On this view, the early films of cinema’s pioneers would not have been improved by the advanced technology of later generations, for their displays did not call for it. Further they cannot be seen as solely preparatory, for, like later narrative films, they presented a subject for view in a uniquely cinematic way. The early films of Edison and Dickson were simple, short glimpses of “well-known sports figures, excerpts from noted vaudeville acts, or performances by dancers or acrobats” (Thompson & Bordwell 7). While it is true that primitive technology did limit these small-scale productions, which, according to Thompson and Bordwell, “lasted only twenty seconds or so – the longest run of film that the Kinetoscope could hold” (7), advanced technology would not necessarily have improved them, for their simplistic nature did not call for it. Regardless, filmmaking technology evolved with the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinématographe which freed filmmakers from the confines of the studio and allowed for on location shooting (Thompson & Bordwell 8-9). This, however, did not lead to better films, but only augmented the possibilities for future films such as Workers Leaving the Factory (Lumiere 1895) and Arrival of a Train (Lumiere1896), the production of which would have been impossible within a studio. With this advancement, the global toolset of filmmakers grew; from Edison and Dickson, filmmakers got the option to shoot in a light controlled studio and from the Lumiere brothers the ability to shoot on location. Neither of these options is universally better, but only particularly more suited to a given production and would, in themselves, evolve over time.
Single shot display films eventually gave way to films such as George Melies’ Trip to the Moon (1902), composed of several single shot scenes, and later films like Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915), which employed analytical editing, using multiple shots from varied distances in the same scene to show detail and emotion (Thompson & Bordwell). The continuation of this technological editing evolution is most evident in the Constructivist-influenced, state-sponsored Soviet montage movement of the 1920s. According to Thompson and Bordwell, Montage films “have a greater number of shots than does any other type of filmmaking of their era […and] frequently broke individual actions down into two or more shots” (117). However, the more complex editing techniques were not, in themselves, what drove the quality of montage films, but instead the “more specific strategies of editing, involving temporal, spatial, and graphic tensions” (Thompson & Bordwell 117). Thompson and Bordwell write that Montage filmmaker Dziga Vertov, for instance, “emphasized that the filmmaker should calculate the differences between shots – light verses dark, slow motion versus fast motion, and so on.
These differences, or ‘intervals,’ would be the basis of the film’s effect on the audience” (115). The influence of Marxist dialecticism led Sergei Eisenstein, another Montage filmmaker, to theorize that shots should clash with one another to create a new idea in the mind of the viewer (Thompson & Bordwell 116). This practice is employed multiple times in Eisenstein’s film October (1928), such as in the juxtaposition of Kerensky with a shot of Napoleon (Thompson & Bordwell 120). With Vertov and Eisenstein as exemplars, it is clear that the Montage filmmakers achieved success not solely because of the technological evolution, but because they purposefully utilized the cinematic formal elements, in this case editing, born from that evolution to create a distinct style. Their inventiveness catered the technology to their goals and resulted in quality.
While Soviet Montage filmmakers focused on editing, they recognized the importance of a striking composition within each individual shot (Thompson & Bordwell 121). So too did the French Impressionists and German expressionists who used other of the cinematic formal elements, such as camera work and mise-en-scene, respectively, to externalize characters’ inner states (Thompson & Bordwell). For French Impressionists, such as Louis Delluc, filmmaking was about photogénie, “that quality that distinguishes a film shot from the original object photographed” (Thompson & Bordwell 77). According to Thompson and Bordwell, photogénie “is created by the properties of the camera: framing isolates objects from their environment, black-and-white film stock transforms their appearance, special optical effects further change them, and so on” (77). This emphasis led the Impressionists to develop innovative camera techniques to externalize characters’ subjectivity. They manipulated the components of the presented technology, in this case the camera, to purposefully elicit a desired effect. Thompson and Bordwell detail Impressionist uses of the camera’s optical devices:
Superimpositions may convey a character’s thoughts or memories. A filter placed over the lens may function t