landmark films as A Trip to the Moon(1902) and The
Impossible Voyage(1904).
Another early pioneer, Edwin S. Porter, was a
director working with Edison, who by 1903 had
established a relatively sophisticated approach to
narrative filmmaking in such pioneering films as
The Great Train Robbery(1903; 12 min.), which used
multiple camera positions, interior and exterior
settings, and crosscutting (intercutting) that made
it possible to depict parallel actions occurring
simultaneously. He also established the concept
that the shot was the basic structural unit of a
movie and pioneered the idea of continuity editing.
The Great Train Robberywas the first major mile-
stone in the development of the American narra-
tive film as well as the first “Western.”1908—1927: Origins of the Classical
Hollywood Style—The Silent Period
The “silent era” of film history is distinguished by
Edwin S. Porter’s and D. W. Griffith’s developments
in narrative form, the crystallization of the classical440 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
Méliès the magicianGeorges Méliès, who was by trade a
magician, took naturally to motion pictures, which are, first
and foremost, an illusion. He quickly understood that he
could make the camera stop and start (what we now call
stop-motion photography) and, with this technique, make
things vanish and reappear (sometimes in a new form). Like
all magicians, he reveled in fooling the public. In Long
Distance Wireless Photography(1908), Méliès plays the
inventor of a process for transmitting photographs from one
place to another and dupes his clients. When a man and
woman ask for a demonstration, he photographs them and,
behind them, projects unflattering images of them. Annoyed
at this deception, they try to destroy the studio, but are
chased away in a scene of slapstick comedy. Here, Méliès
shows a prophetic, but comic, insight into two events that
were decades away: the electronic transmission of
photographs and television. The action is staged for the
camera—just as if it were on a theater stage—and the movie,
which is nearly 6 minutes in length, tells a complete story.
The beginnings of cinematic narrativeRealizing that
they needed to tell stories, the early filmmakers began to
develop conventions of cinematic narrative. Among these
artists were Georges Méliès in France, G. A. Smith in England,
and Edwin S. Porter in the United States. In Life of an
American Fireman(1903) and The Great Train Robbery(1903),
Porter broke away from the prevailing step-by-step, one-shot-
one-scene editing of Méliès and invented an early form of
continuity editing in which he built a scene of shots that
seemed chronologically continuous from one shot to the next.
We make sense of this, as well as create meaning, by mentally
connecting the shots into a logical narrative. Porter also cuts
back and forth in time, showing simultaneous events taking
place in different locations. For example, the robbers begin
their heist by shooting and tying up a telegraph operator at a
train station, then board the next train, rob the passengers,
uncouple the engine, and head off. As they reach what they
think is safety, Porter cuts back to the telegraph office, where
(as shown here) a little girl, presumably the operator’s
daughter, discovers her father and revives him. Porter then
cuts directly to a barn dance, where the operator and the little
girl report what has happened. Porter then jumps ahead to
the outlaws and the final shoot-out, continuing to use ellipsis
when necessary to keep the action moving to the conclusion.