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1944, World War II,
the Normandy beaches.
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00:00:58,830 --> 00:01:02,004
A bunch of Allied troops
have just plunged underwater
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00:01:02,029 --> 00:01:04,677
to stop being shot by
German machine guns.
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00:01:13,284 --> 00:01:14,710
Above the water is hell.
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00:01:19,364 --> 00:01:21,444
Bullets tinkle on iron.
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00:01:24,357 --> 00:01:25,917
The camera's all over the place.
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00:01:27,157 --> 00:01:30,077
This scene was actually shot
on a peaceful beach in Ireland.
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00:01:32,144 --> 00:01:35,790
But director Steven Spielberg
brought bullets and blood
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00:01:35,823 --> 00:01:37,463
and bombs to that beach.
10
00:01:39,210 --> 00:01:40,737
A lie to tell the truth.
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00:01:44,784 --> 00:01:46,290
This is filmmaking.
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00:01:49,397 --> 00:01:52,164
The art of making us
feel that we're there.
13
00:01:58,697 --> 00:02:01,144
A young woman in Paris
has her eyes closed
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00:02:01,404 --> 00:02:04,044
to feel the warmth of
the sun on her face.
15
00:02:09,911 --> 00:02:12,326
At the same time, unseen by her,
16
00:02:12,577 --> 00:02:15,057
this little street drama takes place.
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00:02:20,204 --> 00:02:22,530
White light floods the screen,
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00:02:22,970 --> 00:02:25,024
links the young and old woman.
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00:02:25,391 --> 00:02:28,311
We want to reach into the screen
to help the old lady.
20
00:02:33,377 --> 00:02:35,084
This is filmmaking.
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00:02:35,471 --> 00:02:37,837
Cinema as an empathy machine.
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00:02:46,130 --> 00:02:48,543
The Normandy beach scene
and the French lady
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00:02:48,568 --> 00:02:51,997
show that in its use of
sound and light and truth,
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00:02:52,284 --> 00:02:54,124
cinema can be great.
25
00:02:55,844 --> 00:02:59,217
The story of film is
the story of that greatness.
26
00:03:00,344 --> 00:03:02,464
It's a story full of surprises.
27
00:03:02,744 --> 00:03:05,530
..you can rely...
28
00:03:06,010 --> 00:03:08,383
At first thought,
you'd guess that the story of film
29
00:03:08,408 --> 00:03:11,370
will be about scenes like
this one from Casablanca,
30
00:03:11,684 --> 00:03:14,250
full of yearning, story and stardom,
31
00:03:14,557 --> 00:03:16,763
because Casablanca is
a Hollywood classic.
32
00:03:16,990 --> 00:03:19,523
Ingrid Bergman's lit like a movie star.
33
00:03:19,810 --> 00:03:21,343
Highlights in her eyes.
34
00:03:21,524 --> 00:03:23,543
It's all filmed on a studio set.
35
00:03:28,997 --> 00:03:33,304
But films like Casablanca are too romantic
to be classical in the true sense.
36
00:03:34,690 --> 00:03:39,438
Instead, Japanese films like this
are the real classical movies.
37
00:03:41,317 --> 00:03:43,490
Romantic films are always in a rush
38
00:03:43,931 --> 00:03:49,104
but this moment in Record of a Tenement
Gentleman is a pause in the story.
39
00:03:56,924 --> 00:04:02,003
A cat, a chiming clock,
a kettle quietly coming to the boil,
40
00:04:02,444 --> 00:04:07,261
the almost square frame filled with
smaller squares and rectangles.
41
00:04:07,563 --> 00:04:09,783
Calm, emotionally restrained,
42
00:04:10,106 --> 00:04:12,176
like a little classical Greek temple.
43
00:04:14,924 --> 00:04:16,710
So Hollywood's not classical.
44
00:04:16,844 --> 00:04:18,390
Japan is.
45
00:04:25,870 --> 00:04:27,697
With all its talk of box office,
46
00:04:27,757 --> 00:04:31,690
the film business would have us
believe that money drives movies.
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00:04:37,157 --> 00:04:38,317
Ticket sales.
48
00:04:39,870 --> 00:04:42,990
Marketing, glamour,
premieres, red carpets...
49
00:04:44,357 --> 00:04:45,530
But it doesn't.
50
00:04:46,623 --> 00:04:48,390
Money doesn't drive cinema.
51
00:04:48,664 --> 00:04:51,310
The money men don't know
the secrets of the human heart
52
00:04:51,537 --> 00:04:53,677
or the brilliance of the medium of film.
53
00:04:54,657 --> 00:04:57,577
But if money doesn't drive
movies, what does?
54
00:04:58,290 --> 00:05:00,510
Here's the answer: ideas.
55
00:05:01,144 --> 00:05:05,044
Watch how a shot of bubbles
becomes an idea in movie history.
56
00:05:08,470 --> 00:05:13,677
This is a scene from British director
Carol Reed's 1946 movie Odd Man Out.
57
00:05:14,357 --> 00:05:15,784
A guy's in a mess.
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00:05:16,550 --> 00:05:20,177
He sees his troubles reflected in
the bubbles of a spilled drink.
59
00:05:21,324 --> 00:05:23,803
Now look at another close-up
of bubbles in a drink.
60
00:05:24,044 --> 00:05:27,537
Again, a character is in
trouble, self-absorbed.
61
00:05:29,930 --> 00:05:32,170
This film's director, Jean-Luc Godard,
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00:05:32,195 --> 00:05:34,735
knew and admired Carol Reed's work,
63
00:05:35,721 --> 00:05:37,895
so he was probably
thinking of Odd Man Out
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00:05:37,968 --> 00:05:41,438
when, twenty years later,
he filmed this moment.
65
00:05:44,810 --> 00:05:48,817
Now look at Martin Scorsese's
film, Taxi Driver, of 1976.
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00:05:53,550 --> 00:05:57,030
Scorsese loves the films of
Carol Reed and Jean-Luc Godard
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00:05:57,604 --> 00:06:01,510
and so used the same idea - that
a character looking into bubbles
68
00:06:01,770 --> 00:06:03,263
can see their own troubles,
69
00:06:03,553 --> 00:06:05,943
and also, somehow, the cosmos.
70
00:06:05,968 --> 00:06:07,510
A piece of Errol Flynn's bathtub.
71
00:06:10,351 --> 00:06:13,257
Visual ideas,
more than money or marketing,
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00:06:13,424 --> 00:06:15,697
are the real things that drive cinema.
73
00:06:19,844 --> 00:06:21,857
Innovating with those ideas.
74
00:06:23,917 --> 00:06:27,523
It doesn't always seem like
it, but sitting in the dark,
75
00:06:27,610 --> 00:06:32,283
it's images and ideas that excite
us, not money or showbiz.
76
00:06:33,223 --> 00:06:36,629
But if the business people
don't control film, who does?
77
00:06:37,364 --> 00:06:39,582
Who knows how to get inside your head?
78
00:06:40,430 --> 00:06:41,830
David Lynch does.
79
00:06:42,704 --> 00:06:44,270
And Baz Luhrmann does.
80
00:06:44,690 --> 00:06:48,397
And, in a different way,
Samira Makhmalbaf does.
81
00:06:49,957 --> 00:06:53,850
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
is a global road movie
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00:06:53,917 --> 00:06:57,763
to find the innovators,
the people and films that give life
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00:06:58,103 --> 00:07:01,423
to this sublime,
ineffable art form:
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00:07:01,524 --> 00:07:02,696
cinema.
85
00:07:06,117 --> 00:07:07,657
And here's a third surprise.
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00:07:08,564 --> 00:07:11,677
In the '70s,
you'd guess that moments like this,
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00:07:13,737 --> 00:07:16,004
the camera racing through
space like a bullet,
88
00:07:16,330 --> 00:07:19,637
the scream of tyres on the road
as a car chases a train,
89
00:07:20,197 --> 00:07:21,537
will be the big story.
90
00:07:25,591 --> 00:07:29,746
New American cinema was
wonderful but Dakar in Senegal
91
00:07:29,771 --> 00:07:33,430
was as exciting as Los Angeles
in the '70s, movie-wise.
92
00:07:36,277 --> 00:07:37,690
A surprise indeed.
93
00:07:38,697 --> 00:07:41,670
Much of what we assume about
the movies is off the mark.
94
00:07:44,030 --> 00:07:48,529
It's time to redraw the map of movie
history that we have in our heads.
95
00:07:50,006 --> 00:07:53,866
It's factually inaccurate
and racist by omission.
96
00:07:58,558 --> 00:08:02,921
The Story of Film: An Odyssey could
be an exciting, unpredictable one.
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00:08:03,416 --> 00:08:06,549
Fasten your seatbelts.
It's going to be a bumpy ride.
98
00:08:30,974 --> 00:08:33,055
New Jersey, east coast America.
99
00:08:34,879 --> 00:08:37,996
A mum and two daughters
are going to the movies.
100
00:08:39,688 --> 00:08:41,203
Why are we here?
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00:08:41,369 --> 00:08:43,821
Because something
extraordinary happened here.
102
00:08:44,490 --> 00:08:47,741
In the 1890s, movies were born here.
103
00:08:51,088 --> 00:08:52,555
Lyon, France.
104
00:08:54,668 --> 00:08:57,118
Two college friends are
going to the movies.
105
00:08:59,861 --> 00:09:01,639
Movies were born here too.
106
00:09:01,961 --> 00:09:04,298
Maybe even more so than in New Jersey.
107
00:09:07,823 --> 00:09:10,623
So what is there to discover
about movies in New Jersey?
108
00:09:12,482 --> 00:09:15,164
We find this man, Thomas Edison.
109
00:09:16,503 --> 00:09:19,140
Edison was a manic, passionate inventor.
110
00:09:20,028 --> 00:09:21,391
Here's his office
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00:09:22,432 --> 00:09:24,784
where he invented the light
bulb and the phonograph.
112
00:09:26,026 --> 00:09:29,265
Here's his desk, full of
compartments, full of detail.
113
00:09:29,577 --> 00:09:31,626
Obsessive, like he was.
114
00:09:33,004 --> 00:09:34,684
Here's Edison's factory.
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00:09:36,764 --> 00:09:38,860
The beauty of Victorian engineering.
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00:09:38,986 --> 00:09:40,467
The care and detail.
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00:09:45,161 --> 00:09:49,227
Look at this quotation on the wall of
the factory from the painter Joshua Reynolds.
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00:09:49,598 --> 00:09:52,360
"There is no expedient to
which a man will not resort
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00:09:52,385 --> 00:09:55,397
"to avoid the real labour of thinking".
120
00:09:56,463 --> 00:09:58,862
Edison loved it and moved
it around the factory
121
00:09:59,152 --> 00:10:02,592
so that his colleagues wouldn't
get used to seeing it in one place.
122
00:10:04,045 --> 00:10:06,860
So Edison's factory
was an ideas factory.
123
00:10:11,463 --> 00:10:14,137
Before Edison, there had been funfairs,
124
00:10:14,410 --> 00:10:18,500
circuses, magic lantern
shows, magician's acts.
125
00:10:25,535 --> 00:10:29,698
Still images were reflected
on mirrors or spun in a box.
126
00:10:43,943 --> 00:10:46,417
This happened not in
fancy cities in the world,
127
00:10:48,284 --> 00:10:51,604
but places like this:
Leeds in England.
128
00:10:56,023 --> 00:11:00,134
The American George Eastman came
up with the idea of film on a roll.
129
00:11:03,710 --> 00:11:07,784
Edison and his colleague WKL
Dickson egged each other on
130
00:11:07,809 --> 00:11:10,814
to find that if you spin
these images in a box
131
00:11:12,206 --> 00:11:14,266
they give the illusion of movement.
132
00:11:16,125 --> 00:11:19,177
And then look at this,
invented by Edison.
133
00:11:19,731 --> 00:11:21,606
It's called the Black Maria.
134
00:11:25,122 --> 00:11:28,604
Edison and many of the other
manic, ideasy inventors of cinema
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00:11:29,715 --> 00:11:32,603
realised that beyond
the equipment and machines
136
00:11:33,618 --> 00:11:37,344
what you needed most
for movies was light.
137
00:11:39,128 --> 00:11:42,780
It probably didn't occur to them that
cinema would become the art of light.
138
00:11:45,418 --> 00:11:48,307
But, somehow,
in building this box on wheels,
139
00:11:48,332 --> 00:11:50,366
that turned to follow the sun,
140
00:11:51,118 --> 00:11:53,599
whose roof opened by turning this wheel,
141
00:11:54,322 --> 00:11:57,281
Edison took the first
steps in that direction.
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00:11:58,423 --> 00:12:02,924
He had a hunch that cinema was
a dark room, where light mattered.
143
00:12:03,998 --> 00:12:05,768
He shot little movies here.
144
00:12:08,217 --> 00:12:10,135
This couple kissing, for example.
145
00:12:10,444 --> 00:12:12,898
A little moment that
everyone could understand.
146
00:12:17,353 --> 00:12:20,916
But to see these films you had to
look inside something like this.
147
00:12:21,975 --> 00:12:25,271
That wasn't enough.
It was too private and small.
148
00:12:25,709 --> 00:12:27,330
Cinema had to be bigger.
149
00:12:27,900 --> 00:12:29,324
And it became so.
150
00:12:30,063 --> 00:12:31,743
Here in Lyon.
151
00:12:32,658 --> 00:12:34,006
In this house.
152
00:12:34,435 --> 00:12:36,651
In the minds of these passionate men
153
00:12:36,719 --> 00:12:39,495
- Louis Lumière and
his brother Auguste.
154
00:12:41,121 --> 00:12:43,390
The brothers were as ideasy as Edison.
155
00:12:43,848 --> 00:12:46,418
Louis in particular was
technically brilliant.
156
00:12:46,958 --> 00:12:50,550
He realised that the grab advance
mechanism of a sewing machine
157
00:12:50,861 --> 00:12:53,253
would allow the strip
of film to be advanced,
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00:12:53,278 --> 00:12:57,475
paused, exposed,
advanced, paused, exposed.
159
00:12:59,218 --> 00:13:01,729
This is one of the very
first Lumière cameras.
160
00:13:02,166 --> 00:13:04,404
Open its back, shine a light through it
161
00:13:04,692 --> 00:13:06,263
and it becomes a projector.
162
00:13:06,813 --> 00:13:09,012
Count Leo Tolstoy called the result
163
00:13:09,323 --> 00:13:12,457
"the clicking machine
like a human hurricane."
164
00:13:14,561 --> 00:13:17,901
One of the first films
the Lumières shot was this one.
165
00:13:24,366 --> 00:13:26,559
A short documentary of everyday life.
166
00:13:26,900 --> 00:13:28,989
They're workers leaving a factory.
167
00:13:29,226 --> 00:13:30,774
The Lumière factory.
168
00:13:31,541 --> 00:13:33,156
This is the factory today.
169
00:13:33,593 --> 00:13:35,504
The place of the first movie.
170
00:13:35,892 --> 00:13:37,349
The source of the Nile.
171
00:13:45,285 --> 00:13:48,763
But it wasn't enough for the Lumières
to make such home movies.
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00:13:49,078 --> 00:13:50,522
They wanted to show them.
173
00:13:50,806 --> 00:13:55,451
Not just in a box to one person at
a time like Edison, but to groups.
174
00:14:00,146 --> 00:14:05,975
On 28th December, 1895, in this building
on the Boulevard Capucines in Paris,
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00:14:06,387 --> 00:14:08,587
the Lumière brothers projected film.
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00:14:11,224 --> 00:14:12,772
Light shone through it,
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00:14:12,797 --> 00:14:15,535
onto a screen, bigger than life.
178
00:14:19,381 --> 00:14:22,618
It's hard for us today to
picture how enchanting it was.
179
00:14:28,959 --> 00:14:31,648
This is one of the very first
films that the Lumières shot
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00:14:31,673 --> 00:14:34,292
and showed on the Boulevard Capucine.
181
00:14:35,604 --> 00:14:37,683
It's said to have unnerved the audience.
182
00:14:37,818 --> 00:14:39,855
They thought the train
was coming at them.
183
00:14:40,430 --> 00:14:42,001
This is laughable today.
184
00:14:42,161 --> 00:14:43,681
But look at this.
185
00:14:47,318 --> 00:14:50,969
Light projected on a building
in 21st century Lyon.
186
00:14:51,238 --> 00:14:52,977
The effect is startling.
187
00:14:53,137 --> 00:14:56,089
Digital imagery of a type
we haven't seen before -
188
00:14:56,474 --> 00:14:59,837
the shock of the new just
like the Lumière train.
189
00:15:01,055 --> 00:15:02,796
Something that had already happened,
190
00:15:02,821 --> 00:15:04,621
light from a distant star
191
00:15:05,476 --> 00:15:08,287
came back to life for
the very first time.
192
00:15:20,419 --> 00:15:24,033
Neither The Lumière brothers nor Edison
nor the other inventors of cinema
193
00:15:25,246 --> 00:15:27,789
could have known how big
the movies would become.
194
00:15:29,124 --> 00:15:30,946
How they'd make us want to escape,
195
00:15:31,235 --> 00:15:33,435
play with our erotic imaginations,
196
00:15:35,416 --> 00:15:37,972
fail to film the Nazi gas chambers.
197
00:15:38,712 --> 00:15:41,758
Make us want to be a princess
or a hero or a cowboy.
198
00:15:46,146 --> 00:15:48,316
Neither the Lumières
nor Edison could foresee
199
00:15:48,341 --> 00:15:52,390
that the movies would invent flashbacks
- there are no flashbacks in Shakespeare
200
00:15:53,924 --> 00:15:55,598
- that they'd glamorise war,
201
00:15:57,553 --> 00:15:59,752
capture the horror of
the D-Day landings,
202
00:16:05,374 --> 00:16:08,885
give us an image bank to flick
through in our heads when we're bored,
203
00:16:08,910 --> 00:16:10,470
or happy, or sad.
204
00:16:14,870 --> 00:16:17,786
Movies would become
the world's greatest mirror
205
00:16:18,255 --> 00:16:20,442
and, sometimes, a hammer too,
206
00:16:20,535 --> 00:16:22,752
that would bash reality into shape.
207
00:16:27,085 --> 00:16:32,522
By the end of 1896 much of the globe
knew about this new invention: movies.
208
00:16:34,058 --> 00:16:37,962
But almost at once it was seen as
lowbrow, for the working classes.
209
00:16:38,425 --> 00:16:41,310
Its jokes and jolts were unsophisticated
210
00:16:42,857 --> 00:16:44,549
and soon became boring.
211
00:16:45,435 --> 00:16:50,194
So, from about 1898 the earliest
filmmaker-inventors turned their minds
212
00:16:50,284 --> 00:16:54,046
from the machinery of
cinema to shots and cuts.
213
00:16:54,469 --> 00:16:56,417
Things started to get exciting.
214
00:16:59,151 --> 00:17:03,276
In Paris, for example, a theatre
illusionist called George Méliès,
215
00:17:03,437 --> 00:17:06,229
who'd been at the Boulevard
Capucines that first night,
216
00:17:07,437 --> 00:17:08,859
filmed on a street.
217
00:17:09,362 --> 00:17:11,940
The film's now lost but
here's what happened.
218
00:17:13,946 --> 00:17:16,420
His camera jammed, then started again.
219
00:17:16,924 --> 00:17:20,783
When he looked at the results,
streetcars seemed to disappear.
220
00:17:21,878 --> 00:17:24,048
Just like these people
seem to disappear.
221
00:17:27,369 --> 00:17:29,436
Cinema's first magic trick.
222
00:17:32,926 --> 00:17:36,252
In this scene he used the same
technique to make a man appear,
223
00:17:36,277 --> 00:17:38,260
rather than a streetcar disappear.
224
00:17:42,005 --> 00:17:44,272
Innovation by accident, you could say,
225
00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:47,701
but it drove the medium forward.
226
00:17:51,612 --> 00:17:54,524
Where the Lumières were
cinema's first documentarists,
227
00:17:54,768 --> 00:17:58,012
Méliès was its first
special effects director.
228
00:17:59,174 --> 00:18:02,744
His film A Trip to the Moon
astonished people too.
229
00:18:03,181 --> 00:18:07,923
In Lyon today, in the Festival of
Lights, a moon rises over the city
230
00:18:07,924 --> 00:18:09,825
as if in tribute to Méliès.
231
00:18:14,275 --> 00:18:17,067
Lumière, the name of the brothers,
means "light" of course.
232
00:18:19,202 --> 00:18:22,446
And where other countries saw
movies as a sideshow in these years,
233
00:18:23,024 --> 00:18:24,854
France took them seriously.
234
00:18:25,078 --> 00:18:27,173
Film historian
Jean-Michel Frodon:
235
00:18:27,297 --> 00:18:29,711
France has been doing
something completely different
236
00:18:29,736 --> 00:18:32,780
with cinema because of
the French Revolution
237
00:18:33,158 --> 00:18:37,876
and because of this dream to project
238
00:18:38,105 --> 00:18:40,819
something to the world and to itself,
239
00:18:41,054 --> 00:18:44,786
like what we call "le Lumière".
And this is - Lumière invents cinema
240
00:18:44,811 --> 00:18:49,979
but before they were "le Lumière" in
the sense of the French Revolution,
241
00:18:50,004 --> 00:18:53,989
of le Encyclopédie, of Kant, et cetera.
242
00:18:54,863 --> 00:18:58,739
In the decades to come, France
believed that cinema was such a beacon,
243
00:18:58,878 --> 00:19:03,129
almost an element of foreign policy,
that it funded French filmmaking
244
00:19:03,239 --> 00:19:05,618
like no other country in the world.
245
00:19:08,637 --> 00:19:12,897
Also in France, the world's first
female director, Alice Guy-Blaché,
246
00:19:13,078 --> 00:19:15,998
became as interested in magic as Méliès.
247
00:19:21,055 --> 00:19:24,975
And Brighton in England was a buzzing
place in Victorian times too.
248
00:19:26,764 --> 00:19:31,443
Maybe the buzz and the light explains why
local photographer George Albert Smith
249
00:19:31,725 --> 00:19:34,325
became one of the movies'
early innovators.
250
00:19:40,524 --> 00:19:43,603
He was one of the first to
film from the front of a train,
251
00:19:43,663 --> 00:19:48,063
creating a ghostly tracking shot,
which became known as the "phantom ride,"
252
00:19:48,866 --> 00:19:51,081
as if a ghost was
floating through the air.
253
00:20:00,048 --> 00:20:02,226
There was a magic in such shots.
254
00:20:03,181 --> 00:20:05,966
In this great documentary
about the holocaust,
255
00:20:06,275 --> 00:20:09,434
Claude Lanzmann filmed shots
on the same train lines
256
00:20:09,524 --> 00:20:11,918
that took the Jews to the gas chambers.
257
00:20:12,279 --> 00:20:15,621
The phantom ride at its
most morally serious.
258
00:20:19,135 --> 00:20:20,943
And, in a completely different way,
259
00:20:21,108 --> 00:20:23,972
director Stanley Kubrick
used a phantom ride scene
260
00:20:24,051 --> 00:20:26,624
near the end of 2001:
A Space Odyssey.
261
00:20:27,138 --> 00:20:30,472
The camera seems to zoom through
the coloured light of the cosmos,
262
00:20:30,829 --> 00:20:33,672
as if the main character,
or the film itself,
263
00:20:34,012 --> 00:20:37,252
is tripping or having an
out of body experience.
264
00:20:40,586 --> 00:20:44,712
In 1900, Smith used one of
the first close-ups in cinema.
265
00:20:47,209 --> 00:20:49,436
Filmmakers usually
kept their camera wide
266
00:20:49,461 --> 00:20:51,599
because they hadn't
considered other options,
267
00:20:51,624 --> 00:20:56,512
or assuming that if they went close,
it would confuse or disrupt the audience.
268
00:20:57,460 --> 00:21:00,067
But then, GA Smith did this.
269
00:21:00,813 --> 00:21:03,672
He wanted to show us the cat
eating in more detail.
270
00:21:04,116 --> 00:21:08,716
The cut between the wide and close
not only worked, it seemed natural.
271
00:21:09,318 --> 00:21:11,198
And so close-ups were born.
272
00:21:14,218 --> 00:21:16,158
The films of some of
the greatest directors
273
00:21:16,183 --> 00:21:18,174
are hard to imagine without them.
274
00:21:19,103 --> 00:21:22,903
In this incredible moment in
Sergei Eisenstein's film, October,
275
00:21:22,928 --> 00:21:27,616
the government raises a bridge to stop
revolutionary workers storming a city.
276
00:21:28,060 --> 00:21:30,603
But it's the close-ups
of a dead woman's hand
277
00:21:30,628 --> 00:21:33,227
and hair being pulled
off the raising bridge
278
00:21:33,331 --> 00:21:36,464
that give the real sense
of movement and tragedy.
279
00:21:41,926 --> 00:21:44,623
In Sergio Leone's Once
Upon a Time in the West,
280
00:21:44,870 --> 00:21:48,356
it's only when Charles Bronson
looks - in big close-up
281
00:21:48,616 --> 00:21:50,408
- into the eyes of Henry Fonda,
282
00:21:50,543 --> 00:21:53,419
that he realises that
Fonda is the murderer
283
00:21:53,444 --> 00:21:55,839
he's been searching for all his life.
284
00:22:19,174 --> 00:22:23,589
Back in America, Enoch J Rector
extended film in another way.
285
00:22:24,063 --> 00:22:29,019
He filmed a boxing match, not with
the standard size of film - 35mm -
286
00:22:29,318 --> 00:22:32,544
but with a negative that was 63mm wide.
287
00:22:33,362 --> 00:22:36,353
The broader image showed
more of the action.
288
00:22:36,967 --> 00:22:39,034
Widescreen cinema was born.
289
00:22:39,790 --> 00:22:44,731
It's the norm now but would not
become commercially so until 1953.
290
00:22:47,097 --> 00:22:49,186
Film had already come far.
291
00:22:49,507 --> 00:22:51,704
It was born as a sideshow, a novelty.
292
00:22:51,924 --> 00:22:54,223
Quick fun, like fast food.
293
00:22:55,165 --> 00:22:58,795
But almost at once it became
clear that it was also a language.
294
00:23:04,599 --> 00:23:06,051
A new language.
295
00:23:06,076 --> 00:23:08,118
A language of ideas.
296
00:23:25,550 --> 00:23:28,869
The early 1900s were
a remarkable time to be alive.
297
00:23:29,780 --> 00:23:31,469
The first airplane flight.
298
00:23:31,955 --> 00:23:35,688
Albert Einstein announced that light,
the flickering stuff of cinema,
299
00:23:35,924 --> 00:23:38,458
is the only constant in the universe.
300
00:23:39,199 --> 00:23:43,266
Here in Copenhagen,
other physicists expanded his ideas.
301
00:23:44,470 --> 00:23:45,996
The Titanic sank.
302
00:23:46,953 --> 00:23:48,463
World War I began.
303
00:23:50,004 --> 00:23:53,204
Compared to all this,
the changes in movies might seem tiny.
304
00:23:53,732 --> 00:23:54,989
But they aren't.
305
00:23:56,412 --> 00:24:00,932
By 1903, filmmakers had developed
many of the key elements of the shot
306
00:24:03,940 --> 00:24:06,281
but they still had to
learn how to do this.
307
00:24:08,236 --> 00:24:09,399
Cut.
308
00:24:09,643 --> 00:24:11,243
Editing made cinema.
309
00:24:14,620 --> 00:24:17,590
To see how, look at The Life
of an American Fireman,
310
00:24:17,615 --> 00:24:23,103
made in 1903 by a Pennsylvanian dynamo
of a man called Edwin Stanton Porter.
311
00:24:27,091 --> 00:24:31,750
A fireman arrives outside a blazing
house to rescue a mother and her child.
312
00:24:34,349 --> 00:24:36,282
We see the street action first.
313
00:24:52,658 --> 00:24:56,273
Then the same action again from inside.
314
00:25:07,358 --> 00:25:10,624
Some years later,
Porter re-cut the film.
315
00:25:11,172 --> 00:25:15,638
This time, after the fireman
arrives, we cut inside the house,
316
00:25:15,663 --> 00:25:18,727
to see the first rescue,
then outside again
317
00:25:18,779 --> 00:25:20,703
to see her being
brought down the ladder,
318
00:25:20,728 --> 00:25:24,019
then inside again,
to see him rescue the child,
319
00:25:24,363 --> 00:25:26,252
then back outside again.
320
00:25:26,706 --> 00:25:28,869
The audience follows
the story of the rescue
321
00:25:28,894 --> 00:25:31,913
despite the fact that
one space - the street
322
00:25:32,316 --> 00:25:34,361
- suddenly disappears
from the screen
323
00:25:34,664 --> 00:25:38,983
and is magically replaced
by another space - the room.
324
00:25:39,325 --> 00:25:41,221
This could never happen in theatre.
325
00:25:43,169 --> 00:25:44,762
The earlier version of the film,
326
00:25:44,787 --> 00:25:46,836
which you could call
the theatrical version,
327
00:25:46,861 --> 00:25:51,940
doesn't fragment the space, but
repeats the time like an action replay.
328
00:25:52,431 --> 00:25:55,899
The inter-cut version has
a continuous timeline -
329
00:25:56,045 --> 00:26:00,771
we see everything in the order in which
it was done, but the space is fragmented.
330
00:26:01,260 --> 00:26:05,393
Cinema was learning,
experimenting, thinking even.
331
00:26:06,826 --> 00:26:10,878
It could now show the flow of
action from one space to another.
332
00:26:12,353 --> 00:26:14,605
This made chase sequences possible.
333
00:26:15,124 --> 00:26:18,598
It liberated movies.
It emphasised movement.
334
00:26:19,245 --> 00:26:21,843
Nearly every scene in The Story of Film
335
00:26:22,008 --> 00:26:27,467
will in some way use this most basic of
storytelling devices: continuity cutting.
336
00:26:27,768 --> 00:26:30,738
The editing equivalent
of the word "then".
337
00:26:31,925 --> 00:26:33,481
This was a landmark.
338
00:26:33,797 --> 00:26:37,392
Theatrical cinema was
giving way to action cinema.
339
00:26:38,058 --> 00:26:41,984
And Porter? He lost everything in
the Wall Street crash of the twenties,
340
00:26:42,009 --> 00:26:44,629
and died, forgotten, in 1941.
341
00:26:49,861 --> 00:26:53,276
It's easy to forget what
a conceptual jump editing was,
342
00:26:53,577 --> 00:26:56,691
but 21 years after The Life
of An American Fireman,
343
00:26:56,869 --> 00:27:00,038
the comic genius Buster
Keaton shot a scene
344
00:27:00,063 --> 00:27:02,957
using double exposure which reminds us.
345
00:27:03,846 --> 00:27:05,763
Keaton plays a film projectionist.
346
00:27:05,942 --> 00:27:11,004
He falls asleep, dreams of
cinema, climbs into a film.
347
00:27:19,856 --> 00:27:22,129
And then, bam! A cut.
348
00:27:22,515 --> 00:27:25,611
The world around him is suddenly
replaced by another world.
349
00:27:25,888 --> 00:27:27,944
Instantly. Magically.
350
00:27:51,245 --> 00:27:54,497
In 1907, cinematic
innovation went up a gear.
351
00:27:56,381 --> 00:27:59,633
Look at The Horse that Bolted,
by the Frenchman Charles Pathé.
352
00:28:00,813 --> 00:28:02,894
A man leaves his horse on the street
353
00:28:03,004 --> 00:28:05,724
as he delivers food to
an upstairs customer.
354
00:28:06,005 --> 00:28:08,598
The horse spies something to
eat, and tucks in.
355
00:28:10,724 --> 00:28:12,592
Cut to the man climbing the stairs.
356
00:28:15,764 --> 00:28:19,541
Then cut back to the horse,
which isn't doing a new thing.
357
00:28:20,124 --> 00:28:21,473
It's still eating.
358
00:28:22,316 --> 00:28:24,761
Then back to the man
just a second later...
359
00:28:34,044 --> 00:28:35,747
..then back to the horse.
360
00:28:36,402 --> 00:28:38,224
In The Life of an American Fireman,
361
00:28:38,426 --> 00:28:40,609
the cuts showed what happened next.
362
00:28:41,237 --> 00:28:44,519
Here they're showing what's
happening at the same time.
363
00:28:45,238 --> 00:28:47,163
This isn't continuity editing,
364
00:28:47,254 --> 00:28:48,941
it's parallel editing.
365
00:28:49,362 --> 00:28:52,251
It doesn't say "then,"
it says "meanwhile."
366
00:28:54,140 --> 00:28:57,502
Great filmmakers have used this
"meanwhile" editing ever since
367
00:28:57,562 --> 00:29:02,621
to contrast events, build tension
or advance two storylines at once.
368
00:29:04,953 --> 00:29:08,242
And soon after continuity and
parallel editing were invented,
369
00:29:08,351 --> 00:29:11,510
another remarkable editing
technique was born.
370
00:29:12,075 --> 00:29:16,682
This woman is looking towards us, as if
she's onstage and we're in the audience.
371
00:29:17,026 --> 00:29:18,825
But what if she does this?
372
00:29:19,463 --> 00:29:21,596
In the earliest movies, people seldom
373
00:29:21,621 --> 00:29:23,781
turned their backs to
the camera like this.
374
00:29:24,571 --> 00:29:28,371
This film, made in 1908, was one of
the first in which this was done.
375
00:29:29,551 --> 00:29:31,698
But if directors were to
give actors the freedom
376
00:29:31,723 --> 00:29:34,046
to turn their backs to
the camera like this,
377
00:29:34,825 --> 00:29:39,759
then, it occurred to them, they could
point the camera in the opposite direction
378
00:29:40,381 --> 00:29:43,781
to see what would eventually be
called the reverse angle shot.
379
00:29:45,130 --> 00:29:47,737
Directors were putting their
cameras into the action,
380
00:29:48,004 --> 00:29:50,959
freeing themselves to
film from any angle.
381
00:29:52,845 --> 00:29:56,126
This new freedom was an
exhilarating break with theatre,
382
00:29:56,282 --> 00:29:59,748
and seemed entirely natural to
cinema, central to it.
383
00:30:00,541 --> 00:30:03,961
So, in the 60s in France,
when Jean-Luc Godard refused
384
00:30:03,986 --> 00:30:07,689
to bring his camera round to
show the face of Anna Karina
385
00:30:07,714 --> 00:30:10,830
at the start of Vivre sa
Vie, the effect was shocking.
386
00:30:20,587 --> 00:30:24,019
Combine this with this
- GA Smith's close-up
387
00:30:24,402 --> 00:30:28,728
- and the actor, rather than the set,
began to be the thing that was filmed.
388
00:30:34,507 --> 00:30:37,026
And just as the movie
buildings were changing,
389
00:30:37,124 --> 00:30:40,085
the movies themselves
took another leap forward.
390
00:30:41,258 --> 00:30:44,458
A look back at The Life of An
American Fireman shows why.
391
00:30:45,076 --> 00:30:49,125
Audiences watching this film felt
concern for the safety of this woman.
392
00:30:51,820 --> 00:30:55,420
But they knew nothing about the actress
who played her, not even her name.
393
00:30:56,537 --> 00:30:59,907
If they'd known about her life,
or recognised her from other films,
394
00:30:59,932 --> 00:31:01,581
they'd care even more.
395
00:31:03,418 --> 00:31:07,996
Then enter into the movies this actress
dressed in white, wearing a hat.
396
00:31:09,940 --> 00:31:13,118
She was known, semi-anonymously,
as the IMP girl,
397
00:31:14,066 --> 00:31:16,836
but in 1910 her producer, Carl Laemmle,
398
00:31:16,980 --> 00:31:19,263
announced in the press
that she had died.
399
00:31:19,908 --> 00:31:21,167
She hadn't.
400
00:31:21,319 --> 00:31:24,597
And when she miraculously
showed up in a scene like this,
401
00:31:24,622 --> 00:31:27,659
very much alive,
anxious and looking around,
402
00:31:28,002 --> 00:31:29,972
Laemmle then told the newspapers
403
00:31:30,064 --> 00:31:33,795
that the crowds were so hysterical
that they tore her clothes off.
404
00:31:35,405 --> 00:31:38,836
This wasn't true either,
but the furore burnt her name
405
00:31:38,861 --> 00:31:40,631
into the public consciousness:
406
00:31:41,286 --> 00:31:42,885
Florence Lawrence.
407
00:31:43,543 --> 00:31:48,499
Lawrence became famous.
She earned $80,000 in 1912.
408
00:31:49,054 --> 00:31:50,787
Then her career fizzled out.
409
00:31:51,146 --> 00:31:57,335
In 1938, aged 48, she committed
suicide by eating ant poison.
410
00:31:59,081 --> 00:32:01,459
Florence Lawrence was
the first movie star,
411
00:32:01,484 --> 00:32:05,837
and set a pattern for stardom -
hype, fame, tragedy.
412
00:32:07,353 --> 00:32:12,057
Here in Denmark, this actress,
Asta Nielson, became even more famous.
413
00:32:13,524 --> 00:32:15,279
There was less censorship in Europe.
414
00:32:15,575 --> 00:32:17,297
Actors could be more sexual.
415
00:32:20,244 --> 00:32:24,103
He's tied up. She's hip grinding
in her slinky black dress.
416
00:32:27,284 --> 00:32:29,572
Hollywood learnt from Nielson's fame
417
00:32:29,997 --> 00:32:31,877
and, instead of sex...
418
00:32:33,482 --> 00:32:35,838
..as this reveal of
Gloria Swanson shows,
419
00:32:36,463 --> 00:32:39,645
it trowelled on
the luxury and costuming.
420
00:32:40,900 --> 00:32:44,070
Hollywood was adding an
element of sublime to stardom.
421
00:32:47,284 --> 00:32:50,824
Almost every aspect of cinema
was affected by the star system.
422
00:32:51,432 --> 00:32:54,577
As the adoring public became more
and more interested in Lawrence,
423
00:32:54,602 --> 00:32:56,283
Nielsen or Swanson,
424
00:32:56,638 --> 00:33:00,239
so moviemakers started to
show their faces more clearly.
425
00:33:00,919 --> 00:33:02,843
Except it wasn't really their faces,
426
00:33:03,141 --> 00:33:06,438
it was their thoughts that
audiences became interested in.
427
00:33:08,642 --> 00:33:13,020
The star system meant that psychology
became the driving force of films,
428
00:33:13,272 --> 00:33:15,205
especially American ones.
429
00:33:17,004 --> 00:33:22,460
And through these years, 1907, 8,
9 and 10, small movie theatres,
430
00:33:22,485 --> 00:33:25,092
places for working class
people, emerged.
431
00:33:25,949 --> 00:33:28,319
In America,
they were called nickelodeons.
432
00:33:29,285 --> 00:33:32,418
This one, Tally's,
was on Spring Street in LA.
433
00:33:33,351 --> 00:33:35,111
This is the same spot now.
434
00:33:37,137 --> 00:33:40,929
This little cinema, built in
1914, is in Leeds in England.
435
00:33:44,718 --> 00:33:48,888
And on this famous corner, the first
nickelodeon in New York was built.
436
00:34:16,889 --> 00:34:20,051
In the early 1910s,
the best filmmaking in the world
437
00:34:20,076 --> 00:34:22,696
was taking place here in Scandinavia.
438
00:34:23,546 --> 00:34:26,161
Maybe it was the northern
light, how it changed.
439
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:31,003
Or maybe it was the sense of destiny
and mortality in Scandinavian literature
440
00:34:31,383 --> 00:34:35,994
that made Danish and Swedish
movies more graceful and honest.
441
00:34:38,435 --> 00:34:43,079
By 1912, for example, the most
innovative use of film light in the world
442
00:34:43,365 --> 00:34:45,524
was in the work of Benjamin Christensen.
443
00:34:51,929 --> 00:34:54,744
Christensen studied at
this theatre in Copenhagen,
444
00:34:55,069 --> 00:34:58,863
then made this film,
The Mysterious X, in 1913.
445
00:35:08,383 --> 00:35:12,659
Gorgeous photography, cross
cutting, a dream drawn on film.
446
00:35:13,091 --> 00:35:15,738
One of the most daring
debuts in film history.
447
00:35:22,888 --> 00:35:27,666
Later he built a vast studio here in
Hellerup, in the suburbs of Copenhagen.
448
00:35:27,940 --> 00:35:32,660
To make Haxan, a masterpiece
about witchcraft through the ages.
449
00:35:36,007 --> 00:35:39,125
The light sources were
multiple, the effects complex.
450
00:35:39,292 --> 00:35:41,836
Christensen himself
played the naked devil.
451
00:35:54,755 --> 00:35:57,436
This telegram in the Danish
Film Archive says:
452
00:35:57,461 --> 00:36:01,899
"Your masterful film Haxan had its
first screening to a full house,
453
00:36:01,924 --> 00:36:03,604
"with a standing ovation".
454
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:10,253
In Sweden, director Victor Sjöström
was just as great an early director,
455
00:36:10,383 --> 00:36:12,783
and was more influential
than Christensen.
456
00:36:14,709 --> 00:36:19,988
Sjöström started by selling doughnuts
but soon found himself here: Svenska Bio.
457
00:36:20,345 --> 00:36:22,509
Sweden's first major film studio.
458
00:36:23,900 --> 00:36:28,589
His 1913 film Ingeborg Holm
had naturalism and grace.
459
00:36:29,329 --> 00:36:31,952
But, seven years later,
still at Svenska,
460
00:36:32,044 --> 00:36:36,603
Sjöström made one of the great
multilayered films of the silent era,
461
00:36:36,929 --> 00:36:38,564
The Phantom Carriage.
462
00:36:40,565 --> 00:36:44,244
It had stories within
stories, moods within moods.
463
00:36:44,839 --> 00:36:48,232
In tinted blue evening light,
an alcoholic, David Holm,
464
00:36:48,364 --> 00:36:52,602
tells a drunken story about a phantom
carriage which arrives at new year
465
00:36:52,732 --> 00:36:55,002
to collect the souls of the dead.
466
00:36:56,764 --> 00:36:59,860
Here on the right,
Sjöström plays Holm himself.
467
00:37:01,406 --> 00:37:03,739
Later in the story, David dies.
468
00:37:04,095 --> 00:37:09,169
Sjöström re-exposes the film to show
the separation of his body and soul.
469
00:37:11,287 --> 00:37:15,499
The carriage-driver arrives and shows
him how horrible his life has been.
470
00:37:15,672 --> 00:37:18,472
A wasted life wrapped in a haunted myth.
471
00:37:21,638 --> 00:37:23,918
And Sjöström was brilliant at women.
472
00:37:26,091 --> 00:37:28,446
His strong mother died
when he was young.
473
00:37:30,195 --> 00:37:34,950
Sjöström ended his days in this
cottage by the sea, west of Stockholm.
474
00:37:38,048 --> 00:37:40,885
Christensen and Sjöström
became star directors
475
00:37:41,092 --> 00:37:44,255
and, as was to become the pattern
for European talents,
476
00:37:44,507 --> 00:37:47,443
they were seduced by what would
be, in the years to come,
477
00:37:47,468 --> 00:37:51,548
the centre of the movie world
- a place called Hollywood.
478
00:37:52,922 --> 00:37:57,181
They sailed there, as a certain Swedish
movie star called Greta Garbo did,
479
00:37:57,507 --> 00:38:00,662
and, later,
another called Ingrid Bergman did.
480
00:38:02,860 --> 00:38:04,683
As a result of their departures,
481
00:38:04,708 --> 00:38:09,868
Scandinavia would not be central to
the story of film again until the 1950s.
482
00:39:21,063 --> 00:39:25,263
A long time ago in a galaxy
far, far away from Scandinavia,
483
00:39:26,559 --> 00:39:29,907
there was a garden that didn't
know what was about to hit it.
484
00:39:30,537 --> 00:39:32,529
Sage brush in the rain.
485
00:39:32,903 --> 00:39:34,910
The eucalyptus in the rain.
486
00:39:36,223 --> 00:39:39,984
You see, the spring was such
a marvellous thing there.
487
00:39:51,798 --> 00:39:54,819
The garden was about to be
invaded, built upon.
488
00:39:55,649 --> 00:39:59,500
It was about to bring in artists and
business people from around the world
489
00:39:59,648 --> 00:40:02,826
to paint clouds to
look like real clouds,
490
00:40:05,561 --> 00:40:08,635
to create people to
look like real people.
491
00:40:18,490 --> 00:40:21,845
The sort of place you'd wear
costume jewellery in the daytime.
492
00:40:22,376 --> 00:40:25,401
The sort of place that
invented youth and glamour.
493
00:40:26,055 --> 00:40:30,123
Where Marlena Dietrich could wear black
feathers and be framed in a train window
494
00:40:30,381 --> 00:40:32,781
and be lit in a lattice of shadows
495
00:40:33,494 --> 00:40:35,373
and somehow look believable.
496
00:40:36,131 --> 00:40:37,424
How have I changed?
497
00:40:37,449 --> 00:40:40,138
Youth and glamour came
out of its test tubes.
498
00:40:41,109 --> 00:40:44,931
No one was supposed to be
plain here or sad, or old
499
00:40:44,956 --> 00:40:47,635
or racially equal or sexually different.
500
00:40:48,336 --> 00:40:51,218
What denial. What eugenics.
501
00:40:53,297 --> 00:40:56,556
And yet it attracted people, selves,
502
00:40:56,581 --> 00:41:00,067
ideas, styles, shape-shifters.
503
00:41:00,801 --> 00:41:02,726
It became a bauble, this place
504
00:41:02,907 --> 00:41:05,217
- shiny, perfect, brittle,
505
00:41:05,669 --> 00:41:07,721
something you could see yourself in.
506
00:41:11,383 --> 00:41:13,842
Movies started to be in the air here.
507
00:41:21,653 --> 00:41:24,008
Of course this place
is called Hollywood.
508
00:41:25,735 --> 00:41:29,906
A fantasy name because one of the things
that won't grow here is this:
509
00:41:30,146 --> 00:41:31,321
Holly.
510
00:41:36,168 --> 00:41:38,146
Why did movie people come here?
511
00:41:38,592 --> 00:41:40,509
Because of weather, sunlight.
512
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:45,912
And because, on the East
Coast, New Jersey and New York,
513
00:41:46,636 --> 00:41:50,116
the film process had been
patented, copyrighted.
514
00:41:51,653 --> 00:41:53,534
Take this example of copyright.
515
00:41:54,497 --> 00:41:57,923
For years, film running through
viewing machines had snapped
516
00:41:58,223 --> 00:42:00,200
because of the tension in the spool.
517
00:42:00,867 --> 00:42:04,844
Then the Latham brothers and people
around Thomas Edison had the brainwave
518
00:42:04,869 --> 00:42:08,400
of creating this simple loop,
which created a bit of slack,
519
00:42:08,548 --> 00:42:10,614
which would allow the machine to stop,
520
00:42:10,639 --> 00:42:14,496
project an image, then move on
again without tearing the film.
521
00:42:15,370 --> 00:42:19,725
This so called "Latham Loop" was
patented by its east coast inventors.
522
00:42:20,199 --> 00:42:23,288
You had to pay people to use
it and other discoveries.
523
00:42:23,583 --> 00:42:27,286
But California was very far
away from those rights owners
524
00:42:27,671 --> 00:42:29,368
so you could break the law there.
525
00:42:39,338 --> 00:42:42,368
This is South Spring Street in 1897.
526
00:42:44,124 --> 00:42:45,953
Here is the same spot today.
527
00:42:46,996 --> 00:42:51,027
Things moved quickly.
The first studio was built in 1911.
528
00:42:52,284 --> 00:42:54,039
It was like an outdoor tent.
529
00:42:55,702 --> 00:42:57,084
It was built here.
530
00:43:01,572 --> 00:43:04,891
The first feature-length movie ever
made, The Story of the Kelly Gang,
531
00:43:04,916 --> 00:43:06,580
was filmed in Australia.
532
00:43:06,659 --> 00:43:08,498
Outdoors. Available light.
533
00:43:08,698 --> 00:43:10,120
Head-on framing.
534
00:43:13,652 --> 00:43:18,119
Seven years later, Cecil B DeMille
shot the first Hollywood feature here.
535
00:43:21,081 --> 00:43:23,110
Here it is: The Squaw Man.
536
00:43:23,414 --> 00:43:25,620
In it we can see another crucial element
537
00:43:25,645 --> 00:43:28,399
of filmmaking that fell
into place in these years.
538
00:43:29,445 --> 00:43:32,660
A decent man is trying to decide
whether to do a good deed.
539
00:43:33,267 --> 00:43:35,029
He looks right, through a window
540
00:43:35,054 --> 00:43:37,689
and sees a young woman
who'll benefit from the deed.
541
00:43:46,281 --> 00:43:48,200
Their eyes meet for a second.
542
00:43:48,407 --> 00:43:52,436
He feels her pain,
and decides to do the good deed.
543
00:43:54,301 --> 00:43:56,472
But imagine if DeMille
and his cameraperson
544
00:43:56,497 --> 00:43:59,309
had lifted their camera from
here, brought it round
545
00:43:59,334 --> 00:44:02,830
to the far side of this room and
filmed the young woman from over there?
546
00:44:06,251 --> 00:44:08,858
The shot of her would have
looked something like this...
547
00:44:11,864 --> 00:44:14,990
..as if she was looking away from the man,
rather than towards him,
548
00:44:16,198 --> 00:44:18,961
and the scene wouldn't
have had the same power.
549
00:44:19,124 --> 00:44:22,259
It's because their eyes
match across the cut,
550
00:44:22,379 --> 00:44:26,593
him looking right, her looking
left, that they connect emotionally.
551
00:44:28,924 --> 00:44:31,346
Filmmakers in these
years were discovering
552
00:44:31,371 --> 00:44:33,850
that to make it look like
people in different shots
553
00:44:33,875 --> 00:44:35,561
were looking at each other,
554
00:44:35,586 --> 00:44:38,519
or that armies were
marching towards each other,
555
00:44:39,451 --> 00:44:44,503
the camera had to stay on the same
side of an invisible 180 degree line
556
00:44:44,636 --> 00:44:48,364
drawn between the two people
looking at or talking to each other.
557
00:44:51,264 --> 00:44:52,893
Because this rule was new,
558
00:44:52,918 --> 00:44:56,568
filmmakers in the late 1910s
sometimes broke it by mistake.
559
00:44:58,761 --> 00:45:01,938
Later in The Squaw Man,
DeMille made such a mistake.
560
00:45:02,777 --> 00:45:04,444
A man's dangling from a cliff.
561
00:45:04,806 --> 00:45:07,554
He's looking right.
The cliff is on the right.
562
00:45:08,220 --> 00:45:11,887
But then DeMille goes to the bottom
of the cliff to show the man's fall.
563
00:45:15,637 --> 00:45:17,476
But he films from the wrong
side of the man,
564
00:45:17,501 --> 00:45:20,512
so it looks like the cliff has
switched to the left of the screen.
565
00:45:21,424 --> 00:45:24,802
The shot would have been more
spatially clear if it was like this:
566
00:45:31,020 --> 00:45:34,198
And to make matters worse,
his friends come to the rescue,
567
00:45:34,223 --> 00:45:38,331
leaving screen left but entering
the next shot screen right,
568
00:45:38,604 --> 00:45:40,633
as if they've taken a detour to the pub.
569
00:45:43,688 --> 00:45:47,569
Once this discovery was made,
it was used throughout mainstream cinema.
570
00:45:48,588 --> 00:45:53,587
This scene from The Empire Strikes Back,
an old-style movie made 60 years later,
571
00:45:53,906 --> 00:45:56,380
shows how enduring the discovery was.
572
00:45:57,064 --> 00:46:00,005
Darth Vader is on the left
of screen looking right.
573
00:46:00,232 --> 00:46:04,768
His underling, to whom he's speaking,
is in a separate shot looking left.
574
00:46:05,458 --> 00:46:07,429
Because of the 180-degree rule,
575
00:46:07,606 --> 00:46:10,355
we completely believe that
they're looking at each other.
576
00:46:10,444 --> 00:46:12,629
Set your course for the Hoth system.
577
00:46:12,900 --> 00:46:15,006
General Veers, prepare your men.
578
00:46:17,997 --> 00:46:21,796
Crucial to the inventiveness of
American cinema before the 1920s
579
00:46:21,900 --> 00:46:23,642
was how female it was.
580
00:46:24,196 --> 00:46:26,181
Film historian Cari Beauchamp:
581
00:46:26,844 --> 00:46:30,755
Hollywood was built by
women, immigrants and Jews,
582
00:46:31,229 --> 00:46:35,088
people who would not be accepted in
any other profession at the time.
583
00:46:35,399 --> 00:46:40,259
So Hollywood became this magnet
for people who wanted to work,
584
00:46:40,284 --> 00:46:44,521
who were incredibly creative, but
wouldn't be accepted in other professions.
585
00:46:44,684 --> 00:46:48,232
Well, half of all films written
before 1925 were written by women
586
00:46:48,706 --> 00:46:52,736
so that shows you how, just, comfortable
women were in the business then.
587
00:46:54,555 --> 00:46:58,799
Perhaps the first woman to direct a film,
and the first female studio boss,
588
00:46:58,974 --> 00:47:00,651
was Alice Guy-Blaché.
589
00:47:01,696 --> 00:47:04,332
Most of the film companies
focused on the machinery
590
00:47:04,592 --> 00:47:07,569
and Gaumont started
to make actual films.
591
00:47:07,604 --> 00:47:11,049
And Alice Guy was a secretary there.
And they let her play with the cameras
592
00:47:11,074 --> 00:47:14,313
after hours as long as she'd
gotten her secretarial work done.
593
00:47:14,668 --> 00:47:17,442
And Alice Guy was not only one
of the first female directors,
594
00:47:17,467 --> 00:47:19,174
she was one of the first directors.
595
00:47:19,289 --> 00:47:22,444
She was one of the first to
actually put film together
596
00:47:22,469 --> 00:47:24,624
into a story with an arc.
597
00:47:24,972 --> 00:47:27,113
Up until then, we'd had The Sneeze,
598
00:47:27,245 --> 00:47:28,459
The Wave
599
00:47:29,859 --> 00:47:31,142
- individual actions.
600
00:47:31,298 --> 00:47:35,288
But Alice created some dramatic arc
films, for the very first time.
601
00:47:35,626 --> 00:47:38,719
Here's an example of
Guy-Blaché's touching poetics.
602
00:47:39,186 --> 00:47:42,572
A little girl overhears a doctor
say that her sister'll die
603
00:47:42,597 --> 00:47:45,111
before the leaves fall from the trees.
604
00:47:45,802 --> 00:47:49,040
So she goes outside and
starts to tie them back on.
605
00:48:00,870 --> 00:48:04,018
One of the most innovative directors
of the time was Lois Weber.
606
00:48:04,733 --> 00:48:07,955
Here she also plays the lead
in her film, Suspense.
607
00:48:08,897 --> 00:48:10,793
A woman is at home with her child.
608
00:48:11,197 --> 00:48:12,664
She hears an intruder,
609
00:48:13,056 --> 00:48:14,435
looks out the window,
610
00:48:14,460 --> 00:48:17,782
sees him, in this remarkable
sideways POV shot.
611
00:48:18,511 --> 00:48:19,963
She calls her husband.
612
00:48:20,541 --> 00:48:24,824
Weber uses a split screen to show
the husband, the intruder and herself,
613
00:48:24,958 --> 00:48:26,425
all in the same moment.
614
00:48:27,113 --> 00:48:30,513
The husband jumps in a car and
tries to race to save his wife.
615
00:48:38,177 --> 00:48:39,764
He's chased by the police,
616
00:48:39,789 --> 00:48:43,124
who Weber shows in this inventive
shot of the wing mirror.
617
00:48:44,364 --> 00:48:46,257
The intruder climbs the stair...
618
00:48:50,441 --> 00:48:55,226
..and again Weber's camera position
emphasises the approach, the threat.
619
00:48:55,841 --> 00:48:59,100
In the end, the police and
husband arrive and save the day.
620
00:49:04,456 --> 00:49:08,966
The film was, for years,
credited to a male director, DW Griffith.
621
00:49:10,384 --> 00:49:13,392
Frances Marion was an even
more significant figure.
622
00:49:13,784 --> 00:49:17,598
Well, Frances Marion was the highest
paid screenwriter - male or female
623
00:49:17,843 --> 00:49:22,443
- from 1915 to 1935. That's an
incredible accomplishment right there.
624
00:49:22,569 --> 00:49:25,851
She also is the only woman ever
to win two Oscars for writing.
625
00:49:26,233 --> 00:49:31,137
And she won her Oscars for The Big
House, the seminal prison film,
626
00:49:31,426 --> 00:49:34,363
and The Champ, the classic boxing film.
627
00:49:34,652 --> 00:49:38,443
And what I love about that is it just
right there puts the lie to the idea,
628
00:49:38,652 --> 00:49:41,763
well, these women writers were
writing the matinee weepies
629
00:49:41,764 --> 00:49:44,283
or the "women's films".
630
00:49:44,376 --> 00:49:47,991
No. They were writing every
conceivable genre of film.
631
00:49:48,176 --> 00:49:53,004
Women like Francis, Adela Rogers St
Johns, Bess Meredyth, Anita Loos.
632
00:49:53,242 --> 00:49:56,843
I mean, these were the crème
de la crème of the writers,
633
00:49:56,995 --> 00:50:01,843
the ones that the Thalbergs and the Mayers
went to when they had big productions
634
00:50:01,844 --> 00:50:03,558
they knew they needed to count on.
635
00:50:03,814 --> 00:50:07,692
Marion's screenplay for the film The Wind
was about a woman living in a shack.
636
00:50:08,278 --> 00:50:09,826
The wind is incessant.
637
00:50:09,851 --> 00:50:11,139
Sand's everywhere.
638
00:50:11,799 --> 00:50:13,984
It seems to blast the visual image.
639
00:50:16,033 --> 00:50:18,507
An aggressive man forces himself on her.
640
00:50:18,857 --> 00:50:22,055
She shoots him then
buries him in the sand.
641
00:50:22,553 --> 00:50:24,635
But the wind blows the sand away.
642
00:50:25,124 --> 00:50:26,938
The corpse is exposed.
643
00:50:27,175 --> 00:50:28,546
Just like her fear.
644
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:31,200
Just like her unconscious mind.
645
00:50:32,216 --> 00:50:34,504
The Wind was an epic tone poem.
646
00:50:34,830 --> 00:50:37,386
Cut like a thriller but
filmed like a dream.
647
00:50:39,604 --> 00:50:44,443
Hollywood films like it showed female
audiences things they'd probably felt
648
00:50:44,702 --> 00:50:46,100
but never seen.
649
00:50:51,347 --> 00:50:55,147
Most people in America did not go
further than 20 miles from their home
650
00:50:55,172 --> 00:50:57,251
from when they were born till they died.
651
00:50:57,524 --> 00:51:00,405
So you have this incredible country
652
00:51:00,430 --> 00:51:04,109
that really only lives in this
bell jar of their own community.
653
00:51:04,643 --> 00:51:08,436
And as films start coming out,
as movie theatres are being built,
654
00:51:08,559 --> 00:51:12,238
by 1920 there's over 15,000
theatres in this country.
655
00:51:13,069 --> 00:51:16,513
So all of a sudden, you can go around
the corner, put down your nickel
656
00:51:16,538 --> 00:51:20,972
or your dime or your quarter and have
this entire world open up to you.
657
00:51:21,602 --> 00:51:24,363
And it's not just they're
seeing Paris for the first time
658
00:51:24,388 --> 00:51:26,765
- they're seeing New York
City or San Francisco
659
00:51:26,790 --> 00:51:28,514
- they are seeing
women's fashions,
660
00:51:28,539 --> 00:51:33,121
they are seeing women acting in
ways that nobody would dare do.
661
00:51:33,328 --> 00:51:37,179
With talking films,
the price of making movies skyrocketed
662
00:51:37,734 --> 00:51:39,369
and so with talking films,
663
00:51:39,394 --> 00:51:41,919
Wall Street really entered
the business for the first time.
664
00:51:42,338 --> 00:51:45,938
And when money entered into it,
the jobs starting paying more,
665
00:51:45,963 --> 00:51:50,716
it was taken seriously as a business
and men wanted those jobs.
666
00:51:54,279 --> 00:51:57,864
If the great women filmmakers of
the 1910s are under-remembered,
667
00:51:58,227 --> 00:51:59,698
you could say that this man,
668
00:51:59,723 --> 00:52:05,383
lanky, here in a stagey family scene with
a painted skyline, is over-remembered.
669
00:52:06,100 --> 00:52:10,806
People say that DW Griffith invented
close-ups or editing which isn't true.
670
00:52:12,891 --> 00:52:15,854
But he did something far more
valuable for the art of cinema.
671
00:52:16,083 --> 00:52:18,165
He said it needs to show this:
672
00:52:18,698 --> 00:52:20,469
The wind in the trees.
673
00:52:35,158 --> 00:52:39,313
Before Griffith, film had
a tendency to be stagey like this.
674
00:52:40,156 --> 00:52:43,417
Airless. He brought the wind
in the trees to cinema.
675
00:52:46,844 --> 00:52:48,844
A sense of the outside world.
676
00:52:49,976 --> 00:52:54,161
The delicacy of Lillian Gish's performance
here matches the delicacy of the light,
677
00:52:54,928 --> 00:52:56,516
the visual softness.
678
00:53:01,514 --> 00:53:06,737
Decades later, the critic Roland Barthes
said that some images have unplanned,
679
00:53:06,762 --> 00:53:09,626
natural details in them that move us.
680
00:53:10,412 --> 00:53:12,398
Barthes called this the punctum.
681
00:53:12,578 --> 00:53:14,937
The thing that pricks our feelings.
682
00:53:15,168 --> 00:53:18,849
Griffith's work is full of the punctum,
the wind in the trees.
683
00:53:25,372 --> 00:53:29,506
This scene from Way Down East is
set on a treacherous thawing river.
684
00:53:29,794 --> 00:53:31,387
Griffith could never have planned
685
00:53:31,412 --> 00:53:36,223
that Lillian Gish's right arm would
push ice off the adjacent ice flow.
686
00:53:37,222 --> 00:53:39,275
But we notice the realness
of the moment.
687
00:53:41,989 --> 00:53:45,204
Griffith worked with one of the best
cinematographers in the business,
688
00:53:45,337 --> 00:53:46,596
Billy Bitzer.
689
00:53:46,811 --> 00:53:49,396
Bitzer disliked the hard
edge of the film image,
690
00:53:49,444 --> 00:53:51,603
so put a collar around the lens hood,
691
00:53:51,781 --> 00:53:54,262
to make the edge of the image
go slightly darker,
692
00:53:54,287 --> 00:53:57,736
"adding class to the picture"
as Bitzer himself put it
693
00:53:57,947 --> 00:54:01,867
and influencing the look of film
in America for a generation.
694
00:54:03,027 --> 00:54:06,938
Griffith and Bitzer understood
the psychological intensity of a lens.
695
00:54:07,435 --> 00:54:09,328
They used visual softness
696
00:54:09,731 --> 00:54:12,538
and backlighting,
which gave a halo to hair
697
00:54:12,676 --> 00:54:15,553
and made actors stand
out against backgrounds.
698
00:54:18,446 --> 00:54:23,298
What Griffith and Bitzer did in
1914 and '15 with all their talents,
699
00:54:23,323 --> 00:54:25,965
their haloed imagery,
their splendid tracking shots
700
00:54:25,990 --> 00:54:30,768
and feel for the outdoors is one of
the great shocks in the story of film.
701
00:54:31,279 --> 00:54:36,597
They made this deceitful state of
the nation movie that raised a racist flag,
702
00:54:37,083 --> 00:54:40,157
which showed the power of
cinema, and its danger.
703
00:54:42,128 --> 00:54:45,906
The Birth of a Nation looks like it
was shot in Griffith's native Kentucky
704
00:54:47,730 --> 00:54:50,774
but it was actually filmed
here near Los Angeles.
705
00:54:55,101 --> 00:54:56,861
It showed the American Civil War.
706
00:54:58,173 --> 00:55:00,587
Griffith mixed the epic
with the intimate.
707
00:55:01,684 --> 00:55:03,698
A Southern officer returns home.
708
00:55:04,209 --> 00:55:08,395
He goes to his mother. Her arms come
out of the doorway to enfold him.
709
00:55:16,116 --> 00:55:17,775
We don't see the rest of her.
710
00:55:19,063 --> 00:55:22,257
Such subtlety made the racism
all the more dangerous.
711
00:55:23,738 --> 00:55:26,583
Black Senators were shown
as drunk and unclean.
712
00:55:28,295 --> 00:55:30,932
In this scene,
Griffith used Wagner music.
713
00:55:31,472 --> 00:55:34,599
The Cameron family are being
attacked by black soldiers.
714
00:55:35,044 --> 00:55:38,503
They're rescued by the Klan
- heroic and thrilling.
715
00:55:46,665 --> 00:55:51,057
After some screenings, black audience
members were attacked with clubs.
716
00:55:51,946 --> 00:55:57,027
The Ku Klux Klan had been disbanded
in 1869, but by the mid 1920s,
717
00:55:57,292 --> 00:56:00,432
its membership was back
up to four million.
718
00:56:01,658 --> 00:56:03,806
Talk about the wind in the trees.
719
00:56:04,659 --> 00:56:09,369
More than 80 years later, DJ Spooky
sampled and played with the toxic scenes
720
00:56:09,394 --> 00:56:12,819
of Birth of a Nation,
almost as if he was scribbling on them.
721
00:56:19,302 --> 00:56:21,303
The year after The Birth of a Nation,
722
00:56:21,328 --> 00:56:24,881
Griffith saw this,
the epic Italian film, Cabiria.
723
00:56:25,270 --> 00:56:28,929
He was stunned,
particularly by these moving dolly shots.
724
00:56:29,860 --> 00:56:33,149
Inspired by these moves and
production design such as this,
725
00:56:33,174 --> 00:56:35,329
using elephants to suggest scale,
726
00:56:36,729 --> 00:56:39,336
and also by the novels
of Charles Dickens
727
00:56:39,514 --> 00:56:41,906
he made a three and a half hour film,
728
00:56:41,975 --> 00:56:45,439
Intolerance, about "love's
struggle through history."
729
00:56:49,998 --> 00:56:52,412
The film showed human
intolerance in Babylon...
730
00:56:54,362 --> 00:56:56,272
..and the life of Jesus Christ,
731
00:56:57,092 --> 00:56:58,517
tinted in sepia...
732
00:56:59,104 --> 00:57:01,198
..in the massacre of St Bartholomew,
733
00:57:01,307 --> 00:57:04,781
in medieval ages,
violent scenes tinted blue...
734
00:57:06,830 --> 00:57:08,556
..and in modern gangsterism,
735
00:57:08,749 --> 00:57:11,119
all shiny cars and jazz outfits,
736
00:57:13,122 --> 00:57:15,344
and then inter-cut these.
737
00:57:16,573 --> 00:57:19,965
Griffith said, "Dickens
inter-cuts, so, so will I".
738
00:57:20,738 --> 00:57:25,259
He took storyline A so far,
then jumped to storyline B,
739
00:57:25,545 --> 00:57:29,012
advanced it a certain amount,
then went back again to A
740
00:57:29,116 --> 00:57:31,115
and picked up where he had left off.
741
00:57:32,580 --> 00:57:36,669
Previously a cut from one shot
to the next meant, as we've seen,
742
00:57:36,956 --> 00:57:38,972
"then" or "meanwhile."
743
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:45,320
Griffith's cutting between time
periods wasn't saying either.
744
00:57:46,580 --> 00:57:50,484
It was saying, "look, these very
different events, from different eras,
745
00:57:50,509 --> 00:57:52,976
all show the same human trait,
746
00:57:53,701 --> 00:57:56,220
- intolerance,
or the failure of love."
747
00:57:57,065 --> 00:57:59,614
Editing as an intellectual signpost,
748
00:58:00,575 --> 00:58:04,538
asking people to notice not
something about action or story
749
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:06,600
but about the meaning of the sequence.
750
00:58:08,908 --> 00:58:12,048
Soviets such as Eisenstein
wrote about this editing.
751
00:58:12,420 --> 00:58:15,330
And as far away as Japan in 1921,
752
00:58:15,664 --> 00:58:18,186
Minoru Murata made this film,
753
00:58:18,211 --> 00:58:19,588
Souls on the Road.
754
00:58:20,202 --> 00:58:22,158
Two storylines intertwine.
755
00:58:22,409 --> 00:58:24,476
In the end of the film,
they come together.
756
00:58:24,848 --> 00:58:30,018
Two ex-convicts from one storyline here
find a son from the other storyline,
757
00:58:30,264 --> 00:58:31,611
in the snow.
758
00:58:32,990 --> 00:58:36,642
Their story has been one of
hope, but the son has died.
759
00:58:37,168 --> 00:58:40,294
A pioneering use of
parallel editing in Asia.
760
00:58:41,719 --> 00:58:45,282
This made Souls on the Road
the first great Japanese film.
761
00:58:52,929 --> 00:58:55,804
In LA today, a shopping
mall on Hollywood Boulevard,
762
00:58:55,829 --> 00:58:57,603
where the Oscars take place,
763
00:58:57,628 --> 00:59:01,709
has partially rebuilt the massive
Babylonian gate from Intolerance.
764
00:59:05,159 --> 00:59:08,329
The original was here,
a mile away from the shopping mall.
765
00:59:11,940 --> 00:59:15,999
It was demolished when Hollywood
didn't care much about its own history.
766
00:59:18,420 --> 00:59:21,118
But what history! What ideas!
767
00:59:21,284 --> 00:59:24,150
Filmed with a dolly on a crane,
and even on a balloon,
768
00:59:24,175 --> 00:59:28,469
to get high enough up into the wind
that flaps these vast hangings.
769
00:59:32,122 --> 00:59:35,559
Cinema was just 20 years old
when this shot was filmed.
770
00:59:37,152 --> 00:59:39,152
A new art form had been born.
771
00:59:39,479 --> 00:59:42,404
Scandinavian directors had
made it an art of light.
772
00:59:48,863 --> 00:59:51,692
Nickelodeons had given
way to movie palaces,
773
00:59:52,603 --> 00:59:54,581
places built like cathedrals.
774
00:59:59,684 --> 01:00:01,180
Or Egyptian Temples.
775
01:00:03,875 --> 01:00:05,534
Or Chinese pavilions.
776
01:00:13,067 --> 01:00:17,460
A garden called Hollywood started to
pump fantasies out into the world.
777
01:00:21,266 --> 01:00:25,288
Film editing captured the fragmented
experiences of modern life.
778
01:00:28,765 --> 01:00:32,861
New creatures called movie stars became
the most famous people in the world.
779
01:00:34,226 --> 01:00:37,107
They lived in places
of rapture and escape.
780
01:00:39,643 --> 01:00:42,651
The story of film seemed to
have reached its climax...
781
01:00:50,014 --> 01:00:53,006
but, in fact,
it was only just beginning.
72768
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