It will probably come as a surprise to learn that the great majority of films produced between the beginnings of the cinema and the outbreak of the First World War were endowed with colour. According to the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, the fact that non‐specialised audiences think of early or silent films as being in black and white is largely the result of the preservation strategies implemented by film archivists. It is suggested that three factors may contribute to this cultural bias:
- 1.
a large number of films made after 1920 were in black and white, thus reinforcing the belief that all cinema of the past was in black and white;
- 2.
archivists restored their most ancient holdings through duplicates in black and white partly because of the prohibitive costs involved in colour preservation and partly out of the (legitimate) belief that a black and white print had a much longer life span; and
- 3.
an assumption that early colour techniques were not sophisticated enough to justify the effort to reproduce them for modern audiences.
The “early cinema” in this encyclopedia refers to the first 20 to 25 years of the cinema's emergence, or the early 1890s to the middle 1910s. The pre‐cinema period is also covered in order to describe apparatuses and inventors as well as exploring the cultural, philosophical, and socio‐economic contexts within which the cinema was to emerge. The early decades cover at least two overlapping periods; the “cinema of attractions”, not so much storytelling but shock, surprise, and amazement which reflects the fairground type of exhibition; and the transition to a cinema more familiar to modern audiences and what would become the American model of “classical Hollywood” cinema.
The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema is a one‐volume reference work of over 800 pages covering all aspects of the early cinema. It covers the technological and industrial developments, the techniques of film production, the actors and filmmakers of the time, and the changing modes of representation and narration, as well as the social and cultural contexts within which early films circulated, including topics such as distribution, exhibition, and audience. Beyond the USA and Europe, the encyclopedia also looks at the wider international picture, including those regions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central America where filmmaking may have been relatively undeveloped but cinema‐going was significant. It gives consideration to who actually made up the audiences for early cinema, what was the use value of going to the movies – for pleasure, distraction, education, communality or sociality – and what was its impact on spectators for the social construction of identity or subjectivity, particularly given a historical context of heightened nationalism and growing mass consumption in Europe and North America. It also presents information from the “revisionist” history of early cinema, with its focus on the changing nature of film distribution and exhibition and changing patterns of reception.
The encyclopedia contains nearly 1,000 entries which were commissioned from 150 internationally recognised specialists in their field, including a sizeable UK contingent. The book is arranged in an A‐Z format with entries ranging in length from short factual articles to full essays on key issues, people, practices, and phenomena. These are all cross‐referenced with the longer sections including details of further reading. As well as the full index, bibliography, and clearly laid out list of the contributors with their academic affiliations, the encyclopedia really benefits from the thematic entry list which provides a very useful guide through the book.
This hardback encyclopedia is beautifully bound to the extent that it will lie flat at almost any part of the book without the pages springing back. The paper stock has a lovely smooth feel. The pages are laid out in a traditional two‐column reference work format with white space utilised to give an aesthetically well‐balanced appearance. The 132 monochrome illustrations are well produced and show great detail. There is a marvellous photograph of Theatre Row, Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia taken in 1910 showing the Lubin and Bijou theatres with the electric lights blazing. One can make out the different hats on the tiny figures of theatre patrons, and finally, the great symbolism of a horse and carriage going out of the picture's right‐hand corner as a motor car enters from the left‐hand. Marvellous! Other illustrations include advertisements, programmes, tickets, stars such as Mary Pickford in The New York Hat (1912), a frame still from Quo Vadis? (1913) and many others.
The editor of this work is Richard Abel, Robert Altman Collegiate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Michigan, whose love of and enthusiasm for his subject shines clearly through this work. He is careful to establish, in the Introduction, what he sees as the book's limitations. He points out that, however successful he has been in making the book broadly representative, it is inevitable that it will seem to favour North America and Europe. This is because cinema, initially, was so predominant in these regions, and it is also where cinema studies as an academic discipline have been most institutionalised. He also adds the proviso that it has been impossible to include or adequately cover every country or region, every company or “pioneer”; indeed, it is just not possible to cover everything.
Early films were not made just for entertainment. During the period of the early cinema many religious films were produced and one of the most pro‐film Christian organizations was the Salvation Army. The Australian branch made Soldiers of the Cross (1900) and the British branch had established a cinematography department in 1903 under Frederick Cox. The department sent a cameraman, Henry Howse, to film the tour of the Holy Land by General Booth, Leader of the Salvation Army in 1905.
The scientific community, after initial suspicion, explored the new media and from June 1898 on, Parisian surgeon Eugene‐Louis Doyen had several of his operations filmed, including a famous separation of the Siamese twins, Doodica and Radica, which caused a scandal in 1902. The medical films were intended for use in teaching but some found their way into commercial venues where brutal images were seen by uninitiated audiences. British science educator F. Martin Duncan was apparently the first with the idea of coupling a moving picture camera and a microscope and in 1903 he made a series of short films called The Unseen World with such titles as Anatomy of the Water Flea, and Circulation of the Blood in a Frog's Foot. These were so successful that they were presented at the Alhambra Theatre in London.
Pornographic films were produced and distributed as soon as moving pictures came to exist. In fact, scenes of explicit sexuality had been manufactured in large supply before the cinema from animated silhouettes to zoetrope strips to magic lantern slides. The first official announcements of films restricted to adult viewers were made by Pathe‐Freres, whose 1902 catalogue includes a section dedicated to “scenes of erotic character”. One of the 1904 titles was A Parisian Lady Goes to Bed but nothing explicit was visible in these films and the appeal to the male spectators was more in line with erotic French postcards of the time. Unfortunately the social stigma, conditions under which they were made and presented, and objections about their “screening” have ensured the virtual disappearance of pornographic films from early cinema history.
However, in picking out these fascinating snippets, this reviewer is in danger of conveying a distorted impression of this excellent work by sensationalising it. It is definitely not a populist work of amazing facts about the early cinema. It is a scholarly, academic, and authoritative book, edited to form a consistent style. The language is not populist, but neither is it heavy or dry. It is full of fascinating facts, but the reader will need to dig down to find them.
The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema is well recommended as an invaluable and fascinating resource for students and researchers interested in the history of cinema, as well as others who simply want to learn more about the early years of the world's most influential art form.
