Considering that filmmakers in the silent days probably never
anticipated the longevity of their product - not least through
academic discussion and scrutiny -, and also considering how much
flexibility was allowed in how and in which order films and programmes
were compiled and shown, I guess they would grant present-day forms of
screening some leeway. I doubt exact viewing conditions could be
reproduced, though students would obviously benefit from knowing in
which ways cinema-going and the experience of film was different.
Henry
> Quoting "Frank, Michael" <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> . . . if my
>> purpose in this silent cinema course is to examine how moving
>> images can
>> work to communicate meaning in the absence of spoken dialogue, and
>> if my
>> circumstances [shared, i venture, by most of us] do not permit me to
>> provide a benshi, how honest a representation of a film like this one
>> can i offer? . . . if in some sense the film was made presupposing a
>> benshi, is showing it without one a significant misrepresentation?
>
> I find this a highly intriguing subject, and I wonder if I might
> broaden it
> a bit to include other extra-textual sources of narrative
> information upon
> which silent-era cinema audiences might have drawn...
>
> I am currently working on a project that examines narrative films made
> around 1916 and 1917 that dealt with birth control and/or abortion.
> The
> productions that I have been focusing on are the Lois Weber-Phillips
> Smalley
> films _Where Are My Children?_ and _The Hand That Rocks the Cradle_,
> as well
> as Margaret Sanger's _Birth Control_ and an unrealized but
> reasonably well-
> documented project developed by Alice Guy-Blache and Rose Pastor
> Stokes.
> One of my incidental discoveries relates to the issue at hand; it
> was not at
> all unusual for newspapers to publish press releases that gave away
> major
> details of the films' stories. These documents are loaded with what
> we
> today call "spoilers," and I am wondering if the expectation among
> movie
> companies, theater managers, and audience members back then was that
> the
> spectators were to have a fairly strong sense of the films' narratives
> before they set foot into the theaters.
>
> Say, for example, that _Where Are My Children?_ was booked to play
> in a
> given theater for seven days. During each of those days, the local
> newspaper(s) would publish a press release that would reveal key
> developments in the film's story. I speculate that a typical
> spectator
> about to see this film would know ahead of time that a young woman
> dies as a
> result of a botched abortion and that the wife of the film's central
> character (played by the redoubtable Tyrone Power) has had abortions
> without
> informing him. This latter situation is the film's *main*
> revelation --
> indeed, it prompts the husband to ask the titular question -- yet it
> is
> "pre-revealed" in the press releases.
>
> Knowing that newspapers were so important as sources of information
> back
> then, it seems to me that audience members would have difficulty
> avoiding
> these press releases (if indeed they wanted to avoid them). These
> items
> were standard fare in the newspapers; in a few cases, they were
> published on
> the papers' front pages.
>
> I suspect that, in some instances, audiences used these documents to
> help
> them make sense of movies that had been severely truncated as a
> result of
> censorship. A city or state censorship board might demand the
> excision of
> several critical scenes, and the ensuing "cuts" might render some
> situations
> or character actions as incomprehensible. The press releases might
> thus
> enable spectators to "fill in the blanks" created by the removal of
> certain
> key moments.
>
> The widespread presence of spoiler-laden press releases doesn't seem
> to have
> diminished audience enthusiasm for the films. _Where Are My
> Children?_ in
> particular was an incredibly popular film -- it played for weeks if
> not
> months in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and many other
> cities and towns. (In fact, I just learned that it played at London's
> Philharmonic Hall for three solid months in 1917 but without benefit
> of a
> permit from the British Board of Film Censors.) The general
> situation does
> make me wonder, though, if audiences entered movie theaters with
> something
> resembling a fatalistic perspective -- i.e., they would know that
> certain
> "fixed" situations and events would occur in the world about to unfold
> before them.
>
> Sorry for rambling on so, but this general topic has given me
> considerable
> pause. It raises some interesting questions for those of us who teach
> silent-era film: Should we prepare and distribute similar documents
> to our
> students before the screenings? Or would such narrative summaries
> distance
> the students too much from the films and ruin the sense of discovery
> and
> engagement that we would want them to have? I would be grateful for
> your
> thoughts on any of the above; citations for relevant research or
> theory
> would be especially welcome.
>
> --Marty Norden
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Martin F. Norden
> Communication Dept., 409 Machmer Hall norden(at)comm.umass.edu
> University of Massachusetts-Amherst fax: 413 545-6399
> Amherst, MA 01003 USA vox: 413 545-0598
> Home page: http://people.umass.edu/norden
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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