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1920 |
Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, a foundation work of German Expression. |
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Lev Kuleshov's Soviet State Film
School workshop conducts experiments on film space and
time. |
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Formation of Shochiku studio in
Japan. |
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Also in History: In the US, women are
allowed to vote for the first time. |
|
1920s |
Murder trial of film comedian Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle, murder of director William Desmond Taylor,
and drug-addicted death of Wallace Reid are part of a cycle of
scandals that increase public demands for greater industry
regulation. |
|
Soviet cinema is influential for its
strategies of montage, graphic approach to the film frame,
"biomechanical" acting, and political use of the motion
picture medium. |
|
French Impressionism is founded, a
movement predicated on the belief that cinema is an artform of
personal expression. |
|
Soviet silent era filmmaker, Dziga
Vertov, now acknowledged as the father of cinema-verite
(realistic documentary movement of the 1960s - 70s), produces
a series of newsreel-documentaries. |
|
Edward Steichen becomes chief
photographer for the fashion magazines Vogue and
Vanity Fair. His well known portraits include the
veiled Gloria Swanson, the hands-to-head image of Greta Garbo,
and the smiling Charlie Chaplin. |
|
American photographer James Van Der
Zee creates memorable portraits of African-Americans. |
|
American artist Man Ray creates the
Rayogram, a collage of objects placed onto photographic paper
and exposed to light. I will have samples pf reyograms on this
site soon. |
|
1921 |
First transatlantic
telephoto transmission is made between Annapolis, Md., and
Belin's laboratories at La Malmaison, Fr. |
|
1922 |
Will H. Hays, former Postmaster
General for President Harding, is appointed head of the newly
created Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
(MPPDA), a self-regulatory organization comprised of industry
leaders. |
|
Founding of the Mingxing Film Company
in Shanghai, the center of Chinese film production. |
|
Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the
North, a point of reference for nonfiction and popular
adventure filmmakers to follow. |
|
Successful subtractive process for
two-color film introduced by Herbert Kalmus' Technicolor
Corporation. Uses a special camera and procedure to produce
two separate positive prints that are then cemented together
into a single print. Used in films: Toll of the Sea
(1922) and Douglas Fairbank's The Black Pirate
(1926). |
|
1923 |
Kodak introduces 16mm movie film for
amateur use. |
|
Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten
Commandments and James Cruze's The Covered Wagon,
are examples of silent era big-budget filmmaking. |
| |
Pola Negri and Ernst Lubitsch are
wooed by American studios following the success of Madame
Dubarry; starting a regular flow of European talent to
Hollywood. |
|
|
Vladimir Zworykin patents television
picture tube. |
|
|
First radio network is established by
AT&T. |
|
1924 |
Erich von Stroheim's naturalistic
epic Greed is mutilated by studio interference. |
|
|
F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh,
notable for its innovative use of camera movement, subjective
point-of-view shots, and optical effects. |
|
1924-25 |
Ernst Leitz designs and markets the
35mm Leica cameras. |
|
1925 |
Sergei Eisenstein's Potemkin,
a powerful film retelling of the 1905 Russian
Revolution. |
|
|
Western Electric, the manufacturing
subsidiary of AT&T, perfects a sound-on-disc system called
Vitaphone. |
|
|
"Little cinema" movement begins with
the establishment of the Screen Guild in New York, a group
dedicated to screening experimental works and films of
historical and aesthetic significance. |
|
|
RCA patented sound-on-film system RCA
Photophone. |
|
|
László Moholy-Nagy's Painting
Photography Film. Experiments with photograms. |
|
1926 |
Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a
triumph of production design. |
|
Following the completion of Son of
the Sheik, Rudolph Valentino dies at 31 and is mourned by
millions. |
|
|
Warner Bros. debuts Vitaphone to the
public with a series of demonstration shorts and the feature
film Don Juan. |
|
|
William Fox responds to Warners'
success with Movietone, the first commercially successful
sound-on-film process developed in conjunction with General
Electric. |
|
1927 |
Abel Gance's Napoléon is
partially filmed in Polyvision and utilizes triptych sequences
to produce wide and multiscreen effects. |
|
Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony
of a City captures the kaleidoscopic movements of urban
life. |
|
|
Box office success of The Jazz
Singer sets film industries worldwide on the course of
sound film production. |
|
|
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences is founded by industry leaders in response to
mounting labour unrest in Hollywood. |
|
|
The Production Code of America, a
self-regulatory code of ethics setting forth standards of good
taste and specific "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," is created by the
MPPDA under Will H. Hays. |
|
First Laurel and Hardy film
Leave
'Em Laughing. |
| |
General Electric invents the modern
flashbulb. |
| |
Bell Laboratories perform the first
mechanical television transmission in United States. |
|
1928 |
Kodak introduces 16mm lenticular KODACOLOR Film
for making motion pictures in color. |
|
|
Walt Disney's Steamboat
Willie, starring Mickey Mouse, the first animated cartoon
designed for synchronized sound. |
|
|
Technicolor introduces an imbibition
or dye-transfer process for two-color films. |
|
|
RCA enters into film production by
forming RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) and Warner Bros. takes over
First National Pictures. Along with 20th Century-Fox, they
join Loews and Paramount to form the "big five," an oligopoly
that controls the American film industry for the next 30
years. |
|
|
Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's
The Passion of Joan of Arc, is shot in France with
massive technical and financial resources. |
|
1929 |
The Academy Awards are presented for
the first time, with the Best Picture honour going to
Wings. This is one of my favourite old films. |
|
|
Motion picture cameras are
standardized to run at a speed of 24 frames per second to
ensure consistent sound synchronization. |
|
|
Postsynchronization is used by King
Vidor in Hallelujah. |
|
|
Dziga Vertov's The Man with a
Movie Camera, is a film essay on the vicissitudes of
perceptual reality. |
|
|
Also in History: The N.Y. stock
market crash begins the Depression. |
|
|
Film and Foto exhibition that
synthesized modernism in photography is held in
Stuttgart. |
