Session 4: Broadcasting and the Media

Abstract

Abstract Histories of early cinema generally identify a paradigmatic shift between 1907 and 1917. During these years the early ‘cinema of attractions’, which emphasized the exhibition of cinematic technology, gave way to narrative films. As Miriam Hansen has recently stressed, this shift should be understood above all as a transformation in relations between film and spectator. With the newer modes of narration, the spectator was offered new positions of understanding and subjectivity, not so much as part of a particular exhibition or technological event, but rather from a space within the fictional worlds of specific films. Spectatorship became part of the film itself, as a point of address, a textual entity that worked to standardize cinematic consumption. Important to this shift in modes of spectatorship were the new genres of the historical film, the literary, and, especially, the operatic adaptation. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of the impact of operatic practices scenography, narrative, musical-on cinema during this crucial period.