Theatre to cinema: stage pictorialism and the early feature film

Abstract

This is the first book-length study of relations between early cinema and nineteenth-century theatre for nearly fifty years. Incorporating the results of recent reconsiderations of early cinema, Theatre to Cinema seeks to characterize what features of nineteenth-century theatre early film-makers borrowed or adapted, and the ways specific characteristics of cinema inflected these borrowings. Rather than simply copying the theatre en bloc, the cinema seized on those aspects of spectacular staging that can be called 'pictorial', and found ways of adapting cinematic techniques to pictorial ends. The book traces this influence in the adaptation and transformation of the theatrical tableau, acting styles and staging techniques, examining such films as Caserini's Ma l'amor mio non muore, Tournier's Alias Jimmy Valentine and The Whip, Sjostrom's Ingmarssonerma, and various adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin. While previous accounts of the relationship between cinema and theatre have tended to assume that early film-makers had to break away from the stage in order to establish a specific aesthetic for the new medium, the book argues that the cinema turned to the pictorial tradition of the theatre in the 1910s to establish a model for feature film-making. Theatre to Cinema is a seminal work which will profoundly alter our understanding of early cinema.

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