Abstract
Was Méliès striving to establish a specific medium with his films, or was he taking a stand against it? Are there alternative approaches to experiencing cinema? What if we reconsidered the notion that narrative and attraction are opposing terms in the way we have come to conceive them? Can we genuinely draw a clear line between fiction and non-fiction? These are just a few of the questions that New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences grapples with.
As mentioned on the homepage of DOMITOR (the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema), the history of early cinema has been a ‘long’ one. This is not only because of the continuous stream of new discoveries, the dissemination of fresh ideas, or the refutation of widely accepted conceptions, but also because these developments have significant implications for the future of cinema itself. Consider, for instance, the genre of found footage films, which often involve filmmakers collaborating with film archives – a practice heavily inspired by the legacy of early film history and already contributing to the future(s) of filmmaking. Gustav Deutsch's Film ist… series or, in a more mainstream context, Peter Jackson's 2018 film They Shall Never Grow Old come to mind.
In 1978, an International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) conference held in Brighton marked a pivotal moment in film historiography, ushering in a new chapter with a paradigmatic shift and leading to the emergence of New Film History. The New Film History emphasised interconnections and gaps between various media and the exploration of uncharted territory that had previously been largely ignored, opening up new avenues for research. Since then, early film history has continued to expand, finding its way into graduate programmes, conferences, and scholarly events regularly organized by networks such as DOMITOR, the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) and History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception (HoMER), to name just three. Publications on the subject have also grown substantially.
Forty years after the FIAF conference, in November 2018, the ‘Rethinking the Attractions–Narrative Dialectics: New Approaches to Early Cinema’ conference held in Ghent took a step in the same spirit. As the title suggests the event sought to revisit the famous concept ‘attractions–narrative’, a binary which was formulated in the mid-1980s by the early film historians, Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault to argue that storytelling was not particularly central to early films but it was rather attractions, a term borrowed from Eisenstein, hence the much-used term, ‘cinema of attractions’. The ground-breaking concept spread rapidly and found worldwide usage; however, it was later critically revised by some scholars such as Charles Musser on the grounds that attractions and narrative, in one way or another, blended into each other.
New Perspectives on Early Cinema History which came out of the conference suggests a somewhat wider scope. The book consists of three parts that reveal the logic of its organisation and the editors’ approach to their subject matter. It should be noted that, to put it very roughly, in this book the attractions–narrative binary is transformed into various triadic sets. All this is explained and justified in the ‘Introduction’ chapter. The ‘Introduction’ by the editors, Mario Slugon and Daniël Biltereyst, does not simply describe the structure of the book and inform the readers about its framework and methodology, but also gives an insightful account of the history of early film history and historiography.
The first part, ‘Concepts and theories’, brings up a series of theoretical reconceptualisations, all of which challenge the paradigm and offer ways to improve it. André Gaudreault, for example, who pioneered together with Tom Gunning in devising the attractions–narrative dialectics, now brings forth the notion of ‘remediation’ in his analysis of Méliès's films with regard to their contribution to the formation of cinema as a specific signifying practice. Next, inspired by Charles Musser's concept of ‘cinema of contemplation’, Valentine Robert adds ‘illustration’ as visual transcription to the ‘attractions–narrative’ binary. Departing from the famous first kissing scene on the screen, Gert Jan Harkema introduces ‘presence’ as ‘catching experience in the act of making the world available’. Finally, Casper Tybjerg stresses the importance of concepts ‘absorption’ and ‘imagination’ in the press reception of early films.
The second part, ‘Approaches, methods, and sources’, opens with Mario Slugan questioning the border between fiction and non-fiction and introducing the concept of the ‘philosophy of imagination’. Danae Kleida introduces a digital annotation platform, Mediathread, and embarks on an exemplary analysis of how gestures stood in for language in early cinema. Anna Kovalova sheds light on an understudied area: Russian film librettos, which are particularly useful when the films are lost.
The third part, ‘Audiences and experiences’, takes up relatively more specific topics. Paul S. Moore, for example, defines narrative cinema as a separate attraction and focuses on newspaper publicity in the case of Archie L. Shepard's travelling show. Agata Frymus provides a vivid picture of Harlem's social texture in the 1900s and examines African American cinema-going. Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk's triadic set consists of attraction–narration–performance; they analyse the reception of two Lumière films in different contexts and discuss their implications in teaching early cinema. Finally, Daniël Biltereyst gives an analysis of a cinema fire in Belgium in 1912, describing a different kind of ‘audience panicking’.
The book questions the established notions of early cinema and points to new frontiers, but it is not an attempt to sever ties with the achievements of preceding research. However, it does not hesitate to challenge the common parlance of early film history. To give just one example, ‘to accompany’ is widely used to denote performing live music for silent film screenings. Since it positions live performance as secondary to the film being screened, to undo the hierarchy, it is suggested that ‘surround’ be used instead.
Although it covers highly theoretical issues and successfully meets the challenges of history and historiography, New Perspectives on Early Cinema History is very accessible not only for scholars and students of film, but also for laypersons with an interest in film and history. A main virtue of the book is that it is self-reflexive and self-questioning and, overall, it does not posit conclusions but proposals and suggestions which opens space for further debates and explorations. New Perspectives establishes the fact that early film history is definitely not a thing of the past.
