An Introduction to Early Cinema

The study of early cinema has been revitalised in recent years by seeing it in the context of Victorian popular culture. The availability of materials through digitization programmes, conferences and journals, has expanded our knowledge of the plethora of visual media in the later 19th century and brought colour (often quite literally) to a study that previously had to rely, to a large extent, on words. Film studies which developed in the middle of the 20th century often struggled to theorise early film, using the same tools as it applied to the productions of the modern feature-dominated Cinema industry or art house film. Back-projecting in this way tended to portray early films as primitive, arcane and alien, and they were discussed more for what they were not than for what they were. It’s not unlike the way ancient art was presented at a similar time by art historians working on a progressive evolutionary timeline – itself conceptually a legacy of Victorian culture.

Approaching early film from the other end – travelling forwards – is far more illuminating. The products of the plethora of visual media in the late 19th century can tell us much more about the development of moving pictures than later films can. That context explains the form that the films took, what subjects they were interested in, how they were presented and how they were received. Reversing the direction of travel enables us to understand how each small innovation contributed to the elaboration of film grammar in narrative film and how business models developed to deliver topical films, which were always the premium product. Travelling forwards also allows us to enjoy films that might otherwise be forgotten in a linear story of the evolution of modern cinema – those genres of film that were peculiar to their age or genres that developed through early cinema, via radio or non-theatrical venues and which ultimately found a home in television, rather than in cinemas.