An Introduction to Film

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy), innovative direc-

tors (Mack Sennett and Hal Roach), and such

enduring silent movies (shorts, series, and fea-

tures) as Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) and

Keaton’s The General(1926).

Other notable films produced in this period

include Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North

(1922), regarded as the first significant documen-

tary film. The art of animation progressed in the

hands of such artists as Otto Messmer (the Felix

the Cat series), Walt Disney, who made his first car-

toons in 1922, and Max and Dave Fleischer, who

experimented with color and sound in the early

1920s and whose most endearing character was

Betty Boop. Benefiting from Griffith’s enormous

influence, other filmmakers made improvements in

design, lighting, cameras and lenses, the use of

color, special effects, and editing equipment. Noth-

ing, of course, would be more important than the

experiments with sound that led to the complete

transformation of the movie industry after 1927. In

the meantime, however, international develop-

ments were influencing film history.

1919—1931: German Expressionism

During part of the period just discussed, Eastern

and Western Europe were engulfed in chaos. The

First World War (1914–18), in which many millions of

people died, pitted the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy,

and the United States against Germany, Austria-

Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. (The

The first female directorAmong early filmmakers, Alice
Guy Blaché stands out as the first female director in film
history. Born in France, where she worked with the Gaumont
Film Company, she came to the United States shortly after
1907, founding her own studio and making dozens of
narrative films, most of which are lost. Making an American
Citizen(1912; 16 min.) is unremarkable in its theatrical staging
and acting but is well photographed and edited. What’s most
important is its outspoken feminist message. It tells the story
of Ivan and his wife, new Russian emigrants. Ivan believes in
the Old World custom of wife abuse. In this shot, a well-
dressed New Yorker threatens Ivan when he catches him
beating his wife (note the Statue of Liberty in the
background). This and other encounters with liberated
American males (including a judge who sentences him to
prison) convince him to love and respect his wife. With the
happy ending, he is, as the title card proclaims, “Completely
Americanized.” Guy Blaché was not only ahead of her time as
a film director, but also highly optimistic in her views about
American male-female relationships.

The Birth of a NationThe turning point in D. W. Griffith’s

great epic (1915) comes in the middle of the movie, as the

title card says: “And then, when the terrible days were over

and a healing time of peace was at hand... came the fated

night of April 14, 1865.” The scene is Ford’s Theatre in

Washington, D.C., where a gala performance is being held to

celebrate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender. In this shot,

President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln enter and greet the

enthusiastic audience. Moments later, he is assassinated,

ending Part I, “War,” and opening Part II, “Reconstruction,” a

saga of Southern white racism that is the most controversial

part of the movie.

A SHORT OVERVIEW OF FILM HISTORY 443