History of cinema

The first step towards cinema was made in the 15th-17th centuries, when the “magic lantern” was developed - a camera obscura (besides, the shadow theater in China and Japan had previously appeared, and the principle of creating an image through a narrow opening was known in antiquity). The term “camera obscura” itself appeared at the end of the 15th century, and the corresponding experiments were carried out by Leonardo da Vinci . The magic lantern for projecting images on a vertical screen became widely known in the 17th century. In simplification, it was a box with a magnifying tube and a lamp inside. Behind this lamp there was a reflector-reflector, between the pipe and the box there was a slot where a picture was drawn with ink. The image was static. ^[one]

The next step towards cinema was made in 1830 by Michael Faraday and his friend Max Roger . All of Europe tried to invent a device to revive the drawing. Faraday's device was called phenakisciscope . A series of consecutive pictures was attached to the device. Previously, the scientist Joseph Plateau was engaged in the decomposition of motion into phases (for example, human movement). When Faraday received these works into his hands, he had very little before the completion of the phenakisciscope. As a result, it became possible to create a moving picture (but not a real image) lasting several seconds.

The third step took place in 1877 with the invention of chronophotography . It became possible thanks to the work of Louis Daguerre and Joseph Niepce who developed the wet collodion process with a sufficiently high photosensitivity, but requiring the preparation of photographic material immediately before the shooting. High sensitivity allowed to reduce the exposure time, without which the shooting of fast motion would be impossible.

In 1878, California Governor Leland Stanford and photographer Edward Maybridge conducted an experiment on the photo recording of the horse's canter. According to some data, Stanford argued with Maybridge on the topic “whether the horse tears all four legs off the ground or not at a gallop ,” according to others, he simply fulfilled the order of Stanford, who analyzed the movement of the horse. They installed along the treadmill for horses 12 cameras placed in special light-proof booths. Assistants in the booths at the signal whistle simultaneously began to prepare photographic plates for shooting ^[2] . As soon as all the cameras were ready, a horse was produced on the track, which galloped along the white wall opposite the cameras. The shutters of all the cameras were driven by ropes stretched across the track: the horse tore them apart, alternately launching cameras ^[3] . As a result, each of the cameras shot a separate phase of the horse's movement on a white wall background, emphasizing the silhouette. This was the first attempt to expand the movement into phases. Later, Maibridge increased the number of cameras to 24, and used the resulting images in the Zupraksiskop that he invented , which gave a moving image.

Photographing the movements of animals and humans is the main area of ​​interest of Maybridge, and for his work in this area he received a grant from the University of Pennsylvania, with which he collaborated for three years. Eleven volumes published under the auspices of the university in 1887 - "The Movement of Animals: Electrophotographic Studies of the Successive Phases of the Movement of Animals" - contained all of Meibridge's photographic experiments from 1872 to 1885, and more than one hundred thousand photographs were placed in them. The photographs contained not only a domestic dog, a cat and a horse, but also a moose, deer, bear, raccoon, lion, tiger, monkey and bird.

In 1901, Maybridge published the book The Figure of a Man in Motion. He returned to England and almost no longer engaged in photography. He died in his hometown of Kingston on the Thames in 1904.

In the second half of the XIX century, photography became very popular, photo albums appeared in the houses, where people kept photos of friends and relatives. During this period, many patents on a “live” photograph were registered.

In 1876, French professor Etienne Mare invented the “photographic gun”. On a rotating octagonal photographic plate, the phases of the movement of animals and birds were recorded at a speed of up to 10 frames per second ^[4] . In the future, the inventor has created a more successful device called "chronophotographic camera", using a roll of photosensitive photo paper ^[5] . By upgrading his invention, Mare received a chronophotographic camera, which could use rolled non-perforated film.

In 1876, frame-by-frame cinema appeared in Paris. Its inventor is Emile Reno , and his invention is the optical theater. It was a magic lantern on a “large scale”: through the lantern there was a film with drawings printed on it. Thus, the theater of the frames shown sequentially on the big screen was obtained: 80, 90 or 100 pictures depending on the plot. Specially invited actor talked about action. The “film” consisted of a series of rollers for several seconds each, the lack of technology consisted in the impossibility of making long rollers. In the heyday of such theaters, there were about 12 in Paris.

An example of such a film: a young woman is reading a book, a young man approaches her, a dialogue begins. Then he takes her arm and leads her into the carriage, they are going to have lunch. Several meetings, then the wedding takes place. Altar. They are escorted to the steamer and sent on a honeymoon trip to Africa. Briefly shows their journey. Young spouses are returning, they are met by parents. Then a white frame is displayed. The girl is sitting on the bench again, she picks up a book - she dreamed everything.

In 1870, the American John Hayat invented celluloid , later used to produce flexible tape. After 7 years, the Russian photographer Ivan Boldyrev suggested using a photographic film on such a substrate ^[6] . In 1889, American inventor George Eastman , who had previously developed an effective industrial method of coating photo emulsion of "dry" photographic plates, launched a transparent film based on celluloid on the market. After that, it became possible to create an effective and durable film strip ^[1] .

Among all the other inventors who were looking for a way to create “moving pictures”, four people came closest to creating cinema. These are Thomas Edison , Brothers Lumiere and Joseph Timchenko .

In 1894, Thomas Edison transferred the development of cinema to William Dickson . Under the leadership of Edison Dickson invents the apparatus " kinetoscope ". This device was designed in such a way that the “moving pictures” that he demonstrated could be observed only by one person. In addition, in the kinetoscope, not frame-by-frame display was used, but constant scrolling - which created the impression of blurring the image of the viewer. On the basis of the kinetoscope, the first in the world film network was created, which brought 150 thousand dollars of profit in a year. The 35 mm film used for the kinetograph and the kinetoskop has survived without significant changes to our time. The aspect ratio of the 1.33: 1 frame was the standard before the sound movie appeared. ^[one]

In 1893, Russian engineer Iosif Timchenko invents a projector to watch a film ^[7] . It was the deputy chief engineer of the Baltic plant. After reading about the development of "live images", he also joined in the process of the invention (the history of this invention is known to us from the materials of Karen Shakhnazarov ). In 1893, Timchenko began to study this issue. He invented a camera shooting a rotating photographic plate, and also invented a projector and tried to remove half a dozen stories about his family and his children. After some time, he demonstrated his apparatus to the Russian scientific community. His merits were appreciated, but money for further development and study was not allocated; then he turned to the business community, which included the owner Putilov , the banker Dmitry Rubinstein , the owner of the shops Eliseev, the baker Fillipov and others. But even there his proposal did not meet with support. But Timchenko did not stop there, he turned to Savva Ivanovich Mamontov . At the beginning of 1894 , in the spring he came to Moscow and told about his inventions, and also stated his idea to Mamontov, to which he said: “It has a great future, but I have no money” ^[8] .

A year later , the Lumière brothers demonstrated their film screening technology - and went down in history as the creators of cinematography as a genre of art. The Lumière brothers were specialists in photo-recording technology for images and by 1895 were able to create a working cinema camera and make a few videos. At least five shows of 1895 are known: on March 22 in Paris at the Society for the Development of Domestic Industry; June 11 at the congress of photographers in Lyon; July 11 in Paris at a technical exhibition; November 10 in Brussels in the Belgian Association of Photographers and November 16 in the amphitheater of the Sorbonne. These shows were not available to everyone and were conducted primarily for specialists. However, on December 28, 1895 in the Indian Salon Grand Café in Paris on Boulevard des Capucines , the first film show was held for all comers for a fee. On the Boulevard des Capucines was shown several clips of 45-50 seconds in length, shot in the spring of 1895. Among them was the comedy story " Watered irrigator ", but there was no famous movie " Arrival of the train at La Ciotat ", which was shown later in 1896. Contrary to the legend, the audience did not try to leave their seats, seeing the train approaching them. ^[one]

The importance of the work of the Lumières was that their technology allowed shooting not in special premises, but in any place (including on the street), quickly preparing the film for viewing and showing it not to one viewer, but to the whole hall. ^[one]

Main article: Silent Cinema

The Lumiere brothers decided to build a business not on the sale of cine-cameras, but on creating a network of cinemas. The lumieres provided a franchise, and their partners organized film screenings, paid for the work of cinematographers and rental machines, bought film material (just Lumiere filmed several hundred one-minute tapes in three years). At first, the business went well (a cinema network was created all over the world), but after a few years, the brothers faced fierce competition, as the number of cinemas grew rapidly. In 1898, the Lumieres decided to stop their film activities and return to the improvement of photo technology (including the creation of a color photo). ^[one]

The duration of the films was increased by the invention of Woodwil Latham, who in 1897 created a mechanism that allows the use of a film of great length ( the Latham loop ). Previously, the length of the film was limited to 15 meters, in order to exclude its break in the tape drive mechanism; This was enough for no more than one minute of the show.

The Frenchman Georges Melies and the American David Griffith made a major contribution to the development of early cinema. Melies founded the first film studio (as a separate enterprise), where he developed technologies for creating special effects and shot the first fantastic film and the first horror film. Griffith developed the concept of "close-up" and became the founder of "Hollywood directing", creating a classic frame-plan-scene-episode. ^[one]

In Europe, before the First World War, the Pate Brothers film studio in Paris dominated, while in the US, the center of the film industry was originally New York. However, in the 1910s, more and more studios moved to the suburbs of Los Angeles, Hollywood , where there were good conditions for field shooting (plenty of sunshine and rare rainfall). In the early 1920s, eight of the largest film studios that controlled film production were already based in Hollywood. Five of them - Fox , Loew-MGM , Paramount , RCA and Warner Brothers - had their own cinema chains, and three more - Universal Pictures , Columbia Pictures and United Artists - did not have their own networks. ^[one]

Main article: Sound cinema

Main article: Color cinema

• List of pre-cinema devices for recording and playback of moving images

• Georges Sadoul . The general history of cinema / V. A. Ryazanov. - M.,: "Art", 1958. - T. 1. - 611 p.

• To the 80th anniversary of the invention of cinema (rus.) // " Technique of cinema and television ": the magazine. - 1975. - № 12 . - p . 64-67 . - ISSN 0040-2249 .

• Darovskiy V.P. “The History of Russian Cinema. Lecture course"

• The whole history of cinema from 1945 to 2017 in one table
• Photo story: Photography and movement (Rus.)