[Week 3] Forum-The Kiss in the Tunnel and the Uses of Cinema

Q: How do these films contrast with "the uses of cinema" as outlined in the reading? 
How does the camera create unexpected intimacy in these films?

In Chapter 3 of Simon Popple & Joe Kember's book Early Cinema, they states a few different but related approaches that early cinema did. Use of cinema as a means of social instruction, social commentary, means of moral and social education, and as a site of spectatorial disengagement.  In this last approach, Popple & Kember bring out the 1890s' "phantom ride" wave as a significant example to illustrate "These attractions demonstrated not only the use of cinema as a means of disengagement from the audience's contemporary reality, but even began to offer a surrogate version of reality, making clear the potential of film as a kind of virtual reality apparatus"(63, P&K).  

One example of the The spectatorial disengagement feeling mentioned in P&K's reading can be seen in George Albert Smith's popular and significant film The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899). One technique the early film-maker find out to engage the audience to have a virtual reality experience is by changing the point-of-view they have towards the main focus in a film. As Lee Grieveson & Peter Krämer illustrate in their book The Silent Cinema Reader, "(The Smith/Hepworth film's) objective point-of-view is maintained but we now view a set that is designed to represent the interior of a railway compartment and contain the couple" (58, G&K). The second shot in the film provide the audience a chance to witness a private intimacy action inside a private space, G & K use the word “voyeurs" as our point-of-view in this story since we are "watching without being caught" (58, G&K). 

Similar but different experience also arise in the film The Kiss(1896) by William Heise & Edison Studios. The audience is also sharing a objective observer viewpoint to witness the affectionate action between the lady and the man on screen. However, with the close-up shot of kissing scene, as Amy mentions in the description of this film on moodle, "This film makes clear a potential power that cinema had that live performance lacked. This was the ability to create a unique perspective and intimacy." In this short film in 1896, the cinema already shows its special way of engaging to the audience, as presenting a live-like action but in a fantastic and usual way. 

The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), Simth



Comments

  1. astra medeirosApril 24, 2020 at 4:03 PM

    I really agree with your ideas here. I too wrote about the point of view in the context of intimacy displayed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Xiyue ZhangApril 25, 2020 at 7:12 AM

    I also like the voyeurs' perspective. It was a new feeling for audiences at that time. And the phantom ride is important for the films' development.

    ReplyDelete

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