A Brief History of Early Film &

Cinema
HIST 3323: American Indian History
Main Points
Historical Antecedents
Early Films & Technologies
Films and Urbanization, Industrialization &
Immigration
Popular Culture & Mass Entertainment
Modern Movie Industry, 1930s 1950s


Historical Background
Plays, theater, dance,
opera, sports and
spectator entertainment
Photography
Capture an image and
moment in time
Reproduction
technologies
Distribution abilities
Civil War
1847, Keokuk (Sac &
Fox)
Thomas Easterly
Daguerreotype Kit
Hand Held Still Cameras
Civil War necessitated
smaller, mobile cameras
1870s U.S., France,
Germany developing dry
processes for fixing
images on film
No glass or large plates
In the 1880s Kodak
Eastman mass produced
film & technologies such
as shutter speed,
snapshot, and system for
developing film
Early Moving Film Technology
Industrial Revolution
Advancements from
cameras & still images
Thomas A. Edison
Built upon inventions in
France & Germany
Kinetoscope
Kinetograph, 1891
Instantaneous images
placed on 35 mm film
strip
Individual viewing
Kinetescope Parlor, San Francisco (1894)
Charles Francis
Jenkins
The Phantoscope
Backlit projection
1894 public
viewing
Smooth motion
pictures
Basic approach
for modern
movies

The Cinematograph
Louis & Auguste
Lumiere
Cinematographe
Filmed images
Developed them
Projection
Paris 1895
Silent Films
Technology to
synchronize film and
sound did not exist until
1923
Piano player/organist
Films evolved from
short clips incorporated
in vaudeville shows, to
full length features by
1915.
Great Train Robbery,
1903
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-
7949193416885414135#
Westerns

Films, Urbanization & Immigration
Great migrations from
1880s-1920
Industries & wage labor
Population growth
Expendable income &
leisure
Ethnic communities
Cultural persistence &
Americanization
Nickelodeons
Short films
Pittsburgh, 1905
Movies and Moral Reform
The Progressive Era
Theatres were spaces
where ethnic groups,
immigrants, both sexes,
could interact socially.
Moral reformers worried
that theatres were
unhealthy and bred vice
Scorned the content
and wasted time in
theatres
Movies and Mass Culture
A form of Americanization
Experience of going to the
movies
Marker of status
Films educated people about
social realities
Entertainment & escapism
National identity & history
The Birth of a Nation
DW Griffith, 1915
Modern Film Industry
Post-WWI Expansion
Entertainment &
distraction
William Fox & Adolph
Zuker
Working class immigrants
with expendable income
Art, entertainment & social
commentary for the
masses
Moved the industry center
to Hollywood, CA
Low cost, fast production
Movie Stars
Hollywoodland
Production moved to
Los Angeles, CA
Weather
Paramount, MGM,
Fox, Universal
Studios, United
Artists, Warner
Brothers
Hays Code of self-
regulation and
censorship
Large corporations
with huge influence
on American Society

Popular Movies / Stars
Charlie Chaplin
Will Rogers
Tom Mix
Rudolph Valentino
John Wayne, Haunted
Gold (1932)
Clara Bow
The Squaw Man, 1914
Cecile B. DeMille
First feature length movie
filmed in Hollywood
Last of the Mohicans,
1920
Arthur Wellen
The Paleface, 1922
Buster Keaton, Dir/star
John Dix, Vanishing
American (1925)

Contemporary Legacies
On the Warpath
Indian Giver
One red cent
Off the reservation
We need to
powwow
Geronimo!!!!
Tomahawk Chop
Circle the Wagons

Conclusions
Movies became a powerful force for entertainment
and socio-cultural identity formation
Reflected AND contributed popular culture
Assimilated immigrants and educated them about
America
Movies can also provide a space for social and
political commentary and critique
Indigenous peoples are central to the creation of
American identity, as contrasts and antagonists
Rarely portrayed as modern peoples outside of the
wild west 19
th
century