So for my class, Professor Boessen and I purchased Leo Enticknap's book "Moving Image Technology: from Zoetrope to Digital" in hopes of gaining further insight into the history of filmmaking. It turns out, there's a couple things that I never thought of (blame my 22 year-old ego that tries to convince himself of his own self-worth constantly)
I blame my generation
Anyway, we are aware that the coming of widescreen productions occurred near the beginning of the 1950s as ammunition to fight the new mediums that more people were getting a hold of (e.g. home film cameras and TELEVISION). However, Enticknap points out another valid event that might bear (or not) more significance towards this specific evolution:
Did you know Hollywood had developed primitive widescreen technology in the 1920s alongside sound? I know I didn't. Films like Wings, released in 1928 and the first recepient of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Happy Days (not to be confused with the television show of the latter-1970s) and The Big Trail, a go-getum Western along the Oregon Trail. But, it dies off until the 50s...why?
Enticknap says that the depression had a lot to do with it. Coincidentally, so did sound. The movie industries had poured so much energy, time and money into sound that little more could be set aside for another bold risk such as widescreen films. From Enticknap's chapter:
"In this context sound just got in under the wire. By the autumn of 1929 Hollywood had committed to producing 'talkies', a large proportion of cinemas throughout the Western world had already installed the reproduction equipment and the rest were compelled to doing so whether they wanted to or not. Too much money had been spent and too many boats had been burnt for the industry to back out. Widescreen, however, was still in the research and development stage with the early experimental shows in first-run city centre cinemas taking place during the autumn and winter of 1929 at the moment of, or just after the crash. Sound had already passed the point of no return" (55).
Not that television wasn't a cause for the widescreen phenomenon (and let us not forget smell-o-vision, either). Rather, it was not the only cause and the full truth, like so many other examples, goes much deeper down the rabbit hole.
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This is the kind of thing we find when we can look more deeply into an issue like motion picture technology as we're doing with this Directed Study. Instead of easy answers, we often find a complex set of inter-related factors, some economic, some social, and some technological, that seem to drive what from our previously broad perspective was a relatively simple answer. We are likely to see more of this kind of revelation as the course develops.
Also, while Enticknap's politics and rhetorical style regarding more traditional film theorists is inflammatory, his research regarding the history of motion picture technology is thorough. He provides an important reminder that the film text is always situated within a deeply contoured historical context, and to dismiss such details is to leave our representation of our subject incomplete.
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