The story of cinema begins on a cold December evening in Paris, 1895. An audience had gathered in the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard Des Capucines to witness a new invention presented by the Lumiere brothers - the Cinématographe- the latest in a long line of exciting new visual technologies which had been emerging for some time in various forms. The Cinématographe was a portable three-in-one instrument, combining a camera for recording movement, a printer and a projector. The spectators on that evening were not disappointed; George Melies noted: “We were open mouthed, dumbfounded, astonished beyond words in the face of this spectacle”. The twenty films shown that evening were all silent, single-reel and lasted only twenty minutes in total. All depicted the daily grind of modern urban life in France but as it had never been witnessed before. Of course, the most famous of all is the film of a train arriving at a station - the audience gasped and drew back in fear, as if the train was about to pummel out of the screen towards them. The Lumiere’s invention was a resounding hit.
Within a year the brothers had travelled across the globe with the Cinématographe, delighting and astonishing audiences in Japan, Australia, Egypt and India, while at the same time Thomas Edison took his similar invention, the Vitascope, on tour around the States.
It wasn’t long before early filmmakers such as George Mélies began developing various tricks and special effects which could be achieved by means of clever cinematography, lighting, sound recording and editing. Through the manipulation of imagery removed from it’s real life context, cinema’s first division was born - the use of the camera to depict life as it is, to reveal new truths about ourselves and our world which we mightn’t previously have been aware of, versus the creation of alternate universes where anything and everything is possible. Perhaps it is when these two notions are combined that the filmmaker is able to achieve absolute greatness; I point to Ingmar Bergman as my favourite example. As these two theoretical perspectives arose, cinema started to develop a language not unlike a religious one; the promise of “new perceptions” and the formalist/realist models of debate, an attempt for consciousness-raising via means of myths, rituals and symbols. This transcendental view of cinema, although more hidden today, was partly so prevalent because of the controversies which the arrival of cinema invited.
Within the first two decades of cinema’s existence, censorship boards sprung up around the world to monitor “indecent” subject matter. Perhaps the greatest backlash against the cinema came from the Church. In 1936 a Papal Encyclical was released to discuss the moral challenges which arose from the new medium. At the same time, the Church recognised a need to “use” the power of cinema to their advantage:
“the cinema is in reality an object lesson which, for good or for evil, teaches the majority of men more effectively than abstract reasoning, it must be elevated to conformity with the aims of the Christian conscience and saved from depraving or demoralizing effects”. (Encyclical Letter Vigilanti Cura)
It was recognised that much of cinema’s power lay in its ability to manipulate an audience’s emotions via imagery and later by sound. In this sense the Papal Encyclical is absolutely correct, all moral arbiters did indeed have great cause for fear. Since its invention cinema has been used towards both evil ends (Nazi propaganda films) and as a tool of transcendence, awareness and good. And then of course there is that hazy middle ground of Hollywood...how influenced are we by what we watch? A question that has never left public consciousness.
The larger-than-life dimensions which separate cinema from similar media, namely the television, are quite central to this thesis. One of film’s earliest theorists, Jean Epstein, writes on the animistic nature of the language of cinema; the way in which it imbues the objects it portrays with life, as if the objects themselves were characters, as if they have souls. In his 1924 essay On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie Epstein begins to develop a mystical theory of cinema which is later added to by geniuses such as Artaud and Deren; a body of thought which remains dynamic today:
“the cinema is polytheistic and theogonic. Those lives it creates, by summoning objects out of the shadows of indifference into the light of dramatic concern, have little in common with human life. These lives are like the life in charms and amulets, the ominous tabooed objects of certain primitive religions. If we wish to understand how an animal, a plant, or a stone can inspire respect, fear, or horror, those three most sacred sentiments, I think we must watch them on the screen, living their mysterious, silent lives, alien to the human sensibility”
The importance of film as a transcendental medium remains absolutely unquestionable in the contemporary world. We are moulded by the imagery which surrounds us, feeding into our psyches. To end with a quote from Epstein:
“The cinema is poetry’s most powerful medium, the truest medium for the untrue, the unreal, the “surreal” as Apollinaire would have said. That is why some of us have entrusted to it our highest hopes”.
And in case you missed it at the Grande Cafe, here's that train:
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