From Attraction and the One-Reeler to the Feature

Abstract

During the earliest period of cinema (the ‘cinema of attractions’), narrative films lasting a few minutes included elementary versions of the melodramatic seduction plot in which a poor girl is seduced by an upper-class male and takes a downward path of misery and sometimes prostitution. During the ‘transitional period’ from 1909 to 1914Q1, when most films were no more than one reel in length, the classical seduction plot becomes increasingly rare as it is replaced by cross-class romances in which the poor girl finds happiness with a wealthy man even in contexts of class conflict. A critical factor in the sudden increase in cross-class romance films in 1915 was the appearance of feature-length films of four or more reels, lasting about one hour or more. The conditions of women working in the factories and living in the tenements as well as strikes and factory fires were portrayed, sometimes vividly and realistically, in cross-class film romances that were also highly melodramatic. As the number of women in white-collar work increased, the trend after 1915 is for the number of factory or mill girls in cross-class romance films to decline and the number of shop girls, stenographers and those in other white-collar occupations to increase.1