Transitional Cinema

Balio, Tino (ed.) (1985): The American Film Industry.
Barnes, John (1976): The Beginnings of the Cinema in England.
Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, and Thompson, Kristin (1985): The Classical Hollywood Cinema.
Chanan, Michael (1980): The Dream that Kicks.
Cherchi Usai, Paolo, and Codelli, Lorenzo (eds.) (1990): Before Caligari.
Cosandey, Roland, Gaudreault, Andre´ and Gunning, Tom (eds.) (1992): Une invention du diable?
Elsaesser, Thomas (ed.) (1990): Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative.
Fell, John L. (1983): Film before Griffith.
Fell, John L. (1986): Film and the Narrative Tradition.
Gunning, Tom (1986): ‘The Cinema of Attractions’.
Holman, Roger (ed.) (1982): Cinema 1900–1906: An Analytic Study.
Low, Rachael, and Manvell, Roger (1948): The History of the British Film, 1896–1906.
Musser, Charles (1990): The Emergence of Cinema.
Musser, Charles (1991): Before the Nickelodeon.

The standard film length evolved significantly during the transitional period. Initially composed of single shots, the average film eventually reached a standard length of a $1,000$ -foot reel, providing a runtime of approximately $15$ minutes at the standard projection speed.
The emergence of the ‘feature film’ (multi-reel projects) occurred between $1911$ and $1915$ . These films expanded the runtime to an hour or more, allowing for complex character development and subplots that were previously impossible in the short-form "cinema of attractions."

The rise of the ‘cinema of narrative integration’ coincided with cinema's establishment as the first truly mass medium. As audiences grew to include the middle class, the industry faced intense scrutiny from moral reformers and religious groups.
In response, film companies formed the National Board of Censorship in $1909$ (renamed the National Board of Review in $1916$ ). This internal censorship scheme helped the industry avoid government-imposed regulation and improved the social respectability of the medium by self-policing content that depicted crime or immorality too explicitly.

Prior to World War I, European film industries—specifically France, Italy, and Denmark—were the primary exporters of cinema.
Pathé-Frères, the prime French studio, was a vertically integrated giant. They manufactured their own raw film stock, built their own cameras, and produced films, allowing them to dominate the international market. Between $1905$ and $1914$ , approximately $60$ to $70$ percent of all films imported into the U.S. were French-made.

The Nickelodeon (named after the five-cent entry fee and the Greek word for theater, odeion) transformed film from a vaudeville act into a standalone business. These storefront theaters grew from $3,000$ sites in $1907$ to $10,000$ by $1910$ .
By $1909$ , it is estimated that $45$ million people attended the cinema weekly. Despite their popularity, nickelodeons were often criticized as "dark, dank dens of iniquity" due to fire hazards, poor ventilation, and the perceived lack of supervision for youth and immigrant audiences.

Formed in $1908$ , the MPPC (also known as the "Edison Trust") was an oligopoly that pooled the patents of major players like Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, and Selig.
Their primary goal was to control the industry by requiring exhibitors to pay a weekly $2$ dollar license fee and use only Trust-approved films and equipment. This led to a fierce legal war against "Independents" (such as Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal) who sought to film outside the Trust's restrictive grasp, eventually leading to many filmmakers moving to Hollywood to escape the Trust's East Coast detectives.

In the early years, actors were anonymous to prevent them from demanding higher salaries. However, by $1908$ , studios began to recognize the marketing power of recurring faces.
The transition began with figures like the "Biograph Girl" (Florence Lawrence). When Lawrence was poached by Independent producer Carl Laemmle and his IMP studio, he launched the first major publicity stunt by faking her death and then debunking it to generate national headlines, effectively inventing the modern Star System.

The shift toward Narrative Integration meant that cinematic techniques were now used to serve the story rather than just provide a spectacle. This included:
1. Analytical Editing: Breaking a single scene into multiple shots to show different perspectives or close-ups.
2. The "9-foot line": Moving the camera from the traditional $12$ or $16$ feet away to a three-quarter shot (9 feet), which allowed audiences to see facial expressions more clearly.
3. Continuity Editing: The development of techniques like the 180-degree rule and match-on-action to ensure the viewer could follow the spatial logic of the scene.

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation served as a technical culmination of the transitional era. While technically revolutionary for its use of cross-cutting, tinted frames, and massive epic scale, it remains deeply controversial for its racist themes and glorification of the KKK, illustrating how film's power as a mass medium could be used for social and political propaganda.