|
The ability to weave together visual and aural images, the way authors use words and composers use musical notes, is what makes motion pictures a unique art form. It was just a hundred years ago that a pioneering American filmmaker, Edwin S. Porter, perhaps inspired by the work of French filmmaker George Méliès, took the first tentative steps toward creating this new art, with his landmark film The Great Train Robbery.
To understand how truly groundbreaking this film was, it’s important to revisit early film history. The public first experienced motion pictures through Kinetoscope peep-show viewing devices, one-person machines where the film was viewed through a small hole, developed by W.K.L. Dickson for Thomas Edison. These 50-foot, 35mm films showed a single moving subject, photographed from camera stop to camera stop, and were spliced into a continuous loop wound around a bank of spools. After projection was introduced in 1895-96, films were mounted on reels but remained single-shot moving subjects. (Apparently there are no detailed technical accounts of how these earliest films were presented, and it is impossible to use surviving pre-print material for reference because of later modifications to them.) The earliest films followed the lead of still photography, fascinating audiences with photographs of real life activity that “moved.” Storytelling Tools Early filmmakers had access to the tools used in other visual media of the time. Especially popular on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits of the period were lecturers who augmented their programs with lantern slides arranged in a rudimentary editorial fashion to illustrate their points. In 1894-95, some Lyceum audiences saw a kind of bridge between slides and dramatic films; a story told in a series of specially photographed slides that showed posed actors on constructed sets. In addition, comic strips were a regular feature in many tabloid newspapers, using a cinematic arrangement of drawings to tell a story. Soon filmmakers added to this repertoire with techniques unique to the medium, such as panning the camera to follow action; shooting close-ups of subjects, sometimes with long lenses; and shooting from moving vehicles. As film programs grew in length, individual but related shots were often spliced together, camera cut to camera cut, in rough continuity. Despite these precedents, the development of a filmic storytelling language was not immediate. When vignettes from popular stage plays were filmed, photographic and cinematic technique was discarded in favor of an approach more in keeping with the legitimate theater. These dramatic excerpts were shot by static cameras from the point of view of an audience member seated front row center, with all the action taking place in a proscenium wide shot during the course of one fifty-foot take. Film historian Kevin Brownlow has theorized that early filmmakers copied the stage when they began dramatizing material because they were awed by it and longed to win the respect of its upscale audiences. At the time, most films were part of the program at vaudeville houses catering to the lower classes. Perhaps it’s no surprise that when early filmmakers began to actually stage material for the camera, they took their cues from the legitimate theater, despite cinematic precursors. One interesting bit of cinematic technique did find its way into one of these early dramatic subjects, Thomas Edison’s The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1898). In the play, the curtain fell before the axe did, but in the film version, the camera was stopped to allow for the substitution of a dummy for the actress, resulting in a bit of “Grand Guignol” more appropriate to the tastes of the vaudeville house audiences — and the first intentional jump cut in motion picture history. Although early filmmakers borrowed a number of camera tricks from still photography, it was French magician George Méliès who first explored the possibilities of “white magic,” tricks unique to cinema. Initially fascinated just by the idea of photographing pictures that moved, Méliès, like most early filmmakers, started by shooting everyday life around him. As legend has it, his camera jammed while photographing a passing wagon. By the time he was able to start cranking again, a hearse was passing in the same position. When he viewed the print, Méliès was astonished to see the wagon apparently turn into a hearse. Realizing what had happened set him not only on a path to make a series of novelty trick films, but also a series of dramatizations specifically designed for film, beginning with his 1,000 foot version of Cinderella (1900). Porter’s Contribution
Before becoming a cameraman for Edison, Edwin S. Porter was a projectionist in New York City, where, according to Brownlow in the book Hollywood: The Pioneers, he had projected and been fascinated by the Méliès films. We don’t know the chronology between the first American presentations of Méliès’ most famous film, A Trip to the Moon (1902), and the start of production of Porter’s equally important Life of an American Fireman, but it’s quite possible that a moment in the former may have influenced the latter. Aside from his trick effects, Méliès had maintained the tradition of photographing complete dramatic scenes from the equivalent of front row center. However, at one moment in A Trip to the Moon, he departed from this. After the scene in which the rocket ship is fired from a cannon, Méliès cuts to the ship’s POV heading toward the moon (photographed by sliding a huge moon painting toward the camera), followed by a jump cut to a face in another moon miniature grimacing in pain — the ship is stuck in its left eye, which is dripping cheese. The rest of the film returned to the completely played out theatrical scene tradition, but these shots suggested that a filmmaker was not necessarily tied to the time and space limitations of the stage but could move around and through the narrative in a manner closer to that of the novelist. Porter seems to have grasped the possibilities of this better than Méliès, who never advanced creatively beyond his early films.
By 1902 the novelty value of the simple films was wearing off, and vaudeville houses started using them at the end of shows to drive audiences out of the theaters. The exceptions were Méliès’ works and other simple narrative films attempting to copy them. Racing fire engines had long been a standard subject for filmmakers, since at that time cities were composed to a large extent of rickety wooden buildings and were still lit by gas, so fires were an everyday occurrence. In Life of an American Fireman (1902/03), Porter took the next step by developing a way of wrapping fire engine footage around a simple story to create parallel lines of action that appear to be happening at the same time. Unlike the staged theatrical vignettes, Porter conceived his story along cinematic lines: a fire captain daydreaming of his wife and child safely at home; the first-ever use of a close-up, of a hand pulling an alarm; staged and actual footage of firemen going into action; the fire revealed to be in the captain’s home, intercut with footage of the engines racing to it; a daring fireman climbing into a blazing second story window to save the baby at the last minute; and the family reunited, with the fire extinguished. The editing was very primitive, of course, as editing devices were yet to be invented, and many scenes still ran from camera stop to camera stop. But Porter occasionally did cut within a scene and cut back. The film worked with audiences of the time and paved the way for Porter’s magnum opus: The Great Train Robbery (1903). The Great Train Robbery Whereas Méliès films at this time were still basically a series of theatrical tableaus designed to show off his trick effects, Edwin S. Porter’s masterpiece can be considered the first dramatic work totally conceived for film. Porter took his cue from the western dime novels that were popular at the time: a band of robbers hold up a train station and tie up the stationmaster, then climb onto a train that has briefly stopped. After a gunfight with the guards in the baggage car, they blow open the safe and steal the money inside. They then proceed along the top to the engine, fight with the fireman, whose body is thrown off (a dummy substituted in a jump cut), force the engineer to stop the train and rob the passengers. Meanwhile, the stationmaster’s daughter finds and frees him, and he breaks up a dance to alert a posse that hunts down and kills the bandits. All of these elements would become a staple of westerns for the next fifty years. Except for the famous close-up of actor George Barnes, all the scenes in the film are photographed in full or long shot with all the action for a given scene occurring within unbroken takes that last long enough to make story points. But shooting on location seemed to free Porter from thinking in terms of the proscenium, and his staging and camerawork in those scenes are inspired more by established photographic techniques than by the formal and static stage scenes. The editing is less rudimentary than in Life of an American Fireman, and the assembly of scenes to tell the story is far more cinematic, with parallel action impossible to depict on the stage. Vaudeville house audiences unused to the limitations of the “legitimate” stage and its necessary “willing suspension of disbelief,” but quite familiar with letting their imaginations soar when hearing or reading stories, had no problem accepting this new, exciting medium for storytelling. While Life of an American Fireman was apparently a hit when shown to audiences in 1902, The Great Train Robbery was such a phenomenon that all over the country empty stores were converted into theaters to show it, moving the motion picture from a vaudeville house novelty toward its eventual fulfillment as an art form, as well as an industry in its own right. Unfortunately, Porter would not build on this success to become a significant creative force in early filmmaking. Though he continued to make films for another decade, and would become a partner and chief director for Adolph Zukor in his Famous Players Company (a precursor of Paramount formed, ironically, to make silent movies of classic plays), his technique never advanced beyond these early primitive films. According to cinematographer Arthur Miller, who worked with him in later days, Porter preferred creating unique lighting and visual effects as opposed to dealing with actors. He subsequently left filmmaking to devote his time to the development of the Simplex projector. In the decade following The Great Train Robbery, directors like D. W. Griffith and people working specifically in the art and craft of film editing would further explore the narrative potential that would come from breaking up scenes into individual shots, arranged to elicit specific responses in the viewing audience. Today, with the craft of editing fully developed, we can look back on this 12-minute landmark film and celebrate the centennial of a unique art form. |
