Modernity, World Wars and Dictatorships | 107in music halls, pub atmospheres were livelier. From 1896, cinematograph the-
atres emerged, particularly in the United States and France. Especially from
an international perspective, no linear development from the funfair film to
cinema can be made out (Brandt 1994: 89).
The cinema of silent film was actually far from soundless. Background
music was quite common and, depending on entry fee and establishment,
ranged from out-of-tune pianos to the orchestras that were characteristic of
picture palaces. Sound machines and film commentators also accompanied
the action and were particularly common in the early phases of the established
cinema. Most notably, the audience would often give vent to its feelings in a
lively manner and thus co-determine a film’s interpretation. Films in general
were aimed at eliciting a range of emotions from the audience. Advertise-
ments promised laughter, love and chills as well as patriotic elation, and the
darkened room made it easier to express feelings openly. The rumour that an
early recording of an approaching train by the Lumières caused panic among
its viewers is an idle legend circulated out of business interest (Loiperdinger
1996). However, its propagation points to the emotional effect intended by
film, which was to literally move its audience.
Although hardly examined as yet, viewer behaviour offers an intrigu-
ing cultural and socio-historical field of research for historians in particular.
Early films seem to have supported patriotic collectivisation to a large extent.
Whenever home troops or the monarch appeared on screen, German audi-
ences would leap from their seats, shout ‘bravo’ or sing. In similar fashion,
they would react with jeers at the sight of foreign powers: for example, clips
of Englishmen in the Boer Wars, which nationalistic societies tried to turn to
their advantage. The German Fleet Association thus proclaimed that the patri-
otic hymns accompanying their naval films could stir up even those with little
enthusiasm for the navy (Bösch, in Bösch and Borutta 2006: 220f.).
There is little reliable research on the social composition of audiences. Yet
certain differences are apparent in international comparisons. In the early days
of film, American and British theatregoers tended to belong to the lower or
lower-middle classes. In Japan, films were aimed towards the wealthier classes
quite early on, as they were embedded in the culture of theatre (Sklar 2002;
Abel 2005: 45–47). For a long time, analyses of German audiences were
restricted to contemporary discussions and an early dissertation on cinema
audiences by Emilie Altenloh (1914), according to which women, workers and
young people represented the largest proportion of theatregoers. However, the
basis of Altenloh’s work is empirically insufficient and thus cannot be regarded
as representative (Filk and Ruchatz 2007). The ostensible ‘cinema addiction’ of
women, children and the ‘masses’ was rather the result of moral apprehensions
and middle-class barriers. The patriotic use of films in bourgeois fellowships
in itself indicates that men from the lower-middle and middle classes were