Lecture Two: Cinema of Attractions
8/30/2005

Cinema of Attractions: A term coined by film historian Tom Gunning to describe the earliest years of film, specifically 1895-1906. While Classical Hollywood cinema emphasizes storytelling, as we discussed in Lecture #1, a cinema of attractions emphasizes spectacle, visibility, and exhibitionism.

Along similar lines, other historians have used the terms “glance cinema” vs. “gaze cinema” to describe the distinction between early films and those later films that clearly fall into the category of classical Hollywood cinema.  Whereas “glance cinema” assumes that a film need not hold the viewer’s attention for an extended period of time, “gaze cinema” requires the undivided concentration of its spectators.

What is the time frame for this cinema of attractions? Dates are roughly 1895-1906. During these eleven or so years, two types of films predominate:

• “actuality” films such as the Lumiere brothers’ “The Arrival of a Train” (1895)
• films that flaunt their illusory power and exoticism, such as George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon and “The Untamable Whiskers”

Other , more specific features of “a cinema of attractions” include:

• Brevity
• Use of close-ups to showcase film’s interest in visibility rather than character development
• A vital relation to vaudeville
• Humor
• Trick photography and other special effects
• Featured in spaces that were meant to evoke the amusement park.

Pre-classical cinema, 1895-1917:

After 1907, Hollywood enters its transitional period, where there is a strong movement toward narrative in cinema. This culminated in 1913, with films like Traffic in Souls, which clearly possess so many of the features of Classical Hollywood cinema we discussed last Tuesday

For its sources, film now moves to the novel and to the legitimate theater rather than vaudeville. The look at the camera becomes taboo and the devices of cinema (such as the close-up) are transformed from playful tricks to elements of dramatic expression, entries into the psychology of character and the world of fiction.