Brighton School

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James Williamson , one of the leading representatives of the "School of Brighton"

As a school of Brighton ( Engl. : Brighton School ; . French : L'école de Brighton ) is a group of British film pioneers referred to near the seaside resort of Brighton had settled. The short films made by these filmmakers between 1896 and 1910 are among the most important in early film history and made a significant contribution to the development of film editing .

definition

The term "School of Brighton" was coined in the 1940s by the French film historian Georges Sadoul in a study of the development of film techniques in the United Kingdom. For Sadoul, the meaning of the "School of Brighton" is that it introduced and established film editing, filmed chases , parallel action, a certain social realism and outdoor shots. However, this school did not form an artistic movement with a common goal, but the members of this group were in close contact with each other and influenced each other in their work.

The members of the "School of Brighton" include George Albert Smith , James Williamson , William Friese-Greene , Alfred Darling and Esmé Collings , all of whom were active as filmmakers in Brighton and neighboring Hove for several years. Born in America, Charles Urban , who distributed Smith and Williamson's films in London through his Warwick Trading Company , is also included in this group.

history

The history of film production in Brighton began in the summer of 1896, a few months after the Lumière brothers presented their cinématographe in London . In addition to the film pioneers Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres , who had chosen the seaside resort of Brighton as the location for their films, the Hove-based photographer Esmé Collings also began making his own films. He made numerous films in Brighton, only three of which are known today.

Collings was helped in his work by the engineer Alfred Darling, who ran a shop for photographic accessories in Brighton. Darling was to become the initiator of the "Brighton School". At the end of 1896 he sold equipment to James Williamson, a druggist and amateur photographer, and George Albert Smith, who had made a name for himself in Hove as a demonstrator of the magic lantern .

While Collings had already withdrawn from the film business in 1897, Smith and Williamson developed into the most influential directors in early British film history . Williamson gave up his drugstore in 1898 and concentrated on film work, Smith set up a film laboratory in 1897 , which was also used by his companions. Even Elizabeth Hawkins Whitshed as Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond one of the first British film directors, and Charles Urban's Warwick Trading Company were among Smith's customers. In 1899, George Albert Smith established the first film studio in Hove.

Excerpt from James Williamson's film Fire! by 1901

At the beginning of the new century, Brighton and Hove George formed an important center of the young British film industry with Albert Smith and James Williamson. In the early years, Smith and Williamson were best known as pioneers of film tricks , their works are considered counterparts to the films of Georges Méliès '. From 1900, however, her films showed the development of cinematic techniques that were used as narrative means. By combining different shots , Smith and Williamson were able to narrate increasingly complex plots, and their films helped establish the invisible editing as the most important montage technique in classic film. Other innovations that could be seen in the Brighton School films are parallel montage , counter-cut and close-up .

In 1905 William Friese-Greene moved from London to Brighton. Friese-Greene had operated photography shops with Esmé Collings in Brighton, London and Bath from 1888 to 1891 , but withdrew from the joint venture to focus on the construction of film cameras . Friese-Greene moved to Brighton to assist William Norman Lascelles Davidson in his experiments with color photography . At the same time as Davidson, George Albert Smith began developing his own color film system , which he patented in 1906 under the name Kinemacolor . After the marketing of Kinemacolor by Charles Urban, there was a lawsuit between Friese-Greene and Smith in 1914 over the authorship of the first successful color film system, in which Smith was defeated in court. Smith then finally withdrew from the film business.

James Williamson, who had set up his own film production company Wiliamson & Co. in 1907 , had already stopped producing feature films in 1910 . Thus, at the start of the First World War, no member of the "Brighton School" was active in the British film industry, which had outgrown its infancy.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georges Sadoul: British creators of film technique: British scenario writers, the creators of the language of DW Griffith, GA Smith, Alfred Collins and some others . British Film Institute, London 1948.
  2. ^ Georges Sadoul: Histoire générale du cinéma. 2. Les pionniers du cinéma 1897 - 1909. Editions Denoël, Paris 1948, p. 192.
  3. ^ Rachael Low: The History of British Film. Volume I: The History of the British Film 1896-1906 . Routledge, London 1997, ISBN 0-415-15451-0 , p. 115.
  4. ^ Robert Pearson: Early Cinema , p. 16.
  5. ↑ Michael Chanan: The Dream that Kicks: The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain. Routledge, London 1996, ISBN 0-415-11750-X , p. 172.
  6. ^ Frank Gray: The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899). GA Smith and the emergence of the edited film in England. In: The Silent Cinema Reader (Eds. Lee Grieveson and Peter Krämer). Routledge, London 2004, ISBN 0-415-25284-9 , pp. 51-62
  7. ^ Luke McKernan: The Brighton School and the Quest for Natural Color . In: Vanessa Toulmin, Simon Popple (Eds.): Visual Delights - two: Exhibition and Reception . John Libbey, Eastleigh 2005, ISBN 0-86196-657-0 , pp. 212-215.
  8. ^ Charles Barr: Before Blackmail: Silent British Cinema . In: Robert Murphy (Ed.): The British Cinema Book . British Film Institute, London 2001, ISBN 0-85170-852-8 , p. 15.

literature

  • Jörg Helbig: History of British Film . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01510-6 .
  • Robert Pearson: Early Cinema . In: The Oxford History of World Cinema , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996. ISBN 0-19-874242-8 , pp. 13-23.

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