It introduces the early development of American Cinema and gives an overview of early exhibitions and talks about the monopoly of Edisons' MPPC and Self Censorship in Films

1. DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL
HOLLYWOOD CINEMA (1903-1927)
Dr. JANARDHAN JUVVIGUNTA
Assistant Professor, DFM, JGI

2. THE EXPANDING AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY
● Hollywood dominates the international market in entertainment media
● United States was not yet the world's most economically important country
● Great Britain still ruled the waves
● American film firms concentrated on the swiftly expanding domestic demand
● Paid less attention to foreign markets
● Between 1905 and 1912, American producers, distributors, and exhibitors tried to bring
some stability to the shifting and confused film business
● Edwin S. Porter quickly rose in the ranks of the Edison Manufacturing Company.

3. ● In 1903 he directed two seminal American films
● Life of an American Fireman(1903)- it's a nine-shot narrative
https://youtu.be/p4C0gJ7BnLc
● The Great Train Robbery (1903)
https://youtu.be/y3jrB5ANUUY
● The use of continuity editing to deepen narrative in early cinema.
● The establishment of temporal continuity from one shot to the was the major
problem for early filmmakers was

4. ● James Williamson’s 5-minute British film, Fire (1901) created a cohesive narrative
sequence in early cinema
● Porter deepens the audience investment through
the close shots in early cinema
Fading in and out between images
Use of continuity between shots
● The direction of ‘The Great Train Robbery (1903) turn towards the realist
narrative

5. THE NICKELODEON BOOM(1905-1912):
● The main trend in the American film industry from 1905 to 1907 was the rapid
multiplication of film theatres
● Program running fifteen to sixty minutes
● Nickel theatres, opened films to a mass audience, many of them immigrants

6. ● By 1906, early cinema necessitated the rapid development of a visual language of
expression.
● Griffith developed the rules of continuity editing at The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Multiple camera Shots
The flow of dramatic storytelling
Continuity in space and time
● In SUSPENSE- (1913), a roughly 10-minute film
● Weber engages in superior editing to heighten the suspense and narrative clarity
of her story.
● Lois Weber’s 1914 film, The Merchant of Venice, is widely considered to be the
first American feature directed by a woman.

7. ● Lois Weber’s 1914 film, The Merchant of Venice, is widely considered to be the
first American feature directed by a woman.
● In 1916, she would be the first, and only, a woman elected to the Motion Picture
Directors Association
● In films like Hypocrites (1915), Where Are My Children? (1916) and The Hand
That Rocks the Cradle (1917) she challenged the power and hypocrisy of religious
institutions and issues of contraceptives and abortion, respectively.

8. HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM :
● By 1908, many more movies were needed by the new distributors
● The Warner brothers got their start as nickelodeon exhibitors : JAZZ SINGER 1927
● Carl Laemmle, later the founder of Universal,
● Opened his first nickelodeon in Chicago in 1906
● Louis B. Mayer, who became the second "M" of MGM (Metro-Goldwyn Mayer),
ran a small theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts
● Adolph Zukor (later head of Paramount), William Fox (who formed the company
that became 20th Century-Fox), and Marcus Loew (whose Loew's was the parent
company of MGM)
● These men would help create the basic structure of the Hollywood studio system
during the 1910s

9. THE MOTION PICTURE PATENTS COMPANY (MPPC) V/s. THE INDEPENDENTS
● Since 1897, the Edison company had tried to force its competitors out of business
by suing them for patent infringement
● Edison claimed to own the basic patents on motion picture cameras, projectors,
and film stock
● American Mutoscope & Biograph (WK Dickson) refused to cooperate with Edison
● Since its Biograph camera had a different mechanism and had separate patents
● The two firms set up rival licensing arrangements in early 1908
● In December of 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), headed by
Edison was created

10. ● The MPPC hoped to control all three phases of the industry: Production
Distribution
Exhibition
● Only licensed companies could make the films
● Eastman Kodak agreed to sell film stock only to members of the MPPC
● During 1909, MPPC members set up a regular schedule of weekly releases
● One reel became the standard film length

11. 1909-1915: THE INDEPENDENTS FIGHT BACK
● Carl Laemmle started the Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP)
● Later on, more than a dozen other independent companies started up across the
country
● MPPC created the General Film Company in 1910 as an attempt to monopolize
distribution
● The MPPC brought lawsuits against all of the independent producers
● In 1912, the American government began proceedings against the MPPC as a
trust
● The case was decided against the MPPC in 1915

12. SOCIAL PRESSURES AND SELF-CENSORSHIP:
● The movies were seen as a training ground for prostitution and robbery
● French films were criticized for treating adultery in a comic fashion
● Violent subject matter such as re-enacted executions and murders dominated in
nickelodeon boom
● In 1908, the mayor of New York started closing down all the city’s nickelodeons
● Later on, New York citizens formed the Board of Censorship in March 1909
● Producers were to submit films voluntarily, displayed a notice of approval
● This cooperation led the group to change its name to the National Board of
Censorship

13. ● In 1915, to the National Board of Review
● The Rise of the Feature Film from 1909-1911
● The first American film companies were located in New Jersey and New York
● During the early 1910s, the Los Angeles area emerged as the country's major production
center, Hollywood

14. EARLY MOVES TOWARD CLASSICAL STORYTELLING
● By 1917, filmmakers had worked out a system of formal principles that were standard in
American filmmaking
● Audiences could not understand the causal, spatial, and temporal relations in many films
● Character psychology had not been particularly important in early films
● Slapstick chases or brief melodramas depended more on physical action or familiar
situations than on character traits
● Inter-titles, Close-ups, Color, Set Design, and Lighting could imply a time of day and so on
● Editing also came to emphasize continuity among shots

15. THANK YOU