The Invention Of Cinema Essay Research Paper

The Invention Of Cinema Essay, Research Paper

In what ways can the innovation of film be seen to reflect the tensenesss and struggles of bend of the century America?

Cinema reflects events of the clip, movies are based around events of the epoch and concern events and personal businesss that the money paying public are interested in and can associate to. The film of the yesteryear, and to some extent that of today, was based around economic calamities, wars, revolutions, counterrevolution, colonisation, and decolinization. ( Landy ) In the old ages following 1900, American film devising became a major industry, which had a broad influence over an ever-expanding audience. Cinema had become a new art turning out of scientific discipline and the older humanistic disciplines. ( Jacobs ) Film and film had grown in America beyond anyone s belief or apprehension, traveling images were being woven into the really fabric of day-to-day life. ( Christie ) Film emerged as one of the first mass-produced cultural signifiers of the 20th century.

( Kellner ) Although the American movie industry was developed as an amusement industry, it still had really powerful links to American society of the clip and the movies were non coy about covering with the more seamy facets of metropolis life and offense. ( Christie )

In order to vibrate to audience frights, dreams

and experiences, the Hollywood genres of the time had to deal with the conflicts and problems in American society, and attempt to assure audiences that all central problems could be solved within existing institutions. (Kellner) However, many films at the turn of the century were so brutal in their portrayal of society and its problems that it worried and even scared some viewers, in Biograph s A Legal Hold Up (1902) a policeman beats up and robs a prosperous citizen in broad daylight, while no passers-by intervene. (Christie) However, are we to take examples such as this as the truth; that turn of the century America was in a state of near anarchy with examples of such lawlessness being made by those who supposedly upheld the law? There are other cinematic examples of such behaviour shown in one of a number of films from the collection, The Downward Path, which shows an innocent country girl inexorably dragged into big city vice. (Christie) These films and others, which depicted similar events, touched a nerve in America, as the US was anxious about corruption in society, which was shown perfectly by the actions of the police officer in A Legal Hold Up. The cinema at the turn of the century also reflected a real and persistent struggle to square Protestant morality with aggressive morality. (Christie)