French and British filmmaking: diverse with style

Cinema as a medium for entertainment and an industry finds its origin in America and Europe and dates back to the end of the 19th century. This is when technologic development in the field of photographic hardware allowed moving images to be projected on a bigger scale and therefore be speculated in the form of visual mass entertainment. In Europe, this firstly happened in France  and England almost contemporarily. The aim of this essay is to illustrate the development of the early film industry in these countries between the 1890s and WWI and to demonstrate the consistent similarity of both technical and creative achievements occurred during this period of time, and the interactions between French and British filmmakers. The essay will also explore the different styles of progression of French and British cinema in terms of hardware, content and exhibition.

 France is certainly the European country to which the birth of cinema has been more attributed to for the past century. In fact, when the French Lumière brothers premiered in Paris with their Cinématographe in December 1895, what was born was real innovation within different fields and not limited to mere technological development. Edison’s Kinetoscope in America, and then in Europe, had brought the ultimate motion picture show to vaudeville audiences. Yet, it only conceded one spectator at the time to watch the film through its peephole. The Cinématographe instead was the first hardware that allowed the filming, the printing and the projection of moving image in just one device and this is what made this machine outstanding and innovative compared to Edison’s Kinetoscope or other contemporary apparatuses. Besides, thanks to their device, Frères Lumière as a company gave the first cinema show to a paying audience and therefore set big scale moving image projection as a new form of mass entertainment. Furthermore, the purposely researched and elegant venue where the Cinématographe was first premiered, the Grand Cafe in Paris, inevitably set a wealthier standard of audience. Until then, in fact, peepshows and magic lantern shows were hosted at less fashionable venues attended mostly by unsophisticated working class spectators (The French Cinema Book : p12-13)

 However, Lumière’s exhibition success and popularity began to fade in 1897, mostly after the deadly fire accident that caused more than 100 victims during one of their projections at the Charity Bazaar, but also because more complex and appealing films made by other filmmakers took over their simplistic novelty and topical shots. Considering the simplicity of the content of Lumière films such as “La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon”(1895) made of a single continuous shot of their employees exiting their factory, and comparing it to movies made by later filmmakers in France, it is understandable why these became old fashioned. In fact, the pioneers of French cinema understood that “what was required for the Cinématographe to become cinema, for these animated views to become entertaining films that the paying public would want to come and see, again and again, was variety and novelty, spectacle and stories” (TFCB p10). Thus, films with proper genres began to take form thanks also to the increased length of film reels that allowed the merge of multiple shots and therefore the possibility to show a lengthier story.

Alongside the Lumières, the most successful early filmmakers in France were George Méliès, Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont. Méliès was a magician and illusionist and thanks to these pre owned abilities he produced some of the most innovative and peculiar films belonging to the early French cinema including “Escamotage d’une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin” (1896) where he transformed a woman into a skeleton by using the stop motion technique and consequent substitution of the frame of the woman for the one of the skeleton. Another of his most celebrated films is “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (1902), a film about a group of scientists that after building a space capsule travels to the Moon to then be chased by its extraterrestrial inhabitants and eventually manages to escape back to Earth. Méliès creativity was extensively appreciated within other filmmakers and for this reason his films and illusionistic ideas were widely imitated in France and abroad (B&T p16). Charles Pathé was an Edison’s phonograph seller and exhibitor and, when the copycat of the Kinetoscope was made by British R.W. Paul, he bought some of these hardwares and began exhibiting them alongside phonographs and provided, in this way, an extra mean of entertainment as spectators could be watching moving images whilst having sound accompaniment (Mcleod : 2016). After his success in exhibiting films in France, Pathé funded his own studio and began producing his own films, mainly inspired by Méliès, American and British productions. At the same time, Pathé began selling his own prototype of camera that was also the most popular until 1910 (B&T p15). Seen his major success in France, he opened several offices abroad in cities such as New York, Berlin and Moscow and became within a few years the largest film company in the world. Pathé was a pioneer of cinema as an industry and the fact that its firm covered the production (of both hardware and creative content), distribution and exhibition of films “have led some to claim that the French have invented the system known as vertical integration, where a single company aims to control every phase of the film business from making the camera to projecting pictures on the screen” (TFCB p11). What just stated is also applicable to the work produced by Gaumont in the same years. Even though Gaumont was more interested in the technical innovation that cinema brought, his earliest films directed by the first ever female filmmakers Alice Guy, and the opening of his studio in 1905, gave higher industry visibility to his firm. Guy was also the production manager of the firm and soon “began to train and supervise teams of personnel with increasingly precise functions such as directors, writers and cameramen” (TFCB pp.11) and signed the birth of the first organised production company in history. Perhaps, the fact that both Pathé and Gaumont’ s attitude “was different and much closer to the philosophy of a movie executive” (TFCB pp11) explains why their firms still exist in the 21st century. Besides, as they were also controlling the distribution of their films, before WWI Pathé and Gaumont’s were owners of multiple branded cinema such as Omnipathé since 1906 and, by 1911, Gaumont Palace was the biggest cinema in the world. (TFCB pp14)

 Compared to France, the British cinema industry had developed slightly later in terms of exhibition. In fact, the first purposely built cinema in the UK did not come until 1909 but, within five years from then, about 4000 cinemas opened in the UK and were selling millions of tickets per week (Silent Britain). However, it is within the fields of technology and production that the innovation brought to cinema by British filmmakers had reportedly been denser. When Edison’s Kinetoscope was first presented in London in 1894, manufacturer of photographic equipment Robert W. Paul made a replica of it and started selling the device broadly to venues and other filmmakers. This was made possible by the fact that Edison never extended the Kinetoscope’ s patent outside the US for reasons that are still unclear (B&T p10). However, some happen to think that a possible reason might be that, like the Lumières, Edison either lost interest in his own creation over the years or simply did not believe it would have made the history of cinema as we know it. (Temple 2016 & Mcleod 2016). Thus, when the Cinématographe premiered in London at the “Poly”, in February 1896, the filmmaking business had already spread around the country thanks to Paul’s replica of the original Kinetoscope that was instead, as also was the Cinématographe until 1897, a lease only item. (B&T p14). The earliest British films were, as the French ones, simple takes such as novelties and topicals, and sometimes with a vein of comedy that did not present any camera movement as noticeable on Paul’s “Twins Tea Party” (1896) and Lumières “L’Arroseur arrosé” (1896).  In both countries however, around 1899, producers began to create films made of multiple shots and tape them together to create a narrative and oftentimes special effects and  trick films (B&T pp 13). For example, in Paul’s “Upside Down”(1899) it is visible how the stop motion technique has been used to turn around the room and the people in it to make them seem to be hanging from the ceiling whilst dancing (Fig. 1). A similar technique has been used few years later by Percy Stow in “How to stop a Motor Car” (1902) to create, the illusion of the policeman being run over by a car. (Fig. 2).  This was done by substituting the frame of the living policeman with the one of the puppet and this is the same technique used by French filmmaker Méliès on “Escamotage d’une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin” (1896) as previously explained.

 Despite coming from different countries, many French and British filmmakers supported each other in a friendly competition. Méliès, for example, purchased his first camera from R W. Paul and their bond comes alive simply by watching some of their films. As a matter of facts, Paul’s “The Motorist” (1906), a film that shows a couple driving a car trying to escape police by driving up on a wall and flying into the sky, resembles Méliès’  “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (1902), especially because both show the Moon as a representation of the extraterrestrial space (Fig. 3). Nevertheless, both films can be considered some of the earliest attempts to the genre of science fiction in history (Silent Britain).

 Other outstanding British filmmakers are those to the Brighton School, namely Cecil Hepworth, George.A. Smith and James Williamson. The trio is mainly recognised for the innovation they brought to the editing process, but also for their filming techniques. The film that set Smith apart from others was “The Kiss in the Tunnel” (1899). This film shows how he created, perhaps for the first time in British film history (Barnes: p47), a narrative made of multiple shots and demonstrates his new understanding of continuity editing as“a concept that would have had profound impact on the development of editing strategies and become a dominant filmmaking practice” (Gray : p51).  This film comprises of three shots. The middle one showing a couple kissing during a train journey, shot by Smith, whereas the first and last shots were one of the so called “phantom rides” that began to emerge in the late 20th century with the purpose of giving the idea of movement. In regards to moving shots, it is worth remembering that also the Cinématographe’s pioneer Eugène Promio had been credited for originating the moving camera by putting the device on a tripod and this on a gondola in Venice to create the illusion of movement in 1896  (B&T: p14). In “The Kiss in the Tunnel” specifically, the phantom ride was filmed by Cecil Hepworth and is knows as “View From an Engine Front - Train Leaving Tunnel” (1899). Hepworth was also recognised for his editing techniques and one of his most acclaimed films was “Rescued by Rover” (1905), starring his family sheepdog Blair in the intent of bringing their child back home after this being kidnapped by a beggar. Nevertheless, this film shows one of the earliest successful narratives made of multiple shots. Williamson was also an innovator in the editing field as noticeable on his “Attack on a China mission” (1900). This was one of the first staged historical reconstructions including a certain degree of camera angles and more than a dozen of actors involved and it shows how Williamson put together continuous scenes to create a thrilling and entertaining narrative (Silent Britain).

Besides the Brighton School’s filmmakers was the UK neutralised Edison’s salesman Charles Urban. His main credit in film history is for pioneering, alongside G.A. Smith, the Kinemacolor process which represents one of the first attempt to achieve a colour film with the aid of a series of coloured filters as shown on his film of the “Delhi Durbar” (1911) , later exhibited in a sumptuous set up with live orchestra accompaniment. (Mcleon : 2016)    

Nevertheless what just explained gives an idea of how, although in different fields, both British and French filmmakers have set the bases of today’s cinema industry and how, back in the days, they’ve contributed in the spread of the great world of filmmaking and gave birth to cinema for entertainment worldwide.  

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Bordwell D, Thompson. K ‘Film History: An Introduction’ , New York : McGraw Hill, 1994, pp 1 - 25 (Referenced as B&T)

Temple, M & Witt, M “The French Cinema Book” , London: BFI Publishing, 2004, pp. 9 - 17 (Referenced as TFCB)

Secondary Sources

Gray, F “The Kiss in the Tunnel, G.A. Smith and the emergence of the edited film in England” in Grieveson & Kramer “The Silent Cinema Reader” ,London: Routledge, 2004, pp 51 - 61

Barnes, J “The Beginning of the Cinema in England” , Exeter : University of Exeter Press, 1998, p 47

Lecture notes

Temple, M “Early Film Business”, lecture notes distributed for module ”Approaches to Cinema History”  at Birkbeck University of London, 13th October 2016

Mcleod, A “Early British Film Industry”, lecture notes distributed for module ”Approaches to Cinema History”  at Birkbeck University of London, 27th October 2016

Filmography

French Films

“La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon”(1895) [FRANCE]  Directed  by Louis Lumière:  Lumière Frères

“Escamotage d’une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin” (1896) [FRANCE] Directed by George Méliès : Manufacture de films pour cinématographes

“L’Arroseur arrosé” (1896) [FRANCE] Directed by Louis Lumière : Lumière Frères

“Le Voyage dans la Lune” (1902) [FRANCE] Directed by George Méliès : Manufacture de films pour  cinématographes

British Films

“Twins Tea Party” (1896) [UK] Directed by Robert. W. Paul : Paul’s Animatograph Works

“Upside Down”(1899) [UK] Directed by Robert. W. Paul : Paul’s Animatograph Works

“View From an Engine Front - Train Leaving Tunnel”(1899)  [UK] Directed and produced by Cecil Hepworth

“The Kiss in the Tunnel” (1899)  [UK]  Directed and produced by George Albert Smith

“Attack on a China mission” (1900)  [UK] Directed by James Williamson : Williamson Kinematograph    Company

“How to stop a Motor Car” (1902)  [UK] Directed by Percy Stow: Hepworth Manufacturing Company

“Rescued by Rover” (1905)  [UK] Directed by Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth, produced by Cecil        Hepworth

“The Motorist” (1906)  [UK] Directed by Robert. W. Paul : Paul’s Animatograph Works

 “Delhi Durbar” (1911)  [UK] Directed by Charles Urban : Charles Urban Trading Company