1905 - Panorama from the Times Building, New York - Wallace McCutcheon

It is not an over-exaggeration to state that Panorama from the Times Building, New York provides the audience with a new way of seeing. Panorama is similar to some of the Lumiere Brothers’ ‘actualities’, except that it provides us with a breathtaking view of New York from the top of the Times Building. Within the space of a decade, film has gone from a still shot of workers outside the Lumiere Brothers’ factory to a daring aerial shot of a substantial part of New York. The film was shot by Wallace McCutcheon, who also directed the briefly discussed 1905 film Personal.

In 1905, in the world of art, Matisse and the Les Fauves were pushing beyond Post-Impressionism (See Matisse's Open Window above) and Picasso had left Barcelona for Paris a year earlier and was heading towards ‘inventing’ Cubism alongside Braque. Film, an artistic medium still in its infancy, was also providing its audience with fresh perspectives. We can only speculate as to what the reaction of the contemporary audience would have been to seeing this film, but there is little doubt that it would have had a startling effect on them (I apologise if I seem to make this point about most films but access to such information would enrich this blog). The depth of vision when at 0:29 is remarkable even to the contemporary audience and opens up an exciting amount of new possibilities for film. The motion picture camera is providing the audience with a perspective they would not be able to obtain from any other art form. It also raises the audience’s expectations in terms of what a single frame can contain.

People and transport are barely visible in this film: the city, specifically New York, becomes the protagonist of this film. The writer Thomas Wolfe once said, “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years”. It can be argued that this is largely down to the city’s rich cinematic history – not only is the city familiar to many viewers, but it has a distinctive personality that usurps any other filmed city - Panorama begins our relationship with New York.  

The Library of Congress tells us exactly what can be seen in the film:

The view is from the top of the then newly-erected Times Building, at a height of approximately twenty stories. The film opens with a vertical pan, going from the street below up to the sky. The photographer then makes a pan to the north over the tops of the buildings from Bryant Park, south of 42nd Street (behind the New York Public Library) [Frame: 1078] up 6th Avenue to the Hippodrome Theatre at 43rd Street [1866]. A marquee on the theater reads "A Yankee Circus On Mars." The camera continues to rotate toward 44th and 45th Streets between 6th and 7th Avenues, until coming to rest looking directly north up Times Square to 46th Street, where Broadway (left) and 7th Avenue (right) diverge again [3676].

Can any New Yorkers tell us which of these buildings remain in place, and if the Times building is still standing?

 

New York Subway, directed by G.W. Bitzer, provides us with a viewpoint of the other end of New York: its subway. The Subway itself had only opened a year earlier; once again this film would have bedazzled the audience. Yet again, a comparison can be made with another Lumiere Brothers’ film. In Arrivee d'un train en gare a La Ciotat the stationary camera captured a train’s arrival, in this film we are given a tracking shot of a train’s journey from one station to another. The shot of the train as it passes through a tunnel is both hypnotic and claustrophobic; the gradually diminishing light in this shot is quite a sight.

It also gives us our first glimpse of the 'underworld' - it will be interesting to chronicle film's relation with this particular space.

1905 - La Presa Di Roma (The Taking of Rome) - Filoteo Alberini

This film is worth remembering for a number of reasons. It marked a major step forward from the brief short film designed to entertain audiences during intermissions of musical concerts or theatrical productions towards the longer, more complex feature film. The film’s subject, the breaching of the Porta Pia by Italian troops in 1870, resulting in the annexation of Rome to the fledgling unified Italian state, connects the Italian Risorgimento, the national drive to independence and the formation of a single Italian nation throughout the peninsula. (Italian cinema would continue to play a civic function in society, especially during the neorealist period and afterward.) The Taking of Rome also set the stage for the rise of what would eventually become Italy’s most successful silent film genre: the historical epic.

The above is Peter Bondanella’s description of La Presa di Roma from his excellent book A History of Italian Cinema (a reading list post is in the pipeline...). It makes clear the importance of Filoteo Alberini’s film. Alberini was the Italian equivalent of the Lumiere Brothers; on 11 November 1895 he applied for a patent for his device, the Alberini Kinetograph.

La Presa Di Roma is a film which requires a certain amount of background reading. I always attempt to watch a film ‘blind’ first, i.e. without reading any information on it so that I do not enter the viewing of the film with any preconceptions, but on this occasion I was at a complete loss as to the events of the film, which was compounded by the fact that a couple of the scenes of the movie have been lost.

Bondanella refers to the breaching of the Porta Pia by Italian troops, which was the final act of the Second Italian War of Independence and lead to the unification of the Italian state. The events of the film sees the General of the Italian Army escorted under blindfold from Ponte Milvio to the General of the Papal Army, where the latter General issues an ultimatum to the General of the Papal Army to surrender. The ultimatum is refused, and the final scene of the film sees the Italian troops breach through the wall of the Porta Pia.

This scene provides us with our first ‘battle’ scene; there is no Méliès esque  visual trickery on show but it is not needed, the image of the soldiers storming through the wall is compelling but also prophetic of the century’s coming events.

When we think of the origins of political cinema, we tend to think of the likes of Eisenstein and Riefenstahl. Yet this film predates not only those directors, but also the First World War and its recriminations. La Presa Di Roma, depicting a key moment in Italy’s recent history, was produced in co-operation with the Italian Ministry of War. This makes clear that as early as 1905, governments were aware of the potential power of the moving image.

Much is made of the audience’s immediate reactions to The Great Train Robbery and L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat, but it would be of greater interest to learn what effect La Presa Di Roma had on its contemporary audience and their feelings of national pride. It would be extremely useful to uncover accounts of these reactions as I think it is hard for a modern viewer to measure the effect viewing a key historic moment would have had on the contemporary audience.

The influence of the Lumiere Brothers and Méliès is not visible in La Presa Di Roma. The film is distinctively Italian and the visual language is of a different nature to what we have seen in other films. For example, the lavish, opulent set of the scene (see below) where the blindfolded general is brought to the Papal Army’s general will become typical of Italian films of the next decade. The hand gestures and movement of the two generals is of a unique nature and emphasised the Italian inflections of the film.

La Presa di Roma is an incredibly important film that requires far more academic and general interest. A film requiring as much context as La Presa Di Roma does needs more information about the contemporary audience response was as well as to what extent the Italian Ministry of War influenced the film’s direction. If you are interested in either political or Italian cinema it is a must see film.