors, picture palaces survived in Association (MPPDA), it did so not only to respond many cities into the 1970s, long past the time when to the Arbuckle scandal, but also to insure the contin- movies were thought to need an elegant showcase. ued flow of box office dollars. With Will Hays atthe In the same year as The Strand opened in New helm, the MPPDA convinced state and local censor- York City, a new mode of production became solid- ship boards that it was serious about policing the moral ified in Hollywood. The central producer system, in content of movies. The MPPDA may have helped which a detailed shooting script allowed for planning keep censors at bay, but filmmakers would largely and budgeting well before a film went into produc- ignore its code of movie conduct for another decade. tion, replaced an earlier director-based approach. The director’s work could now focus on approving the set design, shooting the film, and working with the edi- The Industry tor in the assembling of a final cut. Overseeing vir- tually everything else – labor, props, set construction, Between 1915 and 1928, the major filmmaking com- wardrobe, players – was a producer who functioned panies of the studio era were established or stabi- like a general manager, someone also entrusted with lized. Loew’s (MGM), Fox, Paramount, Universal, the job of managing costs and estimating profits. His- and Warner Bros. all emerged over the course of a torians differ somewhat over the extent to which the fiercely competitive 15 years of mergers and acqui- central producer system dominated film production. sitions. The path to vertical integration, with studios Its primary phase ran from 1914 to 1931 and Thomas acquiring their own theaters, also led in both direc- Ince is most often cited as the first to fully adapt these tions. In response to what they took to be the unfair organizational practices to movie production (Staiger practices of block and blind booking – rental policies 1985, 136–137). Ince also was instrumental in fore- first enacted by Adolph Zukor at Paramount requiring grounding the importance of the script and writing independent-owned theaters to book entire groups or of intertitles, as Torey Liepa points out in the hard- blocks of the studio’s films without advance knowl- cover/online edition of this series. Yet filmmakers edge of their content – those owners united to form such as D. W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil the First National Exhibitors Circuit. From there it B. DeMille, and James Cruze, artists whose work was a quick step for First National to move into film transcended the run-of-the-mill films characterizing production, facilitated by the signing on, in 1917, of much of the industry’s output, operated according to Charlie Chaplin. Zukor, in turn, bankrolled by Wall a method that still privileged the creative and manage- Street powerhouse Kuhn, Loeb & Co., led Paramount rial role of the director (Koszarski 1994, 110). Either on a mission to acquire first-run theaters – over 300 way, by the mid-1920s, film production proceeded by 1921 (Koszarski 1994, 75). along a highly efficient path, with teams of artists and During this period, movie theaters underwent not technicians working under the supervision of a hand- only changes in ownership but also a fundamental ful of top executives at every studio. Those artists change in design. The nickelodeon era had witnessed and executives included many women among their a dramatic increase in the size of exhibition venues ranks. Indeed, the silent era is distinguished not only as theaters devoted exclusively to motion pictures by the importance of women as moviegoers, but by moved rapidly from standing-space-only storefronts, the diverse roles women played within the industry in 1905, to theaters, less than a year later, seating as well. As Shelley Stamp points out in this volume 8 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 and Jane M. Gaines and Victoria Sturtevant explain fell. Action-adventure pictures, Westerns, melodra- in the hardcover/online edition, the popular image of mas, and comedies dominated the silent era. Despite women as mere extras was contradicted by the facts. recurring declarations by industry analysts that Amer- Screenwriters June Mathis and Anita Loos and direc- icans were tiring of cowboys on-screen, the Western tors Lois Weber and Ida May Park, to name just four, remained the most popular genre of the era. In 1910, played crucial roles in shaping studio stars and prod- 21 percent of all American-made films were West- uct. While it is certainly true that individual execu- erns and in 1926, that figure came close to 30 per- tives made their mark on film production, the stability cent (Buscombe 1988, 24, 427). Undoubtedly, most of the system was, in fact, certified by its very capacity of these were B-films, but in the 1920s, the genre was to withstand changes in management personnel. enhanced by several epic productions – The Covered For audiences and moviemakers, the stability of Wagon (1923), The Iron Horse (1927), a film Nicholas the movies was also anchored to a codified method Baer discusses in depth in the hardcover/online edi- of story construction and editing, what has come to tion – predecessors to a number of A-Westerns made be known as the classical system. It prescribed that in the next decade, such as Cimarron (1931), The narrative events be organized according to a logic of Big Trail (1930), and Union Pacific (1939). More than cause and effect. The result would be a unified plot, any other genre, at least up to the coming of sound, despite whatever disparate ingredients it might con- the Western marked Hollywood’s greatest contribu- tain, in which characters’ actions are clearly motivated tion to national myth. Yet the heroic Westerner was and the causal chain of scenes made legible. According hardly a singular character. William S. Hart’s stoic, to Kristin Thompson, this causal unity can be found dirt-stained loner contrasted sharply with Tom Mix’s in early one-reel films but would become increas- clean-clad hero, but the cowboy nonetheless func- ingly necessary as films grew longer and their narra- tioned as an exemplary figure for the celebration of tives more complex (Thompson 1985, 174–175). To white expansion into and across Western and Ameri- present the classical narrative, there emerged a con- can Indian lands. sistent method for linking shots together, one that The melodrama, and more particularly the mater- could handle the myriad temporal and spatial variables nal melodrama, were staples of the era. The very that came with telling stories through multishot films. earliest film melodramas typically revolve around Needless to say, these variables grew exponentially as physical peril and a last-minute rescue, as in Porter’s the industry turned toward feature film production. Life of an American Fireman and Rescued from an Eagle’s As Thompson concludes, “The continuity rules that Nest (1907) and in Griffith’s shorts – including The filmmakers devised were not natural outgrowths of Adventures of Dollie (1908) in which the title character, cutting, but means of taming and unifying it. In a as a baby, is kidnapped by gypsies. Such plots, as sense, what the psychological character was in the uni- Gerald Mast and Bruce Kawin point out, clearly were fication of the longer narrative, the continuity rules influenced by the theatrical productions of David were in the unification of time and space” (Thomp- Belasco, in which “good miraculously won out in the son 1985, 162). Those rules would come to dictate last 15 minutes” of plays lasting more than two hours: such practices as shot-reverse shot editing, the eyeline “Melodrama was a world of pathos, not of tragedy, match, the match cut, and respect for the 180-degree of fears and tears, not of ideas” (2003, 31). But with axis of action. These techniques were implemented so feature-length films like Griffith’s Broken Blossoms as to minimize any possible disorientation introduced (a.k.a. Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl, by cutting from one shot to another, thereby permit- 1919) melodrama took on much greater sophistica- ting the viewer’s attention to remain focused on the tion, in terms of both narrative complexity and richly story being told. textured visual style, albeit with a damsel generally remaining in distress. The young girl Lucy (Lillian Gish), in Broken Blossoms, lives with her violently Genres and Stars abusive alcoholic father, prizefighter Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp), and is rescued by a Chinese shop- What also achieved a remarkable stability were the keeper, Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess), when subject categories into which most film production she collapses on the street after her father has brutally SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 9

Figure 1.1 Lillian Gish as the poor, vulnerable Lucy in D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919, produced by D. W. Griffith Productions). beaten her. These two outsiders – defined as such Way Down East further exemplifies aspects of the by race, in Cheng’s case, and by gender and impov- maternal melodrama, a subgenre popular during the erishment, in Lucy’s case – develop an affectionate, silent and early sound era, as Lea Jacobs points out in Platonic bond based on past misfortunes and present the hardcover/online edition of this series. Generally vulnerabilities, with Cheng Huan nurturing and car- revolving around women who are banished from their ing for Lucy until Burrows and his henchmen discover homes and from their children when they are sus- her. In this case, the last-minute rescue fails, and Lucy pected of adultery, such films are of particular interest suffers a fatal beating. The otherwise gentle Cheng for their representations of motherhood and mater- Huan obtains some measure of revenge by shooting nal suffering, and in their appeal and address to female Burrows before stabbing himself, yet his actions attest viewers of the period (Jacobs 2012, 398). The many to the very fragility of tenderness and beauty in a remakes of Madame X (1916), for instance, attest to harsh urban world. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920) an appeal that has spanned the decades (with much is most known, perhaps, for its iconic image of Lillian updating, of course) through versions in 1920, 1929, Gish lying unconscious on an ice floe as it danger- 1937, 1952, 1966, and 1994, along with several in ously approaches a waterfall before she is rescued. the new millennium – as does Stella Dallas (1925), In both films parallel editing heightens suspense and with its iconic 1937 remake starring Barbara Stan- creates nuanced relationships among sympathetically wyck. Another variation of the maternal melodrama, connected characters. Griffith’s precisely calculated in a more updated form, centers on an erotic trian- close-ups imbue the films with a powerful pathos gle involving a mother, her love interest or second so central to the genre. husband, and her late-teen/early twenties daughter, 10 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 as in Ernst Lubitsch’s Three Women (1924). These the body. To a great extent this would characterize the variations represent a few of the many melodramatic cinema throughout its history. From its athleticism, tropes on the silent screen, almost all of which, ulti- like the horseback riding of Westerns or the duel- mately, depend upon the stabilizing force of a good ing of adventure films, to its more precise movements man or a male-enforced legal system to restore order through dance or the far subtler but no less important in response to imagined or actual moral transgressions. gestures of smiling and posture, the body was the star In sharp contrast to the melodrama, no genre, per- of silent cinema in an era not yet overwhelmed by the haps, is more thoroughly associated with the silent voice. This was, to be more precise, a cinematic body, era than comedy. To be sure, the rise of the star set to the rhythms of editing and photographed within was a defining aspect of the movies during their first a precise calculation of light, costume, and makeup. 30 years, becoming an inseparable part of genre pro- What exactly makes a star performer attractive to duction. As players became associated with a given moviegoers is one of those inestimable matters that genre – Douglas Fairbanks and adventure, Tom Mix ultimately cannot be adduced from polls. Talent, and the Western, Lillian Gish and melodrama – stu- physical appeal, high-quality supporting artists and dios recast them again and again in familiar stories, material certainly help, as does good timing. But constructing on-screen personas that only fed the for- while the list of most popular stars might have been mula. But in the case of silent comedy, star and reshuffled every few years, the economic centrality authorship often were combined. A film with Charlie of the star was an industry fact by 1910, as Mark Chaplin or Buster Keaton was also a film by Char- Lynn Anderson details in this volume. Filmmakers lie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. And while Gish and could solicit brand reliance by featuring stars in film Fairbanks, or Lon Chaney and Gloria Swanson might after film. In turn, the professional power of the star have returned frequently to similar roles, the stars of grew tremendously. In 1916, for example, Adolph silent comedy appeared to carry the same character Zukor created Artcraft to handle productions starring from film to film, story to story, as Charles J. Maland Mary Pickford, whose career Victoria Sturtevant points out in this volume. Whether he was an immi- examines at length in the hardcover/online edition. grant or a pawnshop assistant, a waiter or a boxer, The actress was making $10,000 per week and Chaplin was, in the dozens of films he made during taking 50 percent of the profits (Koszarski 1994, the teens, the tramp. 266). Chaplin’s contract with Mutual paid him What does it tell us about an era that its most $12,884 a week and when, in 1917, he moved to beloved figure was a man of such little means? It First National, he became his own producer with seems just as remarkable that this hero, and here one the company advancing him $125,000 for each film can add Keaton as well, should be of diminutive of an eight-two-reelers-in-one-year deal. After the stature. In the classic films of silent comedy, grace was recuperation of all costs for advertising, prints, and privileged over strength, underdog ingenuity over distribution, Chaplin would get 50 percent of the net rugged machismo. But it was more than outwitting profits (Robinson 1985, 223). Stars were even more bigger rivals or escaping hostile authorities. In the essential as box office attractions, given the frequency films of Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, there with which theaters changed programs. While some was something funny about merely surviving. This special features enjoyed runs of several weeks, perhaps often took the form of perilous encounters with the even months, it was common throughout this period most profound factor of the early twentieth century – for theaters to exhibit a film for only a week before mechanized life. Whether it was dodging fast cars, moving on to another. Thus, stars were often the only scaling the walls of a tall building, or working on the form of reliable advertising, that is, the only aspect of assembly line, silent comics kept their balance and a film with which audiences might be familiar before drew laughs from anxiety in the effort to coexist with going to see it (Koszarski 1994, 35–36). Although the modern times. interests of the stars and the demands of the studios The acrobatics of Keaton and the dance hall phys- often would collide in subsequent years, the star icality of Chaplin point, in fact, to a quality that would remain fixed as the centerpiece of virtually defined much of silent cinema – its fascination with every quality production. SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 11

Figure 1.2 In Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917, producers John Jasper, Charlie Chaplin, and Henry P. Caulfield), Charlie and Edna Purviance are roped off immediately upon arriving in “the land of liberty.”

Hollywood and World Cinema infrastructure. As with the domestic business, power over the global market depended on controlling dis- The rise of the silent film star coincided with the tribution. During the war, London ceased to function emergence of American film on the world market. as the center of foreign distribution, and American While the industry’s expansion onto foreign screens film companies moved aggressively to deal directly did not get underway until after the domestic market with overseas markets. This meant establishing offices was consolidated by the MPPC in 1908, it took less throughout the world and, in some cases, sending than a decade for American movie companies to gain representatives to negotiate deals for specific pictures. a major foothold in that market. As Kristin Thompson The opening of subsidiary offices in non-European has detailed, World War I threw the Western world countries would be particularly important to the into turmoil, ultimately permitting the American postwar domination exerted by American companies. film industry to take over international markets In turn, major South American exchanges set up previously controlled by European suppliers such as offices in New York. As World War I boosted the Italy and France (Thompson 1985, 71). While foreign economies of North America, Japan, and various buyers were lured by the quality of American films, South American countries, these countries could bet- especially once US production turned to more costly ter afford the importation of American goods, films feature films, the domination of the world market included. During the 1920s, American filmmakers really depended on the construction of an exporting continued to enjoy a dominant role in the exhibition 12 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 of movies throughout the world. Several countries, many of his films, the allure of Valentino’s Sheik is most notably Germany, would secure its domestic wrapped, quite literally, in the garments of exoticism – market from American domination, as well as build in this case flowing robes and headdresses. In this film, a healthy exportation business. And cooperation in particular, he seems inseparable from the mise-en- between European countries would prevent their scene` of costume and layered curtains. national cinemas from being totally overwhelmed. But the changes brought about by sound and, then, the rise of fascism in Europe, would present new The Jazz Age On-Screen – Inside obstacles, as well as opportunities, for the American and Outside of Hollywood industry in its efforts to exploit overseas markets. While American films were being sent overseas While the silent cinema looked overseas for exotic for exhibition on international screens, the talent of locales, to America’s West for stories of cowboys international cinemas slowly made its way to Holly- on the range, and to the sentiments of nineteenth- wood and its impact would be felt throughout the century melodrama, it registered, as well, the con- studio era. Even before the consolidation of pro- tours of its age – the Jazz Age. Indeed, in its formal duction in southern California, French film artists, rhythms and inherent voyeuristic appeal, in its fabri- such as directors Maurice Tourneur and George cation of star personas, and its urban settings (whether Archainbaud, went to work for the World Film Cor- on location or in the studio), the movies contributed poration, an American production and distribution to the transformation undergone by the nation, from company (Koszarski 1994, 66). From Germany came genteel agrarianism to cosmopolitan renaissance. No F. W. Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch, the latter surviving doubt American film remained wedded, at points, to and succeeding well into the sound era. Joseph von an earlier era. Griffith’s cinema, for example, while Sternberg got his start in American movies. In the late modern in its editing, often remained tied to his Vic- 1920s, he briefly returned to his native Germany to torian roots. But the rise of mass culture, with the make films for UFA, before returning to Hollywood, movies in the lead, now appears inseparable from the with Marlene Dietrich in tow. Victor Sjostr¨ om¨ had era of scandal sheets and speakeasies, the Scopes Trial been a prolific director in Sweden before directing that debated teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution films in Hollywood beginning in 1924. Several Euro- in public schools, and the victory for women’s vot- pean actors also became immensely popular during the ing rights in 1920. Indeed, the New Morality of the 1920s. As Diane Negra details in the hardcover/online period – leisure, consumption, and sexual indepen- edition of this series, Pola Negri had worked in the dence – found expression in many films of the era. Polish and German film industries before becoming a The migration from country to city that character- star in Hollywood. Greta Garbo, who, unlike Negri, ized the 1920s, and the harsh realities of that move- survived the talkie revolution to continue as one of ment, were represented in King Vidor’s The Crowd MGM’s biggest stars, arrived from Sweden to make (1928), which tells the story of John Sims who comes her first American film in 1926. The exoticism offor- to New York to achieve success but finds struggle, eign stars was matched by the exoticism of films built heartbreak, and tragedy instead. Vidor’s montage of around foreign subjects. Rex Ingram would direct a bustling streets captures the dynamic rhythms of urban number of these films, including The Four Horsemen dwellers at work and at play, as David A. Gerstner of the Apocalypse (1921), The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), details in the hardcover/online edition. Vidor’s The Arab (1924), and The Garden of Allah (1927) – mobile camera, influenced perhaps by the stylistic the first of which featured Rudolph Valentino, a star breakthroughs of Murnau in Germany, appears to whose immense popularity grew into something of climb the side of a skyscraper and then glide over a a national cult. Whether placed in Argentina, Spain, giant office filled with two hundred workers attheir or the Sahara desert, Valentino’s characters projected a desks. Combining melodrama with realism to present sexual magnetism inseparable from their foreign iden- the individual buffeted by mass culture, Vidor’s film tity. In The Sheik (1921), Valentino plays Ahmed Ben illustrates how, within the Hollywood mode, the Hassan, a European-born Arabian prince who woos mobility of cinema could trace the dimensions of city and seduces Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres). As in life, its pace and scope. SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 13

So, too, in The Big Parade (1925), What Price Glory? studios – experimental film. But before turning to (1926), and Wings (1927), did Hollywood present a these, at least one significant figure working inan sober encounter with World War I. The movies also independent mode needs to be acknowledged – Oscar found a partner in another burgeoning Jazz-Age pas- Micheaux. The child of parents who had been slaves, time – sports. An enthusiasm for boxing, fueled by Micheaux was drawn to the cinema while struggling the stardom of Jack Dempsey (who would himself to be a writer. He made his first film in 1919 from appear in several films and marry screen star Estelle a position totally outside the white-dominated com- Taylor), found its way into such films as Famous mercial industry and would, over the next 30 years, Players-Lasky’s The World’s Champion (1925), Buster become the most prolific producer/director of feature Keaton’s Battling Butler (1926), and Tay Garnett’s films aimed at a black audience, as Paula J. Massood Celebrity (1928). Baseball, too, provided material for observes in the volume, most notably perhaps his Body films from this period, most notably in The Busher and Soul (1925) that marked the film debut of Paul (1919) and Headin’ Home (1920), the latter starring Robeson, as a bit of a shyster, but nonetheless charis- Babe Ruth. matic, preacher. The period crystallizes most clearly perhaps in Frank Urson’s Chicago (1927) – a narrative continu- ally remade for screen and restaged for Broadway over Newsreels the decades to follow, extending into the new mil- lennium. Originally adapted to screen at the end of The ancestry of the weekly newsreel dates back to the silent era from a Broadway play based on actual the Kinetoscope when the Edison Company staged events, Chicago is both a product and a satire of its prizefights at its Black Maria studio. Edison-era actu- age. The film is rife with scandal-hungry journalists, alities and films of the Spanish–American War, many crimes of passion, a greedy criminal mouthpiece, a of them staged for the camera, established in the minds career-driven District Attorney, policemen happy to of moviegoers the sense that the cinema could provide be in on the action, and, at the center, a sexually more than theatrical entertainment. In 1900, camera independent married woman. Released at the end of operators arrived in Galveston, Texas within days of a 1927, the film’s story of Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver), hurricane that leveled the city and killed 5,000 people. a less than moral flapper who murders her lover and is Six years later, in the aftermath of the San Francisco then acquitted by a leering and gullible all-male jury, earthquake, cameramen from Edison and Vitagraph is played mostly for laughs. But it carries a sophisti- were on the scene to photograph the devastation. In cated sting in satirizing a gossip-crazed public manip- addition to events such as these, and the more modest ulated by truth-bending tabloid reporters. Register- tragedies of daily life, silent news films also covered ing the power of mass culture and its place within a the affairs of state, with Teddy Roosevelt a particu- novelty-seeking era, in love with both profits and self- larly frequent figure before the cameras. promotion, Chicago represented the kinship that then American moviemakers were relatively slow in existed and would remain between the movies and the turning to weekly news films, and the first newsreels newspaper world. The thorough reciprocity between exhibited in the United States were the product of Hollywood and publishing, in the form of fan maga- French producer Charles Pathe,´ who introduced an zines, film reviews, and gossip columns, would only American edition of his newsreel in 1911 (Fielding be strengthened with the coming of sound and the 1972, 70). During the teens a variety of production migration of writers from Eastern and Midwestern companies tried their hand at the genre, some in cities to the movie colony. association with major news organizations such as the While the fictional narrative dominated produc- Hearst press and the Chicago Tribune. By the middle tion throughout this period, three other categories of of the decade, Universal, Selig, and Vitagraph had filmmaking also got their start during the silent era. established themselves as fixtures. Then, in 1919, Fox Two of these came from within the industry – news- entered newsreel production and, with its cameramen reels and animation. The third, a less well-defined stationed around the globe and a state-of-the-art lab- category that, at times, worked in the animation oratory in New York, quickly emerged as a leader in and documentary modes, emerged from outside the the field. 14 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928

Newsreel production in the 1920s was charac- perhaps the most significant films reflexively featured terized by aggressive competition. Exclusive rights the animation process itself. The plot of Little Nemo to photographing sporting events were often under- revolves directly around McCay’s efforts to impress mined by undercover competitors, and the race was his colleagues by bringing his drawings to life. McCay always on to bring events to screen as quickly as poss- is also on-screen at the beginning of Gertie and his ible. To meet the demand for regular programs, news- voice is heard throughout, via intertitles, instructing reel producers frequently turned to the reenactment of his dinosaur to do tricks for the audience. A similar news, and at times, the staging of events exclusively reflexivity characterizes the early work of Max for filming. Still, the newsreel cameraman, glorified in Fleischer, who would go on to be among the most the popular press, was often on scene recording spec- important of sound-era animators and the creator tacular events, frequently risking life and limb in the of Betty Boop. Fleischer’s “Out of the Inkwell” process. In 1927, both Paramount and MGM entered series typically began with a shot of the artist’s hands the newsreel business just in time for the conversion opening his ink bottle, and in Cartoon Factory (1925), to sound, and in a short time Paramount News took he appears in the frame in live-action next to his a leading role. But it was Fox’s Movietone News that animated Koko the Clown. recorded the first important sound-on-film events – In its infancy then, American animation frequently the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering trans- broke the frame of illusion and foregrounded itself atlantic flight from Long Island on May 20, 1927and as the main attraction. In Cartoon Factory and Gertie the ceremonies welcoming his safe return on June 27. the Dinosaur, animated figures break free from or dis- Fox premiered the first regular all-sound newsreel at regard the orders of their creators. As such, they the Roxy in New York in October 1927. point toward an irreverence that would characterize many of the most accomplished animated shorts of the sound era, in particular those created by Warner Animation Bros. In exposing their means of production and in their direct address to the spectator, early animators Animation for the screen would not approach any- signaled how their genre, more than any other within thing close to maturity until after sound came to cin- the Hollywood mode, would joyfully challenge the ema. But certain essential technical advances were conventions of illusion. The arrival of sound on film achieved during this time, establishing the means provided a boost to animation because it eventually by which the medium would enter into its golden brought to an end the live stage presentation that often age. Winsor McCay pioneered animation with Little preceded the projection of a feature. As a theater’s film Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Billed in program became standardized, a permanent place was Little Nemo – a film about the artist and his process –as created for the animated sound short. “The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald Tribune,” Walt and Roy Disney founded their animation stu- McCay relied upon hand drawing thousands of car- dio in Hollywood in October of 1923. Like the Fleis- toons set before the Vitagraph camera. The imprac- chers, Disney’s early work combined animation with ticality of this method for mass production is clear, live-action, as Kirsten Moana Thompson points out in but it would not be long before Earl Hurd and J. R. this volume, and in the first of his silent Alice cartoons Bray, working separately, would develop the means from 1923, Disney and his collaborators are featured by which to animate specific sections of the frame in the frame alongside their drawings that come to life. against a background that did not require movement. Disney’s first star, Mickey Mouse, was introduced in Hurd’s cels, which could be layered, allowed the artist Plane Crazy (1928), but it would not be released as to animate only those parts of a drawing that needed a sound cartoon until after the success of the better- motion, thus drastically reducing labor time and mak- known Steamboat Willie (1928). Like so many Disney ing the animated film amenable to the industry’s mode cartoons to follow, character and music seem insepa- of production (Koszarski 1994, 170). rable. We meet Mickey at the wheel of the steamboat, While several popular newspaper cartoon charac- whistling and tapping his foot, and for the next eight ters found their way into animated shorts – and the minutes virtually everything within Mickey’s reach later “star,” Felix the Cat, debuted during this time – becomes a musical instrument – bull’s teeth become a SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 15 xylophone, pots and a washboard a percussion section. and stone” are captured in all their patchwork density The bodies of objects and creatures undergo amazing through extreme long shots. Flaherty orchestrates an transformations in a space where nothing seems per- interframe montage that combines the fixity of stone manent. As Robert Sklar has written of Disney’s 1920s structures like the Brooklyn Bridge with the mobil- and early 1930s animation, it created a world in which ity of cars, tugs, and ships in the harbor. In short, the “there is no fixed order of things: the world is plastic poetic potential of nonnarrative filmmaking was no to imagination and will” (1994, 200). less significant for American filmmakers as for their European counterparts. But the early American avant-garde did far more The First Avant-Garde than document cities. Like its European influence, it frequently used the frame not for verisimilitude but While the canon of early avant-garde filmmaking for abstraction, preferring the symbolic rather than has been located firmly within European borders, the indexical potential of the medium. In The Life the 1920s witnessed the emergence of a widespread and Death of 9413—A Hollywood Extra (1928), Robert experimental movement in the United States as well. Florey and Slavko Vorkapich satirize the movie busi- As Jan-Christopher Horak has demonstrated in this ness, depicting a man whose dreams of stardom turn volume and elsewhere, the professionalized avant- nightmarish when he is transformed into a num- garde of post–World War II America supported by bered, mechanized Hollywood extra. Shot by Gregg university teaching positions and foundation grants Toland, the film intercuts expressionist iconography, had been preceded by a self-identified “amateur” miniatures, and images of the real Hollywood. A movement two decades earlier. During the 1920s, a sequence, in which editing prevents the man from far-ranging network of filmmakers, art house theaters, successfully ascending a set of stairs, echoes a sim- and publications was established. By 1927, according ilar pattern in Ballet Mecanique´ (Fernand Leger´ and to Horak, there were roughly 30,000 amateur film- Dudley Murphy, 1924), also an experimental film makers in the United States and a year later, more that hinges on abstracting everyday objects and body than 100 film clubs (1995, 19). parts – bowls, whisks, necklaces, numbers, eyes, and This is a cinema of remarkable variation, much of it lips. Montages of close-ups and interiors with pitch- lost to history. Unlike Hollywood, experimental film- black backgrounds create a hallucinatory space in The makers often chose not to privilege the human figure Life and Death of 9413. This antirealist impulse, eager within the frame. Rather, their films frequently piv- to explore the subjective, perceptual realm, would oted around lyrical editing, abstract compositions, and remain an important component of alternative cin- psychological expressionism. They often functioned ema. In fact, while the economics of film produc- as personal records. Some of what survives from this tion in the United States permitted the commercial period, and certainly that which is most often screened industry to define the medium for most moviegoers, today, reveals a fascination with modern urban life and experimental filmmakers of the 1920s initiated an the rich visual patterns of the cityscape. Like their avant-garde that would consistently challenge that European counterparts – Walter Ruttmann (Berlin: definition throughout the twentieth century. Symphony of a Great City, 1927), Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929), and Joris Ivens (Rain, 1929) – filmmakers such as Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand, Herman Weinberg, and Robert Flaherty pur- The Coming of Sound sued a nonnarrative cinema that combined documen- to the Cinema tary and poetic impulses. In Manhatta (1921), Sheeler and Strand’s cinematic The period covered by this section is punctuated transposition of Walt Whitman, the skyscraper “iron by the rise of the talkies. The silent cinema had, of beauties” of the city are offered as monumental sculp- course, rarely been silent and live musical accompani- tures, combining art and industry. In Flaherty’s The 24 ment had almost always been part of the moviegoing Dollar Island (1927), the camera is liberated from fram- experience. But because sound synchronized with the ing the human form so that the “mountains of steel image – either on disk or on the film itself – would 16 SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 arrive in the late 1920s to forever change the industry Jazz Singer as it was Jolson’s next film, The Singing as well as the art form, it continues to make sense Fool (1928), with its record-breaking revenues, that to periodize the history of cinema at this juncture. convinced the industry of the box office potential of Over the past 30 years, considerable scholarship has synchronized sound. been focused on the coming of sound. That work The transition to sound may have been smoothly has successfully overthrown the myths of an earlier accommodated by the Hollywood mode of produc- era – that The Jazz Singer (1927) revolutionized the tion and it certainly secured rather than destabilized industry virtually overnight, throwing studios into a the major studios’ domination of the domestic and panic, and that Warner Bros., on the brink of collapse, world markets, but it changed forever what audiences single-handedly pioneered a new film form. But that expected and got every time they went to the movies. does not mean a singular interpretation of this period Synchronized sound gave filmmakers a new and pow- has emerged, as Paul Young points out in this vol- erful tool to advance realism – the ricochet of bul- ume. Douglas Gomery has consistently argued that lets, the screeching of tires, the tapping of dancing the transition to sound was thoroughly planned, the feet – and restored to acting the volume and inflec- result of cooperation and consolidation within and tions of voice. It also provided a new source of anxi- between filmmaking companies and the giants of the ety for those who worried about the influence of the recording, electric, and telephone industries (Gomery movies – the sounds of passion, the potential crudities 2005). Donald Crafton has argued that the changeover of language – as the medium moved toward a more to sound was “partly rational, partly confused,” that faithful representation of the world beyond the screen. the studios’ master plan, enacted to maximize prof- As quickly as the audience took to the movies, it its, was accompanied by regular improvisation to deal took to their new incarnation with sound, bringing to with the unanticipated problems posed by the appli- a close a remarkable period in the history of American cation of new technologies (Crafton 1997, 4). For culture. The golden age of silent film was giving way David Bordwell and Janet Staiger, the introduction to what would become another golden age, the years of synchronized sound can hardly be understood as during which the movies came into full kinship with a revolution. Rather, it exemplifies the flexibility of the American stage, in its Broadway and vaudeville the system, “a typical case of how the Hollywood traditions, and the increasingly popular form of radio. mode of production could accommodate technolog- Few could know, in 1927, how truly prophetic were ical change” (Bordwell & Staiger 1985, 247). Al Jolson’s words in The Jazz Singer: “You ain’t heard What is clear is that sound came to cinema over nothin’ yet.” a protracted period of experimentation, first outside the movie industry and then also within it, and it did so over the course of expanding applications before References and after the October 1927 premiere of The Jazz Singer. In 1926, the Vitaphone (sound-on-disk) pre- Bordwell, David, & Staiger, Janet. (1985). “Technology, sentations of Don Juan (1926) and The Better ’Ole Style and Mode of Production.” In David Bordwell, Janet (1926) offered musical scores to accompany each fea- Staiger, & Kristin Thompson (eds), The Classical Holly- ture. During 1927, the sound-on-film system that wood Cinema (pp. 243–261). New York: Columbia Uni- Fox labeled Movietone was used for newsreels and versity Press. the filming of shorts capturing vaudeville perform- Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, & Thompson, Kristin. ers. During the 1929–1930 season, the studios released (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and silent and sound versions of all their films, with sound- Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia Uni- on-film technology rapidly becoming the standard. versity Press. Buscombe, Edward (ed.). (1988). The BFI Companion to the Finally, all-sound production became standard prac- Western. London: BFI Publishing. tice starting with the 1930–1931 season (Gomery Cook, David. (1996). A History of Narrative Film.NewYork: 2005, 2). What is also clear is that sound film was W. W. Norton. enormously profitable, handsomely returning studio Crafton, Donald. (1997). The Talkies: American Cinema’s investments in new theaters and sound equipment. Transition to Sound 1926–1931. New York: Charles As Gomery has suggested, it was not so much The Scribner’s Sons. SETTING THE STAGE: ORIGINS TO 1928 17

Fielding, Raymond. (1972). The American Newsreel 1911– Mast, Gerald, & Kawin, Bruce F. (2003). A Short History of 1967. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. the Movies. 8th edn. New York: Pearson Longman. Gomery, Douglas. (2005). The Coming of Sound. New York: Musser, Charles. (1999). “The Nickelodeon Era Begins Routledge. Establishing the Framework for Hollywood’s Mode of Gunning, Tom. (1994). D. W. Griffith and the Origins of Representation.” In Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cin- American Narrative Film. Urbana: University of Illinois ema: Space, Frame, Narrative (pp. 256–273). London: Press. British Film Institute. Horak, Jan-Christopher. (1995). The First American Film Robinson, David. (1985). Chaplin: His Life and Art.New Avant-Garde, 1919–1945. Madison: University of Wis- York: McGraw-Hill. consin Press. Sklar, Robert. (1994). Movie-Made America: A Cultural His- Jacobs, Lea. (2012). “Unsophisticated Lady: The Vicissi- tory of American Movies. Revised and updated. New York: tudes of the Maternal Melodrama in Hollywood.” In Vintage Books. Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, & Art Simon (eds.), Staiger, Janet. (1985). “The Central Producer System: Cen- The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film. Vol. 1: Ori- tralized Management after 1914.” In David Bordwell, gins to 1928 (pp. 397–416). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Janet Staiger, & Kristin Thompson (eds), The Classical Koszarski, Richard. (1994). An Evening’s Entertainment: The Hollywood Cinema (pp. 128–141). New York: Columbia Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928. Berkeley: University Press. University of California Press. Thompson, Kristin. (1985). Exporting Entertainment: Amer- Lewis, Jon. (2008). American Film: A History. New York: ica in the World Film Market 1907–1934. London: British W. W. Norton. Film Institute. 2 D. W. Griffith and the Development of American Narrative Cinema

Charlie Keil Professor, University of Toronto, Canada

Few American directors have received as much for a cinema of serious moral uplift.Keiltraces attention by historians and scholars over the past Griffith’s development of narrative strategies over 20 years as D. W. Griffith. Charlie Keil focuses three phases, emphasizing Griffith’s experimen- on Griffith’s work during the transitional period tation with the individual shot. Keil’s essay shares in American cinema, approximately 1908–1913, ground with Gaylyn Studlar on Stroheim/DeMille asking whether Griffith should be understood as in this volume and with Charles Musser on Edwin representative of his era or as a highly innovative S. Porter and Torey Liepa on Thomas Ince in the aberration. Griffith’s emergence at Biograph is hardcover/online edition. situated at a point of transformation, not just for the studio but also for the fledgling industry as it sought Additional terms, names, and concepts: to meet growing demand, produce an enhanced Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC or narrative language that could appeal to middle- Trust), editing patterns, space, place, and all ele- class audiences, and respond to the era’s call ments of mise-en-scene`

The first and arguably most significant phase ofD. ultimately play in the American film industry’s adop- W. Griffith’s film directing career began in 1908 and tion of a storytelling approach that brought together ended in 1913, the years when he was the most the resources of performance and decor, framing and important filmmaker at the preeminent film produc- composition, and, most crucially, editing, in pro- tion company in America. That Griffith’s tenure at ducing thousands of one-reel narratives for a grow- Biograph coincides almost to the year with the tumul- ing audience of moviegoers in the post-nickelodeon tuous period of industrial and formal change typically marketplace? Some have questioned the tendency to referred to as “the transitional era” is but one of many attribute the period’s change in narrational strategies reasons that historians view the director as central to to the singular achievements of Griffith, no matter the period’s developments. But what role did Griffith how impressive those achievements may have been.

American Film History: Selected Readings, Origins to 1960, First Edition. Edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. D. W.GRIFFITH AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NARRATIVE CINEMA 19

Opposition to understanding Griffith as a key transi- subsequent decades, accounts informed more by the tional figure derives less from any hesitation about his recollections of Griffith and his coworkers than a talent and more from the distinctiveness of his out- careful and broad-based examination of films from the put. The debate focuses on whether we should label period. Griffith as a representative director of this period: If Griffith’s campaign of self-promotion exerted While he may be the era’s most celebrated filmmaker, considerable influence on seminal histories of the does he actually define that era? Close attention to the development of American narrative cinema, an formal qualities of Griffith’s Biograph films can cer- unforeseeable accident of preservation provided the tainly help us to assess more precisely his contribution additional textual evidence needed to uphold the to the developing norms of the transitional period; but argument for his superiority as a cinematic storyteller. beyond such study, we also need to consider his films Empire Trust, the primary investor in Biograph at the in relation to those of his competitors. Only then can time Griffith joined the company, preserved virtually we establish with any certainty whether Griffith stood all of the nitrate negatives for the films made dur- apart from the rest of the industry during the Biograph ing the director’s tenure there (Bowser 2009, 62–63). years, or whether he merely realized the aims of the Eventually, these films were acquired and preserved era more proficiently, albeit also more idiosyncrati- by the Museum of Modern Art; this retention of cally, than any other filmmaker at this time. Griffith’s filmmaking legacy promoted intensive study Properly contextualizing Griffith’s contribution of his oeuvre at the same time as it further marginal- to the transitional period becomes even more vexed ized the work of his competition, whose films had when one factors in the complications that history largely disappeared.1 introduces. Past historical accounts have tended Griffith’s status as the preeminent figure of the tran- to privilege him to the point of describing him as sitional era has been fortified by commanding works the “most revered and influential movie creator of of scholarship devoted exclusively or primarily to his his day, and perhaps of all motion picture history” Biograph period, themselves fueled by the relative (Jacobs 1968, 95). Aside from erroneously ascribing to ease of access to large swaths of the director’s oeuvre.2 Griffith the invention of all manner of formal devices Sustained engagement with his work from these years that predated his first film, these histories improperly culminated in the ambitious research initiative enti- imagine how film production operated during these tled The Griffith Project, a multivolume publication years, casting Griffith as the only notable filmmaker in from the British Film Institute that coincided with existence, and his work as the sole laboratory of exper- the screening of every extant Griffith film at the Gior- imentation. If historians tended to inflate Griffith’s nate del Cinema Muto, in a massive retrospective that role as an innovator, they were doubtless influenced spanned a decade. Dozens of early cinema scholars by an advertisement that Griffith himself took out in contributed descriptions of the Griffith canon, with 1913, on the heels of his departure from Biograph. seven of the series’ 12 volumes devoted to the Bio- In this ad, published in the New York Dramatic Mirror, graph period. One can now say with certainty that the director boldly proclaimed himself responsible for every film Griffith directed during these years hasat “revolutionizing Motion Picture drama and founding this point received some degree of scholarly attention, the modern technique of the art,” taking credit even the few that have not survived. for a range of stylistic features, from the close-up In contrast, we still have only piecemeal textual to crosscutting to the fade-out. Moreover, Griffith records of the films made at Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig, actively contributed to the formation of his own Kalem, Essanay, Solax, Thanhouser, and a host of authorial legend by asserting his unassailable influence other companies, all of which contributed to the on other filmmakers of the day: The ad argues that all changes that mark this endlessly inventive period in of the innovations that Griffith introduced are “now American filmmaking. Whereas Griffith’s extant films generally followed by the most advanced producers.” from this period number in the hundreds, those of his With all other companies (and the filmmakers under peers, when they can be attributed, run in the double their hire) relegated to the position of impressionable digits at best. Not surprisingly, comparatively little imitators, Griffith found his reputation for genius scholarly attention has been devoted to the work of reinforced by the accounts historians devised in the Biograph’s competitors, though investigation of the 20 CHARLIE KEIL broader underpinnings of transitional style and narra- dramatic action. Griffith was fortunate to have the tion continues apace. If, ultimately, the survival rate abilities of two veteran cameramen, Arthur Marvin of Griffith’s films will always favor the director inany and Billy Bitzer, to rely on when he started mak- assessment of the transitional period, this lopsided tex- ing films at Biograph. And, in a medium that often tual record can still prove instructive: In its entirety, employed the young and inexperienced, Griffith’s rel- the mammoth Biograph oeuvre provides illuminating ative maturity when he assumed the post of director evidence of how the grueling release schedules of the conferred upon him an authority that allowed him to day affected film production. Viewing Griffith’s out- control completely the productions that he oversaw. put in its totality, we might be much more inclined While the phrase “the right place at the right time” to echo an assessment put forward by Griffith scholar often signals the desperate move of a historian who Russell Merritt, who notes that Griffith’s aesthetic cannot summon up any convincing causal argument, development was hardly one of “uninterrupted in this instance invoking it seems justified. creative evolution [but rather] more erratic: sporadic When Griffith arrived at Biograph at the endof bursts of experimentation were often followed by 1907, he encountered a company redefining itself periods of backsliding, or weeks and even months of at the same time that the American film industry coasting” (1999, 177). If the analysis of Griffith’s Bio- was experiencing its own transformation. Earlier that graph period provided in this essay errs on the side of year, J. J. Kennedy from Empire Trust had taken privileging the director’s aesthetic high-water marks, over Biograph’s management, and he appears to have acknowledgment of Merritt’s insight always under- been instrumental in charting the company’s aggres- writes the long view of Griffith’s achievement. If we sive course of action when confronted by legal chal- keep in mind that the overall arc of Griffith’s time at lenges in 1908. Biograph was subject to mounting Biograph embraced convention in equal measure with pressure to concede control of domestic production innovation, and that every impressive experiment to the Edison Film Combine throughout the year. By was counterbalanced by efforts that did little to chal- using a legal decision that found the Warwick camera lenge developing stylistic or narrational norms, we in violation of the Edison company’s camera patent, move closer to separating the working director from Edison had coerced most of its domestic competition the retrospectively created myth. to join forces as part of a licensed combine. Standing almost alone in opposition to the Edison Film Com- bine, Biograph pursued its own patent-based suits in the courts, inviting further counterclaims from Edi- Griffith’s Move to Biograph: An son. Emboldened by its success in turning the tables Industry in Flux on Edison, Biograph began issuing licenses to numer- ous importers in a bid to quickly increase production. Accounts of Griffith’s career before he began mak- Eventually Edison and Biograph would call a truce ing films tend to emphasize his limited success asa and pool their patents to create the Motion Picture playwright and his modest talents as an actor. One Patents Company (MPPC), or the Trust, late in 1908. wonders how he was able to translate this largely As much as Edison wished to gain sole control of undistinguished resum´ e´ into an indisputably impres- the domestic marketplace, the company shared cer- sive career as a novice director of films. One pos- tain objectives with Biograph: to expand its produc- sible explanation, rooted in the moment Griffith tion capacity to keep pace with vaulting demand, entered the American film industry, suggests itself: and to improve the quality of its films while aim- Because narrative filmmaking was undergoing a pro- ing for a reliably comprehensible final product with found shift, and filmmakers now had to tackle more each release. A more centralized form of production involved stories at the same time that they needed to could help to insure the latter, while a monopolis- devise new ways of rendering their stories compre- tic industry structure was viewed as a way to pro- hensible and engaging, no obvious skill set ensured mote the former. Companies also had to contend with success. Enthusiasm, drive, and a willingness to try the constant calls for evidence of social uplift in the untested approaches probably counted as much as any cinema, spurring manufacturers to develop scenarios demonstrated facility in directing actors or staging that featured more complicated dramatic narratives. D. W.GRIFFITH AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NARRATIVE CINEMA 21

By producing serious dramas, the industry hoped that implying that filmmakers were merely trying to “find it might placate fears that film exerted a negative influ- their way” to the classical system of narration and that ence on its working-class audience; at the same time they slowly fumbled around until they perfected that such films were also designed to appeal to a middle- system. Clearly, filmmakers did not know what would class audience still largely resistant to the medium. But work until they tried it, and they did not have a firm crafting comprehensible dramatic narratives of a lim- set of linked objectives in mind as they formulated ited running time brought its own problems. Initially, different experiments in storytelling over the course solutions arose at the level of the exhibitor, as supports of the transitional period. Even so, preferred practices to the film text in the form of lecturers and actors did emerge, and effective solutions to key problems voicing parts behind the screen were enlisted to ren- often found favor in the trade press; if easily emulated, der such films intelligible to their audiences (Musser these quickly spread across the field of production. 1983). But for an industry aiming to expand its output As I have outlined elsewhere, filmmakers were and to manufacture films according to principles of guided by certain broad principles, many of them pro- rational management and dependability, solving the mulgated within the pages of influential trade jour- problem of comprehension had to take place at the nals of the day, including Moving Picture World and level of production. In short, the solution had to be the New York Dramatic Mirror. Foremost among these text-centered. Investing the director function with principles was film’s obligation to provide a believ- the power to control the elements that contributed able fictional world, preserving a sense of verisimil- to the telling of a story represented one step in the itude while actively soliciting emotional investment problem-solving process; looking to the theater for from the viewer. As I have noted, audience belief and creative talent was another. D. W. Griffith, a refugee emotional investment became the twin hallmarks of from the theatrical world eager to exercise his creative a commendable film (Keil 2001, 35). Where earlier prerogative, even in the degraded arena of film pro- cinema had traded primarily in the presentation of duction, arrived at Biograph at an opportune time. visually arresting material, transitional-era films were charged with the responsibility of generating drama from the varied resources of the medium. Whether it be the actors’ performances or the sets and the cos- Storytelling Challenges and tumes, the distance of the camera from the filmed Stylistic Strategies action or the positioning of the camera, the staging of the action within the confines of the playing space or Any filmmaker starting out in 1908 would have found the arrangement of the shots themselves, filmmakers the prospect of directing a dramatic film daunting. turned to cinema’s formal dimensions to devise ways Few models existed for crafting a compelling and of rendering their narratives intelligible and emo- comprehensible narrative of under 20 minutes. While tionally compelling. Eventually, they would settle on the theater and the short story might provide material selected approaches that became codified and led to for adaptation and even general principles of narra- the establishment of the classical system of narration, tive construction, nothing could prepare filmmakers but in 1908, the formal possibilities must have seemed of the era for the challenge of how to translate the both exciting for their boundlessness and overwhelm- scenarios they were assigned into short films that audi- ing in their very indeterminacy. ences could easily grasp and find involving. Up to this Though a particularly limited number of films has point, most early films had expended little effort in survived from the key years of 1908–1910, we can establishing temporal relations among shots, nor had say on the basis of what is available for viewing that they attempted to invest characters with psychologi- Griffith proved comparatively adept at discerning how cal motivations or molded the depicted action to elicit his newly chosen medium might be harnessed for its suspense or sympathy. If dramatic material of some storytelling potential. If Griffith was not in the van- complexity were to succeed with audiences, these guard of every new practice that helped usher in a aims would have to be realized. The central question changed approach to narration during this time, he was how. There is a danger when setting out the sit- certainly seems to have found the potential in a sig- uation in these terms that it might be misconstrued as nificant number of important storytelling techniques. 22 CHARLIE KEIL

Moreover, Griffith continued to develop these tech- of his development as a storyteller.3 For each period, niques in arresting ways over the course of his time I will analyze a handful of representative Biograph at Biograph. Though he was reportedly frustrated films, buttressed by invocations of trends evident in by the limitations imposed by the one-reel format films from competing companies. In this way, Ihope near the end of his stint at the company, some of to show not only how Griffith’s approach to narration his most accomplished efforts emerged in 1912–1913. shifted over time, but also how his efforts related to And while Griffith has always been acknowledged for those of his competitors during the transitional period. his facility with crosscutting, his narrational skills were not limited only to the domain of editing. He exper- imented with a panoply of devices involving mise- 1908–1909: Shaping a Story en-scene` and cinematographic properties, displaying a stylistic range that definitely marks him as one of The first six months of Griffith’s time as adirec- the period’s foremost filmmakers. tor at Biograph found him working on a range of Tracing Griffith’s accomplishments chronologically story material, from adaptations of literature and the- invites certain problems, not the least of which is ater (Shakespeare, Molnar, and Jack London, among an implicit suggestion that Griffith’s style evolved other sources) to farcical comedy (A Calamitous Elope- toward a satisfying point of maturation that prepared ment). He learned how to work within the constraints him for feature filmmaking. But such an approach of studio sets for certain filmsFor ( Love of Gold), but allows the analyst to link the changes in Griffith’s sto- took full advantage of exteriors for others (Where the rytelling practices to changes in the industry, while Breakers Roar). While becoming accustomed to the also acknowledging concurrent developments at other demands of a punishing production schedule, Griffith companies. Moreover, analyzing Griffith’s films in began to develop certain strengths, most obviously in their totality allows us to investigate his style as a sys- the crafting of dramas of imperilment. Films such as tem of interlocking devices, in which elements of the The Fatal Hour, The Guerilla,andAn Awful Moment mise-en-scene,` cinematographic properties, and edit- gained attention in part for how they deployed edit- ing work in concert to shape his distinct narrational ing to create more dynamic action and suspense. But approach. In tying Griffith’s stylistic development to at the same time that Griffith appeared to recognize his role in shaping the narrational norms of the transi- that the distinct tempos of crosscutting could ener- tional period, I am broadening the basic project Tom gize these scenarios of threat and rescue, his concep- Gunning established in his landmark work on the tion of screen space underwent a concomitant trans- director, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American formation. One begins to sense a progressive grasp of Narrative Film. Concentrating on the formative years the potential of the discrete shot that has two obvi- of 1908–1909, Gunning shows how the director ous outcomes: First, a film becomes not merely an employed style to create a more psychologically rich aggregate of completed short scenes, but a product of vein of characterization, to articulate spatiotemporal the interplay among shots; second, the resources of relationships among shots, and to adopt a moral per- an individual shot, be they graphic, tonal, or expres- spective on the dramatic action. Collectively, a vari- sive, can be exploited and then built upon as a film’s ety of devices – performance style, shot scale, and narrative progresses. crosscutting the most celebrated among them – pro- Of course such potential can only be glimpsed in vided cinema with an arsenal of storytelling strategies the Biographs of 1908, many of which are rushed, that achieved the desired effect of delivering more somewhat perfunctory affairs. And yet one sees in par- complex and engaging stories. Gunning (1991) labels ticular moments an attentiveness to the capacities of Griffith’s distinct approach to storytelling “the nar- mise-en-scene,` whether it be the emphatic diagonals rator system,” and argues that the director helped dominating the frame in the opening shot of Where usher in a new order of narrativization distinct from the Breakers Roar, the joyous dancing in the back- that evident in the previous period. In what fol- ground space at the outset of Call of the Wild,orthe lows, I will trace out that narrator system by dividing layered staging of the introductory courtroom scene Griffith’s Biograph career into three periods, each last- in An Awful Moment. The latter instance epitomizes ing approximately two years and each marking a stage what will become one of Griffith’s specialties: The