April 3, 2007

Edison Films

One of the most interesting things about the early cinema is that the stories haven't really changed. They have the romance, the comedy, the action, the sci-fi and history. The most interesting one I thought was the film with the rich man looking for a wealthy bride. The first thing that went through my head was, "Oh this is the bachelor." I don't really watch the bachelor but I assume that the creators of the show thought that it was really unique and an interesting way to do TV. It's really not. Even though that film was fictional it's still the same idea. Lots of girls chasing after one guy=comedy.

Even though it's hard to watch an hour and a half of these films back to back it was still very interesting to see that while film and movies have evolved technologically the stories are similar. It shows that uniqueness is a hard thing to come by in the cinema.

2 comments:

jarryd meyer said...

It's very true, a lot of the gags, and standards that american cinema has for the films that it produces (primarily comedy films) have been the same since there the beginning of the movies. Furthermore, another aspect of early cinema, primarily in the edison's films, is becoming more and more popular in today's modern media. The early edison films allowed people to be voyeurs. Yes, there was something amazing about the movie camera invention, what with it being new and all, and learning about intermitant motion must have been something great for the time, but people enjoy watching other people do things, be it sex or something as simple as a sneeze. In this desire to watch, that is found in most humans, is part of the reason that people of the time enjoyed the nickelodens, and perhaps why the films can still have enjoyable aspects in today media viewing culture.

Rachel Playe said...

It's as if we haven't gotten used to the fact that we can project images of ourselves on huge screens. It's like a mirror that has a time laps, only over time we can manipulate it to do things we can't even do in real life. The black and white films in which they made the dress turn beautiful colors is an expression that might not have been captured if preformed live.