Cinema was perhaps the dominant art form of the 20th century. Its only serious rival was music, until it was overtaken in this early 21st century by videogames. Invented in the late 19th century, cinema quickly became a massive popular entertainment in the period between the early short films of Edison and the Lumiere brothers and the first full-length feature, 1906’s The Story of the Kelly Gang.
Throughout its history, cinema has been driven by relentless technical innovation. Some, like sound and colour, endured. Others were flash-in-the-pan gimmicks that never caught on. Some movie-making innovations were just ahead of their time: their pioneers flopped, but the techniques eventually became standards.
The first really groundbreaking technical innovation was sound. The Jazz Singer (1927) wasn’t the first “talkie”, but its triumphant “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” was the death-knell of silent film. Not to mention the careers of such giants of silent film like Raymond Griffith. Despite his visual charm, a childhood illness meant that he could barely speak above a whisper.
The Power of Love (1922) was the first feature-length 3D film. But the technique didn’t catch on, and it was released in a 2D print. It’s now one of the lost films of the silent era. Since, 3D has come and gone, enjoying a brief revival in the ’50s, and a slightly longer-term comeback in the 2000s, notably with James Cameron’s Avatar. Whether his upcoming sequel will revive the gimmick remains to be seen.
Even less popular than 3D have been various attempts at multiple projection. Napoleon (1927) was shot entirely shot in three-strip Polyvision: that is, the simultaneous, side-by-side project of three film reels.
Other films have since attempted to use simultaneously projected images, such as 1974’s Wicked, Wicked and 2000’s Timecode. But the gimmick has otherwise died repeatedly. It still appears in short sequences, in movies such as Ang Lee’s Hulk, but it has never won audiences at feature-length.
Bigger and wider screen formats have helped keep the cinema experience alive, but early attempts at really big screens didn’t always catch on immediately. The Robe (1955) was part of cinema’s efforts to counteract declining audiences in the face of television. While the movie was a hit, the CinemaScope process soon faded away.
For a while, it seemed like IMAX might go the same way. Today, it’s the preferred format of hit-makers like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. But from 1970’s Tiger Child on, the same problem has plagued the format: the basic challenge of theatres accommodating such a massive screen. The company has accordingly downsized the “IMAX-approved” brand to cope with smaller theatres.
Nevertheless, the big-big-screen experience has helped keep audience coming in, even in the face of Covid and streaming services.
Bigger and bigger sound has also been the goal of moviemakers since at least the 1970s. Disaster movies were in vogue at the time, and Universal decided to up the ante by introducing Sensurround for 1974’s Earthquake. Theatres had to rent special speakers that tried to mimic the experience of an earthquake by literally shaking the audience with ultra-beefed-up subwoofers.
The film was a hit, but some theatres were less impressed with reported structural damage. Not to mention audiences in adjacent theatres in multiplexes having to put up with constant rumbling from the theatre next door. Sensurround was also used in 1978’s Battlestar Galactica.
Ultimately, though, Sensurround fell out of favour, but more sophisticated audio techniques like THX and Dolby Atmos eventually became standards.
A jazzed-up version of Sensurround is D-BOX, best known in 2009’s Fast & Furious movie. Like an individual carnival ride, the viewer’s seat is moved up and down and rumbled. Other techniques reportedly in development include scent-sprayers and misters. It’ll be a long way from Pink Flamingos (1972), which issued scratch’n’sniff cards to audiences.
Alfred Hitchcock was a pioneer of the one-shot movie, with Rope (1948). Hitchcock was limited by film magazines that only ran up to 10 minutes, so he hid cuts behind objects that briefly covered the screen – a technique still used today by one-shot movies, like 1917, even though digital cameras can film for as long as the batteries last. But the peak one-shot movie is undoubtedly 2002’s Russian Ark, a history of Saint Petersburg told in a single, choreographed Steadicam shot that wanders through the Hermitage Museum (the Czarist Winter Palace).
One of the most ahead-of-its-time films was 1982’s Tron, a groundbreaking blend of computer animation and live-action. Tron got a lot of attention, but wasn’t quite a hit. But some talented people were wowed by it, including John Lasseter, founder of Pixar. Thirteen years after Tron, Lasseter made the entirely computer-generated Toy Story, and the rest is history.
Both a technique and a genre, “found-footage” movies have a long history in exploitation and low-budget cinema. One of the most exploitative was the pioneering Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The movie purports to be a documentary and mixes splattery special effects with genuine animal cruelty, to such an extent that many were convinced it was a genuine snuff film. Director Ruggero Deodato’s clever idea of contractually obliging his actors to go into hiding for a year after its release blew back badly: he had to track them down and bring them out of hiding when he was accused by anxious relatives of murdering several of them.
Faces of Death, a late-’70s series found-footage shocker, notoriously mixed real footage of fatal accidents with staged scenes, including a person being eaten alive by an alligator and people killing monkeys and eating their brains.
More recently, movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield have made the found-footage genre more respectable. But it remains mostly a novelty genre.
But that’s cinema for you: throughout its near-150-year history, cinema has innovated and gimmicked. Some, from sound and colour to CGI, have caught on and become ubiquitous. Others, like 3D, enjoy occasional splashes of popularity. Others, such as buzzers in armrests, designed to make audiences jump appropriately during horror movies, lasted about as long as whatever movie they were tried on.
But whatever the technology and gimmickry, the only thing that has ever kept cinema alive through television, comic books and computer games, is good story-telling. Some moviemakers still occasionally remember it.