Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 39, November 2003
Richard Schellhammer
Moving Pictures before Cinema:
Mannoni's _The Great Art of Light and Shadow_
Laurent Mannoni _The Great Art of Light
and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema_ Exeter, England:
University of Exeter Press, 2000 ISBN 085989665X 546 pp. Once again, in Laurent
Mannoni's _The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of
the Cinema_, the Exeter Studies in Film History from the
University of Exeter Press has provided us with an
invaluable work for the study of the early history of
cinema. Clearly influenced by the Annales School of French
history, Mannoni's study of the technological foundations of
cinematography is based on the *longue duree*. Thus, instead
of simply starting with Edison's Kinetoscope peepshow,
Mannoni begins the story of the technological development of
moving pictures in the 13th century with Roger Bacon's
description of the *camera obscura* (3-5). _The Great Art of Light
and Shadow_ is divided into four lyrically titled sections,
'The Dreams of the Eye', 'Triumphant Illusions', ''The
Pencil of Nature'', and 'Inscribing Movement'. Throughout
these four sections, Mannoni has two major themes. The first
theme is the idea of 'motion' and 'movement'. This theme is
evident in the first section as Mannoni discusses how the
*camera obscura* evolved from a device for observing the sun
and solar eclipses in the 13th century to a device for
projecting the images of everyday life (such as persons
walking along the street outside the camera) onto a screen
by the early 16th century (6-12). In the first section of
the book, we are introduced to Mannoni's first great rascal.
If a book on the technical development of moving pictures
can have a plot, then the plot of this book is how often
persons, some for nefarious reasons and others out of
genuine ignorance, have taken credit for other's work. In
the first section, the reader is introduced to Athanasius
Kircher, who, in 1646, wrote a book with several
improvements on the *camera obscura* entitled, _The Great
Art of Light and Shadow_. According to Mannoni, Kircher
claimed to have invented the magic lantern around 1671, and
most historians have accepted this claim (56-8). While
Mannoni claims not to be interested in 'firsts', he cannot
allow Kircher, even posthumously, to get away with this
claim. Instead, Mannoni presents a detailed discussion of
the invention of the magic lantern by the Dutch
mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens (34-45).
Mannoni also credits Huygens as the 'inventor of the moving
slide (that is, the projection of a moving illuminated image
on a screen)' (70-71). He notes, with palpable sadness, that
the tricentenary of his death was not recognized during the
celebrations of cinema's centennial. (70-1) The invention of
the magic lantern is absolutely critical to a discussion of
pre-cinematographic projection: 'The 'magic' lantern (it
was not christened as such until 1668) represents the
longest-lasting, most innovative, and most artistic of the
'ancestors' which were eventually snuffed out by the birth
of cinema. For the whole length of its reign, which extended
over three centuries, it presented artificial fixed and
moving images to a public ever more filled with wonder, ever
more demanding.' (33) Thus, the story of the
various developments of the magic lantern forms the greatest
part of his study. The second section of the
book continues Mannoni's theme of motion and movement by
beginning with a discussion of traveling lanternists.
Throughout the 18th century, traveling showman wandered from
village to village and fair to fair putting on magic lantern
shows or peepshows. These traveling lanternists were
surprisingly significant in the political history of
eighteenth-century France. For example, Mannoni tells a
wonderful story of plans to use the magic lantern to teach
the young Dauphin, who bored easily, his lessons.
Unfortunately, he and his parents were imprisoned before
this plan could be implemented (84-5). Ironically, the magic
lantern (and the peepshows) had something to do with this
because, at least since 1789, many of these shows contained
political drawings that were highly critical of the
aristocracy (98-100). [1] In one of the more
technical parts of his book, Mannoni provides a lengthy
discussion of the creation of slides and lenses for magic
lanterns. One of the truly ingenious inventions was the
development of the moving slide: 'These illuminated images,
like little moving playlets, were a naive but vital
forerunner of the cinematograph show.' (115) In an
interesting technical detail, Mannoni points out that, while
some inventors experimented with a square image, until the
advent of the photographic slide at the end of the 19th
century, lanternists continued to use circular slides (124).
[2] One of the most
significant advances in the development of the magic lantern
was the creation of the 'Phantasmagoria'. The Phantasmagoria
was an experience that combined the magic lantern with music
and other sound effects in a suitably decorated room. It
was, in its own way, an early attempt at what Wagner would
call 'Gesamptkunstwerk'. Spectators were lead into a dark
room, usually decorated with gothic or diabolical images.
The lights were lowered so they could not see the picture
screen being unveiled. A magic lantern would project its
image on the back of the thin screen in a process called
'back projection'. Both the lantern itself as well as the
slide would move, and thus the Phantasmagoria created the
illusion of ghosts, demons, and other such figures moving
about the room. 'The combination of the moveable lantern and
the moving slide were an essential first step forward in the
history of 'moving' projection.' (141) Once again, in this
discussion of the Phantasmagoria, we meet another of
Mannoni's rascals. Etienne-Gaspard Robertson claimed to have
invented the Phantasmagoria (or, as he called it, the
'Fantasmagoria') in 1798. However, Mannoni proves that the
first Phantasmagoria shows were in Paris between December
1792 and April 1793 by someone using the pseudonym Paul
Philidor. Mannoni, like most historians a detective,
attempts to tease out of the limited evidence who this
person was (148-73). Mannoni ends the second
section of his book with a discussion of the Panorama and
the Daguerreotype. While the Panorama did not provide the
illusion of movement, it provided Louis Jacques Mande
Daguerre with the necessary experience and capital to take
over the development of a process for fixing images on glass
slides, which he named, in all modesty, the Daguerreotype.
Thus Daguerre is yet another rascal. The process of
transferring a photographic (a term not used until 1839)
image of an engraving to a piece of glass was developed by
Nicephore Niepce by 1822. Mannoni points out that just like
the cinemagraph, photography was invented by someone who
worked long and hard but, because of money, connections, or
scientific problems, could not make the jump to popularizing
the invention. Popularization waited for a 'newcomer' who
took credit for the invention. In the case of photography,
it was Daguerre and, in the case of cinematography, it was
the Lumiere brothers (191-93). Part three of Mannoni's
work takes up the development of different devices that led
to the development of 'Faraday's Wheel'. Mannoni provides a
detailed, technical description of these devices, but
suffice it to say that they created static images through a
stroboscopic effect (201-14). However, in 1832, Joseph
Plateau invented the 'Phenakistiscope', which created the
illusion of moving images (215-17). In an 1843 article in
_The Mechanic's Magazine_, T. W. Naylor described a device
combining the Phenakistiscope with the Phantasmagoria to
project an image. Mannoni then traces further developments
and improvements on Naylor's device to project moving images
(223-231). One of the most significant inventions (although
not known at the time) was developed simultaneously by a
British engineer, J. Beale, and an American, A. Brown, and
was called the Maltese Cross interrupter. This device
interrupts the motion phase of the image in a projected
stroboscopic image so that only the stopped frame is viewed,
thus improving the illusion of movement -- and it is still
an essential part of cinematographic projection (232-35). As
Mannoni demonstrates later in his book, the developments in
stroboscopic imaging laid the essential foundations for
chronophotography which evolved into
cinematography. By the mid-1800s, Jules
Duboscq, building on others' inventions, developed a device
for viewing daguerreotype images called the Bioscope, a
device that provided the illusion of both motion and
three-dimensionality. Mannoni reveals the second theme of
the book when he notes that the ambition of the various
inventors whose work led to the Bioscope 'was a response to
an expectation of the public and a dream of some Utopians:
to see the photographic image of a human being, animated in
three dimensions on a screen or a stroboscopic disc' (239).
This is Mannoni's greatest achievement -- he consciously
argues against the *inevitability* of cinematography. Too
often, histories of the development of cinema see this
invention as the inevitable result of about fifty or sixty
years of research that obviously ended with the cinema. Too
many historians have forgotten that nothing is inevitable;
only historical hindsight imposes order where there was
none. Mannoni, through his discussion of the many
predecessors to cinema, including the important failures,
clearly reveals that the development of cinematography was
not inevitable. Rather, cinema is just one step in 'one
overriding godlike desire: to recreate life, to see a human
alter ego, either hand-painted or chronophotographed, living
and breathing on the screen' (xvii). Further, cinema is not
the end, rather, it is only one step in the continuum of a
dream that has yet to be realized -- the dream of projecting
truly life-like, three-dimensional images. New media, like
computer generated animation and virtual reality video
games, are the next, but not final step in this progression.
[3] Part three also contains
an in-depth discussion of the impact on cinema made by the
Belgian Henry Desire du Mont and the Frenchman Louis-Arthur
Ducos du Hauron. In the 1860s both men invented a system of
photographing a moving object in quick succession,
transferring these images to glass slides, and then
projecting these images one at a time to create the illusion
of movement. Initially, their projectors required 290 lenses
(and one projector required 580 lenses), however Du Hauron
invented a projector that used only eight moveable lenses.
He also developed a means for transferring photographic
images to opaque paper strips for his projector.
Unfortunately, none of these strips or any of his projectors
is extant (252-61). Here, and throughout his work, Mannoni
shows his clever use of primary sources: patents. Mannoni
has discovered a treasure trove of primary documents for the
technological history of the pre-cinema. These patents
reveal a varied and elaborate history of moving picture
production that scholars in other countries should
investigate. Part three ends with a
discussion of the widespread appeal of magic lanterns by the
second half of the 19th century. Indeed, by this point magic
lanterns were being mass-produced for the home market. In
addition, slides, both static and moving, were also
mass-produced. The manufacture of lanterns and slides
employed thousands by the end of the 19th century. Thus, all
levels of society owned their own lanterns or had frequent
access to lantern shows. (280-96) In addition to
mass-produced lanterns, elaborate, exquisitely designed
professional-grade lanterns were also produced. The Lumiere
brothers, for their 'Cinematographe shows of 1895', used one
of these professional-grade lanterns (287). This, however,
was the beginning of the end for magic lanterns. In 1908
Lapierre Freres, one of the largest producers of magic
lanterns, merged 'with Jules Demaria's photographic and
cinematographic camera manufacturing company: a turning
point which symbolized the fact that magic lanterns could no
longer compete with the cinema on the *grands boulevards*'
(286). Part four brings the
reader into more familiar territory with names like Eadweard
Muybridge, Thomas Edison, and the Lumiere brothers. However,
in addition to these, Mannoni, true to his theme that the
development of cinema was not inevitable, presents important
work by others. As Mannoni correctly argues, 'there was no
single-handed inventor of the technique, spectacle and art
of cinematography, but a long chain made up of many
generations of researchers, all dependent on each other'
(299). For example, Mannoni relates the story of Muybridge's
development of photographing human and animal (especially
horse) movements (304-19). While many previous works on the
development of cinema jump immediately to Edison, Mannoni
demonstrates that important developments took place in the
interim. In particular, he shows how the development of
chronophotography by the French physiologist Etienne-Jules
Marey was absolutely essential for the further development
of cinematography. Marey and Muybridge corresponded with
each other (and even met in Paris) to discuss the use of
'instantaneous photography' to chronicle the movement of
animals. As Mannoni demonstrates, this was a most fruitful
intellectual collaboration (312-16, 330-33). Not content with
Muybridge's 'instantaneous photography', Marey sought to
capture physical movement more clearly and more precisely.
At first, he used a 'photographic rifle' to capture movement
on glass slides. While this device was an improvement over
Muybridge's bank of some forty cameras, the glass slides
still had to be handled very carefully and the captured
image tended to appear as only a silhouette (326-33). In
1888, using the sensitized paper strip patented by George
Eastman, Marey created, according to Mannoni, 'his first
'film' on paper: a series of pictures . . . at the rate of
twenty images per second' (340-41). Not content with this,
Marey eventually turned to celluloid film (like most
inventions associated with the development of
cinematography, celluloid film was developed by several
inventors in many different places at different times, but
it was patented by the Eastman Photographic Materials
Company in 1889). In 1891, in his own words, Marey noted
that with chronophotography using celluloid film: 'one may operate in front
of all types of background, illuminated or dark; this allows
the study of movements which it is of interest to know in
the place where they occur. In this way one will capture the
movements of practitioners of different trades in the
factory, those of runners and gymnasts on their training
grounds, those of all kinds of animals in menageries and
zoological gardens.' (344) Thus, once again,
Mannoni's first theme of movement is a central concern to
one of the great early practitioners of what would become
cinematography. Mannoni is correct to say
that these brief sequences of carefully timed photographs --
which, when viewed through a zoetrope or projected by
Marey's 'chronophotographic projector', produced the
illusion of movement, despite having only 'ten to forty
images per film' -- do in fact represent a 'film' (342-46,
350-53). Many scholars of film studies have forgotten that
the early films, such as those by the Lumieres, Pathe, Paul,
Hepworth, Edison, and others, were less than a minute long.
Thus, the short duration should not prevent us from
considering these chronophotographs as some of the first
films. Most of Marey's films would have been clearly
recognized by film audiences in 1899 as
'actualities'. In this fourth section of
the book, Mannoni provides a vivid portrait of a little
known film pioneer, Emile Reynaud. Reynaud is brilliant
proof that the cinema as we know it was not inevitable and
that there were important failures along the way. Reynaud
developed a machine called the Praxinoscope that, through
hand-drawn figures on gelatin strips and the ingenious use
of mirrors, created the illusion of three-dimensional
action. Between 1888 and 1900, using a machine he called the
Theatre Optique, he projected films made up of 300 to 700
images. The longer strips could show a film lasting 12 to 15
minutes -- a feat not equaled by the cinema for several
years (364-86) -- but Raynaud's plan of painting each
individual frame was too expensive and too time consuming to
compete economically with cinema. Yet despite his eventual
failure, Reynaud's work should not be dismissed or
forgotten: 'Between the Theatre
Optique and chronophotographic or cinematographic projection
there is no disjuncture, but a continuity, an essential
relationship . . . Reynaud was therefore not a 'precursor';
what he made was true cinema, both as spectacle and as
'inscription of movement'' (386). Mannoni's description of
Edison's Kinetoscope in this fourth section of the book is
reasonably solid. Of particular interest to American
audiences is Mannoni's detailed discussion of the
Kinetoscope's progress through Europe. The only problem, and
it is a small one, is Mannoni's assertion that, 'The
Americans view Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) as the
inventor of the cinema, in terms of technique, spectacle,
and industry.' (387) This is an overly broad statement.
Perhaps most of the American public (those who have heard of
Edison) assume this, but film specialists in the US do not
believe that Edison invented the movies. In his concluding chapter,
Mannoni persuasively argues that the Lumieres were not the
sole inventors of projecting chronophotographic images --
the cinema -- rather, they were part of a large group of
inventors and 'newcomers' including 'the Lathams, Jenkins,
Armat, de Bedts, Joly, Skladanowsky, and others, who between
them launched cinematography as both industry and spectacle'
(417). Just like the magic lantern, it was the 'newcomers',
the showmen, and not the inventors who benefited from the
'gold rush' of cinema (467). And most of these were
rascals. One of the most
significant parts of Mannoni's work is his thorough use of
patents to describe the technological progression of
machines to project moving images. In many cases, without
extant examples of these machines, these patents are the
only way to learn what happened in the past. However,
Mannoni has overlooked another fine source of primary
sources. The British Film Institute has a number of early
British film producer catalogues. Many of these, especially
the earlier catalogues, contain pictures and descriptions of
both magic lanterns, film projectors, and film cameras.
These might have proved useful for Mannoni's
study. Mannoni has written a
wonderful social history of the development of motion
pictures from the Middle Ages to the 1890s. Too often
writers refer to their work as social history when it is, in
fact, cultural history. That is, their histories focus on
the players at the exclusion of the historical stage.
Mannoni, on the other hand, brilliantly weaves an intricate
tapestry of cultural and technological history to create a
true social history. Mannoni focuses on the individuals and
their accomplishments (sometimes to the point of telling us
the exact street addresses where they made their
developments), thus his work is cultural history. However,
he helps us realize that these individuals were creators.
They created not just their art, but also the technology
crucial to their art form. Thus, this is a lucid, detailed
technical history of the development of cinema. Mannoni has
produced a terrific model of how history of the *longue
duree* should be written and how a real social history
should be written. Laurent Mannoni's _The Great Art of Light
and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema_ is highly recommended
for all academic libraries as well as personal collections
of any person studying film. Livingston, Alabama,
USA Notes 1. Many, if not most of
these showmen probably were not all that political. As I
have argued in my own work on early British cinema, these
showmen were simply providing what the consumer wanted -- in
this case, they wanted to see scenes and stories critical of
the aristocracy. For my argument, see, ''Celluloid Heroes
Never Die in Vain': British Cinema and the Depiction of War
on the Eve of the First World War, A Textual Analysis',
_Film and History Annual_ (1999). 2. As in the first
section, Mannoni demonstrates in the second section how the
lantern and the various innovations in lantern projection
spread rapidly around the world. This comes close to an
argument I have made in various papers on early British
cinema that the 'language of film' is universal to all
cultures of the industrialized west and is not arbitrary.
See the article above, as well as the unpublished paper,
'Working-Class Hegemony: The Portrayal of Working-Class
Characters in Early British Silent Film Comedies', presented
at the Southern Conference on British Studies
(2000). 3. This point was made all
the more poignant to me a few weeks ago when I took my
daughters to see the film _Spy Kids 3-D_. Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2003 Richard Schellhammer,
'Moving Pictures before Cinema: Mannoni's _The Great Art of
Light and Shadow_', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 39,
November 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n39schellhammer>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
are published. here
Save as Plain Text Document...Print...Read...Recycle
Film-Philosophy (ISSN 1466-4615)
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD, England
Contact: editor@film-philosophy.com
Back to the Film-Philosophy homepage
