This essay will endeavour to look critically at the development of cinematic practices between 1895 and 1940. Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian dog) (1928) and Birth of a Nation (1915) will be examined, with consideration to their impact on cinematic practices: both technical and theoretical.
The first commercial film ever was screened during the Christmas of 1895 to a paying public at the Grand Parade Café in France. This is seen as the invention of cinema. During the next twenty years cinema developed from short silent films to long, plot driven epics.
Early cinema was exceptionally simple in form and style, typically only consisting of a single shot framing an action, usually at long-shot distance for example in Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat by the Lumiere brothers. The shot does not move and films people alighting a train, waving, and moving on. Plot was quickly introduced; particularly notably in L'Arroseur arose also by the Lumiere brothers in which a young boy tricks a gardener into spraying himself with a hose. As film became a more popular medium, the pressure was on to create more impressive films to lure in paying audiences. …
