1 00:00:00,050 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality, educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,340 To make a donation, or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,340 --> 00:00:17,210 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,210 --> 00:00:17,835 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:25,572 --> 00:00:27,280 DAVID THORBURN: I want to begin by asking 9 00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:32,549 what seems an obvious question, what is film? 10 00:00:32,549 --> 00:00:35,390 I used to sometimes present it by saying, film as, dot, dot, 11 00:00:35,390 --> 00:00:35,980 dot. 12 00:00:35,980 --> 00:00:37,810 Film as what? 13 00:00:37,810 --> 00:00:40,370 And it may be surprising to you, but one way 14 00:00:40,370 --> 00:00:43,150 we could think about film is as chemistry. 15 00:00:43,150 --> 00:00:44,580 Now how could that make sense? 16 00:00:44,580 --> 00:00:49,224 Why would it make sense to think of film as a form of chemistry? 17 00:00:49,224 --> 00:00:50,890 What this film got to do with chemistry? 18 00:00:50,890 --> 00:00:52,598 In fact it's a very fundamental relation. 19 00:00:56,950 --> 00:01:00,970 This is also true of still photography, as well as movies. 20 00:01:00,970 --> 00:01:04,019 But what's the process by which they're made? 21 00:01:04,019 --> 00:01:04,525 Yes. 22 00:01:04,525 --> 00:01:06,400 AUDIENCE: Film really comes together from a-- 23 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:08,286 DAVID THORBURN: Speak loudly so everybody can. 24 00:01:08,286 --> 00:01:10,770 AUDIENCE: Film is made up of a lot of different components. 25 00:01:10,770 --> 00:01:13,195 You have your lighting, your scene, your character. 26 00:01:13,195 --> 00:01:16,105 And that all has to come together to make film. 27 00:01:16,105 --> 00:01:18,287 Without even on component of it, you're 28 00:01:18,287 --> 00:01:19,554 losing part of the experience. 29 00:01:19,554 --> 00:01:21,220 DAVID THORBURN: You're right about that. 30 00:01:21,220 --> 00:01:23,750 But that's a more general answer than I wanted. 31 00:01:23,750 --> 00:01:26,200 There's something much more dramatically 32 00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:28,660 fundamental about the way, about the connection 33 00:01:28,660 --> 00:01:30,290 between chemistry and movies. 34 00:01:30,290 --> 00:01:31,144 What is it? 35 00:01:31,144 --> 00:01:33,870 AUDIENCE: The interaction between the audience and. 36 00:01:33,870 --> 00:01:34,750 DAVID THORBURN: It doesn't have to do 37 00:01:34,750 --> 00:01:36,040 with the experience of movies. 38 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:36,940 Come on. 39 00:01:36,940 --> 00:01:37,820 It's technical. 40 00:01:37,820 --> 00:01:38,845 AUDIENCE: Chemistry had to be developed 41 00:01:38,845 --> 00:01:39,870 before you could have it. 42 00:01:39,870 --> 00:01:41,340 DAVID THORBURN: It depends on chemistry. 43 00:01:41,340 --> 00:01:43,010 Film is a form of applied chemistry. 44 00:01:43,010 --> 00:01:43,830 Why? 45 00:01:43,830 --> 00:01:45,010 Of course you're right. 46 00:01:45,010 --> 00:01:47,167 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 47 00:01:47,167 --> 00:01:48,000 DAVID THORBURN: Yes. 48 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:48,860 What is a film? 49 00:01:48,860 --> 00:01:53,160 There are certain emulsions that are put on piece of celluloid. 50 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:56,250 Light actually has to normally-- it can be any light, 51 00:01:56,250 --> 00:01:58,780 but sunlight is best-- act, interacting 52 00:01:58,780 --> 00:02:02,010 with those emulsions, causes the image to appear. 53 00:02:02,010 --> 00:02:04,790 The actual, fundamental process by which film 54 00:02:04,790 --> 00:02:08,160 is physically created is a chemical process. 55 00:02:08,160 --> 00:02:11,460 And if you reflect on for a moment, 56 00:02:11,460 --> 00:02:13,670 one of the things this suggests is 57 00:02:13,670 --> 00:02:17,940 that then when we think about film in a much larger sense, 58 00:02:17,940 --> 00:02:21,170 in the film as we experience in theaters, film, 59 00:02:21,170 --> 00:02:23,690 as an engine of economic development, 60 00:02:23,690 --> 00:02:26,980 as a provider of jobs, and careers, and so forth. 61 00:02:26,980 --> 00:02:31,180 What we could say is that it is a form of applied chemistry 62 00:02:31,180 --> 00:02:34,320 that is among the most profound uses of chemistry 63 00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:36,680 that humankind has ever found. 64 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:40,400 Because if you think about the impact of movies on human life, 65 00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:41,850 it is now a global phenomenon. 66 00:02:41,850 --> 00:02:44,740 Is there any culture that is free of movies? 67 00:02:44,740 --> 00:02:46,410 Maybe there are Taliban cultures that 68 00:02:46,410 --> 00:02:48,230 dream of being free of movies. 69 00:02:48,230 --> 00:02:50,760 But to my knowledge there's no culture in the world now 70 00:02:50,760 --> 00:02:52,940 that's completely oblivious to film. 71 00:02:52,940 --> 00:02:55,580 It's become a global phenomenon. 72 00:02:55,580 --> 00:02:58,590 And it's more than a century old. 73 00:02:58,590 --> 00:03:00,880 It is the distinctive, narrative form 74 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:05,040 of the 20th century, the signature form of storytelling 75 00:03:05,040 --> 00:03:07,230 for the 20th century. 76 00:03:07,230 --> 00:03:10,690 All of it derives from this chemical reaction, when 77 00:03:10,690 --> 00:03:13,780 the emulsions are subjected to light, 78 00:03:13,780 --> 00:03:17,440 the image appears on the celluloid. 79 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:21,340 There are even theoreticians of movies who have suggested 80 00:03:21,340 --> 00:03:25,730 that there's a fundamental break of a kind that is subliminal, 81 00:03:25,730 --> 00:03:28,500 unless obvious to many people. 82 00:03:28,500 --> 00:03:30,900 But it's fundamental to our experience of text 83 00:03:30,900 --> 00:03:34,200 when we moved from real film to digital forms of filmmaking. 84 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:37,670 Because nature is eliminated in digital form. 85 00:03:37,670 --> 00:03:40,930 There's something natural, and in fact slow, 86 00:03:40,930 --> 00:03:44,150 about the way when light works on those 87 00:03:44,150 --> 00:03:46,644 emulsions to bring the images up. 88 00:03:46,644 --> 00:03:48,560 And those of you who are amateur photographers 89 00:03:48,560 --> 00:03:52,050 will know that you can control the clarity or the blurriness 90 00:03:52,050 --> 00:03:54,870 of the image, the darkest of the lightness of the image, by how 91 00:03:54,870 --> 00:03:59,540 long you leave the film paper in the emulsions. 92 00:03:59,540 --> 00:04:02,480 You can control it, and still photographers 93 00:04:02,480 --> 00:04:04,370 and creative movie directors actually 94 00:04:04,370 --> 00:04:10,840 use those use that chemical principle in order 95 00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:12,632 to create certain kinds of effects. 96 00:04:12,632 --> 00:04:14,090 So one way to think about movies is 97 00:04:14,090 --> 00:04:16,450 to think of it as a form of applied chemistry. 98 00:04:16,450 --> 00:04:20,540 And one of the most profound uses of chemistry 99 00:04:20,540 --> 00:04:22,630 that we could imagine in terms of its impact 100 00:04:22,630 --> 00:04:25,520 on society, in terms of the vast number of people 101 00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:27,610 who have been affected, and continue to be 102 00:04:27,610 --> 00:04:31,800 affected by this invention. 103 00:04:31,800 --> 00:04:35,350 So film is a form of chemistry. 104 00:04:35,350 --> 00:04:38,450 What I'm suggesting, these different framings of what film 105 00:04:38,450 --> 00:04:41,050 is, these different frameworks for understanding film. 106 00:04:41,050 --> 00:04:42,750 One thing I'm trying to do is to suggest 107 00:04:42,750 --> 00:04:45,550 some of the ways in which we might understand film 108 00:04:45,550 --> 00:04:48,090 apart from what we're going to be doing in this course. 109 00:04:48,090 --> 00:04:51,950 Now I don't know if one could justify 110 00:04:51,950 --> 00:04:54,620 persuading a professor of chemistry 111 00:04:54,620 --> 00:04:56,930 to teach a course in film. 112 00:04:56,930 --> 00:04:58,180 That might be going too far. 113 00:04:58,180 --> 00:05:03,050 But certain broad principles of photography, 114 00:05:03,050 --> 00:05:07,900 and how they are linked to other photochemical processes, 115 00:05:07,900 --> 00:05:12,060 might very well make a quite exciting and complicated course 116 00:05:12,060 --> 00:05:15,820 in the chemistry department. 117 00:05:15,820 --> 00:05:20,020 One can also think of film simply in a historical sense, 118 00:05:20,020 --> 00:05:21,960 certainly, as a kind of novelty. 119 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:24,990 When film first appeared in the world, 120 00:05:24,990 --> 00:05:26,960 and especially in the United States, 121 00:05:26,960 --> 00:05:32,240 it was seen as a novelty that caused its first appearance 122 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:36,270 to take place in places like penny arcades. 123 00:05:36,270 --> 00:05:39,870 Where people went to experience other kinds of public novelties 124 00:05:39,870 --> 00:05:41,860 as well. 125 00:05:41,860 --> 00:05:47,170 there would be machines in these penny arcades 126 00:05:47,170 --> 00:05:48,590 that would guess you're weight. 127 00:05:48,590 --> 00:05:51,341 And you put a penny in, if the machine 128 00:05:51,341 --> 00:05:53,840 was right it kept your penny, if the machine was wrong would 129 00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:55,610 give your penny back. 130 00:05:55,610 --> 00:05:57,160 There were fortune telling machines 131 00:05:57,160 --> 00:05:59,950 in these penny arcades. 132 00:05:59,950 --> 00:06:05,210 In some of the more sleazy ones there were live peep shows. 133 00:06:05,210 --> 00:06:08,080 Strip shows of various moderate kinds. 134 00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:11,330 And of course, even at the very early stages, 135 00:06:11,330 --> 00:06:13,350 film begin to replicate those live performances. 136 00:06:13,350 --> 00:06:18,190 There were very trivial forms of burlesque 137 00:06:18,190 --> 00:06:21,920 began to-- women stripping-- I don't think 138 00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:26,800 there were any male strippers in this late Victorian era-- began 139 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:28,580 to appear in the penny arcades as well. 140 00:06:28,580 --> 00:06:30,770 So one could say that film in its earliest stages 141 00:06:30,770 --> 00:06:35,640 was also just a kind of novelty item, like a PEZ dispenser 142 00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:37,880 or some equivalent kind of silly thing, 143 00:06:37,880 --> 00:06:42,590 or baseball cards, or football cards, that kind of thing. 144 00:06:42,590 --> 00:06:45,520 More profoundly of course, we could think of film 145 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:48,570 from another [INAUDIBLE], a manufactured object. 146 00:06:48,570 --> 00:06:51,270 And this identity of film is incredibly important. 147 00:06:51,270 --> 00:06:53,340 It's again, easy for us to forget, 148 00:06:53,340 --> 00:06:55,700 because when we go to the movies today, 149 00:06:55,700 --> 00:06:59,190 we see these complex and overwhelming-- 150 00:06:59,190 --> 00:07:02,620 we have these complex and overwhelming audiovisual 151 00:07:02,620 --> 00:07:03,840 experiences. 152 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:06,850 And we might tend to forget what in fact is 153 00:07:06,850 --> 00:07:09,430 the sort of industrial base on which movies were made 154 00:07:09,430 --> 00:07:11,160 at a relatively early stage. 155 00:07:11,160 --> 00:07:14,180 Part of what we want at least to be aware of in our course, 156 00:07:14,180 --> 00:07:16,270 even though we won't study it systematically, 157 00:07:16,270 --> 00:07:19,390 is the fact that the movies, the film, 158 00:07:19,390 --> 00:07:21,880 is one of the first significant commodities 159 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:25,080 to become a mass-produced item. 160 00:07:25,080 --> 00:07:27,550 And in fact, the same principles that 161 00:07:27,550 --> 00:07:31,110 led to another manufacturing miracle 162 00:07:31,110 --> 00:07:34,290 that we associate with the late 19th and early 20th century-- 163 00:07:34,290 --> 00:07:36,660 the automobile-- the same principles that 164 00:07:36,660 --> 00:07:38,580 went to the production of the automobile 165 00:07:38,580 --> 00:07:42,610 also worked in the production of film. 166 00:07:42,610 --> 00:07:44,340 And in fact, both film and the automobile 167 00:07:44,340 --> 00:07:48,660 could be seen as prototypical instances of this fundamentally 168 00:07:48,660 --> 00:07:54,010 defining industrial capitalist behavior, capitalist activity, 169 00:07:54,010 --> 00:07:55,330 which is mass production. 170 00:07:55,330 --> 00:07:58,220 And especially, what does mass production depend upon? 171 00:07:58,220 --> 00:08:00,430 The specialization of labor. 172 00:08:00,430 --> 00:08:02,600 The rationalizing of the production 173 00:08:02,600 --> 00:08:05,100 process into smaller, and smaller units. 174 00:08:05,100 --> 00:08:07,730 So that particular people can do it quickly, 175 00:08:07,730 --> 00:08:10,920 and you can create essentially an assembly line production. 176 00:08:10,920 --> 00:08:13,500 You can create mass production. 177 00:08:13,500 --> 00:08:17,220 I still find it very inspiring and important, significant, 178 00:08:17,220 --> 00:08:22,490 the notion that film was created on an assembly line, 179 00:08:22,490 --> 00:08:24,570 just like toasters or automobiles. 180 00:08:24,570 --> 00:08:26,930 Seems a shocking and important insight. 181 00:08:26,930 --> 00:08:29,510 Because they're still in some fundamental way 182 00:08:29,510 --> 00:08:30,930 produced like this. 183 00:08:30,930 --> 00:08:34,070 I don't mean that the same movie studios are churning out 184 00:08:34,070 --> 00:08:37,260 500 movies a year, which is what was churned out 185 00:08:37,260 --> 00:08:39,570 during the great era of the Hollywood Studios, 186 00:08:39,570 --> 00:08:44,820 from around 1930 through the end of the 1940s. 187 00:08:44,820 --> 00:08:46,780 But the fact is the production of movies, 188 00:08:46,780 --> 00:08:49,590 the manufacture of movies still depends on these principles 189 00:08:49,590 --> 00:08:53,714 of the specialization of labor. 190 00:08:53,714 --> 00:08:55,880 And I'm not simply talking about the way in which we 191 00:08:55,880 --> 00:08:59,460 have actors, and directors, and cinematographers, and grips, 192 00:08:59,460 --> 00:09:06,150 and best boys, and set dressers, and makeup people, and script 193 00:09:06,150 --> 00:09:07,280 writers, and so forth. 194 00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:09,390 All are relevant to this. 195 00:09:09,390 --> 00:09:11,790 But I'm also talking about the way in which movies, still 196 00:09:11,790 --> 00:09:17,470 to this day, are divided in their production principles 197 00:09:17,470 --> 00:09:19,900 in three stages, a pre-production phase, 198 00:09:19,900 --> 00:09:22,850 a production phase, and a post-production phase. 199 00:09:22,850 --> 00:09:26,430 And there are specialists at each level, on each phase. 200 00:09:26,430 --> 00:09:31,780 And a vast army of specialist is hired 201 00:09:31,780 --> 00:09:34,576 to handle the problems that are connected 202 00:09:34,576 --> 00:09:36,200 to the production of every single film. 203 00:09:36,200 --> 00:09:40,350 So we can think of films as a really distinctive, signature, 204 00:09:40,350 --> 00:09:43,030 instance of what mass production is capable of. 205 00:09:43,030 --> 00:09:43,900 OK. 206 00:09:43,900 --> 00:09:46,570 So we can say that the film is a manufactured object. 207 00:09:46,570 --> 00:09:48,320 And not just a manufactured object, 208 00:09:48,320 --> 00:09:50,175 but a product of mass production, 209 00:09:50,175 --> 00:09:53,450 a product of essentially, assembly line principles. 210 00:09:53,450 --> 00:09:56,150 And what makes this so remarkable to me, 211 00:09:56,150 --> 00:09:59,360 still an idea that I have trouble fully absorbing 212 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:02,050 is that the mass-produced item that we're 213 00:10:02,050 --> 00:10:05,420 talking about, unlike a toaster or even an automobile, 214 00:10:05,420 --> 00:10:09,660 managed so fully to permeate our society and our world, 215 00:10:09,660 --> 00:10:12,320 that it's infiltrated ourselves even into our dreams 216 00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:13,696 and our fantasy life. 217 00:10:13,696 --> 00:10:15,570 And finally, another way to think about film, 218 00:10:15,570 --> 00:10:16,560 and I'm going to sort of enlarge in that. 219 00:10:16,560 --> 00:10:18,680 And this is a way we'll be talking 220 00:10:18,680 --> 00:10:21,390 about quite a lot in the course of our discussions 221 00:10:21,390 --> 00:10:22,830 in this semester. 222 00:10:22,830 --> 00:10:26,940 We can say that film, after it's elaborated, and established 223 00:10:26,940 --> 00:10:30,710 itself in culture, it becomes a fundamental social form, 224 00:10:30,710 --> 00:10:32,910 a fundamental social formation. 225 00:10:32,910 --> 00:10:35,720 And experienced, widely practiced, 226 00:10:35,720 --> 00:10:38,846 widely indulged in by a vast number of people 227 00:10:38,846 --> 00:10:39,470 in the society. 228 00:10:42,814 --> 00:10:44,230 So that one could say for example, 229 00:10:44,230 --> 00:10:47,020 toasters are important, but they don't 230 00:10:47,020 --> 00:10:49,050 generate the kind of social rituals 231 00:10:49,050 --> 00:10:52,020 that are involved in going to the movies, 232 00:10:52,020 --> 00:10:54,120 and of identifying with movie stars, 233 00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:57,010 and of generating fans surround movies, 234 00:10:57,010 --> 00:11:02,600 and ancillary, complex activities that we associate 235 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:03,570 with movie going. 236 00:11:03,570 --> 00:11:06,520 And in fact, one might say that the great era of movie going 237 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:07,450 is already gone. 238 00:11:07,450 --> 00:11:10,230 That it was really in the era of the Hollywood Studios 239 00:11:10,230 --> 00:11:13,600 when they were before the internet and before television. 240 00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:18,120 So we could also think of the film as a social form. 241 00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:20,360 Not when it first appears, when it's just a novelty, 242 00:11:20,360 --> 00:11:22,068 but after it goes through various phases. 243 00:11:22,068 --> 00:11:26,030 When it embeds itself into the society the way the movies did, 244 00:11:26,030 --> 00:11:27,720 it becomes a kind of social form. 245 00:11:27,720 --> 00:11:29,160 And one might almost argue that it 246 00:11:29,160 --> 00:11:31,810 becomes one of the most important social forms 247 00:11:31,810 --> 00:11:35,120 in the society because it's so widely shared. 248 00:11:35,120 --> 00:11:37,210 Most social activities in the society 249 00:11:37,210 --> 00:11:42,070 are relatively limited in the circle of people they involve. 250 00:11:42,070 --> 00:11:43,880 Even the number of automobile drivers 251 00:11:43,880 --> 00:11:49,500 is controlled in a way that is contained or demarcated 252 00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:50,650 in a way that's less true. 253 00:11:50,650 --> 00:11:52,710 Movies appeal to children as well as adults. 254 00:11:55,114 --> 00:11:56,530 And from there very beginning this 255 00:11:56,530 --> 00:11:57,988 has been true of movies, especially 256 00:11:57,988 --> 00:11:59,060 in the United States. 257 00:11:59,060 --> 00:12:02,930 They've appealed across lines of social stratification, 258 00:12:02,930 --> 00:12:07,300 across differences of gender, across differences of age, 259 00:12:07,300 --> 00:12:09,290 across differences of race. 260 00:12:09,290 --> 00:12:12,660 There's one book on the film, a rather overly optimistic one 261 00:12:12,660 --> 00:12:16,910 that simplifies the pernicious or sinister aspect of movies 262 00:12:16,910 --> 00:12:19,709 called "Film -- The Democratic Art. 263 00:12:19,709 --> 00:12:21,250 And you can understand, even though I 264 00:12:21,250 --> 00:12:23,754 think it's a simplification, why that's an interesting way 265 00:12:23,754 --> 00:12:24,670 to think about movies. 266 00:12:24,670 --> 00:12:29,080 Because it reached so widely across so many social barriers. 267 00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:32,090 In that sense, film was the narrative form 268 00:12:32,090 --> 00:12:34,850 that reached a wider audience than any other narrative 269 00:12:34,850 --> 00:12:38,150 system that had been invented by human beings before it. 270 00:12:38,150 --> 00:12:41,450 What's one explanation for why film would be so appealing, 271 00:12:41,450 --> 00:12:45,660 be even more appealing than printed narrative? 272 00:12:45,660 --> 00:12:48,020 It also is connected to why the movies grew 273 00:12:48,020 --> 00:12:49,900 so quickly in their infancy. 274 00:12:49,900 --> 00:12:51,360 Why they went from being a novelty 275 00:12:51,360 --> 00:12:53,959 to being an embedded social form so quickly. 276 00:12:53,959 --> 00:12:55,500 You probably know what the answer is. 277 00:12:55,500 --> 00:12:57,620 AUDIENCE: That more people could see than could read. 278 00:12:57,620 --> 00:12:59,170 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, that's the real answer, isn't it. 279 00:12:59,170 --> 00:13:00,660 That it's mostly a visual medium. 280 00:13:00,660 --> 00:13:02,870 It doesn't depend on language to the same degree. 281 00:13:02,870 --> 00:13:05,690 And especially silent film, which 282 00:13:05,690 --> 00:13:07,957 did not depend-- which it did depend on language, 283 00:13:07,957 --> 00:13:09,540 it used intertitles and things, but it 284 00:13:09,540 --> 00:13:12,200 depended on language minimally. 285 00:13:12,200 --> 00:13:13,670 Why was this important? 286 00:13:13,670 --> 00:13:16,830 Because when the film was in its infancy, there was also-- 287 00:13:16,830 --> 00:13:20,600 and this was a fundamental, enabling condition 288 00:13:20,600 --> 00:13:22,200 for the development of movies-- there 289 00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:25,040 was also in the United States a vast and growing 290 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:28,790 immigrant population in all the major cities, but especially 291 00:13:28,790 --> 00:13:32,920 Chicago, New York, some of the other larger, 292 00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:34,140 industrial cities. 293 00:13:34,140 --> 00:13:37,820 And this new immigrant population, which many of them 294 00:13:37,820 --> 00:13:40,890 didn't know English at all, had only a little bit 295 00:13:40,890 --> 00:13:44,280 of money, disposable income, but they needed entertainment. 296 00:13:44,280 --> 00:13:47,150 And the silent film was the perfect answer to this. 297 00:13:47,150 --> 00:13:50,400 The film, relatively quickly becomes a profoundly embedded 298 00:13:50,400 --> 00:13:53,050 social form. 299 00:13:53,050 --> 00:13:55,110 To give you some sense of how monumental, 300 00:13:55,110 --> 00:13:56,720 and how central, how important this 301 00:13:56,720 --> 00:14:00,010 was in American society, what I can just simply remind you of 302 00:14:00,010 --> 00:14:06,390 is that for most of the period in which the Hollywood 303 00:14:06,390 --> 00:14:09,050 Studios were operating at full power, roughly the period 304 00:14:09,050 --> 00:14:12,100 from the advent of sound film in the late '20s, 305 00:14:12,100 --> 00:14:15,740 until the late '40s when television intervened, 306 00:14:15,740 --> 00:14:18,250 even though there's a period when television is around 307 00:14:18,250 --> 00:14:20,500 when the movie studios retain something 308 00:14:20,500 --> 00:14:22,980 of their old character, but they begin 309 00:14:22,980 --> 00:14:25,540 to decline without fully realizing if, that occurs 310 00:14:25,540 --> 00:14:27,220 in the mid '50s sometime. 311 00:14:27,220 --> 00:14:29,650 So in the period from roughly 1930 to say, 312 00:14:29,650 --> 00:14:32,170 1955, to be crude about it. 313 00:14:32,170 --> 00:14:35,380 In this period, the vast majority of Americans 314 00:14:35,380 --> 00:14:37,920 went to the movies every single week. 315 00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:40,340 Think about that, every single week. 316 00:14:40,340 --> 00:14:42,860 This was before television, which supplanted 317 00:14:42,860 --> 00:14:46,090 that quality of movies. 318 00:14:46,090 --> 00:14:50,680 In 1947 or 1948, 80 million Americans went to the movies 319 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:53,020 every week, every week. 320 00:14:53,020 --> 00:14:55,630 That was like 2/3 of the population at that time. 321 00:14:55,630 --> 00:14:59,090 So it was near to being a universal experience. 322 00:14:59,090 --> 00:15:00,840 And not just the universal experience 323 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:04,240 that occurred occasionally, but a routine experience. 324 00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:07,720 An experience that families, and individuals, and young, 325 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:12,450 and old, had regularly, as a fundamental part of their life, 326 00:15:12,450 --> 00:15:15,350 as a part of their ordinary experience. 327 00:15:15,350 --> 00:15:19,170 That's what I mean by an embedded social form. 328 00:15:19,170 --> 00:15:21,770 That's an immensely important fact about the movies, 329 00:15:21,770 --> 00:15:24,010 and especially about the classic movies. 330 00:15:24,010 --> 00:15:27,560 And when that feature, the idea of the movies as something 331 00:15:27,560 --> 00:15:29,980 routine in people's lives, something 332 00:15:29,980 --> 00:15:32,760 they did regularly, not occasionally. 333 00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:35,410 When that feature disappears, it disappears 334 00:15:35,410 --> 00:15:38,920 in part because of the impact of television on society. 335 00:15:38,920 --> 00:15:41,080 Television's in the house, so it's 336 00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:43,555 a lot easier to retain, to establish 337 00:15:43,555 --> 00:15:45,270 an habitual relation to television 338 00:15:45,270 --> 00:15:46,270 than it is to the movie. 339 00:15:46,270 --> 00:15:48,900 So the advent of this new technology 340 00:15:48,900 --> 00:15:51,140 changed movies relation to its audience. 341 00:15:51,140 --> 00:15:53,100 And this is the fact that to which 342 00:15:53,100 --> 00:15:54,750 again we will return again, and again. 343 00:15:54,750 --> 00:15:57,880 So we could also frame movies in other ways. 344 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:00,580 But these framings I think, are helpful to us in part 345 00:16:00,580 --> 00:16:02,830 to remind us of some things that I'm not going to do. 346 00:16:02,830 --> 00:16:04,680 One could certainly imagine a course 347 00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:07,350 in the Department of Economics that looks simply 348 00:16:07,350 --> 00:16:11,570 at the film as an economic engine, 349 00:16:11,570 --> 00:16:13,780 at the number of jobs created by movies. 350 00:16:13,780 --> 00:16:16,720 Not just the immediate jobs, the people who are actually 351 00:16:16,720 --> 00:16:23,100 producing the film, but another kind of a accounting 352 00:16:23,100 --> 00:16:25,470 that would take account of all the ancillary jobs. 353 00:16:25,470 --> 00:16:27,850 The theater owners, the popcorn sellers, 354 00:16:27,850 --> 00:16:30,670 the people who create the publicity for movies. 355 00:16:30,670 --> 00:16:33,310 The whole entourage of hangers-on-- 356 00:16:33,310 --> 00:16:35,330 you're thinking of the TV show, aren't you? 357 00:16:35,330 --> 00:16:37,600 The whole entourage of hangers-on that 358 00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:40,280 follow the movie stars around. 359 00:16:40,280 --> 00:16:42,800 It's an unbelievable engine of economic development 360 00:16:42,800 --> 00:16:43,700 and economic growth. 361 00:16:43,700 --> 00:16:46,390 And it is arguable, given the fact that the movies had 362 00:16:46,390 --> 00:16:48,950 been a dominant industry in the Western world, 363 00:16:48,950 --> 00:16:50,540 and especially in the United States, 364 00:16:50,540 --> 00:16:53,191 since the early 20th century, one 365 00:16:53,191 --> 00:16:54,690 could make an argument that it's one 366 00:16:54,690 --> 00:16:57,540 of the most productive and central engines 367 00:16:57,540 --> 00:17:01,190 of economic growth that capitalism has ever developed. 368 00:17:01,190 --> 00:17:04,000 And one could teach a course in the movies that simply 369 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:09,520 emphasized its economic aspects, its power as an employer, 370 00:17:09,520 --> 00:17:12,810 its role as a generator of wealth, 371 00:17:12,810 --> 00:17:15,040 as a generator of resources. 372 00:17:15,040 --> 00:17:16,859 And I mention this partly to clarify 373 00:17:16,859 --> 00:17:18,560 the extent to which, in our course, 374 00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:21,790 we're focusing on only aspects of what film might be. 375 00:17:21,790 --> 00:17:23,760 But also, in order to remind you that we 376 00:17:23,760 --> 00:17:28,780 need to be aware of this as a backdrop to the more cultural 377 00:17:28,780 --> 00:17:31,904 and aesthetic concerns about the content of movies, 378 00:17:31,904 --> 00:17:33,820 and about the way they developed, the way they 379 00:17:33,820 --> 00:17:36,840 evolved, that will be the central energies 380 00:17:36,840 --> 00:17:39,915 we will be committed to in our course. 381 00:17:43,070 --> 00:17:47,240 Well, one thing you need to do in order 382 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:52,430 to experience these first weeks of this course in a really 383 00:17:52,430 --> 00:17:55,780 effective way is to try to in a certain sense, 384 00:17:55,780 --> 00:17:58,800 get outside of your own head, get outside of your own skin. 385 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:02,990 We live in such a visually saturated environment. 386 00:18:02,990 --> 00:18:06,510 In which audio/visual messages are beamed at us constantly. 387 00:18:09,730 --> 00:18:12,742 Some of us are connected to apparatus all the time. 388 00:18:12,742 --> 00:18:14,200 We're connected to our cell phones. 389 00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:16,930 We're connected to our computers. 390 00:18:16,930 --> 00:18:22,235 It's almost as if we have audio visual signals bombarding us 391 00:18:22,235 --> 00:18:22,735 24/7. 392 00:18:26,100 --> 00:18:27,980 It's almost as if you were entering a cave, 393 00:18:27,980 --> 00:18:29,479 imagine that you're entering a cave. 394 00:18:29,479 --> 00:18:32,740 What I want to do is think away your iPods. 395 00:18:32,740 --> 00:18:34,230 Think away your cell phone. 396 00:18:34,230 --> 00:18:36,110 Literally, think them away. 397 00:18:36,110 --> 00:18:37,910 Imagine a world without them. 398 00:18:37,910 --> 00:18:40,750 Imagine a world without movies, a world without television, 399 00:18:40,750 --> 00:18:43,670 a world without radio. 400 00:18:43,670 --> 00:18:46,780 I want you to imaginatively put yourself back 401 00:18:46,780 --> 00:18:50,890 into the era when the first films began to appear. 402 00:18:50,890 --> 00:18:54,240 And try to recover some of the excitement 403 00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:58,170 and wonder that those earliest audiences must have felt when 404 00:18:58,170 --> 00:18:59,435 they saw some of these images. 405 00:19:02,420 --> 00:19:04,640 The most important thing in some sense 406 00:19:04,640 --> 00:19:08,650 would be that they were immensely amazed, 407 00:19:08,650 --> 00:19:12,550 they were taken aback by the simple, shocking, wonder 408 00:19:12,550 --> 00:19:14,550 of movement captured on film. 409 00:19:14,550 --> 00:19:16,610 It was if movement itself, something 410 00:19:16,610 --> 00:19:19,180 they associate with reality, could suddenly 411 00:19:19,180 --> 00:19:21,560 be recaptured in film. 412 00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:25,170 Can we show some examples of this, Greg? 413 00:19:25,170 --> 00:19:26,970 Some of you have seen one example of this. 414 00:19:26,970 --> 00:19:29,260 Remember in the recitation section, when you 415 00:19:29,260 --> 00:19:30,930 saw The Great Train Robbery. 416 00:19:30,930 --> 00:19:33,640 Do you remember the moment in The Great Train Robbery-- 417 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:37,410 which seems unconnected to the story-- 418 00:19:37,410 --> 00:19:40,740 in some prints of the film it comes at the end. 419 00:19:40,740 --> 00:19:42,707 In some prints it came at the beginning. 420 00:19:42,707 --> 00:19:44,290 In some prints it didn't occur at all. 421 00:19:44,290 --> 00:19:45,664 Where was it in the film you saw? 422 00:19:45,664 --> 00:19:47,009 AUDIENCE: Is it the guy? 423 00:19:47,009 --> 00:19:48,050 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, yes. 424 00:19:48,050 --> 00:19:48,640 When was that? 425 00:19:48,640 --> 00:19:49,360 AUDIENCE: It was at the very end. 426 00:19:49,360 --> 00:19:50,140 DAVID THORBURN: That was at the very end. 427 00:19:50,140 --> 00:19:51,780 It's the moment where the guy pulls out his gun, 428 00:19:51,780 --> 00:19:53,571 and points it at the camera and shoots him. 429 00:19:53,571 --> 00:19:55,237 Did any of you find that odd? 430 00:19:55,237 --> 00:19:56,570 I mean, I think you should have. 431 00:19:56,570 --> 00:19:59,000 One reason is that it had nothing 432 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,055 to do with the narrative. 433 00:20:03,016 --> 00:20:04,320 This is important film. 434 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:06,530 It used to be thought to be the very first story 435 00:20:06,530 --> 00:20:09,030 film, the very first systematic narrative on film. 436 00:20:09,030 --> 00:20:11,430 It's not that, there are earlier examples. 437 00:20:11,430 --> 00:20:13,200 But it's one of the very first, and that's 438 00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:14,500 why I wanted you see it. 439 00:20:14,500 --> 00:20:17,640 It's one of the earliest story films. 440 00:20:17,640 --> 00:20:21,000 It's one of the earliest film to tell a sequential story. 441 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:23,300 Although it seems very primitive to you guys, 442 00:20:23,300 --> 00:20:25,832 it's actually a very sophisticated item. 443 00:20:25,832 --> 00:20:27,790 And there has been a lot of filmmaking going on 444 00:20:27,790 --> 00:20:30,112 before this film was made 1902. 445 00:20:30,112 --> 00:20:32,070 We'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. 446 00:20:32,070 --> 00:20:34,900 So this moment where he shoots the gun at the camera, 447 00:20:34,900 --> 00:20:37,580 why is that disturbing to us or strange to us? 448 00:20:37,580 --> 00:20:38,770 I'll answer my own question. 449 00:20:38,770 --> 00:20:40,755 One, it's disturbing to us because it 450 00:20:40,755 --> 00:20:41,630 breaks the narrative. 451 00:20:41,630 --> 00:20:43,535 It seems unconnected to the narrative. 452 00:20:43,535 --> 00:20:44,410 Why would they do it? 453 00:20:47,665 --> 00:20:49,290 And then second, what's going on there? 454 00:20:49,290 --> 00:20:50,081 Why is he doing it? 455 00:20:50,081 --> 00:20:52,490 Does the filmmaker not like his audience? 456 00:20:52,490 --> 00:20:53,670 What's the reason for it? 457 00:20:53,670 --> 00:20:55,900 Why do you think it's there? 458 00:20:55,900 --> 00:20:56,569 Who has an idea? 459 00:20:56,569 --> 00:20:57,360 Why would be there? 460 00:20:57,360 --> 00:20:58,750 Again enter the cave. 461 00:20:58,750 --> 00:21:01,440 Think yourself back to an era before movie. 462 00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:03,830 When people had never seen movies before. 463 00:21:03,830 --> 00:21:04,990 What's the answer? 464 00:21:04,990 --> 00:21:06,725 AUDIENCE: He couldn't engage the audience in the film. 465 00:21:06,725 --> 00:21:07,680 DAVID THORBURN: Well, he does engage them, 466 00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:08,770 but what else what does it do? 467 00:21:08,770 --> 00:21:10,061 What does it call attention to? 468 00:21:11,870 --> 00:21:13,830 AUDIENCE: It puts him into a situation 469 00:21:13,830 --> 00:21:16,246 that they normally would not encounter, and probably would 470 00:21:16,246 --> 00:21:17,760 not survive. 471 00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:19,360 DAVID THORBURN: OK, that's right. 472 00:21:19,360 --> 00:21:20,620 Yes, a way that's right. 473 00:21:20,620 --> 00:21:24,320 And in fact, there are a lot of accounts of early films playing 474 00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:27,135 these kinds of tricks, and audiences not yet sure 475 00:21:27,135 --> 00:21:29,410 of what films were, reacting as if they 476 00:21:29,410 --> 00:21:30,970 were looking at something real. 477 00:21:30,970 --> 00:21:33,610 So there are at least reports of people seeing this film when 478 00:21:33,610 --> 00:21:35,693 the guy shot the gun, people screaming and ducking 479 00:21:35,693 --> 00:21:37,430 down under their seats. 480 00:21:37,430 --> 00:21:39,895 And there are many stories like this about early films 481 00:21:39,895 --> 00:21:42,520 where people would come to the-- and that's why they showed it. 482 00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,530 They showed it because it's a very dramatic way 483 00:21:45,530 --> 00:21:49,710 of dramatizing, of crystallizing the difference between reality 484 00:21:49,710 --> 00:21:50,530 and movies. 485 00:21:50,530 --> 00:21:53,570 And also, how realistic movies can be. 486 00:21:53,570 --> 00:21:56,560 The movie's name's the most fundamental feature 487 00:21:56,560 --> 00:21:59,280 of the movies. 488 00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:00,892 It's a dead metaphor for us. 489 00:22:00,892 --> 00:22:02,850 We don't even think about it when we say movie. 490 00:22:02,850 --> 00:22:05,020 But think what it means, it means movement. 491 00:22:05,020 --> 00:22:06,292 Films capture movement. 492 00:22:06,292 --> 00:22:08,000 What don't you just show this in sequence 493 00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:09,930 while I talk, Greg, OK. 494 00:22:09,930 --> 00:22:11,790 These are a sequence of early films. 495 00:22:11,790 --> 00:22:14,120 And you can see that all of them have in common 496 00:22:14,120 --> 00:22:16,600 is a fascination with motion. 497 00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:18,830 In other words, the novelty of motion 498 00:22:18,830 --> 00:22:21,960 was so great in the beginning that the earliest film simply 499 00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:24,080 did this. 500 00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:26,310 There's an important principle here about the way 501 00:22:26,310 --> 00:22:27,770 all media developed. 502 00:22:27,770 --> 00:22:31,140 In their infancy, the first thing that happens 503 00:22:31,140 --> 00:22:35,740 is that no one really much knows how a particular medium 504 00:22:35,740 --> 00:22:37,670 we should be or could be developed. 505 00:22:37,670 --> 00:22:41,950 And part of the reason for these early weeks 506 00:22:41,950 --> 00:22:45,190 in the film for the first two or three weeks in this course 507 00:22:45,190 --> 00:22:47,520 is to put you back into that situation. 508 00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:50,130 To try to in a very crystallized and distilled way, 509 00:22:50,130 --> 00:22:53,080 because there are thousands of films made in this era, 510 00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:55,100 but in a very distilled and crystallized way, 511 00:22:55,100 --> 00:22:57,870 I'm trying to recapture some of that excitement for you. 512 00:22:57,870 --> 00:23:01,050 And in the case of both Chaplin and Keaton, what I've done 513 00:23:01,050 --> 00:23:04,490 is choose some short films they made earlier, 514 00:23:04,490 --> 00:23:06,200 and then show you a feature film. 515 00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:10,090 So if you watch the Chaplain, Keaton films in sequence, 516 00:23:10,090 --> 00:23:13,490 two shorts and then a feature film, 517 00:23:13,490 --> 00:23:16,630 you'll see enacted in a kind of small compass 518 00:23:16,630 --> 00:23:20,180 within the terms of a single director's career this larger 519 00:23:20,180 --> 00:23:23,070 process that I'm saying was also enacted by movies themselves. 520 00:23:23,070 --> 00:23:25,580 It was this period of the silent era, 521 00:23:25,580 --> 00:23:28,710 was a period in which the movies discovered their identity, 522 00:23:28,710 --> 00:23:30,250 or such identity as they have. 523 00:23:30,250 --> 00:23:32,250 And I want to talk a bit more about that. 524 00:23:32,250 --> 00:23:36,890 While all of these early, relatively primitive films 525 00:23:36,890 --> 00:23:41,457 show us is a kind of-- this is one 526 00:23:41,457 --> 00:23:43,790 of the earliest-- some people call this the first comedy 527 00:23:43,790 --> 00:23:44,290 film. 528 00:23:48,692 --> 00:23:49,900 The first joke in the movies. 529 00:23:56,270 --> 00:23:59,270 The simplicity of it seems to us weird. 530 00:23:59,270 --> 00:24:01,970 But if you think yourself back, if you go into the cave, 531 00:24:01,970 --> 00:24:05,700 try to imagine a universe without audio/visual stimuli, 532 00:24:05,700 --> 00:24:08,980 you could begin to understand why some of this stuff 533 00:24:08,980 --> 00:24:10,310 was so interesting. 534 00:24:10,310 --> 00:24:14,710 Motion itself captivated early audiences and filmmakers. 535 00:24:14,710 --> 00:24:16,680 Waves on the shore for example. 536 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:18,430 There are a number of films that just show 537 00:24:18,430 --> 00:24:20,560 waves lapping on the shore. 538 00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:24,980 Many films of trains coming into stations, and of course, 539 00:24:24,980 --> 00:24:26,630 this Fred Ott Sneeze. 540 00:24:26,630 --> 00:24:30,200 Have we shown the kiss, or the electrocute? 541 00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:31,630 Can we do that? 542 00:24:31,630 --> 00:24:34,230 There were also risque or anarchic elements 543 00:24:34,230 --> 00:24:37,180 that showed up in early film that I want you see. 544 00:24:37,180 --> 00:24:42,460 Here is one of the most famous and scandalous of early films, 545 00:24:42,460 --> 00:24:44,490 something called The Kiss. 546 00:24:44,490 --> 00:24:47,520 And it was an unbelievable scandal when it came out. 547 00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,270 It films a scene from a stage play. 548 00:24:55,684 --> 00:24:56,600 Look how short it was. 549 00:24:56,600 --> 00:24:58,567 It was banned in many cities. 550 00:24:58,567 --> 00:24:59,900 It was thought to be scandalous. 551 00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,689 Do you have the electrocute? 552 00:25:07,689 --> 00:25:09,730 Many people would call this the first snuff film. 553 00:25:12,830 --> 00:25:17,160 And this is a film called The Electrocution of an Elephant. 554 00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,060 And think again what's going on here. 555 00:25:19,060 --> 00:25:20,770 Part of it has to do with this wonder 556 00:25:20,770 --> 00:25:23,730 that the film can capture actuality, in a way. 557 00:25:26,870 --> 00:25:30,980 There's something bizarre and gross about this in some way. 558 00:25:30,980 --> 00:25:33,500 This was a rogue elephant that was about to be put to death. 559 00:25:33,500 --> 00:25:36,000 AUDIENCE: She had apparently stepped on a couple of handlers 560 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:37,324 and killed them. 561 00:25:37,324 --> 00:25:38,740 DAVID THORBURN: So they were going 562 00:25:38,740 --> 00:25:41,210 to electrocute the elephant, and they brought a camera there 563 00:25:41,210 --> 00:25:42,418 to witness the electrocution. 564 00:25:45,790 --> 00:25:48,790 And of course it's so dark, because this fragment of film 565 00:25:48,790 --> 00:25:51,920 survives from over 100 years ago, more than 100 years. 566 00:25:55,990 --> 00:26:00,110 He's supposed to collapse not to stand up, isn't he? 567 00:26:00,110 --> 00:26:01,710 So there it is. 568 00:26:01,710 --> 00:26:04,210 [AUDIENCE GASPS] 569 00:26:04,210 --> 00:26:05,970 Grotesque, isn't it? 570 00:26:05,970 --> 00:26:08,200 But also a part of early film. 571 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,020 This idea that film could capture reality 572 00:26:11,020 --> 00:26:13,540 was itself so-- the novelty of this 573 00:26:13,540 --> 00:26:15,850 was so powerful, that in the early stages 574 00:26:15,850 --> 00:26:19,720 this was enough to cause great excitement for audiences. 575 00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:21,680 One way to think about this problem, 576 00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:28,300 and to think about-- the way I have for encapsulating, 577 00:26:28,300 --> 00:26:34,780 or dramatizing in a kind of a distilled way, 578 00:26:34,780 --> 00:26:38,770 all the elaborate processes that went 579 00:26:38,770 --> 00:26:40,990 into the development or the evolution of film 580 00:26:40,990 --> 00:26:43,350 is by-- the way I do this in part 581 00:26:43,350 --> 00:26:45,430 is by reference to old Fred. 582 00:26:45,430 --> 00:26:48,800 This film used to be thought to be the very first film, 583 00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:50,160 it's not actually. 584 00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,470 But it is one of the earliest films made and patented 585 00:26:53,470 --> 00:26:56,340 in Edison's movie studio, the very first movie 586 00:26:56,340 --> 00:26:59,620 studio in the United States in East Orange, New Jersey. 587 00:26:59,620 --> 00:27:01,880 Probably, this made in 1894, at least 588 00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:05,390 the copyright I think is of Fred Ott's Sneeze is in 1894. 589 00:27:05,390 --> 00:27:07,920 And think of how simple it is, how ridiculous it is. 590 00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:09,470 A camera sets up, they were still 591 00:27:09,470 --> 00:27:12,940 working on the technology of the motion picture camera 592 00:27:12,940 --> 00:27:15,160 at this stage, and they were testing it out. 593 00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,010 And Fred Ott was an employee of the Edison Company. 594 00:27:18,010 --> 00:27:19,450 And they said different, OK, Fred, 595 00:27:19,450 --> 00:27:21,635 stand in front of the camera and take snuff. 596 00:27:21,635 --> 00:27:22,760 And that's what he's doing. 597 00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:24,450 We might think of Fred Ott's Sneeze 598 00:27:24,450 --> 00:27:27,720 as, theoretically, symbolically, the first film, 599 00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:29,220 even though there are earlier films. 600 00:27:29,220 --> 00:27:31,580 Well, think of how unbelievably simple it is. 601 00:27:31,580 --> 00:27:33,830 Shown it once more, Greg. 602 00:27:33,830 --> 00:27:34,660 Can you freeze it? 603 00:27:34,660 --> 00:27:35,110 GREG: Oh, yeah. 604 00:27:35,110 --> 00:27:35,610 Hold on. 605 00:27:35,610 --> 00:27:36,280 I'll get it. 606 00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,279 DAVID THORBURN: So that Fred stays on the screen 607 00:27:38,279 --> 00:27:40,350 while we're talking about this. 608 00:27:40,350 --> 00:27:41,260 Look how short it is. 609 00:27:41,260 --> 00:27:41,760 What is it? 610 00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:43,810 It's two seconds long. 611 00:27:43,810 --> 00:27:46,166 Think of this. 612 00:27:46,166 --> 00:27:47,790 So this film is made in whatever it is, 613 00:27:47,790 --> 00:27:55,790 1894, 1895, this two-second long film was made in 1894, 1895, 614 00:27:55,790 --> 00:28:00,220 by the 1920s, astonishingly complex narrative films 615 00:28:00,220 --> 00:28:03,170 are being made, great works of art are being made. 616 00:28:03,170 --> 00:28:06,010 What I call the Fred Ott principle 617 00:28:06,010 --> 00:28:11,930 is this whole complex, social, and technical, 618 00:28:11,930 --> 00:28:17,510 and technological, and artistic process, 619 00:28:17,510 --> 00:28:20,210 the swirling of all of these energies going together. 620 00:28:20,210 --> 00:28:24,780 Including the demographic fact of so many immigrants audiences 621 00:28:24,780 --> 00:28:26,850 creating an environment that made 622 00:28:26,850 --> 00:28:29,800 early film a very profitable activity, despite how crude 623 00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:31,120 it was. 624 00:28:31,120 --> 00:28:34,340 What happens in this period between 1900 625 00:28:34,340 --> 00:28:36,800 and the end of the '20s is that film 626 00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,660 goes from being a novelty separated off, 627 00:28:39,660 --> 00:28:41,620 sharing a space in the penny arcades 628 00:28:41,620 --> 00:28:43,610 with other forms of novelty, to being 629 00:28:43,610 --> 00:28:45,720 one of the dominant industries, and one 630 00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,110 of the dominant social experiences 631 00:28:48,110 --> 00:28:49,990 of the American population. 632 00:28:49,990 --> 00:28:53,510 This principle is replicated in some other European societies 633 00:28:53,510 --> 00:28:55,260 as well, but not in all. 634 00:28:55,260 --> 00:28:58,930 It's an advanced capitalist event. 635 00:28:58,930 --> 00:29:02,600 And it occurs in other societies less fully industrialized 636 00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:03,910 at later stages. 637 00:29:03,910 --> 00:29:05,420 But there is an equivalent history 638 00:29:05,420 --> 00:29:07,160 in some of the European cultures. 639 00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:11,170 So in this period of fewer than 30 years, 640 00:29:11,170 --> 00:29:14,910 film goes from being the most trivial and simplified kind 641 00:29:14,910 --> 00:29:18,020 of novelty, to being one of the most complex narrative forms 642 00:29:18,020 --> 00:29:19,760 human beings have ever devised. 643 00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:21,860 What I mean by the Fred Ott principle 644 00:29:21,860 --> 00:29:24,240 is that whole complex process that we 645 00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:27,930 can go from something so simple to something so complex, 646 00:29:27,930 --> 00:29:31,170 from something so marginal in society to something so central 647 00:29:31,170 --> 00:29:33,370 in society in such a short time. 648 00:29:33,370 --> 00:29:35,670 And I want to at least remind you of what 649 00:29:35,670 --> 00:29:37,450 that principle involves. 650 00:29:37,450 --> 00:29:39,370 I'm talking about all the technological, 651 00:29:39,370 --> 00:29:42,760 cultural, demographic, and economic currents that 652 00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:47,770 swirl together to create the movie industry that emerges-- 653 00:29:47,770 --> 00:29:51,370 really by the mid teens the movie industry essentially 654 00:29:51,370 --> 00:29:52,140 is in place. 655 00:29:52,140 --> 00:29:55,640 Variations will occur, new studios will appear, 656 00:29:55,640 --> 00:30:03,405 but by 1915/1916 American movies have been established 657 00:30:03,405 --> 00:30:04,890 on an assembly line basis. 658 00:30:08,260 --> 00:30:11,280 Have been established on an assembly line basis, 659 00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:12,830 and millions and millions of people 660 00:30:12,830 --> 00:30:15,760 are now making it a regular habit to go to the movies. 661 00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:17,670 And the movies are elaborating themselves 662 00:30:17,670 --> 00:30:20,460 in a complex way that has to do with the way in which they 663 00:30:20,460 --> 00:30:21,710 were industrialized. 664 00:30:25,130 --> 00:30:27,720 There are three phases, I think, to what 665 00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,070 we might call-- let's go back to the outline, Greg. 666 00:30:31,070 --> 00:30:35,310 There are three phases to what we might call media evolution. 667 00:30:35,310 --> 00:30:37,790 And this is another way of sort of dramatizing what I 668 00:30:37,790 --> 00:30:39,285 mean by the Fred Ott principle. 669 00:30:44,670 --> 00:30:49,380 The first phase is a phase of imitation and patent warfare. 670 00:30:49,380 --> 00:30:50,760 A new technology appears. 671 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:52,820 Nobody yet knows how it would be applied. 672 00:30:52,820 --> 00:30:54,470 How people will want to do. 673 00:30:54,470 --> 00:30:58,080 Everything about the new technologies up for grabs. 674 00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,380 So there are competitors who want 675 00:31:00,380 --> 00:31:02,720 to sort of claim patents on the technology. 676 00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:05,130 Questions about how long should films be? 677 00:31:05,130 --> 00:31:07,700 Where she feels be shown? 678 00:31:07,700 --> 00:31:09,440 How should films be distributed? 679 00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:10,710 All of that's up for grabs. 680 00:31:10,710 --> 00:31:13,870 All of that is rationalized and decided-- 681 00:31:13,870 --> 00:31:16,060 I put "decided" in quotes because no one sits down 682 00:31:16,060 --> 00:31:17,240 and makes a decision. 683 00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,800 It's really a function of the marketplace, 684 00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:22,939 and of certain economic opportunities. 685 00:31:22,939 --> 00:31:25,230 There's no question, for example, that the movies would 686 00:31:25,230 --> 00:31:26,960 never have developed as they did were not 687 00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:30,320 for those immigrant populations in cities like Chicago, 688 00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:32,560 and New York, and Los Angeles. 689 00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:36,610 And many other cities on the East Coast especially, 690 00:31:36,610 --> 00:31:38,170 where they were very large immigrant 691 00:31:38,170 --> 00:31:40,570 populations who needed. 692 00:31:40,570 --> 00:31:44,040 And it was that financial infusion 693 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,945 that caused the immense amount of experimentation 694 00:31:46,945 --> 00:31:50,650 and development to take place so quickly. 695 00:31:50,650 --> 00:31:53,560 So in this first phase of imitation and patent warfare 696 00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:55,680 many of these questions are not-- even 697 00:31:55,680 --> 00:32:00,310 such simple questions as how long a film should be? 698 00:32:00,310 --> 00:32:02,370 Some of the question of the length of the film 699 00:32:02,370 --> 00:32:04,120 are technological, the very first films 700 00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,380 had to be only 10 minutes long, because that 701 00:32:06,380 --> 00:32:09,062 was as long as the film cartridges in which they 702 00:32:09,062 --> 00:32:10,770 put in the cameras were capable of doing. 703 00:32:10,770 --> 00:32:13,560 Later they were able to make two reelers, and three reelers. 704 00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:16,870 That happens over a relatively short space of time. 705 00:32:16,870 --> 00:32:19,010 So in this phase of imitation, one 706 00:32:19,010 --> 00:32:21,090 the most important things that happens, 707 00:32:21,090 --> 00:32:23,630 and this is the part I want you to become attentive to, 708 00:32:23,630 --> 00:32:26,540 is that all of the ancestor systems that 709 00:32:26,540 --> 00:32:30,400 lie behind the new technology are potential influences 710 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:31,750 on the new technology. 711 00:32:31,750 --> 00:32:33,780 And in new films that you've seen already, 712 00:32:33,780 --> 00:32:35,930 the silent films you saw in recitation, 713 00:32:35,930 --> 00:32:38,940 you saw some examples of this. 714 00:32:38,940 --> 00:32:41,740 For example, do you remember-- maybe we could show this, Greg. 715 00:32:41,740 --> 00:32:46,032 The deaths in The Great Train Robbery. 716 00:32:46,032 --> 00:32:47,990 Remember the deaths of The Great Train Robbery? 717 00:32:47,990 --> 00:32:48,910 Why are you smiling? 718 00:32:48,910 --> 00:32:50,410 AUDIENCE: Because there was a dummy. 719 00:32:50,410 --> 00:32:52,493 DAVID THORBURN: Because they were still noticeably 720 00:32:52,493 --> 00:32:53,630 what, false, fake? 721 00:32:53,630 --> 00:32:54,806 Where do they come from? 722 00:32:54,806 --> 00:32:56,430 The guy shoots, and the guy goes "ooh." 723 00:32:56,430 --> 00:32:58,730 And he staggers around, and then he falls. 724 00:32:58,730 --> 00:33:00,110 What's going on there? 725 00:33:00,110 --> 00:33:02,900 Where does that tradition of performance come from? 726 00:33:02,900 --> 00:33:03,800 AUDIENCE: Theater. 727 00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:04,340 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, yes. 728 00:33:04,340 --> 00:33:05,780 I'll let it play behind me. 729 00:33:05,780 --> 00:33:07,080 Yes, it comes from theater. 730 00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:11,260 Makes sense that one of the deep influences on early film 731 00:33:11,260 --> 00:33:12,110 would be theater. 732 00:33:12,110 --> 00:33:15,740 But now in the Fred Ott principle, 733 00:33:15,740 --> 00:33:20,120 the most important sub idea in this theory, and this label, 734 00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:21,640 the Fred Ott principle is the fact 735 00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:26,840 that this process of development involves, among other things, 736 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:28,740 the capacity of filmmakers to discover 737 00:33:28,740 --> 00:33:31,670 those features of the new medium that are unique or special 738 00:33:31,670 --> 00:33:32,610 to the medium. 739 00:33:32,610 --> 00:33:35,510 What makes the medium different from its ancestors? 740 00:33:35,510 --> 00:33:38,390 Clearly, what was appropriate for books, or newspapers, 741 00:33:38,390 --> 00:33:41,380 or theater, won't be perfectly appropriate for the new medium. 742 00:33:41,380 --> 00:33:43,580 But nobody knows what the new medium's 743 00:33:43,580 --> 00:33:45,990 capable of until things have been tried out. 744 00:33:45,990 --> 00:33:48,630 So that's why I call it a phase of imitation. 745 00:33:48,630 --> 00:33:50,390 And what one can say here especially 746 00:33:50,390 --> 00:33:54,210 is that certain theatrical styles of acting are dominant. 747 00:33:54,210 --> 00:33:58,700 Why our theatrical styles of acting so broad? 748 00:33:58,700 --> 00:34:00,452 So unbelievable. 749 00:34:00,452 --> 00:34:01,410 Why are they like that? 750 00:34:01,410 --> 00:34:02,920 AUDIENCE: Because you're far away. 751 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,086 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, in the theater you're far away, 752 00:34:05,086 --> 00:34:06,430 and you're in a fixed space. 753 00:34:06,430 --> 00:34:08,940 But what's one genius of the movies? 754 00:34:08,940 --> 00:34:12,000 One way the medium of the movies is different from theater 755 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,610 is that the camera can achieve a lover's closeness 756 00:34:14,610 --> 00:34:15,350 to the action. 757 00:34:15,350 --> 00:34:19,010 Or it can achieve a long view that's much longer and further 758 00:34:19,010 --> 00:34:20,539 away than what. 759 00:34:20,539 --> 00:34:22,830 Well, it's going to take time before this kind of thing 760 00:34:22,830 --> 00:34:24,280 is figured out. 761 00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:27,510 And one of the most decisive things we see an early films 762 00:34:27,510 --> 00:34:31,949 is first, an acting style that seems derived from theater. 763 00:34:31,949 --> 00:34:34,159 But some of you may have noticed that this begins 764 00:34:34,159 --> 00:34:36,120 to change relatively quickly. 765 00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,469 Can we show the fragment from A Beast at Bay? 766 00:34:38,469 --> 00:34:40,370 Remember that silly film, A Beast at Bay, 767 00:34:40,370 --> 00:34:44,110 that I had to watching it along with The Great Train Robbery? 768 00:34:44,110 --> 00:34:45,719 Remember the ending of A Beast at Bay? 769 00:34:49,290 --> 00:34:51,903 Something odd happens in this ending. 770 00:34:51,903 --> 00:34:57,270 There's the monstrous, drooling, rapist-like figure. 771 00:34:57,270 --> 00:34:59,200 He's always a convict or a low-life. 772 00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:01,120 There are all kinds of social hierarchies 773 00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:04,840 and established social prejudices that 774 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,350 get imported into early films. 775 00:35:08,350 --> 00:35:11,320 And now we're going to have the rescue. 776 00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,650 And so far it seems a conventional sort 777 00:35:13,650 --> 00:35:16,620 of sleazy melodrama, in which there 778 00:35:16,620 --> 00:35:20,670 is at least a hint of something morally disturbing 779 00:35:20,670 --> 00:35:24,090 in the imminence of the rape. 780 00:35:24,090 --> 00:35:27,490 It's as if the film makes a kind of sleazy appeal 781 00:35:27,490 --> 00:35:29,670 to its audiences. 782 00:35:29,670 --> 00:35:33,810 Here's a perfect example of such a moment. 783 00:35:33,810 --> 00:35:36,080 It's interesting in fact, how one of the recurring 784 00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:38,880 subjects of films always seems to be not just rape, 785 00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:40,860 but violence against women. 786 00:35:40,860 --> 00:35:43,670 It tells you something about the patriarchal societies 787 00:35:43,670 --> 00:35:48,690 in which films emerge that those mythologies are replicated 788 00:35:48,690 --> 00:35:50,050 in movies. 789 00:35:50,050 --> 00:35:52,030 So he's going to be rescued here. 790 00:35:52,030 --> 00:35:53,660 And what I want you to notice is what 791 00:35:53,660 --> 00:35:55,400 happens at the very end of this sequence. 792 00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,655 And can some of you remember what it is? 793 00:35:57,655 --> 00:35:58,530 None of you remember? 794 00:35:58,530 --> 00:35:59,760 It was so fast. 795 00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:01,260 But it actually is very significant. 796 00:36:01,260 --> 00:36:04,170 I think it shows us the emergence, the beginnings 797 00:36:04,170 --> 00:36:05,960 of the emergence of a new style of acting 798 00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:08,410 more appropriate to movies. 799 00:36:08,410 --> 00:36:11,170 And also, something else, the development 800 00:36:11,170 --> 00:36:14,670 of a total complexity that had not been in movies before. 801 00:36:14,670 --> 00:36:19,290 Now the date of this film is early, 1907, 1908, 802 00:36:19,290 --> 00:36:20,800 something like that. 803 00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:24,150 You're going to see one other silent film by D.W. Griffith 804 00:36:24,150 --> 00:36:27,710 tonight, The Lonedale Operator, made in 1912. 805 00:36:27,710 --> 00:36:30,470 And I hope you'll be attentive to how much more complex 806 00:36:30,470 --> 00:36:31,500 that film is. 807 00:36:31,500 --> 00:36:35,377 I'll say a few words about that tonight. 808 00:36:35,377 --> 00:36:37,210 I wish we were really just at the end, Greg. 809 00:36:37,210 --> 00:36:39,043 I didn't really want to show the whole film. 810 00:36:45,850 --> 00:36:47,587 OK, so here we're at the conclusion. 811 00:36:47,587 --> 00:36:49,420 Now this is the part I wanted you to notice. 812 00:36:49,420 --> 00:36:49,961 Look at this. 813 00:36:59,470 --> 00:37:01,110 What's happening here? 814 00:37:01,110 --> 00:37:03,860 The film has shifted over into a kind of silly comedy, 815 00:37:03,860 --> 00:37:07,680 a kind of gentle comedy. 816 00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:10,320 The woman said, kiss me hear, kiss me hear. 817 00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:13,320 And in fact, if you notice she's not she's not saying, 818 00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:15,540 kiss me here! 819 00:37:15,540 --> 00:37:19,140 In other words, her gestures are more modulated to the nature 820 00:37:19,140 --> 00:37:20,270 of movies. 821 00:37:20,270 --> 00:37:23,260 What's beginning to happen there is two important things. 822 00:37:23,260 --> 00:37:27,350 First, total complexity is entering in. 823 00:37:27,350 --> 00:37:30,760 A melodrama has turned comic. 824 00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,220 And acting style's beginning to. 825 00:37:33,220 --> 00:37:37,000 Can we do the very end of Musketeers? 826 00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:40,780 Here is the very end of a film by D.W. Griffith 827 00:37:40,780 --> 00:37:42,430 called The Musketeers of Pig Alley. 828 00:37:42,430 --> 00:37:45,490 Some people see it as one of the first urban crime films. 829 00:37:45,490 --> 00:37:51,420 But what I want you to watch is this small actor here . 830 00:37:51,420 --> 00:37:52,620 Watch his performance. 831 00:37:52,620 --> 00:37:54,400 This is the emergence of a new kind 832 00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:56,600 of acting, a non-theatrical kind of acting. 833 00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,490 And it's happening very early, this film appeared in 1912. 834 00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:12,890 That's Lillian Gish, the famous silent film star. 835 00:38:20,670 --> 00:38:22,545 This gangster is socked that this woman would 836 00:38:22,545 --> 00:38:24,975 choose his rival over him. 837 00:38:24,975 --> 00:38:26,100 He says, you're nuts, lady. 838 00:38:26,100 --> 00:38:27,120 I can't get it, but OK. 839 00:38:31,830 --> 00:38:34,130 Look at this strutting peacock of a man. 840 00:38:39,740 --> 00:38:40,384 Watch this. 841 00:38:44,100 --> 00:38:46,080 He's a gangster, he's about to be arrested, 842 00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:47,720 but the good guys will save him. 843 00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:49,236 Oh, we lost it. 844 00:38:49,236 --> 00:38:50,452 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 845 00:38:50,452 --> 00:38:52,410 DAVID THORBURN: One good turn deserves another. 846 00:38:55,270 --> 00:38:56,770 But you see how much more restrained 847 00:38:56,770 --> 00:38:58,974 the performances are here? 848 00:38:58,974 --> 00:39:00,390 I mean, Lillian Gish became one of 849 00:39:00,390 --> 00:39:02,890 the great silent-screen stars. 850 00:39:02,890 --> 00:39:08,680 But I think it's this strutting peacock of an actor 851 00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:11,800 who really begins to show what you can do on film. 852 00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:13,280 And there are many film critics who 853 00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:15,840 have seen this as a precursor of Edward G. Robinson's 854 00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:16,740 performances. 855 00:39:16,740 --> 00:39:19,950 He's also a diminutive actor, often plays gangsters. 856 00:39:19,950 --> 00:39:22,530 But what you see, I think, in this moment, 857 00:39:22,530 --> 00:39:26,160 and in this man's performance is the emergence, the beginnings 858 00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:28,410 of an acting style that's more modulated, 859 00:39:28,410 --> 00:39:30,247 that's appropriate to the nature of the film 860 00:39:30,247 --> 00:39:31,830 So that kind of thing that's happening 861 00:39:31,830 --> 00:39:35,475 is not just with acting, it has to do with all kinds of things. 862 00:39:35,475 --> 00:39:36,850 It has to do with where you place 863 00:39:36,850 --> 00:39:43,880 the camera, and such matters. 864 00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,870 So what I mean then, by the Fred Ott principle 865 00:39:46,870 --> 00:39:50,280 is this process of evolution that I want you to be aware of. 866 00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:52,830 And really, in a certain sense experience 867 00:39:52,830 --> 00:39:55,640 in distilled form in the short films 868 00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:59,580 I've asked you to watch in this first week of classes. 869 00:39:59,580 --> 00:40:02,840 The first phase is a phase of imitation and patent warfare. 870 00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:05,230 In which all kinds of questions are up in the air. 871 00:40:05,230 --> 00:40:07,380 How will the film be distributed? 872 00:40:07,380 --> 00:40:11,320 How will it be exhibited? 873 00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:14,490 How will it be produced? 874 00:40:14,490 --> 00:40:17,080 There's nothing inherent in the nature of the technology that 875 00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,884 requires the economic arrangements that developed 876 00:40:19,884 --> 00:40:22,300 in the United States, and then we're replicated elsewhere, 877 00:40:22,300 --> 00:40:24,760 for the distribution of movies. 878 00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:26,860 In fact, Thomas Edison had a different idea 879 00:40:26,860 --> 00:40:28,570 for how movies would be developed. 880 00:40:28,570 --> 00:40:30,930 When he first conceived the apparatus, 881 00:40:30,930 --> 00:40:34,170 he actually thought that movie projectors would 882 00:40:34,170 --> 00:40:37,650 be owned by each individual. 883 00:40:37,650 --> 00:40:41,970 In fact, what he was imagining was 884 00:40:41,970 --> 00:40:48,084 the camcorder that occurs in a much later generation. 885 00:40:48,084 --> 00:40:50,000 And there's nothing inherent in the technology 886 00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,590 that would not permit that. 887 00:40:52,590 --> 00:40:56,120 So one of the things we need to be aware of-- 888 00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,030 and I'll return to this matter either tonight 889 00:40:59,030 --> 00:41:00,250 or in a later lecture. 890 00:41:00,250 --> 00:41:03,060 We need to be aware of fact that the shape the technology takes 891 00:41:03,060 --> 00:41:05,740 is not the only shape it might take. 892 00:41:05,740 --> 00:41:07,600 It's not the technology itself that 893 00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:11,320 drives its development so much as economic, and social, 894 00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:12,490 and demographic factors. 895 00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,900 And that's dramatically the case with the system 896 00:41:17,900 --> 00:41:21,430 of distribution and access that was developed for the movies. 897 00:41:21,430 --> 00:41:23,912 It's certainly theoretically possible for the apparatus 898 00:41:23,912 --> 00:41:25,370 to be developed in a way that would 899 00:41:25,370 --> 00:41:26,920 be sold to every individual. 900 00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,000 What instead happened was a system 901 00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,580 in which a professional elite becomes the production arm. 902 00:41:32,580 --> 00:41:36,020 And these productions become very expensive, 903 00:41:36,020 --> 00:41:42,890 and they are pumped out into the society for screening 904 00:41:42,890 --> 00:41:46,810 at public theaters, which people will pay money to attend. 905 00:41:46,810 --> 00:41:50,490 That economic structure, and that basic industrial structure 906 00:41:50,490 --> 00:41:52,980 is not necessary to the technology. 907 00:41:52,980 --> 00:41:55,030 It's not required by the technology. 908 00:41:55,030 --> 00:41:57,830 The shape of film is at least as much cultural 909 00:41:57,830 --> 00:42:00,550 as it is technological. 910 00:42:00,550 --> 00:42:02,200 A very important point. 911 00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,680 So the second phase after the phase of imitation 912 00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:09,640 is the phase I call technical advance. 913 00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:13,940 This phase occurs after some of the warfare is concluded. 914 00:42:13,940 --> 00:42:15,650 Limited monopolies are established. 915 00:42:15,650 --> 00:42:18,210 Some companies are more powerful than others, 916 00:42:18,210 --> 00:42:20,640 or come up with a more successful product than others. 917 00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:22,431 And they begin to dominate the marketplace. 918 00:42:24,830 --> 00:42:26,950 They drive competitors out. 919 00:42:26,950 --> 00:42:29,610 And what essentially happens is a kind of stability 920 00:42:29,610 --> 00:42:33,080 is introduced in which the basic system is put in place. 921 00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:34,990 Here's how we'll manufacture the item. 922 00:42:34,990 --> 00:42:37,590 Here's how we'll distribute it. 923 00:42:37,590 --> 00:42:39,010 Here's how long it will be. 924 00:42:39,010 --> 00:42:40,470 That sort of thing. 925 00:42:40,470 --> 00:42:43,410 And in this period of technical advance 926 00:42:43,410 --> 00:42:46,110 what then happens once the stability sets in, 927 00:42:46,110 --> 00:42:49,010 the particular, unique features of the medium 928 00:42:49,010 --> 00:42:50,132 begin to be explored. 929 00:42:50,132 --> 00:42:52,340 And these early films that I'm asking you to look at, 930 00:42:52,340 --> 00:42:54,010 what I hope you'll watch for are moments 931 00:42:54,010 --> 00:42:57,090 like the ones I was just pointing out this afternoon. 932 00:42:57,090 --> 00:43:00,930 In which you see the emergence of a recognition of something 933 00:43:00,930 --> 00:43:04,050 that is distinct or special in the nature of movie making. 934 00:43:04,050 --> 00:43:06,640 I'll return to some of these matters again tonight. 935 00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:08,840 But I want you to be aware of them. 936 00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:12,470 So in the second phase, the phase of technical advance, 937 00:43:12,470 --> 00:43:15,340 the system begins to learn what is unique about it. 938 00:43:15,340 --> 00:43:17,860 How are movies different from their ancestors? 939 00:43:17,860 --> 00:43:20,950 What does it mean that the camera can move close 940 00:43:20,950 --> 00:43:25,702 to the object is photographing, or very far away from it? 941 00:43:25,702 --> 00:43:27,910 What does it mean that the camera itself doesn't have 942 00:43:27,910 --> 00:43:29,950 to be stable, that it can move? 943 00:43:29,950 --> 00:43:32,120 You can see some of the early Griffith films really 944 00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:36,410 experiment with a camera that's mounted 945 00:43:36,410 --> 00:43:38,450 on something that's moving. 946 00:43:38,450 --> 00:43:44,030 And then the final phase is the phase I call maturity. 947 00:43:44,030 --> 00:43:46,490 And that's the phase that occurs really in silent film, 948 00:43:46,490 --> 00:43:47,660 in the 1920s. 949 00:43:47,660 --> 00:43:51,990 When the technical advances that are accomplished in phase two 950 00:43:51,990 --> 00:43:54,510 are married to a serious subject matter. 951 00:43:54,510 --> 00:43:56,930 The phase I call maturity is the phase in which feature 952 00:43:56,930 --> 00:44:00,390 films are made, and in which some films become works of art. 953 00:44:00,390 --> 00:44:03,490 And all films become more complex forms of narrative. 954 00:44:03,490 --> 00:44:06,260 In which particular genre forms begin to emerge. 955 00:44:06,260 --> 00:44:09,052 And audiences begin to choose particular kinds 956 00:44:09,052 --> 00:44:10,260 of films that matter to them. 957 00:44:10,260 --> 00:44:11,635 In other words, the system really 958 00:44:11,635 --> 00:44:14,240 elaborates itself in a way that suggests 959 00:44:14,240 --> 00:44:18,472 an immense variety of appeal to a range of audience. 960 00:44:18,472 --> 00:44:19,680 That's the phase of maturity. 961 00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:21,220 Why doesn't it go on forever? 962 00:44:21,220 --> 00:44:23,660 What explains why the process doesn't continue? 963 00:44:23,660 --> 00:44:26,950 What stopped this process? 964 00:44:26,950 --> 00:44:28,760 So the Fred Ott principle encapsule 965 00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:30,780 means going from Fred Ott's Sneeze 966 00:44:30,780 --> 00:44:33,220 to going to Chaplin's Modern Times. 967 00:44:33,220 --> 00:44:35,260 This immensely rich, complex narrative 968 00:44:35,260 --> 00:44:37,930 film that we'll be looking at next week. 969 00:44:37,930 --> 00:44:40,240 What explains why that moment of maturity 970 00:44:40,240 --> 00:44:41,640 doesn't extend forever? 971 00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,720 Why is this system not stable forever? 972 00:44:44,720 --> 00:44:46,550 The simplest answer is capitalism 973 00:44:46,550 --> 00:44:48,380 never allows for stability. 974 00:44:48,380 --> 00:44:52,700 But the more exact answer is new inventions, new technologies 975 00:44:52,700 --> 00:44:54,510 subvert the stability. 976 00:44:54,510 --> 00:44:56,470 What happens at the end of the '20s 977 00:44:56,470 --> 00:44:59,450 to subvert the confidence and stability of the system? 978 00:44:59,450 --> 00:45:00,950 AUDIENCE: The introduction of sound. 979 00:45:00,950 --> 00:45:02,010 DAVID THORBURN: The advent of sound. 980 00:45:02,010 --> 00:45:02,280 Yes. 981 00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:03,821 And the sound film doesn't completely 982 00:45:03,821 --> 00:45:06,550 revolutionize movies, but it profoundly alters them. 983 00:45:06,550 --> 00:45:08,160 It changes the nature of film. 984 00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:10,860 And it changes the nature of the kinds of performers 985 00:45:10,860 --> 00:45:12,260 that you need in film. 986 00:45:12,260 --> 00:45:15,260 It profoundly enlarges and complicates what film is. 987 00:45:15,260 --> 00:45:18,160 And then, something of the same principles 988 00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,410 that I've talked about before happen in the sound era. 989 00:45:20,410 --> 00:45:21,590 I'm sorry I'm running a little over, 990 00:45:21,590 --> 00:45:23,240 but I promise you I'm almost done. 991 00:45:23,240 --> 00:45:26,090 And normally, I will never run over even by a minute. 992 00:45:26,090 --> 00:45:26,610 I promise. 993 00:45:26,610 --> 00:45:27,590 I'll work for this. 994 00:45:30,319 --> 00:45:31,860 Why doesn't the final phase continue? 995 00:45:31,860 --> 00:45:33,280 Because of new technologies. 996 00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:34,490 Because of new possibilities. 997 00:45:34,490 --> 00:45:36,800 What happens at the end of the studio system? 998 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,680 The advent of television overturns 999 00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,880 the stabilities that had been created and the old studio era. 1000 00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,490 And the intimate routine connection 1001 00:45:45,490 --> 00:45:47,840 to movies that had been established in the studio era 1002 00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,360 is finally obliterated by the presence of television. 1003 00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:52,280 And movies change their character 1004 00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:53,390 after television comes in. 1005 00:45:53,390 --> 00:45:54,431 We will return to this. 1006 00:45:54,431 --> 00:45:55,680 We will return to this matter. 1007 00:45:55,680 --> 00:46:03,280 , Well one way I can suggest for you to capture this imaginative 1008 00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:06,240 linkage, this imaginative connection to the world 1009 00:46:06,240 --> 00:46:13,160 of early film is by reminding you of a wonderful passage from 1010 00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,180 the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the great film critic James 1011 00:46:16,180 --> 00:46:21,110 Agee, which appeared posthumously in 1957. 1012 00:46:21,110 --> 00:46:25,730 And it distills for me what I mean-- 1013 00:46:25,730 --> 00:46:28,110 and I hope for you-- what I mean in part 1014 00:46:28,110 --> 00:46:32,120 by film as a social form, film as a socially 1015 00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:33,820 embedded formation. 1016 00:46:33,820 --> 00:46:37,820 It helps to explain in less abstract terms what 1017 00:46:37,820 --> 00:46:41,720 I mean when I say that filled permeated American life. 1018 00:46:41,720 --> 00:46:45,590 Listen to the beginning of, this is from the first chapter. 1019 00:46:45,590 --> 00:46:48,990 And we're finished after this is over. 1020 00:46:48,990 --> 00:46:51,990 From the first chapter of A Death in the Family. 1021 00:46:51,990 --> 00:46:55,530 "At supper that night as many times before, his father said, 1022 00:46:55,530 --> 00:46:58,070 well, suppose we go to the picture show. 1023 00:46:58,070 --> 00:47:01,724 Oh, J, his mother said, that horrid, little man. 1024 00:47:01,724 --> 00:47:02,640 What's wrong with him? 1025 00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:03,930 His father asked. 1026 00:47:03,930 --> 00:47:06,760 Not because he didn't know what she would say, but so 1027 00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:08,010 she would say it. 1028 00:47:08,010 --> 00:47:12,860 He's so nasty, she said as she always did, so vulgar. 1029 00:47:12,860 --> 00:47:16,570 With his nasty little cane hooking up skirts and things, 1030 00:47:16,570 --> 00:47:18,530 and that nasty little walk." 1031 00:47:18,530 --> 00:47:20,110 Who is he talking about? 1032 00:47:20,110 --> 00:47:23,430 Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin, of course. 1033 00:47:23,430 --> 00:47:26,320 And this story takes place before Chaplin 1034 00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:27,860 was making feature films. 1035 00:47:27,860 --> 00:47:31,070 So the story takes place probably around 1915. 1036 00:47:31,070 --> 00:47:36,970 When comedy was still being made as shorts. 1037 00:47:36,970 --> 00:47:38,700 Comedies didn't become feature length 1038 00:47:38,700 --> 00:47:40,590 until sometime late in the '20s. 1039 00:47:40,590 --> 00:47:42,640 "His father laughed as he always did. 1040 00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,620 And Rufus felt that he had become rather an empty joke. 1041 00:47:45,620 --> 00:47:47,900 But as always, the laughter also cheered him. 1042 00:47:47,900 --> 00:47:50,950 He felt that the laughter enclosed him with his father. 1043 00:47:50,950 --> 00:47:53,620 They walked downtown in the light of mother of pearl 1044 00:47:53,620 --> 00:47:56,910 to the majestic," nice name for a theater-- 1045 00:47:56,910 --> 00:47:59,030 "and found their seats by the light of the screen 1046 00:47:59,030 --> 00:48:03,200 in the exhilarating smell of tobacco, rank sweat, perfume, 1047 00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:04,760 and dirty drawers. 1048 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,784 While the piano played fast music," right, 1049 00:48:07,784 --> 00:48:09,450 because violent films were never silent. 1050 00:48:09,450 --> 00:48:11,340 There was always music accompanying them. 1051 00:48:11,340 --> 00:48:14,720 "And galloping horses raised a grandiose flag of dust. 1052 00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:17,260 And there was William S. Hart--" the passage then 1053 00:48:17,260 --> 00:48:19,910 goes on to describe a western film with William S. 1054 00:48:19,910 --> 00:48:21,700 Hart, a silent film. 1055 00:48:21,700 --> 00:48:24,340 "And then the screen was filled with the city, 1056 00:48:24,340 --> 00:48:26,700 and with the sidewalk of a side street of a city, 1057 00:48:26,700 --> 00:48:30,430 and a long line of palms, and there was Charlie. 1058 00:48:30,430 --> 00:48:32,700 Everyone laughed the minute they saw him squatly 1059 00:48:32,700 --> 00:48:35,550 walking with his toes out and his knees apart as 1060 00:48:35,550 --> 00:48:36,610 if he were chafed. 1061 00:48:36,610 --> 00:48:40,050 Rufus's father laughed, and Rufus laughed, too. 1062 00:48:40,050 --> 00:48:43,680 This time Charlie stole a whole bag--" this time. 1063 00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:45,430 What does that imply about the audience? 1064 00:48:45,430 --> 00:48:48,300 And intimate familiarity with previous adventures 1065 00:48:48,300 --> 00:48:51,790 of this character, an ongoing routine connection. 1066 00:48:54,300 --> 00:48:56,657 "This time Charlie stole a whole bag of eggs. 1067 00:48:56,657 --> 00:48:58,240 And when a cop came along, he hid them 1068 00:48:58,240 --> 00:48:59,804 in the seat of his pants. 1069 00:48:59,804 --> 00:49:01,470 Then, he caught sight of a pretty woman, 1070 00:49:01,470 --> 00:49:03,890 and he began to squat and twirl his cane, 1071 00:49:03,890 --> 00:49:05,060 and make silly faces." 1072 00:49:05,060 --> 00:49:05,935 I'm going to skip it. 1073 00:49:05,935 --> 00:49:08,160 It's magnificent prose that captures 1074 00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:09,950 the essence of the film very wonderfully. 1075 00:49:09,950 --> 00:49:12,910 But I don't want to keep you longer than I already have. 1076 00:49:12,910 --> 00:49:15,490 And it shows Charlie sort of flirting with the girl. 1077 00:49:15,490 --> 00:49:18,700 And then finally, he flirts with her so much that she pushes him 1078 00:49:18,700 --> 00:49:21,260 and he falls back down. 1079 00:49:21,260 --> 00:49:23,680 "Then he walked back and forth behind her, 1080 00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:25,035 laughing and squatting a little. 1081 00:49:25,035 --> 00:49:26,410 And while he walked very quietly, 1082 00:49:26,410 --> 00:49:27,640 everybody laughed again. 1083 00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:29,890 Then, he flicked hold of the straight end of his cane, 1084 00:49:29,890 --> 00:49:32,550 and with the crooked end hooked up her skirt at the knee 1085 00:49:32,550 --> 00:49:36,090 in exactly the way that disgusted momma. 1086 00:49:36,090 --> 00:49:37,610 Looking very eagerly at her legs, 1087 00:49:37,610 --> 00:49:39,797 and everybody laughed very loudly. 1088 00:49:39,797 --> 00:49:41,380 And she pretended she had not noticed. 1089 00:49:41,380 --> 00:49:44,660 And then she pushes him over. 1090 00:49:44,660 --> 00:49:47,470 And there was Charlie, flat on his bottom on the sidewalk. 1091 00:49:47,470 --> 00:49:50,090 And the way he looked, kind of sickly and disgusted, 1092 00:49:50,090 --> 00:49:53,220 you could see that he suddenly remembered those eggs. 1093 00:49:53,220 --> 00:49:55,470 And suddenly you remembered them, too. 1094 00:49:55,470 --> 00:49:57,610 The way his face looked with his lip wrinkled 1095 00:49:57,610 --> 00:49:59,720 off the teeth and a little sickly smile, 1096 00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:02,610 it made you feel just the way those broken eggs must feel 1097 00:50:02,610 --> 00:50:05,640 against your seat, as queer and awful as that time 1098 00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:07,820 in the white PK suit." 1099 00:50:07,820 --> 00:50:10,740 He's also dramatizing how personal our relation to film 1100 00:50:10,740 --> 00:50:11,910 can be. 1101 00:50:11,910 --> 00:50:13,639 "When it ran down out of the pants' legs, 1102 00:50:13,639 --> 00:50:15,430 and showed all over your stockings, and you 1103 00:50:15,430 --> 00:50:18,390 had to walk home that way with everyone looking. 1104 00:50:18,390 --> 00:50:20,700 And Rufus's father nearly tore his head off laughing, 1105 00:50:20,700 --> 00:50:22,180 and so did everybody else. 1106 00:50:22,180 --> 00:50:25,140 But Rufus was sorry for Charlie, having so recently 1107 00:50:25,140 --> 00:50:27,550 been in a similar predicament. 1108 00:50:27,550 --> 00:50:30,885 But the contagion of laughter was too much for him, 1109 00:50:30,885 --> 00:50:31,760 and he laughed, too." 1110 00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:33,970 And the passage goes on to describe 1111 00:50:33,970 --> 00:50:37,360 the intimacy and the complexity of the relations 1112 00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:40,140 between audiences in 1915 and one 1113 00:50:40,140 --> 00:50:42,820 of the iconic figures of the movies. 1114 00:50:42,820 --> 00:50:46,890 In this idea, that Charlie mobilizes 1115 00:50:46,890 --> 00:50:49,660 this anarchic, liberating laughter, 1116 00:50:49,660 --> 00:50:53,930 and mobilizes this father-son relationship. 1117 00:50:53,930 --> 00:50:56,720 In that idea we recapture something 1118 00:50:56,720 --> 00:50:59,090 of what I mean by the notion that 1119 00:50:59,090 --> 00:51:01,680 film was an embedded social experience, 1120 00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:03,400 an embedded social form. 1121 00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:05,550 I'll see you tonight.