'French Film History' by Richard Neupert
The Hollywood studios coalesced during World War I and became dominant across much of the world, aided by the war’s disruptions in Europe. However, before the war, the technology and marketing of the new medium of film was largely driven by France. University of Georgia film studies professor Richard Neupert’s French Film History 1895-1946 chronicles that nation’s moviemaking through World War II, but some of his most significant arguments concern early days.
France was where photography was invented in the early 19th century. In the years that followed, French technicians were at the forefront of developing optical toys that projected sequences of images, telling simple stories visually. They received funding from the French government and scientific institutions for studying—among other things—human and animal locomotion by making an accurate record of motion studies. Eadweard Muybridge (and his galloping horse) was not alone.
Americans tend to credit Thomas Edison for many things, including the invention of movies, as much from his mastery of public relations as his accomplishments in the lab. Neupert shows that in comparison to his French contemporaries, Edison was often, in a phrase the Wizard of Menlo Park probably knew, a day late and a dollar short. While Edison toyed with cylinders, Étienne-Jules Marey showed him the advantages of flexible celluloid. Edison employed cylindrical rollers to move film reels. Marey devised the more practical sprockets.
Marey wasn’t working alone in France. In 1894, Auguste and Louis Lumière witnessed a demonstration of Edison’s Kinetoscope in Paris. Edison’s device allowed one viewer at a time to watch a short movie. The brothers “quickly realized the larger potential in producing and exhibiting films to groups of paying customers.” Cinema as we know it was born when they unveiled their Cinematographie in 1895. The Lumières were first to cut sheets of celluloid into 35mm strips and were incredibly inventive in many other fields.
One of the earliest French film studios exploiting the idea of finding a mass audience for their work, Gaumont, employed a woman, Alice Guy, as head of production. She directed her first shorts in 1896. The pioneer of special effects, Georges Méliès, is credited with constructing what was perhaps the first purpose-built film studio. As Neupert shows, even Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops owed their schtick to early French film.
French Film History 1895-1946 is a comprehensive summary of the first 50 years following the birth of cinema in France and includes a fascinating chapter on filmmaking under Vichy and the Nazi occupation (1940-45). French directors produced almost no overtly pro-German movies, seldom criticized the U.S. or Great Britain, slipped in some anti-Nazi references and generally maintained an ambience of ambiguity in the face of grave danger.
French Film History 1895-1946 is published by University of Wisconsin Press.
