Richard Abel’s magisterial new book radically rewrites the history of French cinema between 1896 and 1914, particularly during the years when Pathé-Frères, the first major corporation in the new industry, led the world in film production and distribution. Based on extensive investigation of rare archival films and documents, and drawing on recent social and cultural histories of turn-of-the-century France and the United States, his book provides new insights into the earliest history of the cinema.
Abel tells how early French film entertainment changed from a cinema of attractions to the narrative format that Hollywood would so successfully exploit. He describes the popular genres of the era—comic chases, trick films and
féeries, historical and biblical stories, family melodramas and grand guignol tales, crime and detective films—and shows the shift from short subjects to feature-length films. Cinema venues evolved along with the films as live music, color effects, and other new exhibiting techniques and practices drew larger and larger audiences. Abel explores the ways these early films mapped significant differences in French social life, helping to produce thoroughly bourgeois citizens for Third Republic France.
The Ciné Goes to Town recovers early French cinema’s unique contribution to the development of the mass culture industry. As the one-hundredth anniversary of cinema approaches, this compelling demonstration of film’s role in the formation of social and national identity will attract a wide audience of film scholars, social and cultural historians, and film enthusiasts.
Richard Abel’s magisterial new book radically rewrites the history of French cinema between 1896 and 1914, particularly during the years when Pathé-Frères, the first major corporation in the new industry, led the world in film production and distribution.
Inhoudsopgave
Illustrations
Preface
Note to the 1998 Edition
Acknowledgments
Note on Terms
1. Turn-of-the-Century France
2. The French Cinema Industry, 1896-1914
The Big Four, 1896-I902
Pathé Comes to Power, 1902-1907
Strategies of Dominance, 1907-1911
Strategies of Survival, 1911-1914
3 The Cinema of Attractions, 1896-1904
Trick Films and Féeries
Comic Films
Diverging Paths: From Actualités to Historical and Realist Films
4. The Transition to a Narrative Cinema, 1904-1907
The Bricolage Model
The Comic Chase Film and Company
The Pleasure and Pain of Just Looking: Erotic Films and Others
The Dramatic and Realist Films
Dissemination and Difference
The Cinema of Attractions (continued)
5. The Pre-Feature, Single-Reel Story Film, 1907-1911
Contemporary Melodramas: Light and Dark Variants
Comics Come in Series
Film d’Art and Films d’Art: The Historical Film and the Literary Adaptation
Trick Films and Féeries
6. The Rise of the Feature Film, 1911-1914
The Historical Film Comes of Age
Life As It Is: In and Out of Fashion
Crime Pays: Detectives Versus Criminals
The Comic Series in Full Swing
Afterword
Filmography
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Over de auteur
Richard Abel is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of English at Drake University. His books include French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-1929 (1984), winner of the Theatre Library Association Award, and French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939 (1988), winner of the Jay Leyda Prize in Cinema Studies.