The Motion Picture, Part 3

Now last time I think should have been the episode where we talked with Scott Benjamin about the murder mystery or the maybe murder mystery, the disappearance mystery of louis La Prince, the person who actually did shoot inventive film camera and shot movies before anybody before Lumire Brothers, before Edison and his team. But in the episode before that we talked about the earliest commercially viable motion picture technologies.

So by the mid eighteen nineties you had the flourishing of Thomas Edison and W. K. L. Dixon's kinematograph and kinematoscope in America, which made roughly fifteen to sixteen second movies that you could watch by sticking your head and a viewfinder in a cabinet. Um Again, I love the image like you just got your face down in the cabinet and somebody walks up behind you and puts the Kickney sign on or whatever happens in these parlors. I'm

sure it was a rowdy scene. And then around the same time, you've also got the cinematograph of the Lumier Brothers in France, which projected films on a wall. And this is a kind of different thing because it allowed this communal viewing experience, which is last time we talked about how we think this is sort of important both culturally and economically, that you can show films for a

for a big audience all at the same time. Yeah, and and I think that when we look at the history of film viewing and film technology, we see that that push and pull between the communal experience and the individual experience, whether it's the communal experience of of the Lumiar Brothers invention, or movie houses or let's go, or places where we go back towards the the individual experience, such as suddenly being able to watch films at home on television, or watch films on a vcr um other

home media advancements, right down to our our modern use of smartphones where you can you can just crawl underneath the blanket and watch whatever you want with your headphones in, and it's you know, you're you're all but just shoving the screen directly into your brain. And I do think I would bet that film historians have some interesting thoughts about how the changes in technology, especially like home video,

changed the art of film itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's had major certainly that I've I've read some about its effects, say on the adult cinema industry, where they're obvious clearly there, yeah, clear clearly there, you know, obvious influences the technology on on that genre. But I was thinking just the other night about a different avenue of film enjoyment, that being writhing. Oh yes, So we're of course both big fans of Mystery Science Theater three thousand.

If you've never seen it, it's well, you've probably seen images of it. It's the old TV show where they it was a sci fi comedy premise where they take old movies that were generally very bad and poorly made, and you'd have hosts who made jokes about the film. As you watch, you'd see a little silhouettes bobbing in front of the screen. A human and two robots forced to watch bad movies, and in order to survive the experience, they riff on and they make jokes, they talk back

to the screen. Um, you know, all the sort of you know, humorous shenanigans created by the great Joe Hodgson. Yeah, but this is of course turned into a wider genre than just the show Mystery Science Theater three thousand that's been off the air for twenty years or whatever. Well it's back on Netflix. Well that's true, but so it was off the air for a long time, but the the tradition continued. I think it inspired a sort of style of media presentation. And it wasn't the only one.

I mean there's also you were talking before we went on Mike Today about this other phenomenon of not people talking during the movie, but the TV movie host what

do you call that? Like a daytime horror host. Yeah, like Grandpa Monster hosting movies back back in the nineties on like the Turn Channelsvira Helvira or Joe Bob Briggs Monster Vision where they're not chatting during the movie, but they're these bumper segments where they're saying, Hey, how about that film you're just watched, how about those how about that scene with that monster? And then maybe they crack a few jokes. Right, So even if you're at home

alone watching the movie. It's kind of like when you go out to the movies with your friends and if it's a bad movie, lean over next to each other and make jokes about what you're watching. Yeah, so I wondered to what extent like these are reactions to to these these different technological advancements where movie viewing has leaned

away from the communal towards the individual experience. But then we compensate for that through the pseudo communal experience of riffing or the host speaking to you about the film. And then later on when we get more into the DVD age, you of course have commentary tracks, which I think the better commentary tracks I'm thinking of, particularly like the John Carpenter and Kurt Russell commentaries. That's commentary tracks, you know, where it's it's like you're hanging out in

the room with them listening to them. You're watching the film with them. To a certain extent, listening to any Arnold Schwarzenegger commentaries track where it just explains what's happening in the scene and it's in total re called the the unbelievable distortion of the face. But yeah, even that is you know, sort of a communal experience. It's like you're you're watching the film with Arnold, So anyway, that's it.

I haven't researched that to see if anybody else's has given you know, a lot more serious and structured thought to the nature of riffing and when it's important. But it came to mind thinking about the way the technology

influences our experience. Yeah, I have a hunch that you're exactly right that there is this push and pull and that we want, you know, we want to be able to have privacy privacy bound experiences, you know, within our own boundaries, within our own you know, the convenience of being able to do it at home whenever we want to watch a movie or something. But also there's there's part of us that cries out for that kind of

instant reaction. You're wanting to be able to lean over to the person next to you and talk about what you're seeing right like, and a counter to that would of course be some of these examples that you've seen of movie theater innovations designed to limit the communal experience. When you're like dividers next to your head, that sort of thing. Well, I mean I guess it's it's also going to be annoying if you're just trying to pay attention to the movie and the people right in front

of you or having a conversation about whatever. Yeah. Well, it's the human experience as a whole. Right. We want to be alone, but we want to be surrounded by people. And if we're and we have we have whichever we are, we want the other one exactly. The grass is always a little greener, right, But so we should come back to the early days of film and pick up on

this technological journey. Okay, So yeah, So we had the Edison and Dixon kinematograph and kinematoscope, and then you had the Lumier brothers with their cinematograph, and these established some slightly different early traditions of films. And one of the things we talked about before is that there weren't already films waiting to be shown. So the people who invented these camera and projector technologies had to make their own films to go in them. They had to be not

only inventors of the technology but media producers. So Edison and Dixon's early films were usually like short recordings of things that would be kind of like circus acts or vaudeville performances. Here's the strong Man, here's a dancer, acrobats, or something something quick and interesting to look at that would be interesting without sound and last about fifteen seconds,

because that's how long the films could be. Based on the limitations of their technology, the loomis Are Brothers created these short documentaries of real life with scenes like a train approaching the camera, or I was reading about one that's just five men diving off of a jetty and bathing in the sea. There's one that's got a bunch of photographers getting off of a riverboat for a photography conference in Leone. It's riveting stuff, but people were really

into it. Yeah, I mean, just it's the magic of seeing the moving picture or without with with without living in an age of just ubiquitous moving pictures like we

have today, exactly. Uh. And so the Lumiar Oh, but the Lumiar Brothers also created at least one fictional story that we mentioned in that previous episode, the classic The Sprinkler Sprinkled Yes, which is yeah, this is one of the first ten films that they that they unleashed and It is clearly a humorous little fiction piece where a gardener's hose is uh is stepped on by a child and then of course he does the natural thing, right then I comedic clown choice and looks down the hose,

and then that's when the water squirts him in the face. I actually watched it today, and not only does he get squirted in the face, then he chases down the child and beats the child savagely. That's how it ends. You know, it was a different, different type of type of humor back in those days. Uh, if only we could have had the sprinkler sprinkled cinematic universe where they come back and and and that would be explored in a later film. But but you know, take the beating aside.

It is exactly the type of human that has continued to be an important part of motion pictures like right up until today. Oh of course, yeah, I mean slapstick humor. It's still a very cheap way to make a movie that can make a lot of money. But by the mid eighteen nineties films, we we should say we're still mostly something like a curiosity and a technological spectacle and less like a fundamental medium. For stories and mass culture the way they are in our culture today. So what

changed in between? You know, how do we get from that point to this point? One thing that I think is really important along that journey is that, of course, there were plenty of technological upgrades that came along to improve what people could do with motion picture filming and projection early on. But the one innovation that I think might be most important early on is something that is

usually called the Latham loop. Now, we've talked before about how early films were less than a minute long, right there. There were technical reasons for this. It wasn't an artistic choice. One of the technical reasons was the strains put on recording media, and so these early films were shot on

celluloid film strip and celluloid film was good. It was more durable than the flimsy paper film of the past, but still it had its limits, and one was this, the more film you've got coiled up on a roll and you know you're pulling on it, the harder it is to pull to feed along past the shutter. Like you can sort of imagine the physics of this, right, you know, trying to pull tape off of a huge role and pull it really fast. And the way film cameras and projectors worked at the time was to grab

the film along these perforated holes along the side. So if you've seen film before, you know you see these sprocket holes along the side of it. That's so the latch or the lever can grab the film advanced at exactly one frame in front of the shutter and then

move it along another frame after that. Uh. And so if you try to record or project a really long piece of motion picture, you would inevitably end up tearing it in the process, often by ripping through the sprocket hole as you tried to advance the film, and this

actually put an artistic limit on the medium. Yeah, I was reading a article for the American Society of Cinematographers by the film filmographer and film historian David Samuelson, and Samuelson writes that in the nineties, the problem with the tension on celluloid film meant that you couldn't pull more than maybe like a hundred feet or so about thirty meters of film through the camera projector without tearing it, and this limited films to roughly two minutes run time.

Now in our brands that we're thinking like, how do you tell the story of RoboCop in two minutes? This is a robocopless world, you can't have it. But but it was actually a different question that led to the defeat of this technological hurdle. And that question was a more I don't know, kind of maybe more mercenary economic one. But maybe that's just me saying that because I'm not a big, big sports fan. The question was how do

you shoot and play back an entire boxing match? Now, it's funny that and this reveals how little, uh interest I have in sports that I didn't even think about the idea of filming and exhibiting sports matches as like a major early use of film. But of course this is this is going to be big money, right yeah, I mean I was mainly thinking about the you know, the artistic possibilities here and maybe do a certain extent of journalistic opportunity possibilities. But then again, journalism would cover

sports as well. There will be an interest in capturing what occurred exactly. So there's a family company run by an American named Woodville Latham and his sons, and they wanted to pioneer this process to make money off of exhibiting boxing matches after they had happened. So the idea, as you film the fight, you screen it later, and you charge admission. And obviously most boxing matches would have been too long, they would tear the film because they're

going to need more than a hundred feet there. So the answer is something called a film loop or a Latham loop. And this invention essentially used wheels to spool out a kind of short, slackened loop of film ahead of the camera or projector shutter, so that when the lover grabs the film to pull it down rapidly advanced it past the shutter frame by frame, it wouldn't be pulling tight on the entire roll of film and just be pulling down from this sort of slackened loop of

film right above it. Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah,

absolutely so. According to Samuelson, though Woodville Latham gets the name credit for this invention the Latham loop, a sworn statement by our old friend W. K. L. Dixon, who remember invented Edison's kinetograph, indicated that the invention was actually the work of a guy named Eugene Lost, who was otherwise known for inventing the idoloscope, which was a wide film projector, and also as a side note, Samuelson notes that years later, in nineteen eleven, Lost would also travel

to America to quote give the first demonstration there of a combined sound on film recording and reproduction system, though his method was not ever success fully commercialized, and actually synchronized sound didn't become mainstream in films until the late nineteen twenties, so there was a ways to go before that became big. Lost by the way, it spelled l A U s T. Yeah, maybe that's Lost day or maybe lust day. I don't I don't know either way,

he was quite the inventor. Yeah, totally double innovator here. The Latham loop was a big deal. In addition to this, this later uncommercialized sound on film process uh and the Latham loop was such a big deal that Samuelson writes about it, quote for filmmakers of the time, it was as big a breakthrough as anything that has happened since. And think about it again. This is so important because this is what makes it possible to have long films.

Without it, we couldn't have long films right now, obviously, I mean Obviously, prior to this technology, we we had all these other storytelling mediums that were long form. We had books, we had we had plays especially uh. But but it but clearly like the medium was not to receive uh, those longer form stories. Yet this allowed them

to receive those forms exactly. And I think this is one reason early on you wouldn't have had people quite yet thinking yes, this, you know, the film will become the medium for visual novels, that we will adapt a novel for film. If it would be like saying, look at postage stamps, think of the stories we can tell with postage stamps. And you're like, no, you can't. It's just not that big. You can't put Macbeth on a

postage stamp. But then suddenly it's like, hey, we just figured out whether a way that makes the stamps so much bigger. And then suddenly the sky's the limit. Yeah. And so there's another piece I read emphasizing the importance of the loop that was pretty interesting. It's an article I found in the Atlantic in two seventeen by Henry Giardina, though originally it was from an essay series called object Lessons, and its title is the Camera Technology that turned films

into stories and just talking about the Latham loop there. Uh, and so it notes several things. Of course, I wanted to know what's the deal with this boxing match that the Lathams were into. Well, it's got the deets on that. In May of eighteen nine, the Latham family successfully screened a boxing match in New York City and the boxers were Charles Barnett and somebody named Young griff. Oh so, I'm wondering, is this the inspiration of the character in

A Song of Ice and Fire. There's a young Griffo. You don't remember Young griff He's in the books, but not the show. I don't remember Young Griffin. Oh yeah, well he's a young griff. I don't know who won the fight. By the way, I'm pulling for Young Griffo though. But so, this invention obviously wasn't just for boxing. The film loop or the Latham loop, made longer motion pictures possible, and we all know the stuff that came along with that.

Uh though. Giardina's article is also interesting in documenting the obsessive tactics that Thomas Edison pursued in order to hinder the early production of independent films and extract every dime he could out of anybody trying to make a movie, mostly through you know, uh, obnoxious patent claims, like you try to patent every part of the process, and and if somebody's doing it, he's going to be making money

on it. And remember early on, films were not thought of yet as primarily as art or in terms of copyright law. They were technology primarily framed in terms of patent law. So ultimately they I mean, all these films that are being produced, like there's still nothing but um proof for the technology at this point, like that, like the films have not really taken out of life of their own, yeah exactly. I mean audiences were enjoying them,

but I don't think they thought of films yet. The way we think of films is like this is another medium. It's like, you know, it's like the written word, and we think of film as being something like that. And before we move on, I just have to mention also that in this Jardina piece, it talks about how it's been alleged that Edison didn't just use patent harassment on on people who were trying to make films at the

around the turn of the twentieth century. UH. It's also been alleged that he used sheer, muscle and intimidation to control the early film industry, And the author here talks about an interview between Peter Bogdanovich, the you know, the nineteen seventies filmmaker and UH and an early film director who was working in the earliest days named Alan Duan, who said that quote Edison sent gangsters across the country to follow them when they when they went west, and

that the gangsters would shoot at their cameras. Quote most companies only had one. Sometimes they'd wait until a fellow was cleaning the camera and take a shot at it, anything to destroy it. So I don't know if that story is accurate, but wow, it does seem like another tally in the Edison as villain column. Absolutely absolutely the idea that you, I mean, there's so much um, I mean, any film that gets made, it's kind of a miracle, right,

There's so much work that goes into it. And in these days that was that was still the case as well. But on top of that, you're gonna have Edison's gangsters allegedly showing up and UH and potentially messing your camera. That's awful. Yeah, So whether or not that story is true, of course, Edison couldn't stop, you know, independent films entirely. Films continued to develop in France and elsewhere, and then even in the United States, filmmakers moved west and spread

out all over the place, and Edison's power wane. So he just he couldn't put a lid on all of it. So I think it's clear that the film loop or the Latham loop, was a crucial invention enabling the transformation of motion picture from just a technological spectacle into a mainstream storytelling medium in an art form. Like it allowed the creation of longer films, and it made possible new you know, things that you could do with film editing.

Now we'll have to ask the question in a minute who who picked up on this opportunity, Like who were the artists who realized I can make art, I can tell stories with this new medium? Uh, you know who took advantage of the technology. But also I was just wondering first about a question about film history as an example of something that can be generalized, How does a new media technology come to be perceived in culture as

a legitimate art form? Because I remember maybe you weren't aware of this, but I remember some debate in the mid to late two thousands where people would go back and forth about whether or not video games can ever be considered art, And uh, I don't maybe people still have that debate today. I would say that to me, you know, most video games to me don't seem like things that I really think of as art. But I don't have any problem at all with the idea that

they potentially can be, and some probably are. And you're talking about the piece itself being in its entirety of work of art, not merely like encompassing nice production design. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, certainly video games today, you know, a lot of them have some beautiful designs in them that you would think of as visual art. So the question is once it incorporates gameplay, mechanics and all that kind of stuff, like, does does it lose

some artistic quality? Then? I don't know. I mean people have to work that out among themselves. But I also think about the same thing with the virtual reality. Can you just take a virtual reality environment and say, you know, uh, this is art. I mean, it seems to me that virtual reality is sort of in a space kind of like the films of the first decade of films, where in you know, where it's still maybe like a question of like is this just sort of a new technology

and a spectacle that makes use of it. Well, I think a lot of it comes down to you how you're utilizing the new medium. Because we mentioned plays earlier, I think a lot of us. I don't know about all of us, but I've certainly seen my share of filmed plays, especially when it's like taking Shakespeare courses in college and so, and many of them were very good because you're in many cases it is a film of

a wonderful performance. But if it's if the cameras not moving or it's barely moving, you know, uh, you know, it's it's not the same as watching a film. It's not using all of the the the tricks available to the filmmaker. U. So it's it's very difficult, I think, to make an argument that a film to play is

a good film, uh, even if it is a great play. Likewise, when you're looking at virtual reality or a video game, it's like, is the video game just giving me some nice visuals and I'm having some fun playing it, or is it doing something with gaming itself. They're doing something with the way that I interact with it, that it is that is refreshing and unique. And likewise with the virtual reality, are the mechanics of the invention or the technology integral to what the art is or how the

art works in the same way that they are with films? Yeah, exactly. I mean, for example, film, the simplest thing you can think of, a film can use an edit to make a point. You know, a film can like jump cut between two things to cause you to have a connection

between them in your mind. And that's the thing that's sort of unique to fill them as a medium, right, absolutely, Yeah, So I guess the question is are there things similar in games in virtual reality where the mechanics of it, sort of the physical characteristics of the medium are used to do things that other media don't do in service

of an artistic design. Yeah, well, you know, in in gaming, I'm thinking the examples would big games that kind of lean into trying to create the feeling of watching a motion picture. But but but but feels that way, you know what I'm saying, Like it feels like, oh, this is this is almost like watching a movie. I'm almost achieving something, but I'm not, you know, fully immersed in

the experience. Maybe you're being you know, hit on the head with a bunch of cut scenes, and then in between the cut scenes there's more traditional video game like maneuvers. But then a game like well Soma comes to mind is a recent game that that we both played. It's a horror horrorci fi game, and like that game felt like as I recall it, it was not heavy on on cut scenes. You were controlling the elements for the most part, and and the way that you interacted with

elements helped tell the story of your experience. I agree. Yeah, I think that's a very good candidate for that kind of thing. Yeah, as opposed to say many say fighting games or shooting games, where you're just doing the fighting and the shooting, and then there are moments that come along we're like, hey, I'm here to tell you what the narrative is and how the story is progressing, and then you move back to the thing you were doing.

If I know anything, it's the twisted metal is art. Well. Yeah, I mean I was thinking about the most recently Mortal Kombat game of those. Yeah, but you know, you know, I would never say that. I didn't mean that it's it's not a game that I would say is art, though it combined. It clearly it was built on the talents of of numerous you know, very accomplished artists. There's

a lot of cool art in the game. And then there is a certain amount of storytelling that takes place in the game, But the core game experience, it's is still not a narrative. It is fighting. Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent of fight is a narrative. But you know what I mean. Then again, if we're starting to set a high bar about what counts as art and what doesn't, most films probably don't count either. I mean, who knows. I'm sorry. I guess this is a pretentious discussion.

It's my fault because I started. I mean, we're not the Council of Wizards that decides what is art and what is not. Well, but I think here's one of the things that about it though, is like, are you using tricks in various bells and whistles of the medium to engage the audience? And I think one of the important things to keep in mind about about cinema, about filmmaking is that a filmmaker benefits from a great number of tricks and effects to capture our attention, to manipulate

our feelings. And these were these weren't just all rolled out at once. So it's not like Edison or anybody else came along and said, all right, here's here's how you make a film. Here all the techniques you can do. Here are the types of cuts, et cetera. Like these were all developed mostly through trial and error over decades in deck gades of of filmmaking. And that means the work of you know, highly acclaimed and serious filmmakers as well as uh, everybody else involved in the game of

making films. This was pointed out by the way in Psycho Cinematics Issue and Directions by author P. Shimamura. So, you know, little changes here in their new advancements in cinema that allow a film to get its hooks into us. So ultimately, I don't know, I don't think it, you know, matters. They say the Blob is a work of art, uh, but but clearly it's using all of these various artistic tools that were created, uh to better tell the story,

to better engage a viewer. Through the medium of cinema. Yeah, and I would also say that I think you can make the make the point that commercial cinema develops te techniques that are crucial to later art. Yeah. Anyway, so I think maybe we should take a break and then when we come back, we will discuss some of these early innovators in the art form of film. All right,

we're back, Okay. So we've been asking this question throughout of how did film and motion picture transition from being just a technological curiosity, you know, a new invention and a spectacle into something that was more oriented around narrative and story and something that might be considered a legitimate art form. Uh. And so we want to talk about just a couple of important figures here. One that I think is definitely worth mentioning is an interesting figure named

Alice gi Blush. In the words of the American filmmaker and film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, she was quote the foremost pioneer of cinema, which I think is interesting because before preparing for this episode, I want to be honest, I had not heard of her. Yeah, and most of the names that come up are our men from cinema history, so it's refreshing to see a

woman playing such an important role early on. And I think it is highly possible that her gender might have had something to do with the reasons she wasn't remembered as much as she probably should have been. So. Alice Ki Blasche was born Alice ge in France in eighteen seventy three. She grew up going to Catholic school and she early on had a love of narrative literature and theater.

She you know, she was a fan of the arts, and she began her career in eighteen ninety four as a secretary working for the engineer, inventor and industrialist Leon Gomant. In the mid eighteen nineties, Gomont ran a photography company and so he made equipment and materials for this brand

new film industry. For example, this company had a relationship producing equipment for the loumi Are Brothers, and through her work with Gomant's company, she was able to attend the loumi Are Brothers projected film premiere in eighteen We talked about this in the previous episode, so she she got to see the sprinkler sprinkle at the premiere. She was there and by by the way, all of these old films were talking about these these little short films. They

are all available on YouTube. Well, the Loomis Air Brothers ones, I think, yeah, well yeah, but as some of these others that we are discussing, like, we've looked up on YouTube. So there's a YouTube for all of its crimes. And since, uh, it's still a great place to find these little tidbits of cinematic history. Yeah, well, the ones that are available, yeah, you should definitely look up and check out. A lot of them are actually lost to history. The ones that

are lost you're not going to find on YouTube. But the others are fair game. We'll talk about that in a minute. So so, yeah, so she's working for Gomants company, she attends the Loomis Air premiere. Uh, and by eighteen ninety six it appears she'd gotten a bug. Even though she was still officially only a secretary at Gomant's company. He had become interested in filmmaking as an art form

and wanted to see what she could do crafting films herself. Now, remember this is an age dominated by films that are less than one minute long. They're mostly like documentaries about people getting off a boat, you know. Yeah, So that year in eighteen, Gee got Gomant to let her use the company's equipment to direct her own feature, to direct a roughly one minute film of her own called The Cabbage Fairy or Lafe oh Shoe on her lunch break. This is she made. So she made the movie at lunch.

And this film involves this beaming fairy woman in a gated garden pulling real babies out of giant heads of cabbage. It's pretty creepy. There is something I think captivating about it. I mean it's it doesn't have much of a plot, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. Yeah. I watched this as well that he and this was definitely on YouTube, and uh yeah, it's it's pretty captivating and kind of predicts the popularity of cabbage patrick kids later on. Oh,

I hadn't even thought about that. So this is sometimes cited as the first fictional film. I do think that's debatable because why doesn't the Sprinkler sprinkled from eight count I think, and he doesn't. That doesn't contain a specative element, right, that's true, Whereas you know, babies coming out of Cabbage. That's clearly that is exactly what I was about to say. Whatever one comes down to on that question whether it's the first fictional film, it did occur to me. Is

this the first ever fantasy film? It's possible I'm missing something, but I can't find an earlier example. Uh, And the films you see most often cited as the earliest fantasy films are films by a filmmaker we're about to talk about named George milliais from like nineteen o two. So this is much earlier than that. Unless somebody can provide a counter example, I'm going to say that this is the first fantasy film ever made. The Cabbage Ferry. Now,

what was the date on Edison's um Frankenstein adaptation, nineteen ten? Alright, so she's still beat him way after Yeah, that's way after Milliers though. That is worth a look, especially looking Frankenstein monster there, especially given what you know about Edison. It's almost like a metaphor um. But so anyway, Alice

Ky the Cabbage Ferry. Based on her success in directing The Cabach Ferry, g went on to direct and produce more films, and she was eventually made the head of production when Gomant's company transitioned from being a technical camera

and equipment business into a full fledged film studio. And it's interesting how you see this transition happening over and over again with like with Edison, with Lumierer, with Gomant, you know, like people get into the film business and then they're like, I don't want to be just on the technical side. I want to be making movies. So he directed hundreds of films, and she oversaw the production

of hundreds more. Perhaps her most famous film, and the best remembered one, is one from nineteen o six called The Life of Christ. Of course, it is a silent retelling of the life of Jesus. It's a little over thirty minutes long. And I watched some scenes from it, for example, the scene where Mary Magdalen watches the feet of Christ, and I watched the crucifixion scene, and it's beautiful film in any ways, like the sets and the costumes and the staging are wonderful for nineteen o six.

In nineteen o seven, she married a Gauman camera operator named Herbert Blache, and she became Alice G. Blache, And after that the two of them traveled to the United States, where Alice founded a new film production company of her own in New York called the Soulas Company, and so g Blache was prolific over the course of for her career, she wrote, directed, and produced more than a thousand movies, sometimes like three movies a week. The last movie she

made was in nineteen twenty. She died in New Jersey in nineteen sixty eight. Unfortunately, most of her films, like many films of this era, have been lost, so we can't go back now and watch them. For a long time, it seems g Blache was left out of many film histories, like we were talking about there, so there'd be histories of the period that just didn't really mention her some did.

I want to say that there have been some people I've read saying that she was like completely forgotten until recent years, and that's not entirely true, but it does seem that her role in the history of film has been grossly under emphasized, and it does seem now that there's sort of a revival in attention to her story

in the past few years, including I was looking. There was a documentary film about her that came out in teen called be Natural narrated by Jodie Foster, and I haven't seen the movie, but I like the title because I think the title comes from another thing I've read about her, which is that in her studio she hung up a sign urging actors to be natural, which is kind of hilarious if you think about the other staged films from this time, such as those of the great

George Milliers, with all these wild exaggerated gestures and movements in them, you know, which, which really I think was a benefit to those films, because I mean, you're dealing with you're so far far removed from from capturing a natural performance. Yeah, there's no sound, right, there's no sound, So yes, like scream and contort your face as much as possible because you're you really almost have to shout

through the limitations of the medium. Yeah. So, to quote again from Wheeler Winston Dixon, the scholar who called her the foremost pioneer of cinema. UH. Dixon also argues, quote, she's basically the first person to make a film with the plot, the first person to use color, and this

wasn't color photography, this would mean hand tinted films. Uh. And also the first person to use the chronophone process, which was an early sound on film method that, like the other one we mentioned earlier, it did not commercially take off for a while. Again, sound on film didn't become mainstream until the late nineteen twenties. Yeah, but she's she's looking ahead though, she kind of sees the future and ultimately the whole idea of asking the actors to

be natural. I mean that's the same thing nowadays. Um. You know, well a lot of movies, certainly in your more um, you know, serious dramatic pieces like that's where the focus is. You want to capture all the emotional nuance of her performance, and she saw that when others did not. Yeah, these early films were very well, again, they were still it was still the spirit of spectacle

in a way. They were very stagy, you know, these huge motions, not to capture any kind of nuance of the characters, but but more in the spirit of vaudeville, exaggerated motions to to really draw the eye and engage people and not ask them to to like very boldly telegraph everything to avoid subtlety. Right, Because another thing to keep in mind is that the medium is ultimately going

to change the way that you can. You can bring an actor's performance alive, like it's gonna make those really close tense, studied the scenes of an actor's facial expressions possible in ways that a stage production never would. Yeah, and these these earlier films were generally more like stage productions. They I mean, they usually didn't have things like close ups. Right now, I think maybe we should take another break, and then when we come back we will discuss another

better known but also genuinely amazing and influential early film pioneer. Alright, we're back, So let's let's go to the moon. Oh, I think we should. Uh so. One of the most important people in the transition from film as straightforward recording of documentary spectacle to longer narrative form is George Milliers,

who lived eighteen sixty one to nineteen thirty eight. And even if you don't know much about early film history, you are probably still a little bit familiar with Maliais through his nineteen o two film The Voyage Don Laloon, or A Trip to the Moon, in which some learned astronomers dressed like goobery wizards fly to the Moon in a giant artillery shell. They land there, they meet some moon men, they smash them with umbrellas and make them explode,

They capture a moon being, and then they travel back home. Yeah, that's the plot. Yeah, and yeah, I think everyone out there either you have seen this in its entirety, then you have seen allusions to it, right, or you've seen did the Smashing Pumpkins I think, had a music video that that they utilize a lot of the visuals from

this picture. Well, the most famous image from it is something you've probably seen this, the one where the ship lands on the Moon and there's a close up of the moon which has a human face and the so there are special effects that do a do a cut to make the ship smash into the face and then the face looks very displeased. And so A Trip to

the Moon is just still excellent to watch today. Yeah, it's just really kind of whack a doodle to watch because it's it's not quite it's certainly not a film of play, but there is a sense of it's kind of like a film, a film spectacle, like there are these these scenes on but that you're presented with where you're just there's there's something fantasmagoric about it. Oh yeah, and only thirteen minutes long, very short time. Now it's like it's really the perfect film for today's attention span.

And it wasn't Malia's only film, of course. I mean he made all kinds of stuff. He was another great pioneer in early film production. And I like that you say that it does incorporate more of that tradition of spectacle, because there are some things about him that I think will explain that now. Like Ghi Blache, he was one of the first to see the storytelling potential of film as a medium. In the mid eight nineties, Maliais was

a stage magician and a theater director in Paris. And also, like Gi Blush, he was present for the earliest demonstrations of the Loumier Brothers. So when they're showing this thing on the wall, Loomier Brothers are like, check out our cinematograph, and multiple members are the of the audience are like, I can do this. I can make a career at this, or or he's probably thinking I could do better that.

You're just filming people leaving a factory. I could build you a set, I could perform you for you an illusion, I can make you a cabbage ferry, and you know, I can take you to the moon and so Yeah. So when Mallier saw what the Loumier's camera and projector could do, he pretty much immediately imagined the potential of

the medium. He acquired a camera of his own, He founded a film studio which I've seen described as like a giant glass house to let in as much light as possible bowl for filming, and he started making movies and millias. In a way brought the spirit of a stage magician to the technology of the movie camera. He employed trickery, and that is one thing that he really revolutionized about early film. He pioneered many kinds of editing techniques and in camera special effects that are inspired by

the tricks that stage magicians would use. Yeah, the trickery is so essential to the filmmaking process. We we lose sight of it, Like I I really had, I lose sight of that aspect until I'm find myself explaining films to my son who asked, like, how did they do that? How did this? You know, how the skexies disappear in this scene? Or you know, how did this happen? How did that the special effect occur? And then I have to stop and break it down a little bit like, well,

it's it's it's a trick. They stopped filming and then they move things around and then they start filming. Uh, you know, explanations of that manner. But yeah, they are all essentially based in tricking the audience into thinking something happened that didn't happen. Well, I'm sorry, I've forgotten the source on this because I this is a story I

remember from years ago. But I think there is a story that Malia's told that, you know, that he discovered the possibilities of for special effects when one day, like he was filming something and then he just stopped while he was and then he started filming again, and then when he watched it played back, there was a jump cut, and he you know, that was like, oh, oh, I can just transition from one thing immediately to another if I stopped working the camera and then started up with

something different in place, and it's like magic. It's like something disappears and appears somewhere else. That's so obvious to us. Now, who you know, we're familiar with movie special effects. It's hard for us to appreciate how revolutionary of an insight that was, right, and it would make sense that a magician would see it like who's whose trade depends on misdirection? And uh, you know, and and also playing with expectations. Yeah, and so Malias was the first great special effects wizard.

He used all kinds of tricks. He pioneered a double exposures, you know, where you would run the film through the camera twice and the second time it would also pick up a trace of an image. One would be like would come through stronger on the film than the other. But you know, you could do all kinds of interesting special effects like that. He used jump cut editing like we were just talking about. And his movies are generally

still pretty wonderful to behold. There was a nineteen o one film he did called The Man with the Rubber Head that I watched earlier today. And in this film, Maliais uses special effects to make duplicates of his own severed head, which he then inflates with the furnace pump until it explodes. And I believe from reading about his films he also put an emphasis on music. Yes, like having like like having some form of live music present

to fully bring the production alive. But this was still the silent film era, so there was no sound on film. The film would not have a dead catered soundtrack that went along with it, unless like you know, you had like a score written out and had to say, okay, give this to the piano player in the theater or something, or in some cases I believe there would be like recommendations like here, here's a song you can play for this particular this particular short film. Uh. And it's the

case of a trip to the Moon. Makes me think about an interesting modern phenomenon with early film, which is this thing I've encountered several times of rescoring old silent films or films that were made with older soundtracks by modern musicians. And I really am interested in this phenomenon and I like it. I want more bands to create, you know, a track synchronized to a voyage to the Moon. Yeah,

not enough of them do it. Um. Of course that Air did a soundtrack to a Voyage of the Moon two thousand twelves le Voyage downs La Luna, which I remember when it came out, And because because I love Air, air terrific act Um and I remember liking it at the time. I haven't listened to it a lot. I haven't heard it. It's a good um that. But that being said, I have not listened to the album synced

with the movie itself. I see. I know people have done this with In fact, I've watched more than one modern rescoring of Metropolis, the Fritz Long movie, which is of course you know, it doesn't have its own sound and it's this, but it's different because it's like a long uh science fiction feature for it is a full full feature. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Marouder the French electronic artiste, which I remember like getting into. I was like, all right,

I'm gonna watch Metropolis. I'm gonna use this score. And I really wanted to like it more than I did, so I ended up just playing a bunch of Kraft Work over it instead of anything that had been you know, there was a dedicated composition for Metropolis, and I have to say kraftworked worked really well. I think Auto Bond did a good one too. Um. But various folks have

covered Metropolis over the years. I found one that was really interesting by a group called the New Pollutants, and uh, they did a pretty cool rescore of it that's as of this recording fully available on YouTube is from Like, I think I may have actually watched it with this soundtrack before I've watched it with multiple soundtracks. Another one that comes to mind that you you brought this one up Dracula, which was not a silent film, but it

has been rescored. Yeah. Uh, this one was by Philip Glass and the most famous performance was by the Chronos Quartet. And then uh. Of some other silent films that have been rescored many times include The Passion of Joan of arc From and of course nineteen twenties the Cabinet of Dr Caligari. And I think that that one great creepy felt, great creepy film with some wonderful like you know, surreal

German sets and the German expression this period. The sets are not designed to be realistic, you know they they they are all these bizarre sharp angles. I remember a scene, and maybe I'm imagining this. I remember a scene where somebody sits on the stool is just way too tall to be a stool. But yeah, I would love to

see more of this sort of exercise with films. Yeah, So if you're an electronic artist or any kind of musician out there, and you like these old films as well, score some George Melia's yes, and then tell us about it and we will we will promote it on the show.

Or score some Alice sky Blache. That would be cool too, Yeah, but that's probably gonna be just like part of a track, right for most of this, well, for the early ones it well, I mean, like so the Cabbage Ferry is less than a minute long, but of course along her career, films got longer. In the films she made got longer. But I could see that could also be a worthwhile experiment, like what can you do with a really short film, like what you know, what can you apply to it

musically to really bring it to life? Especially for modern viewers. All Right, so we've talked a little bit about, you know, how just how effective films are and manipulating our cognitive functions, because because that's ultimately the thing about it, right, when you watch certainly a great film or even a good film or even a bad film that has something captivating about it, like it is captivating, it takes over your mind. It takes over your thought processes, like it it becomes

your new site. It uh, it becomes reality for your brain. Well, yeah, we have the expression that you can become lost in a film and lost in a narrative, and of course that's a metaphor, but to some degree it's kind of a little bit literally correct. I mean, at least in the mental sense that, Uh, there's often while you're watching a film some degree of distance where you're sort of going in and out of being there with the characters and then having a thought that's disconnected. But there are

times when you just disappear. You just become the narrative. You just become a part of it. Your whole consciousness is the character within the narrative. And films do this in a way that I think, uh, it's even more seamless, and it's easier for it to happen with films than it is with something that that requires more cognitive effort,

like like reading a text. Narrative. Yeah, I mean, well, also, the film, a really good film, certainly a modern film is going to employ music, it's going to employ visuals. It's you know, it's it's really using our most powerful senses and uh, and and and changing the way you know, the way we're viewing the world, at least for a short period of time. So I was looking into this little bit and I was reading the Science of Cinematic

Perception on the OSCARS website. They the OSCARS website has a wonderful um overview of a series of of lectures that they that they hosted. I didn't even though they

did features and stuff. Yeah, yeah, and this one was a pretty cool and this one, UM, this one involved a series like basically you had professional researchers in in film and cognition and then they were paired on stage with various directors and filmmakers and sort of film world experts, and they talked about you know what what the evidence uh you know said about the psychological the neurological effects

of film. Um. For instance, that some of the lectures included Tim J. Smith, a senior lecturer and psychological sciences at Brokeback University of London who specializes in the study of visual cognition, as well as your Ree Hassan Oh, Yeah, an associate professor of psychology and Neurosciences at Princeton University who used f m R I to look at how we view films. We've talked about Rehassen before on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I think we discussed him in

part two of our episode about about against narratives. So Hassen, for instance, they pointed out observed that showing uh, the movie Dog Day Afternoon from engaged sixty three to seventy three of a viewer's brain, well, that's a good one to use. Dog Day Afternoon will engage seventy three percent of my entire body. Well, and it's it's a it's a it's a very well made movie with you know, a great pacing to it. But but yeah, it just shows like how you know, how well it captivates this up.

You know, some other things that came up in this, in this article and in these lectures that there's some connection between blinks and cuts, and between our blinks and the character's blinks. James Cutting, chair of the Department of Psychology at Cornell University, has tracked the downward trajectory in average shot duration, which he says has been quote consistent and uninterrupted since the silent era. Oh yeah, this is

so films used to have longer uninterrupted shots. You just have the camera trained on something without cutting away and the cuts are getting faster and faster on the whole. Now you still sign plenty of you know, smaller films are art art films especially that will really go for those long, uh drawn out scenes. But for the most part, yeah, everything gets flashier and flashier. I mean, if you've seen like a battle scene in Game of Thrones, you'll you'll

know what we're talking about. Yeah, or heck, I feel like everything is more laid back there. If you watch something like a Transformers movie or a modern teage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, it's like, I don't even know what's happening. It's just a million things happening a second. It's just

bombarding the eyes and the brain, constant changes. Um. Some more findings, this one, according to Jeffrey M. Zach's, a psychologist and neuroscientists, found that scenes from the film's step Mom Sophie's Choice and oddly enough The Ring to The Ring too. I don't know why the Ring too, and not that I mean the Ring. The first Ring, the first American Ring film, is terrific and probably one of my favorite horror films. Second One is a sequel to

a great film. The Second One takes everything that's scary in the first one and makes it funny. So I don't know, that's sort of interesting. I remember, I mainly just remember being kind of boring and at times wet, like there's a lot of water and interest. Yeah, it's pretty wet, I mean. But but anyway, he's got that, he's got that creepy girl scamper like a cockroach all over the place. Yeah. Well, that in and of itself

is good, I guess. But at any rate, scenes from these films were shown to individuals in FM or I, and it was found to produce quote complex responses deep within the brain and generated activity beyond normal cognitive levels. So, as much as we might harp on the ring to the the idea is that when you're watching it, it can engage your mind more than most things in life. And then another one that is no, I mean, we are profoundly familiar with having deep thoughts about bad movies.

We talk about this all the time. Absolutely, Yeah, I I'm probably I feel like I'm more engaged with a with a good bad film with a you know, It's part of it is like is the movie doing the thinking for me? Or am I left to do the thinking? And sometimes it's the latter example that produces the most

brain activity. I think you're right about that. And then one more bit from this UH from this article, in this UH this lecture series, Talma Hendler, founder and director of the Functional Brain Center at Tel Aviv Saurowski Medical Center, has found that certain scenes from Black Swan this is of course the surreal kind of horror movie about Ballerina's is it during Aronofsky starring Natalie Portman, right, Yeah, kind

of a kind of a Susperia feel to it. Anyway, the Hindler found UH that watching certain scenes from this UH would produce quote results that Hindler compared to a schizophrenia like state with the cognitive and emotional centers of the brain operating dramatically in and out of sync. Well that's kind of interesting. I mean, so one thing I think we could say from this that movies do is in a way, they produce a slightly altered state of consciousness,

which also, of course some drugs do. I mean, there's a whole thing about like people taking a psychoactive or psychogenic drugs to produce some effects. It's somewhat mirror aspects of psychosis in many cases, people you know, like intentionally do things to their brains that they wouldn't want to be like stuck with or unable to turn off, but like they'll experiment with them in a in a controlled setting. And I wonder if visual storytelling like film can also

be considered a form of that. Yeah, I mean yeah, I think you think of like, for instance, just really interesting examples of psychedelic cinema. You know how some examples of psychedelic cinema are just you know, bad movies trying to cash you on on whatever the psychedelic craze was at the time, certainly like in the sixties or or

or even in the seventies. But but then you have those examples where they're really like playing with your perceptions of reality in a way that feels more authentic and is ultimately more upsetting. Um and and you can you point to various examples of this. I mean even two thousand and one A Space Odyssey. You know that that's a film that really kind of messes with your perception of reality, not in terms of like thinking about the nature of reality, but just like purely the way that

you're experiencing the film. One of my favorites, definitely, And if you'd like to hear Robert and I talk more about two thousand one of Space. Obviously, we have a whole episode of stuff to blow your mind about it, you can go look up. I want to come back just briefly though, too. You know we're talking earlier about how all the tools of filmmaking were not developed at once, so they would develop gradually over time. I wanted to just run through one quick example of this and that.

For that, I want to talk about the jump scare. Oh boy, so one of the best. Joe Joe, describe a good jump scare to to our listeners in case they're not familiar. Okay, So a little bit of tension building goes on. This is usually aided by a character being a I mean, it can be anything, but I'll paint one for you. A character is left alone in a horror movie. Nothing all that dangerous has happened in a while, so the audience is guard is up. They

think maybe something's about to happen. A character is alone in a house, wandering around, asking is anybody there? Hello? Hello. The music is not in full force, maybe it's tinkling a little bit on the little you know, and then the character opens the closet and a cat jumps out, not only a jump scare, but a cat scare. The cat scare is the classic jump scare because it's because something suddenly happens. There's a blast of music, something flies at the camera and h and then oh, it's just

just a cat. So I mean, it's it's wonderful because that we've talked about on on some of our shows before, that that when you're scared in a film and then that that that scare is deflated, like you realize it's not a threat after all. Like that is that that that is one of the pivotal um, you know, emotional roller coaster experiences that you have in watching a film.

But but when we look at the history of the jump scare, I was looking around and it seems like the first jump scare that we really have was probably the luten Bus scene in Cat People from ninety forty two. This okay, so this is just very similar to what you just described actually except no, no, no, not no, not completely. But basically you have a female character walking down this this superbly darkly lit street. Like the use of shadows in this movie is phenomenal, especially for the time.

And uh, and you're just getting a little more tense, a little more tense, and then a bus pulls up and it just scares the hell out of you. Like I watched it on YouTube, you can kind of find the scene isolated on YouTube. I watched it before I came in here, and it got me. It It legitimately gave me a fright, even though it's just a bus. It doesn't hit her or anything. It just comes out of nowhere and it's a surprise. And then she, you know,

she boards it or whatever, just sudden and loud. Yeah, and it's a it's a famous scene for this purpose. But after this film, you see other jump scare sprinkled across the decades that followed. But jump scare mania doesn't really kick into the nineteen eighties. It's almost as if it's not till the eighties that you have enough filmmakers who realize, oh, this is this is some potent magic. Let's let's just overuse the hell out of this. And then of course it becomes a cliche and then becomes

a hated cliche. Can I tell you one of my favorite examples of the hated cliche jump scare. It's the mirror scare. How many movies is this in? Some horror directors picked up on it, I think sometime in the like nineties to two thousands. They're like, Oh, wouldn't it be great to have something suddenly appear behind somebody in a mirror? Or of course they or it's the medical cabinet exactly, Yeah, the medicine cabinet, mirror of somebody looks

inside the medicine cabinet. If you you're in a horror movie, somebody looks inside, sees what pills are in there or whatever, and then they close the medicine cabinet, you've got a nine nine percent chance that when it closes there's something

creepy in the mirror. Either the person's face looking back at them isn't really their face and it's all distorted and scary, or there's somebody looking at them over their shoulder or something like that, and then you're throw in a nice pearl the sound effect, and and just to drive at home. Yeah, I mean, at the same time, if we start really thinking and there are these other sort of counter examples of jump scares done really well,

I mean Alfred Hitchcock, he has jumped scares. Um. John Carpenter has some really nice jump scares that shot to show up a time or two, such as Prints of Darkness. It has a wonderful jump scare with a mirror that kind of plays with the format of b oh Man, I Love Friends of Darkness. It's an unpopular opinion. That's that's in my top three John Carpenter movies. Yeah, but

but but again. Yeah, the jump scare is just one of so many examples of cinematic techniques tricks, and it's it's probably ultimately more of like a a an obnoxious one to bring out because there's so many other tricks that we don't even think of is being tricks. We don't say it's only because it's gotten to the point where it kind of irritates its at times that we can even single it out. But every film we watch

is just a non stop barrage of tricks. One of the things that bugs me the most about myself is when I catch myself using cliches, and I know I use them all the time. Everybody does. Everybody talks in cliches. It's just it happens effortlessly, automatically they just come out of you and you don't know where they came from. Uh. And I try to cut them out. When I catch myself using a cliche and speech, I always kind of WinCE and I'm like, I'll try not to do that again,

but there's no way to stop it. And in films there are also they're they're like visual cliches, like the mirror scare, but there's a zillion of them, you know there, You see them, and they're invisible to you because they're so common, but they just pass right over you. You don't stop to notice how frequently you've been exposed to one. Yeah, I mean, it's fool me once. Shame on, you fool me for three hours straight. Well, I guess it's my fault.

But if I enjoyed the picture, I'm happy being fooled. But I do think it's interesting that these like film cliches, are not they're not just artistic laziness. A lot of them also come out of the material realities of making a film, Like, Uh, film cliches happened because of what filmmakers can do with the techniques they have, and like what's cheap to do and that kind of thing. The same way that I think often verbal cliches come out of our mouths because we might suddenly find ourselves limited

to have limited in vocabulary. Right. But to come back to the jump scare, Yes, it's overused in films these days, but a good jump scare still works, and there's nothing like it for getting a viewer that's watching it by themselves on their iPhone at work, or an entire audience, an entire theaters audience, uh, they're watching it together. And so I mean you might say it's good as gold. Yeah, I mean you're it's almost foolish to resist at least

one good jumps here. I'm not saying, you know, back to back, but you kind of you kind of gotta one in there, I feel. Look, I don't begrudge that horror horror filmmaker one or two good jump scares. You just can't build a whole film out of them. Well that's what we say, but I think the box office probably probably says otherwise. And I would say, also, if you're a horror filmmaker and you want to put a

cat scare in your film, don't make it an orangutang scare. Instead, just hav an orangutang jump out of the closet and then like scampered down the hallway and have it never addressed again like that. Okay, I guess this must this must mean we're done. I think so yeah, so yeah, we have not. We've not given you an exhaustive history

of of cinema here. That was, of course, but we've but hopefully we've given you like a grounding in where the motion picture came from, how it emerges from these other visual technological UM traditions that came before it, and in a sense of just why it is so pervasive, why it is so potent, and why we we continue to worship at the theater. Do you have early favorite films or early favorite filmmakers that we didn't talk about in today's episode. If so, let us know. I want

to hear what else is out there. Absolutely, your thoughts on jump scares, your thoughts on pairing um, you know, new scores with old films. Anything we discussed in here is fair game. In the meantime, if you want more episodes of Invention while you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a website. It is invention pod dot com. You can go there and see

the various topics we've been discussing. As always, the best way to support the show is to make sure you have subscribed to it and then write and review it wherever you have the power to do so. Huge thanks to our friends Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this podcast,

and thanks to our excellent audio producer Torry Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at cont act at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H