|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Gaumont: A Century of French Film
| Article
# : |
11985 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1994 |
2,776 Words |
| Author
: |
Lloyd Eby
Lloyd Eby has worked in film and video since 1970 and has
published articles on the interaction of film and religion.
With René Berger, he coedited the book Art
and Technology (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1986).
He is assistant senior editor in the Currents in Modern
Thought
section of The World & I. |
What, if anything, makes French films different from non-French--especially American--ones? The question is prompted by seeing most of the Gaumont retrospective in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. Gaumont--the world's oldest extant film company, established by Leon Gaumont in France in 1895--will celebrate its centennial in 1995, and it has assembled a collection of more than fifty films that spans its entire history, including shorts, features, classic silent serials, and actualites (newsreels). This series is touring the United States, Canada, and France in 1994 and 1995.
Gaumont began producing pictures in early 1897, at first for the early picture arcades such as those of the Lumiere brothers, and after 1905, for the first motion picture theaters. In these early years from 1897 to about 1910, film producers, directors, and performers were learning the basic grammar of film--such as various types of shots and framing, and different speeds of action--and also learning how to combine these elements into what we might call film-phrases, film-sentences, and film-paragraphs. Most films made in these years show the characteristic hammy overacting of early silent films, a form of acting that was likely taken over from the theater of the time.
One way to make a movie is to film real life--the method of the Lumiere brothers and of newsreels and all kinds of documentary films.
A second method, having its roots in theater and drama, is to act out scenes--to create pseudo-real life--in front of the camera. This came to be used for the vast majority of all films, especially those designed to be shown to paying audiences. Alice Guy, Leon Gaumont's
... (2000 of 16983 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
