Vitagraph
The Vitagraph Company of America was an American film production and film distribution company founded in 1897 by film pioneers J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith .
history
In 1896, the English immigrant J. Stuart Blackton, fairground draftsman and casual reporter for the New York Evening World , interviewed Thomas Alva Edison about his latest invention, the film projector. The interview ended with Edison persuading Blackton to buy films and a projector. A year later, Blackton and his business partner Albert E. Smith founded the Vitagraph Company of America , which became Edison's direct competitor. A third partner, the film distributor William Rock, joined the company at the turn of the century.
Vitagraph's first studio was on the roof of a building in Manhattan . There, and later also in Brooklyn , sensational news films were made. Later, the company made a name for itself mainly with literary adaptations ( Shakespeare and O. Henry series), dramas and comedies. Major Vitagraph directors were J. Stuart Blackton , Ralph Ince , Charles Kent , Wesley Ruggles , Norman Taurog , Laurence Trimble and James Young .
Vitagraph, like a number of other firms, was the focus of Edison's attorneys, who filed for patents and filed lawsuits in the late 19th century to eliminate competition. Blackton wanted to avoid a lawsuit, so he acquired a special license from Edison, and he also agreed to give Edison many of his most popular films exclusively for distribution. Vitagraph was also one of the ten founding members of the Motion Picture Patents Company , with which Edison wanted to make business impossible for small independent film companies by merging the large companies.
In 1917 Vitagraph acquired the Kalem Company .
The decline of the Vitagraph began with the First World War . Foreign distribution companies ceased to exist , large film companies began to produce and at the same time to lend themselves, so that Vitagraph lost more and more market shares. On April 22, 1925, Albert E. Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers .
Movies
2,534 Vitagraph films are still known today.
News movies
In the 1890s Vitagraph made a name for itself with spectacular news films. In 1898 Blackton turned Tearing Down the Spanish Flag about the Spanish-American War . Already here it was shown that Blackton, quite a businessman, had no problems recreating events and presenting them as authentic. Together with Smith he made this film in the middle of Brooklyn. Smith pointed the camera at an open window, in front of which a small flagpole with a Spanish flag was cleverly placed in perspective so that it looked much larger. Then Blackton tore the flag down dramatically. This short film was a patriotic sensation and generated considerable profits for the new company.
In the film Battle of Santiago Bay (1898), the sea battle was re-enacted in a bathtub, the battle smoke came from a cigarette and was blown into the picture by Blackton's wife. Other films actually contained authentic footage, such as the Spot Filming of Windsor Hotel Fire in New York , which Blackton mixed up with re-enacted scenes (he burned down a model of the Windsor Hotel ). In the film The Fitzsimmons-Jeffries Fight (1899), a boxing match with actual opponents was re-enacted.
Special effects and cartoons
Like Georges Méliès , Blackton and Smith made films that, to the amazement of the audience at the time, showed special effects and animation . Three of these films are Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906), Liquid Electricity; or, The Inventor's Galvanic Fluid (1907) and Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy (1909).
In Humorous Phases of Funny Faces a cartoonist drawing funny faces on a blackboard, which then come to life. The three-minute long film, shot by Blackton himself, is generally regarded as the first pure animation film in film history. In 1900 Blackton had already made a similar film, which, however, combined real and animated films: The Enchanted Drawing . In this two minute long film, Blackton draws a funny face, which he then gives real wine, real cigars and a real cylinder. The real objects become drawings and then real objects again. Blackton worked here with stop-motion technology.
Liquid electricity; or, The Inventor's Galvanic Fluid is a short real-life film that shows trick effects: a mad professor creates sprayable electricity that makes people lightning fast. Blackton uses simple but effective tricks: the victims were recorded at normal speed while the professor moved extremely slowly. Then the whole thing was played at multiple speeds: Now the victims fidget and the professor walks at normal speed.
Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy shows a fight between a pipe smoker and two envious elves. The trick of the tiny elves next to the normal-sized smoker is not based on double exposure , but on the skillful use of a mirror and lens. In addition to technical tricks, Blackton also used enlarged props for this film.
Winsor McCay , one of the pioneers of animation technology, made two films for Vitagraph : 1911 Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the NY Herald and His Moving Comics and 1912 How a Mosquito Operates . The first film is a mixture of documentary and animation: McCay talks to friends about his cartoon characters, explains a little about the process of animation filmmaking, before his characters (including Little Nemo ) are finally brought to life. How a Mosquito Operates ( like a mosquito going on ) is exactly what the title promises: A hungry mosquito sees a man followed him and stabs, is when the man in bed.
History, Bible and literary films
Vitagraph made a name for itself through spectacular film adaptations of historical events, biblical stories and, above all, literary models. Ralph Ince, who later became an important director of the company, played Abraham Lincoln eight times in the studio's films; Vitagraph made four films about the life of Napoleon and one about George Washington . The Bible, especially the Old Testament, delivered as well as the history of spectacular templates for films: Alone in 1909, the company released Saul and David , The Judgment of Solomon , Jephthah's Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy and The Life of Moses . This first known film biography of Moses was shot in four consecutive parts, which were later shown in one piece - therefore this film, which lasts around fifty minutes in total, is considered the oldest best-known feature film in American film history.
Vitagraph produced an unusually large number of film adaptations of important and sophisticated literature very early on. Charles Dickens fabrics have been adapted seven times (including the first well-known Oliver Twist film adaptation in 1909 ), works by Victor Hugo three times (including the first known canvas version of Les Misérables in 1909 ), fabrics by Walter Scott five times and stories by O. 51 times . Henry . There are also individual film adaptations of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle (1905: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ), Oscar Wildes (1908: Salome ), Harriet Beecher Stowes (1910: Uncle Tom's Cabin ), Washington Irvings (1912: Rip Van Winkle ) and Edgar Allan Poes (1917: Arsene Lupine ).
The film series based on William Shakespeare's dramas is the most significant in terms of film history . Vitagraph produced thirteen films and did pioneering work: in 1908 the first known screen versions of Antonius and Cleopatra , Julius Caesar , Macbeth , The Merchant of Venice , Othello and Richard the Third . In the same year one of the oldest adaptations of Romeo and Juliet was made . In 1909 the first film adaptations of King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream followed . The films were less than a quarter of an hour long and therefore brought the pieces to the screen in an extremely shortened form, but used elaborately made props and costumes.
Melodramas and comedies
Melodramas and one- and two-act comedies were the Vitagraph's trademark in their most successful period from the early 1910s to the mid-1920s. Elegant actresses and romantic heroes in melodramatic fabrics were one of the company's recipes for success. Female stars in these films included Leah Baird , Mary Fuller , Florence Lawrence , Bessie Love , Mae Marsh , Constance Talmadge, and Florence Turner , among others . The lovers played silent movie stars like Francis X. Bushman , Maurice Costello , Rex Ingram , J. Warren Kerrigan , William V. Ranous , Wallace Reid, and William Shea .
Jean , "the Vitagraph Dog", had a special position , one of the first animal stars in film history, who appeared in a seventeen-part film series.
The studio's most famous comedians were (chronologically) John Bunny & Flora Finch , the couple Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew , Harry Davenport (as Mr. Jarr ), Hughie Mack , Jimmy Aubrey and Larry Semon . From 1916 onwards, the studio's short comedies stood out for their alliterative titles: Spooks and Spasms , Babes and Boobs , Dunces and Dangers ...
The New York Times wrote in its obituary in 1915 about the now almost forgotten Bunny, the very first American comedy film star, that his name would forever remain associated with film. The very overweight Bunny started at Vitagraph in 1909 and from 1911 often appeared in a team with the gaunt actress Flora Finch as Mr. and Mrs. Bunny. Her films were so popular that their own genre name was invented for them: Bunnygraphs (later also Bunnyfinches ).
Only Larry Semon managed between 1918 and 1923 to catch up with Bunny's fame and box office or even surpass them. In retrospect, Semon's departure from Vitagraph in 1924 was the death knell for both the comedian's career and the studio.
The best-known name of all comedians working for the studio back then was still a supporting actor: Oliver Hardy , in the years before his partnership with Stan Laurel , was set on the role of the comic villain alongside Aubrey and Semon.
Web links
- Vitagraph in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Vitagraph at Silents Are Golden
- Video of the oldest cartoon from the company Humorous Phases of Funny Faces