The Last Machine, Early Cinema and the Birth of the Modern World.

Cinema is the last machine. It is probably the last art that will reach the mind through the senses.

- Hollis Frampton(1)

Whether generating its own history through cinema studies or cited as historical "evidence" in other histories, film and its commercial counterpart, cinema, has always maintained an inextricable link with history. The centenary of film is currently being celebrated in the form of special screenings, conferences and books, with an eye cast toward the infancy of film, the era dating roughly from 1895 to 1915.

Due to its unique ability to capture and preserve "reality," film has seemingly offered the world a reflection of itself. Early films included "actualities" (the earliest documentaries) recording everyday activities, newsreel (both staged and unstaged) of historical moments, educational films and fictionalized narratives. The reflection captured in these films may have repelled censors, armed reformers or entertained the masses, but moving pictures undoubtedly helped shape film's early audience's view of the world and of themselves. The images that captivated then, captivate us today. There is a certain awe that emerges while viewing early films, be they about suffragettes marching in New York City in 1912, or everyday life in small-town America, or even the fictionalized "cops" of a Mack Sennett comedy. These images fascinate because they lead us to think that we are, in fact, seeing history and, in seeing, we know the past. What is missing in this viewing experience is context - that elusive element that enables one to move beyond the moment to attain understanding.

The Last Machine, Early Cinema and the Birth of the Modern World (1994) by Ian Christie is that rare book on film in which context is the central concern and the window through which early films are identified and discussed. The book is an accompaniment to the BBC television series of the same name and, as stated by the author, the project is dedicated to bringing academic scholarship on early cinema to a wider public audience. It certainly delivers on this ambitious goal.

The scholars and archives cited and consulted for the project read like a Who's Who of early film study Noel Burch, Kevin Brownlow, John Fell, Miriam Hansen, Tom Gunning and Charles Musser are just a few of the notable scholars involved in the series.(2) Prominent film archives in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States provided access and resources for the project. The author has used these sources to construct an engaging picture of early films and the times in which they were produced. Christie clearly understands that academic scholarship can seem narrow in its focus and is often not intended for a general audience, yet he commends early film scholars with doing society a vital service: "[Early cinema scholarship] has forced attention away from a select number of the random collection of early films that has survived - the 'classics' - and encouraged many to look at the corpus as a whole."(3) The holistic structure of the series and the book demonstrates that Christie takes this statement to heart.

The book is organized into five chapters with titles that hint at the near poetic approach the book will take toward its subject, such as "Space and Time Machine," "The Body Electric," and "The Waking Dream." Framed by such titles the chapters attempt to present the reader with a cultural context within which the highlighted films could be viewed. It is rare to find a film history book that quotes not only current reviews and news articles from the times but also novelists, poets, artists and scientists. A perusal of chapter two, "Tales from the City," includes references to authors E. M. Forster, Edgar Allen Poe and Georg Simmel, with quotes from French poet Charles Baudelaire and Russian symbolist Andrei Bely. These references and quotes do not exist in a vacuum but are directly linked to the films at hand. For example, the reference to Simmel's essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1900) heads the discussion of a common theme in American vaudeville and early cinema: the "country hick" and his comic encounters with city/modern life. Rubes in the Theatre (1901, by Thomas Edison), A Rube in the Subway (n.d., produced by Biograph) and particularly interesting, Rube in an Opium Joint, all present a stereotypic representation of a country bumpkin awed and confused by the big city. Rube in an Opium Joint, made in 1905 by Billy Bitzer, survives in the Library of Congress's Paper Print Collection and is apparently a single episode from a longer film released one week later as Lifting the Lid. In this film a group of New York City sightseers supposedly visit a number of "exotic" locales with "the rube" constantly causing trouble in each situation. The questions and analysis that follow the film synopsis exemplifies the strength of the project. The book initiates an investigation as to what an original viewer may have gotten from the film, while posing questions as to historical meaning for viewers today. A reader is actively engaged in the discussion at hand in a way not generally encountered in other history books.

Dispersed throughout the chapters are 25 biographical insets highlighting the achievements of film inventors, producers, directors and actors. Entitled "Close-up," these sketches include the well-known names of Edison, Louis Lumiere, D. W. Griffith and Edwin Porter. Equal space, however, is given such lesser known names as Italian cinema's Arturo Ambrosio and French/American filmmaker Alice Guy, as well as virtual unknowns such as Russian filmmaker Evgeni Bauer. Through these close-ups the reader is less inclined toward the typical "great man" approach of traditional histories and, instead, is led to a more sociological approach, one that demonstrates that many individuals, throughout Europe and the U.S., have contributed to shaping the film industry and film art we know today.

The strength of the book and, undoubtedly the television series, lies in its ability to attract a broad public audience to a film history based on solid academic scholarship. Film is a unique artifact in historical study. In a fascinating way it functions as a witness, revealing in its captured reflections everything from popular fashions to political thought. It is also one of the most fragile of artifacts and the financial support needed for preservation is enormous. This project, initiated by the British Film Institute, helps move film art (and, consequently, all art) beyond an elite, academic circle. By demonstrating that history is relevant and that art does have meaning in everyday life, cultural preservation has the chance of becoming a public priority. If there is a weakness in the book it is that a reader's journey back in time is all too brief. Christie himself states that the themes covered in the book should not be considered all inclusive: "Indeed a telling exercise is to make a list of practices and subjects current at the turn of the century and see if any of these can not be credibly linked with the early growth of cinema."(4) The five chapters comprising The Last Machine allude to the breadth of these possibilities.

One also longs to see the films referred to in the book. The television series is currently available for viewing at the British Film institute archives and plans are underway to release the series on videotape some time in 1997. As a teacher of film and video production I know that a student's reading of The Last Machine would be illuminated by an accompanying screening and discussion of the cited films. Still, the book is remarkable in its ability to capture one's imagination and I found that upon finishing the book what I longed to do, aside from viewing the films mentioned, was to re-explore the period by rereading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1892).

Effective historical narrative - like The Last Machine: Early Cinema and the Birth of the Modern World - offers a context for placing events back into the world from which they came. In doing so, a reader is challenged to contribute to the historical analysis presented, and through this process, find personal significance therein. In doing so, history becomes a living thing, enriching the culture by enriching the individual.

NOTES

1. Excerpt of a quote by Hollis Frampton that heads the introduction of The Last Machine, p. 7.

2. Charles Musser's comprehensive book The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner, 1991), written as part of the History of American Cinema series, draws from and makes reference to many of the same scholars cited in The Last Machine.

3. Ian Christie, The Last Machine, p. 8.

4. Ibid., p. 11.

LEANN ERICKSON is assistant professor of film and video production at Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA.