Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames : : The Art of Early European Cinema / / Vito Adriaensens.

• VerfasserIn: Adriaensens, Vito,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2023]; 2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality : ESFI
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.) :; 98 B/W illustrations 98 b&w illustrations

Analyzes the visual and cultural context of Europe's first feature films from 19th century painting to pictorial photographySheds new light on the late 19th and early 20th century's cultural contextInnovatively brings together different media, their artistic traditions, and their respective theoretical and discursive paradigmsPresents an alternative history of early European cinema by analyzing it from an inclusive art historical perspectiveThoroughly explores the first European feature films' cinematic form and functionVelvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films' intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts."

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: History, Intermediality, and Early European Cinema -- 1. The Birth of a Sixth Art: The Art Film and the Film-as-Art Discourse -- 2. Behind the Velvet Curtain: The Cultural Communion between Stage and Screen -- 3. An Actress for Our Age: Betty Nansen, Modern Media Icon -- 4. In Another Light: Academic Painting, Pictorial Photography, Bourgeois Cinema -- 5. Old Masters Endure: Victor Sjöström's Netherlandish Tableaux -- Conclusion: Towards a Cultural Poetics of Early European Cinema -- Bibliography -- Filmography -- About the Author -- Index