History of Film Industry
France is considered the most important country in the
development of the world film industry AND the development of the movie poster.
We will not delve into the early developments of Daguerre, Demeny, Edison, Marey,
Muybridge, Niecpe, Reynaud, and many others. Instead we'll start our history
with the developments of the Lumiere Brothers and leave earlier developments
for our new section under development called Global Cinema.
On February 13, 1895, Louis and Auguste Lumiere patented
their first projection machine. On March 28th, the first film Lunch Hour
at the Lumiere Factory was shown before the Societe d'Encouragement de
L'Industrie Nationale. Nine months later, the cinema in France and the world
came into existence.
The first public or paying performance was given on December
28, 1895 at the Grand Cafe, Boulevard des Capucines, in a basement called the
Salon Indien. The proprietor of the Grand Cafe, somewhat skeptical, had preferred
to charge a rental of 30 francs a day in lieu of the customary 20% of the takings.
Admission was one franc. For this sum, audiences saw 10 films, each 50 foot
in length and each lasting less that one minute (250 feet of film lasts 4 minutes).
The first day's takings were 35 francs. The organizers were rather discouraged.
3 weeks later, without a single line of advertising, the profits had risen to
2000 francs a day.
The films were simple and consisted of scenic views, scenes
of people, moving vehicles and the like. As more entrepenieurs made otther presentations,
all the big producers of the time began by filming pretty much the same subjects.
So while Lumiere released Lunch Hour at the Lumiere Factory, Gaumont released
Lunch Hour at the Panhard and Levassor Factories. Gaumont filmed the Fountains
of Versailles so Melies filmed the Boulevard des Italiens. There were 10 different
versions of Teasing the Gardener, 20 different of a Policeman's Patrol, etc,
etc.
Instead of trying to license their equipment (as did Edison
in the US), the Lumieres immediately started training cameramen and by the end
of 1896, they had given presentations and taken footage in Argentina,
Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,
Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Italy,
Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia,
Spain, Sweden, and Yugoslavia.
With this expansion, the way that the camera was used
also began to expand. Besides factuals and newsreels, camera equipment moved
into the science arena and the military for documentation and training films.
Thanks to the Lumiere Brothers, the news and presentation of the cinema had
been presented all around the world. However the public began to lose interest
and within a couple of years the facination with scenes, newreels declined and
the future of cinema looked dim. The Lumieres were soon to cease their presentations
and others take up the gauntlet.
Three immerging areas of development had a tremendous
impact on the development, direction and revival of cinema. All 3 were started
and developed in France from 3 entirely different perspectives and each had
a world wide impact. Let's look at them one at a time:
Enter: Georges Melies
Georges Melies was born in 1861 and was 34 years old
when the Lumiere Brothers produced their invention. Melies attended their
first presentation. To him, their first film show seemed like a miracle. He
later stated, "Long before it was over, I rushed up to Auguste Lumiere
and offered to buy his invention. I offered 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 50 thousand
francs. I would gladly have given him my fortune, my house, my family in exchange
for it. Lumiere would not listen to me. 'Young man,' he said, 'you should
be grateful, since although my invention is not for sale, it would undoubtedly
ruin you. It can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity
but, apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever.'"
Lumiere was sincere in saying this, but Melies would
not listen to him. Melies had been a manufacturer, mechanic, cabinetmaker,
draughtsman, painter, and caricaturist. For the last 8 years he was manager
and proprietor of the Theatre Robert-Houdin at 16, Passage de l'Opera, where
he gave puppet and magic shows.
Refusing to take 'NO' for an answer, Melies sought out
Robert Paul in London and
viewed Paul's camera projector (which was a modification of Edisons camera)
and soon afterwards built his own. He was able to present his first film screening
on April 4th 1896.
Melies' first films were straightforward cityscapes
and event films, patterned after the short films of the Lumieres, but soon
he was using the camera to document magic acts and gags from the stage of
the Theatre Robert-Houdin.
In 1896, while filming a street scene, Melies camera
jammed and it took him a few seconds to rectify the problem. Thinking no more
about the incident, Melies processed the film and was struck by the effect
such an incident had on the scene - objects suddenly appeared, disappeared
or were transformed into other objects. Melies discovered from this incident
that cinema had the capacity for manipulating and distorting time and space.
He expanded upon his initial ideas and devised some complex special effects.
Soon afterwards Melies produced his One Man Band in which he appeared as the
one and only actor in numerous roles simultaneously.
In 1897, Melies set up a studio in Paris, called Star
Film. He pioneered the first double exposure (La caverne Maudite,
1898), the first split screen with performers acting opposite themselves (Un
Homme de tete, 1898), and the first dissolve (Cendrillon, 1899).
He also introduced stop-motion photography, taken frame by fame, so that inanimate
objects appear to move on the screen.
Melies was perhaps the most inventive filmmaker in cinema
history. He also experimented with all types of special effects and multiple
exposures, and led to the development of a film language based on separate
scenes edited together in chronological order. He was also one of the first
filmmakers to present nudity on screen with “Apres le Bal”.
Melies best known film, "A Trip to the Moon"
(1902) was one of the longest and most elaborate of his trick film epics.
The film was hugely successful, but not as profitable as it should have been.
"Trip to the Moon" was perhaps the most heavily pirated film of
its era, and while crowds around the world marvelled at its tale of space
travel, relatively little of this success translated into financial gain for
its creator. Melies would soon fade away as the Lumieres did, but he left
a major impact and changed the direction of the industry forever.
Enter: Alice Guy
Leon Gaumont was born May 10, 1864 and was a French
inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture
industry. Gaumont was gifted with a mechanical mind and was fascinated with
photography. So, when he was offered a job at the Comptoir general de Photographie
in 1893, he jumped at the opportunity. His decision proved fortunate when
two years later he was given the chance to acquire the business. In August
of 1895, he partnered with the astronomer Joseph Vallot, the famous engineer
Gustave Eiffel , and the financier Alfred Besnier to make the purchase. Their
business entity, called L. Gaumont et Cie, has survived in one form or another
to become what some historians call the world's oldest surviving film company
extant.
Leon patented equipment, worked on sound systems and
did many great things for the industry, but the impact and change in the industry
direction didn't come from Gaumont.... but from his secretary. Here's what
happened:
In 1895, Louis Lumiere paid Gaumont a visit to show
him a new contraption that Lumiere had just invented; a camera that made still
photographs appear as a series of moving images. Soon after that Gaumont made
his own version of Lumiere's 60mm camera. Although he and his staff took pictures
with it, they couldn't figure out any real practical use for it. His secretary
Alice Guy immediately recognized it's potential. Here's a quote from Guy in
a later interview, "I thought I could do better.... Gathering up my courage,
I timidly proposed to Gaumont that I would write one or two short plays and
make them for the amusement of my friends. If the developments which elvolved
from this proposal could have been foreseen, then I probably never would have
obtained his agreement. My youth, my lack of experience, my sex all conspired
against me."
Gaumont, who never took the invention seriously, was
taken aback. "What! What! All right, if you want to," he
is credited with saying. "It's a child's toy anyhow." He would let
her have her fun on the condition that her secretarial duties did not suffer.
La Fee Aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) was shown that same year (1896)
at the International Exhibition in Paris. The plot was based on an old French
fable about a fairy who produces children in a cabbage patch. Her experiment
was so successful in selling Gaumont's equipment, that she was completely
relieved of her secretarial tasks. From then on, she was put in charge of
Gaumont's newly formed production entity. Guy is credited with approximately
400 films for Gaumont and later left to go to the US and started the first
woman owned production studio(Solax Studios) in the US. Alice Guy, the first
woman director, changed the direction of the film industry forever by opening
up the scripted drama and fantasy story to the industry.
Enter: Charles Pathe
Charles Pathe at the age of 30 possessed 1000 francs.
He bought a phonograph and a light van and began traveling to fairs with his
brother Emile. Customers paid 2 sous to hear one record or 10 to hear six.
By nightfall, he would make as much as 200 francs. After a few months doing
this, Pathe set up shop in the square at Vincennes where he saw the Edison
camera. Pathe went into partnership with the inventor Joly, and manufactured
a camera to go into competition with Lumiere. Shortly afterwards, Pathe built
a studio, went into partnership with his brothers (but afterward parted with
two of them) and launched a production company that would change the destiny
of film distribution. Pathe wasn't the inventor or creator that pioneered
the industry, Pathe was the organizer that showed the world how is was suppose
to be done.
In 1902, Pathe acquired the Lumiere brothers patents
then set about to design an improved studio camera and to make their own film
stock. To handle the production needs Pathe then expanded to set up 6 production
companies working simultaneously. Combining their technologically advanced
equipment, new processing facilities built at Vincennes, and aggressive merchandising
with efficient distribution systems catepulted Pathe by 1904 to be the largest
producer and distributor of films in the world. Every country showed films
with the Pathe red rooster logo. Pathe dominated the film industry world wide
until World War I, would change the film industry forever.
Now that we've looked at our 4 major French pioneers that
changed film history, let's continue with our French history.
By 1900, France was buzzing with every conceivable variation
of films and the creative competition was like no where else in the world. Gaumont
invented the Chronophone which was a combination of the phonograph and film
to make talking movies. Not to be outdone, Melies combined the old fashioned
cylindrical phongraph with films.
The Paris Exposition of 1900 displayed all types of talking
pictures with a huge variety of films from stage performances, and stories to
opera was shown, but the they were not received well by the public. Gaumont
continued his development of his Chronophone and in 1902 put it on the market.
Gaumont gave a talkie each week in his theaters presented under the name of
Phonos-Scenes. An exhibitor could buy Duos Fron Carmen, film and record for
120 francs, and by 1912 Gaumont was presenting color talkies.
Pathe was the major player during this period. Pathe pioneered
a system of mass production headed by Ferdinand Zecca, which soon had their
studios releasing 6 new film titles per week. Once his production studios were
organized and all in production, Pathe then set up production facilities and
a chain of movie theaters in London. London at that time was the largest city
in the world and was the distribution center of the world.
In the US, films were moving from summer parks and vaudeville
into theaters. The expansion was so rapid and so competitive that US film producers
couldn't meet the demand (especially while also fighting Edison's lawsuits)
and French production filled in the need. The quality and variety from the French
producers, especially Gaumont, Melies and Pathe, were so much better that they
became the dominant requested films. US producers started copying the French
films and putting them out as their own. Melies' Trip to the Moon was
considered the most pirated film ever, and pirating became so bad that in 1903,
[put Melies ad] Melies sent his brother Gaston to open an office in New York
to try to curtail the circulation of 'bad and fraudulent copies' of Star Films.
Pathe, working through Kleine
Optical who was their agent in the US, started putting their logo of the
red rooster on the frames of film to show that they were Pathe films. They also
started a massive advertising campaign. In an interview with Edwin Porter many
years later, he stated that when he was first hired by Edison, his first job
was copying French films where he learned some of the techniques that he used
in his films.
By 1906, the French production companies dominated world
film production, AND Pathe dominated Europe's market in motion picture cameras
and projectors. It has been estimated that at that time, 60 percent of all films
were shot with Pathe equipment. As early as 1907, Pathe began releasing a comic
series entitled Boireau. This was so successful that Gaumont soon introduced
its Calino series. Other comic series soon followed: the Bebe series, the Onesime
series, Bout-de-Zan. These were so popular that soon Eclair, Eclipse
and Lux all made them a regular part of their weekly programs. Eclair did a
variation of the American detective with its Victorin Jasset's Nick Carter series
which ran from 1908 to 1910.
For the next few years, the French film industry was flying
high and when Pathe invented their newsreel in 1908 that was shown in theaters
prior to the feature film, it looked like nothing could stop them.
By 1909, Pathe had built more than 200 movie theaters
in France and Belgium and by the following year they had facilities in Madrid,
Moscow, Rome, Australia and Japan.
Also in 1909, Pathe announced that they were going to
open production studios and facities in the US and started making arrangements.
Edison, realizing that he was losing his battles with growing independent studios,
and quality and production to the French, made several maneuvers that changed
history. Edison reversed his position and created 'the Trust' which was a group
of independent studios and included Melies and Kleine (which was Pathes agent).
These moves postponed Pathes move long enough for Edison and his battery of
attorneys to plague the US government to change import laws and put more restrictions.
Edison then started a campaign to dominant the US market with 'the Trust' and
at the same time promote to 'buy American'. It worked.
Over the next few years, French market dominance decreased
and with the threat of war, French companies started making made numerous changes
and shifts in company offices to anchor themselves. For example: Pathe, to protect
themselves, shifted film production into quasi-independent affiliates so production
was spread through numerous production affiliates in France, Holland, Italy,
Russia and the US; In 1911, Gaumont renovated the Gaumont-Palace and spurred
construction of 'palace' cinemas. Gaumont focused on increasing production in
France to try to compete with Pathe; Under the management of Charles Jourjon
and Marcel Vandal, Eclair emerged as a major player in the production of films
but never established a circuit of theaters for distribution; Some smaller companies
focused on production, like d'Art, Eclipse and Lux, while others like AGC focused
on distribution; Louis Aubert brought in Italian and Danish films to be shown
in France and then bought theaters and finally moved into production.
The French studios had been losing ground rapidly in the
US market, but when the war was announced in August 1914, the French film industry
came to an abrupt halt. Although Pathe, Gaumont, Eclair and Film d'Art all resumed
production in early 1915, wartime restrictions on capital and material forced
them to operate at bare minimums and to focus mainly on patriotic films and
comedies to help the morale. This reduction in production gave way to new distributors
with high quality American films such as the Keystone comedies brought in by
Jacques Haik at Western Imports, who had become a distributor just before the
war. Monat-Film brought in westerns and mysteries. To compete, Pathe brought
in Pearl White serials and other films that its American branch of Pathe had
produced. The smaller production companies gave way to the import distributors.
Melies' Star Studio was taken by the French government and he never recovered.
Gaumont moved their headquarters to London and Pathe moved their headquarters
to the US.
After the war, the film industry in France was in shambles.
During this time, the US film industry had made major advancements in equipment,
organization and quality of film, while all of Europe struggles to rebuild old
studios with old equipment, so the market became flooded with American films
and with all the problems of reconstruction, audiences demanded quality films
that a tattered French industry couldn't produce. The French public demanded
entertainment. The number of theaters grew from 1444 at the end of the war to
2400 just 2 years later. French studios dropped to little more than 10-15% of
the films shown in France.
In 1918, Pathe moved their headquarters back to France
and reorganized their pre-war strategies, dividing off their Records empire
under the control of Charles' brother Emile and leaving Charles to control and
rename his studios as Pathe-Cinema and began selling off his foreign exchanges.
The early 20s brought a new era of art films and formations
of small independent production companies headed by cinema leaders such as Gance,
Delluc, Julien Duvivier, Jean Renoir and Rene Clair. Even though production
increased to 130 feature films by 1922, they still only occupied a minority
share of the French screens. The industry began trying different strategies
of co-production, some studios with American companies and some with German
studios. The French studios used their serials and comedies as a base while
other feature films were being provided by American and German studios. Several
European countries started implementing stronger quotas and banding together
to create a European Film Union to try to improve their film industries and
slow down the massive amounts of imported films. By the end of the 20s, there
were over 4200 theaters in France and an Aubert Palace in every major French
city and demand continued to grow.
The arrival of American sound films at first created
panic among the European countries who immediately began a resistance to the
influx of US films. The language barrier put shackels on the distribution area
and collapsed the European Film Union. The French public wouldn't accept films
in other languages. The French film industry took the approach to procrastinate
and maybe it would go away. The French government strengthened censorship and
tariff laws and stopped 'talkies' from being shown in France for 2 years. At
first this seem to promote a greater amount of French films being shown in France.
The first to step up was Gaumont, who brought up to date
his old system of synchronized phonograph records and in 1928 released L'Eau
du Nil but it wasn't accepted by the public. Charles Pathe, frustrated
with the entire circumstances sold off Pathe to the Natan Brothers from Bulgaria
and retired. Bernard Natan renamed the company Pathe-Natan but the company was
so poorly run that they were soon having major financial difficulties.
US studios were struggling from the depression in the
US and the sudden decline in exported films due to language barriers. After
2 years of resistance, the pressure became too great to stop the foreign films
from coming into France. In 1930, several US studios began looking to invest
to break through the barriers. Paramount built a giant studio in Joinville,
France and began producing multilingual films; they would shoot the same film
in different languages using the same set and costumes over again. Warner Brothers
did the same in Germany. MGM took the opposite approach by bringing French film
stars to the US to be in films with their stars to get them released in France.
French distributors scrambled to create adaquate methods
of subtitling, because so few theaters had sound equipment.
French directors struggled to make the adjustments to
sound productions. The most important director of this time period was Rene
Clair who produced Toits de Paris, which is considered the first significant
French talkie of that time. While the age of sound helped Clair to develop,
other directors like Gance and Duvivier floundered with several failures. It
wasn't until Gance remade a sound version of his Napoleon, did he begin
to utilize the sound instead of fighting it.
By 1935, the French film industry practically disappeared.
Controlled by Americans or crippled by the depression, Elair and Gaumont had
become insignificant and Pathe-Natan was so riddled with financial scandals
that they were ineffective. The few French films that had any relevancy came
from the independents which basically carried the French film industry at that
time.
By 1933, Denmark, Germany,
Netherlands and Great Britain had the majority of
their theaters wired for sound, but France didn't get the majority of their
theaters wired for sound until around 1936. As French directors began to grasp
the power of sound films, an influx of dark film noir developed. This new genre
was extremely popular and again French cinema began to take hold. Director Jean
Renoir led the revival with some very successful titles such as La Grande
Illusion and Le Regle du Jeu (Rules of the Game, 1939).
World War II divided France into a 'free' zone in the
south and an 'occupied' zone in the north, which had a devastating effect on
an industry that was just starting to regain some strength. Some film makers
fled to the US like Renoir, Duvivier, Gabin and Morgan, while others remained
in France and tried to continue to make films. A Committee for the Organization
of the Cinematographic Industries (COIC) was created to try to help regulate
films under these extreme circumstances which had a great affect.
The Germans set up their own production company, Continental
Films, which used German capital but French personnel, produced 30 films out
of the 220 films that France produced during the war. Films made during that
period were heavily scrutinized causing directors to avoid any questionable
topics. Since British and American films were banned, French films dominated
the operating screens in France. The films during this period have been called
'Vichy' films because a lot of them focus on sacrificial motherhood and patriotism.
Upon the liberation of France, the French cinema immediately
responded with a Committee for the Liberation of French Cinema, which condemned
and penalized those directors that portrayed the German cause during the war.
Initially French films primarily dealt with war documentaries, trauma from the
war, and the glory of the Resistance.
In 1946, the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC)
was founded to extend the work of the COIC. This laid the foundation for a modern
film industry establishing some state control, box-office levy, and help to
non-commercial cinema.
Despite all of the new directions, soon problems reappeared.
The Blum-Byrnes Trade Agreement of 1946 established a generous import quota
to American films as part of a settlement to help with the French war debt to
the US. However, by the early 50s, French film production had regained an average
of 100-120 feature films a year which stablized the industry. French films continued
to gain more dominance in the French market, reaching its peak in 1957 as television
was introduced.
The late 50s saw a new era of de Gaulle's modern France
and a greater stablization to the film industry. As audience numbers declined,
French studios held their ground during the growth of television in the 60s
due to this stabilization. A new pattern of international co-production became
common that increased the marketability while dividing the expenses.
The 70s expanded co-productions into the standard with
expanded marketing to export films to the European market as well as the middle
east and Asian markets.
Currently France has a population of 59.3 million and
has approximately 4900 theater screens.
