The motion picture had early on discovered its natural role as what was an essentially popular form of entertainment; from Melies' fantasies and fairy plays to the knockabout antics of the first comedians, the basic thrillers of the Porter school - that it would cultivate its certain something signature style in the arena of art.
The early filmmakers would soon expand their obligatory horizons They were on a pilgrimage to garner respect as well as recognition and appreciation as true artists and hoped for an audience other than the common patrons of music halls and fairgrounds. In 1906, Charles Pathe, seeking to chart new waters would form the Societe-Cinematographiqe des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres, with a remit of filming the classics of the modern theatrical and literary repertory. Two years later, also under the ultimate control of the omnipresent Pathe, the Societe du Film d'Art was formed, to commission scenarios from the greatest living writers and to employ the finest thespians, including the unsurpassed Sarah Bernhardt herself, however Lady Bernhardt would not appear in the heralded first production of the Film d'Art, L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duke de Guise,1908), which had a special musical accompaniment composed by Camille Saint-Saens, but she was to take the lead in several later films, including Dame aux Camelias (Camille,1911) and La Reine Elisabeth (Queen Elizabeth,1912).
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| On the right Pathe. |
The film medium was certainly not flattering for the aging Bernhardt who was in her 67th year at the time, nor could it reverse the ravages of time on any of the seasoned actresses as was the case with rival performer Gabrielle Rejane who was an ancient 55 in Madame Sans-Gene (1911) which was based on the play by French dramatist Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) and playwright Emile Moreau; but theater enthusiasts must be grateful to the cinema for even such inadequate records of the stars if the nineteenth century.
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| Madame St Gene, the 1925 updating starring Gloria Swanson and Charles de Rochefort |
Other companies were following the lead of the Societe du Film d'Art in making their own films d'art, cultivating a new and influential vogue. The productions of the film d'art when screened today, appear stuff, stagy, profoundly upholstered and declamatory. Nevertheless, in their day their patently good connections did much to enhance the social respectability of the cinema.
The vogue of the film d'art left its legacies behind. In Italy its influence would segue into the development of a style of costume spectacle that earned the Italian cinema a period of international glory in the years that preceded the Great War, the taste for historical themes was evinced at least as early as the year 1905 with Filoteo Alberini's short silent La Presa di Roma (The Fall of Rome). The film d'art and the discovery that films could be made in authentic classical locations produced a rich harvest after 1909, with the Cines, Itala Ambrosio and Aquila companies, among others, in fierce competition. The high point was Enrico Guazzoni's colossal Quo Vadis (1912), whose unlimited extravagance, thousands of extra actors, conflagration of Rome and a menagerie of lions to devour the Christians, all but guaranteed it would be a world-wide success. Its fame and the outbreak of World War I somewhat eclipsed a much more remarkable work, Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914), whose script was attributed (somewhat exaggeratedly, it seems) to the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. The control of the narrative, the scale and splendor of the settings, which were cleverly combined with actual locations, and the refinement of the actors, lighting and camerawork were never surpassed by the early Italian cinema.
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| The great Sarah Bernhardt is Queen Elizabeth for a day in 1912 |
It was the invasion of the film d'art that struck the first blow at the domination of the one-reel film in the exhibition systems of Britain and America. Producers, as well as directors were convinced hat the audiences' powers of concentration cold not extend beyond a single reel; and when, in 1911, D.W. Griffith decided that his Enoch Arden demanded to be made at the greater length of two-reels, distributors - until shamed by the protests of audiences - insisted on releasing it in two separate parts. At first the three and four part films that began to emerge from the Continent with film d'art in vogue, they were begrudgingly accepted as a foreign eccentricity. Until 1912 when exhibitor Adolph Zukor (1873-1976) boasted such success with Bernhardt's Queen Elizabeth, the MPA would finally come around to the idea of the extended reels and running times of the motion picture.