Talk:History of Film

Contents

1 Random Early Comments 2 American POV? 2.1 Reference books 2.2 National cinemas 3 New Hollywood 4 Maverick directors 5 Merge with film

Random Early Comments

This article should be better called "History of Cinema in the United States" Is'nt it a shame to be so narrow minded and so arrogant?

We must add bits on daguerrotypes and the introduction of film itself, allowing for multiple copies of a work--surely a crucial development in film history.

I'm not sure what to make of part of the article on France--Truffaut's last film was completed in 1983, and Godard finished one last year (2000). Do you mean that these were influential personalities during that era? Why in that era specifically? What did they do? Would they be as influential now, with later generations continuing to discover their work at revival houses and on video? Also, could I add Louis Malle? (Au Revoir Les Enfants, Damage, My Dinner With Andre)

Plenty of subpages here that could be given new page names. -- Tarquin 10:30 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)

There seems to have been a vast momement from articles using the word film to using cinema without much discussion. Mintguy (T) 01:36, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Surely more important than storage or display technology is the improvements in digital film camera technology??

American POV?

Folks, I've created an outline here and am putting in points to briefly cover. I can see this as a very Wiki-dense article. Most of my citations are regarding American cinema, so if anyone wants to include Goddard, Malle, &c. before I get to it please go ahead. -- Zosodada 01:28, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This page used to be about the technical developments in cinema. You've clearly put a lot of effort into adding material. As you say, almost all of it is about America. I think its gone beyond the point where we can redress the POV — we're not just talking about including Goddard here, we're talking about 'highlights of the 20th century for rest of the world'. Russian? Indian? Chinese? That's just for starters. Plus a lot of American stuff would have to go, if we're to retain some sort of reasonable level of world significance — the article goes into more detail about US cinema than Cinema of the United States! Its an epic task to make this NPOV. The first step would be to delete over half the article, which would be a waste.

I think it would be easier to split the article into two parts:

1. History of cinema in the United States, which would have to be reconciled somehow with Cinema of the United States.
2. History of cinema, developed from a brutally edited version of the current article.

This isn't an attack on American cinema or the work done here, I just think the material needs to be structured properly. Jihg 23:58, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I hope to include more world cinema as time allows, this is still under development (the same state as most wiki articles). My primary reference is Oxford History of World Cinema which would be less than half of its size without mention of US cinema. There's plenty of room here for citations of, e.g., the first anime feature, the introduction of color film in the UK, the British studio system, cinema in India and Hong Kong, &c. Most of the sentences here are pretty short and we're a far cry from maxing out on size so there's plenty of room for more info which would be preferable than less. I also see this as a gateway to other Wiki articles. If you care to list your favorite WP articles on non-US world cinema, go ahead and squeeze 'em in. With time the list might be more than a list as it coalesces into prose. I do hope, however, that it is possible to keep the quality of the links on this one up. Personally, I don't feel the need to categorize this history according to country anymore than I would be inclined to dedicate articles entirely to Italian producers, German directors or English actors.Zosodada 06:54, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So we're agreed the article as it stands is US POV? I appreciate that anybody is free to add their own non-US citations, my point is that this is not going to make the article NPOV within a few days. -- Jihg

Considering it's dormant state and largely British bias for -- years? months? -- I, for one, am not concerned with playing beat the clock. If anyone has more energy or time than I do and is up for a marathon editing session, they're welcome to have at it. -- Zosodada

There was no British bias, but let's not argue about that. And I'm not suggesting any time limits here. Besides, neither point justifies the current POV: we must change the title, or move material elsewhere, or indicate somehow that the page is currently POV. This is the key issue I'd like to achieve a consensus on. Jihg 09:51, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Non-US cinema is not one of Wikipedia's strong points, and its going to take a lot of research and editing to redress the balance here. So what we've got here is a page that will most likely violate policy for weeks or months to come. Hence my suggestion to split the article — it will maintain NPOV while we work. But if you want to move forward from the current article we can do that. We will need to use Template:NPOV or similar until we get close to something resembling neutrality. Also, I think its a shame that a good article on the history of Hoollywood is going to get lost. -- Jihg

The basis of your non-NPOV claim seems to be that there is more information here on US cinema than in another article. I see the problem as a dearth of information in the other article, not a surplus here. Zosodada 02:50, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree there's a lack of information. However you put it, the article is unbalanced. Jihg 09:51, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Zosodada, can we drag the discussion back to my original point: Do you agree that the page as it stands is unintenionally POV? Would you support any of the suggestions I've made: we change the title, or move material elsewhere, or indicate somehow that the page is currently POV? Or have you an alternative plan which will help this page conform to Wikipedia policy? Jihg 09:40, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

No, I still don't agree. It's still too early in the development to claim POV or bias. I don't support changing the title. Some of the material could be moved elsewhere, yes. Much of the material has been moved elsewhere, e.g. Vitascope now has its own article. This doesn't suggest that much should be removed from here. I see someone -- perhaps yourself? -- has reformatted the outline to incorporate the three-part outline that Nowell-Smith uses while still retaining the ages of H'wd as sub-headers. I think this is something that is quite agreeable to both of us. (I had avoided it as not to lean too heavily on OHWD, but this doesn't look as derivative as I had imagined.) As for an alternative plan I would suggest either adding to the outline to incorporate any subjects you think are overlooked, or, alternatively, completely reformatting to a "timeline" style as in the first sections. Zosodada 20:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reference books

US cinema may dominate reference books, but that's mainly an excess of material of relative unimportance to cinema in general. If you had to summarise your Oxford History (like, in an encyclopedia article...) then US cinema would be a major theme, but it would be massively POV to proportion it like the original book. -- Jihg

I don't understand this point, sorry. -- Z.

Sorry, it was made badly. I was trying to say that a bias towards US material in reference works doesn't justify an equal bias in this article. Jihg 09:51, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Have you read OHWC? If you're suggesting that it's biased that you obviously see bias everywhere. There is more information about US cinema because there is more work coming from the US than any other during most of the history (of course, Indian cinema holds the banner on the basis of quantity at this point.) Trying to spin it otherwise is bias in favor of historical revisionism. Zosodada 18:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting OHWC, which I've never read, is biased. I was objecting to "My primary reference is OHWC which would be less than half of its size without mention of US cinema" as a justification for a similar proportion of US cinema in this article. It was a small point, and discussing it is going nowhere. Honestly, it looks like a great book! Jihg 09:40, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

National cinemas

Also, nationality of production is generally agreed to be the most practical way to make sense of the vast world of cinema, as reflected in the majority of writing on the subject. It has nothing to do with nationalism or even the nationality of the people involved. There are many trans-national themes, but they're usually looked at in the context of national cinemas. This page will have to reflect that, up to a point. Jihg 13:54, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with your second point, the national origin of any non-politically motivated work is relatively unimportant to issues of style, genre, theme, content and context and the historic precedent and significance set by the technical or artistic achievements in the works that secures their place in the greater history. As this is a history, the structural context should be historical and chronological rather than political, although a political history of film is a worthy idea for another article. -- Z.

Are you kidding? OK, one could easily make too much of 'national cinemas', and all the other things you mention are important. But nationality is one of the fundamental organisational concepts of film studies, especially when writing histories. The majority of British films of the 1930s are more similar to each other than they are to American or German films of the same period, in style and in the context in which they were made. The significance of a film differs between cultures. Clearly there are exceptions to both these generalisations, but they're extremely useful in understanding the history of cinema. Political content has nothing to do with it. Jihg 09:51, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I see national boundaries as political constructions. British cinemas in the 1930's were largely dominated by American movies. If you'd like to add a bit about Zoltan Korda and King Vidor, please go ahead, I haven't even gotten to include The Third Man yet. Zosodada 18:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nations can also have distinct cultures. Many have had distinct cinematic histories. Denying this is POV. Also, we talking about national production: box office dominance of the US doesn't void the fact that other countries made their own films.

This has developed into a vague argument with no immediate consequences for the page. I think we've both entrenched ourselves in somewhat extreme positions. Could we agree that the cultural context of a film's production can have an affect on its style, genre, theme, ...? Jihg 09:40, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think the new additions by many people are legitimate improvements. What items for inclusion do you feel would balance this out in the direction you're pulling for? I would be more interested in your suggestions for additions rather than subtractions at the moment. Once this is fleshed out some consideration for info movement or article creation might be useful. Zosodada 20:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Hollywood

Why is New Hollywood not mentioned at all in this article? I think this is a important aspect of (American) cinema, shifting the balance of power and all (producers lost their powers while directors became more important). I was wondering if there was any reason it was not included in this article?

I don't know. Probably worth mentioning in that time period, most of the article really needs to be rewritten anyway MechBrowman 23:27, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Maverick directors

• Stanley Kubrick
• John Cassavetes
• Sam Peckinpah
• Francis Ford Coppola
• Brian DePalma
• Roman Polanski

I've removed this director list as I'm not really sure how it fits in. But if someone wants to expand on it and go into the autuer theory or whatever then please do. JW 00:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Merge with film

An anon user wrote this:

{{merge|Film]] How can such an enormous article, with all this data, exist when "cinema" defaults to "film"? There are two competing major articles, unlinked to each other or to their attachments. Good grief!

I didn't correct the merge template and just removed it because an article on the history of a topic is quite common. Music and History of music for example. The article on film and an article on the history of cinema are quite different. MechBrowman 20:53, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

The main issue here, for me, is that the Film article all but declares that Film is the Wikipedia default term for "movies", "moving pictures", "motion pictures" - and "cinema". This defaultness is confirmed by the fact that, using the site search engine for all these terms, the user is redirected to the Film article as the starting point (actually, "Cinema" first takes you to a Disambiguation page, which then leads to Film as regards the medium itself). So I've been using this official starting-point to contribute some things about episodes in the history of "Film", and correcting terminology to "film" in standing articles and then...

...then here - and I don't even remember how I stumbled on it - is this enormous timeline-article called History of Cinema, which expands on the narrative text in the Film article - which *does* address the History of Film so cannot be said to be "quite different" except in the matter of style (narrative text) and precision (general, and for some periods incomplete). They are, in short, much the same thing, in two different formats, using two different primary terms, and not interconnected; plus this one is "hidden" from the search engine for anyone seeking the starting-point. It may be perfectly correct to make this a subsidiary article to the current Film article, but in any case they should be merged at least at the level of a link, and this one retitled History of Film - as in your example, Music and History of Music, the key term is the common "Music".

Furthermore, this article seems to come with its own set of attached subsidiary articles and so does Film, many of which appear to be different but cover similar ground. So we have people writing on things about Film and others writing about the same topics in Cinema based on somehow ending up with this page as the starting point (History of Cinema on the search engine does bring it up), and what we seem to have are two parallel universes going here; and that just doesn't seem a good idea, trying to put together a unified encyclopedia.

Putting up a merge flag seemed to me the best way to draw this matter into the open, altho a subsequent examination of the list of items to be "merged" at the "Village Pump" suggests it could be years before anyone might actually get around to acting on it, at which point all the more damage would be done in terms of two series of parallel articles. At least, we've brought the problem to the surface where, hopefully, it can be fixed so that we have ONE set of articles, logically treed and available to all users and contributors.

PS - For what it's worth, I'da called the whole topic category Motion Pictures. --The Anonyme who put up the merge command, whose entire existence seems to have been deleted from the "history" record. May 8, 2005.

Is "Film" really the WP default term? Movies, film, cinema are all used in various places. Articles on national cinemas are all titled "Cinema of..." JW

Like I said, use the search field and insert any other term - motion pictures, movies, moving pictures, cinema - and see to which page you're redirected - Film. Then, read the first paragraph, and look at all the stuff that's linked to the article at the bottom.

See for yourself, as I did... Anon.

Making the articles consitent is definitely something that should be done, or at least make it clear in the into paragraphs that film, cinema, ect. mean the same thing in this context. I'm still confused about this merge. Do you feel that the articles should be merged? Or do you just feel that this article should be moved to History of Film? MechBrowman 16:53, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)