Breakthroughs and Busts: Mapping Cinema’s Technological Evolution
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By Scott Thill
- October 6, 2010 |
- 7:00 am |
- Categories: movies
The history of cinematic technology is littered with stunning achievements and epic fails. From pioneering exercises in technique to feature-length shames and riotous gimmicks, there's no shortage of film stock worth analyzing.
Milestones marked in the gallery above include cinematic breakthroughs and busts. Some are technical masterpieces, like Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon and James Cameron's immersive 3-D experiment Avatar. Others, like Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer — whose blackface birthday arrives Wednesday — are painful reminders that filmmakers can be handy with the tech and still utterly suck at social engineering.
Above:
The Cinematographe
Now showing: The cinematograph, one of Earth's first film cameras and projectors.
Back story: Although similar machines were invented in the mid-1890s, August and Louis Lumière are popularly credited with creating the cinematographe. The French siblings are also credited with launching the first public, commercial film screening in 1895.
Blockbuster or flop? Flop. Shortly after redefining pop culture, the Lumière brothers declared that "cinema is an invention without any future" and promptly abandoned it at the turn of the 20th century to concentrate on color photography. Fade to lame.
See Also:
I guess this is where I’m supposed to chime in with some tragically overlooked film that advanced the medium forward by lightyears.
So, how about Wizard of Oz? The use of color to emphasize a different world back then drew gasps of wonder.
Stopped reading at “epic fails”. Didn’t realize I was navigating to the WoW forums when I decided to browse wired.
Kubrick’s 2001 in 1969 had effects that hold up much better today than the effects in star wars.
Re Smell-o-Vision: it’s time for a comeback! Or better yet, Misto-o-Vision, which DreamWorks trotted out at a theme park 4-D version of Shrek a few years back complete with nozzle-rigged seats.
What, no mention of the first cinema in color…or the revolutionary HDR video just a few weeks ago?
So, Wired, What’s Up With “”Al Jolson??”" So, What are you advocating here; putting this racist in your Mapping Cinema’s Technological Evolution?
I have a few comments on this.
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First, while I cannot agree more strongly with your editorial comments on the content of Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” it’s influence on film—in this list most notably “Star Wars”—is almost immeasurable. We got the iris shot and the wipe fade. His cinematography was beyond stunning, still more than adequate to impress modern audiences.
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Second, you leave out some key films. Consider “Citizen Kane,” with two shots as yet unexplained given early 1940s technology. In one, the camera zooms in on a still photograph taken at a party, yet when the photograph is full-frame, we are there at the party, in the moving action. In another, we look through a window from outside, moving closer as the camera pushes in, seeming to pass through the closed pane of glass and into the fire-warmed interior, where it proceeds to pan about.
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French and American filmmakers make out like bandits, but where are the Russians? Early pioneers of Soviet film gave us their own vision of montage, most famously, perhaps, in Potemkin (yes, I do refer to the Odessa Steps sequence).
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Finally, while few people have seen “Suture,” it does bear some recognition in such a list. The filmmakers set out to play with the cinematic concept of suture, by which a film can bring the audience into its world, leaving the theatre behind, and the literal sutures needed to stitch up the badly injured main character, nearly killed when his identical half-brother tries to cover up his own criminal behavior via death-by-proxy. The film goes on to show just how impressive narrative and editing can be when two actors of different races, builds, and overall aspects are treated as identical so convincingly that by the end we are willing to accept it, as everyone in the film does. It is also quite fun for those who know about Hunin and Nunin (including what they represent), how Wednesday got its name, the nature of various approaches to psychotherapy, some basic philosophy (a plastic surgeon named Dr. Renee Descartes, helping reconstruct the body of a man with amnesia?), and a few other things.
Thank you, trollbait! That’s the kind of informed geekery we were looking for.
As for Jolson, richard31014, I hazed him quite thoroughly in The Jazz Singer’s section. But that’s the bittersweet truth about film evolution and racism: There’s no way to separate the two, from Birth of a Nation to The Jazz Singer and evidently to to Avatar, depending on who you ask.
What about the SteadyCam? Philadelphia owes a great deal to that innovation. Just imagine watching Rocky without it.
Wow. You fail film school straight out. Fail. With an F. Both Birth Of A Nation and The Jazz Singer are seminal works. Every film school makes you watch them at some point.
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Both were breakthroughs Both were products of their time. The fact that they and Gone With The Wind have attitudes toward non-caucasians that are taboo now, has nothing to do with their influence on future cinema.
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Also, to ignore Cinerama, 3D, stop motion, motion control, optical printing and the hundreds of effects and post production techniques that have defined modern film and persist even in the age of Avatar is, frankly, inexplicable.
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This article needed to be written by someone – preferably a film major – with far more time on their hands.
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Horrible.
Mr. Thill – You’re slight regarding Mr. Jolsons work speaks volumes regarding your lack of understanding of both film and history.
Mr. Jolson was a tireless advocate for African Americans in a time when their talents weren’t valued or even recognized by the film industry. He is widely credited with bringing the song style of African Americans of the time into mainstream popular culture, directly paving the way for Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and many others. The Jazz singer was an incredible success technologically and at the box office.
Nothing makes me more angry than poor a poorly researched, historically inaccurate article, written by an incredibly lazy, hack. All you had to do was wiki Jolson. Your article is a joke.