U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site

Film still from the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, the film is considered by many to be groundbreaking for its editing and storyline. The still shown above frightened many audience members with a life-size image of a gunslinger firing his pistol at the audience. Exhibitors were told to play this separate scene at either the beginning or end of the film.

That type of visual shortcut did not always exist, however. Someone had to originate the first temporal cut, and in so doing create a language unique to cinema. In the early 1900s, filmmakers were still treating movies like moving photographs. The camera position remained fixed and there was little manipulation of the images, aside from some rudimentary special effects. It took a few innovative minds to develop the visual grammar that viewers now take for granted in Hollywood films.

Cinematic language
One of the first of these pioneers was Edwin S. Porter, who is widely credited with shifting editing from between scenes to within one scene. By placing one distinct shot against another and devising meaning from the juxtaposition, intra-scene editing took the first step in developing a cinematic language. For instance, in his 1903 film The Life of an American Fireman, Porter cut between the interior and exterior of a burning house to increase the tension and tell the simultaneous story of the fireman and the people trapped inside. (The legitimacy of the version of the film that includes intercutting, however, has been questioned, as detailed by David Cook in his A History of Narrative Film.)

U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site

Film still from the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery. In this scene two masked robbers enter the railroad telegraph office and compel the operator to signal the approaching train to stop, allowing them to secretly board.

Later in 1903, Porter released The Great Train Robbery, the seminal early example of crosscutting (the cinematic cutting back and forth between two simultaneous events). Here, a gang of bandits ambushes a train, moving from the telegraph office to outside the train to its interior in a series of interconnected shots. As Cook points out, the importance here is that each scene is not played through to its end, but rather shows a fraction of a complete action, allowing the audience to infer the connections between shots. Film historian Robert Sklar calls the film "the first to unite motion picture spectacle with myths and stories about America."

Griffith and cinematic narrative

American Film Institute

Through films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, director D.W. Griffith is considered by many the father of cinematic narrative.

David Wark Griffith is widely (although not indisputably) considered the father of cinematic narrative, and the first auteur, or a director who controls many aspects of the filmmaking process and stamps his or her personal style on each film. As the lead director at the Biograph studio, Griffith spearheaded numerous cinematic advances, including varied shot depth, such as close-ups and far shots; special effects, such as irises and split screens; the move to high-quality stories; expressive lighting and camera angles; longer film lengths; traveling shots; and a more naturalistic, low-key acting style.

Griffith understood that, regardless of the fact that the viewer watches in a public place, cinema is an intimate medium. His great talent was to glean the emotional center of a story and then use all the tools of filmmaking to highlight that nucleus. For instance, in 1914's Home Sweet Home, Griffith positions Lillian Gish as the angelic sweetheart of John Howard Payne (the composer of the title song), multiple images of whom await Payne in the heavens when he dies. The trick photography and heart-tugging melodrama together create metaphoric meaning: that although Payne was corrupt and degenerate, his music substantiated and even, to an extent, absolved him.

American Film Institute

Film poster for the 1914 film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith.

Also highly significant was Griffith's enthusiasm for the multi-reel film. Although Europeans had had success with feature films, the American industry was reluctant to switch from the production, distribution and exhibition system that had grown up around the single-reel film. Griffith bucked the industry and, more specifically, his own studio, in 1913 by producing Judith of Bethulia, an epic four-reel picture. Biograph's executives feared the greater expense and risk of producing a feature, and after Griffith made the picture on the sly, they rescinded his directorial duties, prompting him to move to the Mutual studio.

In the next few years, Griffith created his most famous films, The Birth of a Nation (1914) and Intolerance (1916). For years film historians have debated the attributes (mostly technical) and drawbacks (mainly thematic) of each; for more in-depth analysis, see the bibliography for book suggestions. Birth was based on Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansmen, and extolled the Ku Klux Klan while condemning African-Americans and miscegenation, a position that has appalled liberal audiences of the past century. In terms of its technical advancements, however, the twelve-reel film proved a brilliant accomplishment. Besides the sweeping scope of the story and the physical sets, Birth ties together multiple story lines into one coherent whole, highlighted with intricate editing and camera usage. The film gained international prestige and at the same time engendered much disapproval for its content; Intolerance stands as Griffith's response to Birth's critics. This film fared less well artistically, but stands as the most ambitious and epic film of the silent era. The initial cut ran 48 reels, and the final version, though shorter and tighter, still baffled audiences with a muddled message and complicated four-story structure.

The business of art

U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site

In just a few years after his earliest experiments with celluloid, Edison managed to build a formidable monopoly in motion pictures. However, despite his best efforts to protect his patents and control the film industry, Edison and the major studios he had combined into "The Trust" were brought down by an antitrust ruling.

As movie artistry evolved through the contributions of Griffith and other early filmmakers, the business end of the industry was also maturing. Biograph, Vitascope and Edison soon emerged as the industry's major studios and controlled much of the American movie landscape. Edison's personal desire for industry domination spurred the foundation of a monopoly. Officially titled the Motion Pictures Patents Company, it was commonly known as The Trust.

The Trust was formed with the 1908 merger of studios Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Lubin, Selig, Kalem, Méliès and Pathé. Edison bought and pooled 16 major patents on movie machines, such as cameras and projectors, then entered into an exclusive agreement with Eastman Kodak for the supply of raw film stock. With these tools under his control, he was able to convince the other major studios to band with him and disallow any further competition from the scores of existing independent companies. Together, they forced distributors and exhibitors to buy and show only films made by the Trust. For about a decade, the scheme proved powerful, but soon angry upstarts challenged the monopoly.

Some, such as independent distributors William Swanson and Carl Laemmle, filed suits proclaiming The Trust illegal. Others bought film stock from England and France and formed their own trade associations, such as the Independent Film Protective Association in 1909. Trust producers, eager to protect their efficient model of production, also contributed to their own downfall by insisting that actors remain nameless (and thus powerless) and refusing to expand beyond one-reel shorts. Although The Trust continued to produce the most technically skillful films, their inflexibility proved their ruin, and by 1918 they were dissolved as part of an antitrust suit.