week 5

Films: Les Vampires Episodes 1 & 2 (Louis Feuillade, 1915)

The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903,)

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Enoch J. Rector, 1897)

The Perils of Pauline (Louis J. Gasnier, 1914)

Reading Due:

1. Shelley Stamp “An Awful Struggle Between Love and Ambition: Serial Heroines, Serial Stars and Their Female Fans” (pages 210-225 in The Silent Cinema Reader)

2. Richard Abel “Pathe Goes to Town: French Films Create a Market for the Nickelodeon” (pages 103-118 in The Silent Cinema Reader) 

3. Ben Singer “Manhattan Nickelodeons: New Data on Audiences and Exhibition” (pages 119-134 in The Silent Cinema Reader )

I found this week's readings and films very empowering as we transition into talking about how women are portrayed in film. Since the 1900s, women in film have definitely progressed out of stereotypical roles and are being cast roles outside of maids and being a wife to a man.

In the Shelley Stamp reading, it talked a lot about how femininity onscreen was shown in ways outside of marriage and motherhood that helped female film fans reconfigure their own lives outside of social norms. This really helped females who felt trapped in their own lives to be able to escape to an alternative reality where women played roles that were new and exciting. I would imagine that it would've been difficult for aspiring female filmmakers during this time as their ideas are shot down by how male-dominated the industry was. Women would have been deemed as being more suitable for artistic motion pictures rather than action or thriller films. '"I believe that women would make as big a success directing as men if given the right chance and opportunity (p. 219)."' I can only imagine how much more diversified film would've been from a female perspective.

In another reading, we are introduced to "story films", which really added to the development of early cinema. While most cinema-goers were immigrants and the working class, women also were equally just as interested. Just as much as women were consumers of cinema, they helped produce and progress the film industry as well.