Encyclopaedia Britannica Films

“ Let us stray for a frivolous moment into the realms of art, since the word art is claimed for what we know as the "film." This discovery went as it pleased for a few years in the hands of inventors and commercial agents. In these few years such a raging taste for cowboy, crime, and Chaplin films has been developed, that a Commission which has just been sitting on the matter finds that the public will not put up with more than a ten per cent. proportion of educational film in the course of an evening's entertainment. ”

“ This all means that cinematography has become a gigantic industry, giving employment to hundreds of actors, photographers, and the army of men and women engaged in making and showing the films, to say nothing of the thousands of picture theatres that have sprung up in every city and town in the country. ”

“ A clearer conception, a more sensible interpretation of the wonderful things around us, is shown than could ever be conveyed by a professor’s treatise, or an artist’s impressions.
Preservation of the Film.
Libraries in general have failed to appreciate the educational value of the cinematograph during the growth of the last fifteen years. For years now the National Board of Censorship has been urging the development of the use of educational films. ”

“ This contemporary form of amusement is such an accepted 59 part of modern life that we hardly need to read the books about the cinema by Allerdyce Nicoll, Lewis Jacobs, Maurice Bardèche and others to understand “the Rise of the American Film.” Personally I go to the movies to escape from routine and from painful thoughts of our own times. Occasionally I allow myself to be educated about Steel or The River. I prefer to industrial films or films of social problems like lynching, prison conditions, housing, films with biographies of great historical characters: Pasteur, Zola, Rembrandt. ”

“ Since the end of World War II the film industry has grown to a great extent. Like other instruments of the media, films are chosen for their propagandistic value; however, since the advent of television, fewer people have attended films. ”

“ Motion pictures are still changing so much, in their development from year to year, that any survey of this vast, chaotic new industry is in danger of being out-of-date long before its time. With this in mind, I have attempted to stress those phases of movie-making, and of the story-telling that underlies each photoplay, that do not change. A generation hence, the fundamental problems confronting the makers—how to show real people, doing interesting things in interesting places—will be the same. ”

“ The children of to-day are such habitual Cinema-goers that too much cinematograph is to be discouraged, but the film used in proper perspective in the schools will excite and increase interest in science, industry, art, geography, travel, history, biography and literature. ”

“ This book gives us the long look, the authentic perspective. It may tend to slow down our glibness, to clothe our fancy with fact, and to deflate any notion that the movies belong exclusively to our own well-publicized 20th Century. ”

“ The modern cinematograph was rendered possible by the invention of the celluloid roll film (employed by Marey in 1890) , on which the serial pictures are impressed by instantaneous photography, a long sensitized film being moved across the focal plane of a camera and exposed intermittently. In one apparatus for making the exposures a cam jerks the film across the field once for each picture, the slack being gathered in on a drum at a constant rate. ”

“ Conventions of film, as a medium with its own characteristics, started to be experienced relatively recently, in the broader context of a human praxis in the process of freeing itself from the constraints of literacy. Films are an appropriate medium for integration of the visual, the aural, and motion. People can record on film some of their most intricate experiences, and afterwards submit the record to fast, slow, entire, or partial evaluation. The experience of filming is an experience with space and time in their interrelationship. ”

“ When a piece of fiction—no matter whether it be a short story, a serial or a novel—appears, an endeavor should be made to arrange with a film concern that the photoplay should appear simultaneously with it in fiction form. ”

“ It is rumoured that Cinema playwrights, following the example of certain well-known stage dramatists, are likely in future, in addition to the film representations, to publish their works in novel form. ”

“ Once the picture has been constructed, prepared with subjects and sub-titles, and has been submitted to the Board of Censorship, it must be extensively advertised, circulated amongst exchanges throughout the kingdom, and the commands of the public exhibitors awaited. All these complicated processes have emanated from the regular daily demand of the people for entertainment, not necessarily enlightenment. The manufacturers know the percentage of film subjects demanded, whether tragic, thrilling, artistic, humorous, or educational. ”

“ The possibilities of making a motion picture at comparatively little expense were first drawn to public attention five years ago when two young men, both of whom have become well-known directors, made a saleable photoplay in their own back yard. These boys had many theories about what a movie should and should not be, but they could never find a company willing to give their theories a trial. ”

“ A film is best inspected by rewinding it slowly from one reel onto another, gripping it with a gentle pressure, and allowing it to run between the fingers. This method will catch all splices and also all split films. ”

“ The first thing that will make a difference is knowledge. As soon as you and Henry Jones and Dug McSwatty know enough about the movies to avoid going to the picture shows that are not worth seeing—and know how to tell whether or not particular pictures are worth seeing when you see them—the picture makers will give you more of the sort of films you’d really like to see. ”

“ That a work based upon the more personal aspects of the movie’s evolution can be both readable and timely has been proved of late by the success achieved in book form by the personal reminiscences of one of the leading producers in the motion picture realm. ”

“ In film production the British would create an improvement in their films if some of the American methods were copied. It is the latter’s custom to secure the presence of the author throughout the whole period of production, and his critical judgment and suggestions ensure the exact reproduction of the film as written.
All films are not a failure, far from it. Several British films have been excellently produced, and the plot has remained as originally written. This is what the reading public requires and looks for, especially when they are familiar with the story. ”

“ And every film will have this artistic and commercial success which glows with real passion because it has been wrung from powerful feeling. The art, the very soul of the motion picture, cherishes no desire for subtle, intellectual form or forms. ”

“ Unfortunately, the feeling against the moving picture has not been entirely eliminated, despite its tremendous popularity. Once an energetic Board of Education realises the possibilities of cinematography as a supplement to the information conveyed by text-books and manuals, the film manufacturers will hasten to supply the demand thus created. ”

“ If you have been reading these pages about motion pictures carefully, you have probably by this time been impressed with two things: First, that the movies are tremendously important—enormous, fascinating, influential, popular forces, capable of improving, or injuring, our entire American civilization ”

“ Isn’t it a pretty important thing for us to know something about the best movies, and the worst, and why they are the best, or the worst? And how they might be better?—So that we can encourage the right films, and censure the ones that ought to be21 censured, and do it intelligently, playing our part in improving one of the biggest influences that this country or any other has ever seen? ”

“ Records vary in content, with full ones including complete production details, cast and crew, awards, reviews, plot summaries, technical specifications, merchandising details, and formats; much of the information is helpfully hyperlinked. Of particular importance to literature researchers is the ability to retrieve full details of films based on a literary work. Although much information is supplied by users, IMDb offers the fullest, most accessible guide to films worldwide. ”

“ Every branch of the history is represented, and the collection may be said to be almost complete, and includes books, papers lanterns, slides, projectors, films, illuminants, moving pictures, and optical illusions. ”

“ Because a rare and beautiful story has been transferred to the screen without harm or loss and because in it its director gave one of the most eloquent answers ever given to those who claim there are no artists in the art of picture producing. ”

“ It is through learning something about the distributing and exhibiting angles of the motion picture business that we can find out why pictures can’t be so very much better than they are to-day, under present conditions. ”

“ Although the original compilation is limited to American films, the continuations include foreign ones exhibited in the United States and extend coverage to novelizations. Organized by film title, each entry consists of a brief note on the source of the script, screenplay, or idea. Indexed by authors. Although many entries fail to record exact publication details or are frustratingly vague in identifying a source merely as “a story by” someone, no other work covers so many kinds of sources or as many movies. ”

“ Lists annually about 2,500 registrations for filmstrips and theatrical and nontheatrical motion pictures. Alphabetical arrangement by title, with a classified list arranged under headings which indicate the general nature or intended use of the films, a subject index for nontheatrical films, and an index of claimants, producing companies, sponsors, and authors. ”

“ While this volume advocates “direct action” against this class of film it is not intended unduly to emphasize the seamy side of the case. It is recognized to the full that there are many splendid films being “released” daily, and many managers are rendering a public service by “featuring” only the [15] best class of picture. These many admirable productions are to be commended, and it is for the public to encourage the producers by patronizing those houses where refinement is the rule, to the exclusion of the other brand. Cinemas are public educators. ”

“ You and I, and Dug and Henry, in the last analysis, are the bosses of the whole motion-picture industry. The movies are made for us. If we do not like the kind that is shown, the movie people will try to please us by showing another kind. ”

“ For it is to be remembered that the producer of a “film” is relatively more important than the producer of a “spoken drama.” He is always part, and sometimes whole, author of the play. He has to conceive the successive phases of the action in detail, and to conceive them in terms of photography. Even with some one else’s play as a datum he has, I take it, to invent a good deal. For while the “spoken drama” can only show selected, critical moments of life, the “silent stage” aims at continuity and gives you the intervening moments. ”

“ Entries are accompanied by a list of writers or films discussed only when a title needs clarification. Although the introductory survey of basic issues involving the relationship between literature and film comments on numerous works, it is no substitute for annotations. Two indexes: scholars; subjects. Film as Literature is marred by the failure to annotate all entries and is restricted to English-language works; nevertheless, it is the best guide to scholarship on literature and film. ”

“ It is probably beyond dispute that the popular scientific film, treated in such a manner as is indicated in this chapter, is certain to command the approval of the public in the end. At the present moment the popular scientific cinematograph picture is in its infancy. It will be only through the perseverance of the scientist who has the happy faculty of amusing as well as entertaining a general audience that this class of film ever will have a vogue. ”

“ The base of the film is usually of a highly inflammable composition. Again, before the pictures are perfected, for public exhibition, the producer’s outfit should include highly perfected cameras, studios, staging, and star actors, and a search, often, for appropriate outdoor settings for the scenes to be enacted. The skilful direction of people and scenes to obtain illusions requires an expert at the business; for it necessitates a high grade of technical ability for the production of scenic, travel, and scientific pictures [57] with the minimum film waste. ”

“ The life of a film is usually from three to six months, though varying, of course, with the treatment in handling. “The Scientific American” gives credit for superiority to films of French make, and attributes their excellence to the many tests to which they are subjected to secure exact dimensions, adequate strength, and other properties. ”

“ The tendency towards this state of affairs, happily, is improving every day, for the cinematograph is appealing more and more to the cultured classes, who, after all, constitute its most substantial support. ”

“ In all quarters there is an increasing demand for films of prominent topical interest, either of general or local significance. The proprietors of picture palaces have discovered that no films draw better audiences than these. ”

“ A few full-length, artistic films are produced each year, and a greater number of short films and documentaries are completed annually. Often literary works are made into art films. Figures are not available as to the exact number of each type of film produced. ”