The Photoplay

The Photoplay, by Hugo
Münsterberg

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Title: The Photoplay A Psychological Study
Author: Hugo Münsterberg
Release Date: March 16, 2005 [EBook #15383]
Language: English
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THE PHOTOPLAY
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY

BY
HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1916

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER PAGE
1. THE OUTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES 3 2.
THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES 21

PART I. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
PHOTOPLAY
3. DEPTH AND MOVEMENT 44 4. ATTENTION 72 5. MEMORY
AND IMAGINATION 92 6. EMOTIONS 112

PART II. THE ESTHETICS OF THE
PHOTOPLAY
7. THE PURPOSE OF ART 133 8. THE MEANS OF THE VARIOUS
ARTS 155 9. THE MEANS OF THE PHOTOPLAY 170 10. THE
DEMANDS OF THE PHOTOPLAY 191 11. THE FUNCTION OF
THE PHOTOPLAY 215

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
THE OUTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES
It is arbitrary to say where the development of the moving pictures
began and it is impossible to foresee where it will lead. What invention
marked the beginning? Was it the first device to introduce movement
into the pictures on a screen? Or did the development begin with the
first photographing of various phases of moving objects? Or did it start
with the first presentation of successive pictures at such a speed that the
impression of movement resulted? Or was the birthday of the new art
when the experimenters for the first time succeeded in projecting such
rapidly passing pictures on a wall? If we think of the moving pictures
as a source of entertainment and esthetic enjoyment, we may see the
germ in that camera obscura which allowed one glass slide to pass
before another and thus showed the railway train on one slide moving
over the bridge on the other glass plate. They were popular half a
century ago. On the other hand if the essential feature of the moving
pictures is the combination of various views into one connected
impression, we must look back to the days of the phenakistoscope
which had scientific interest only; it is more than eighty years since it
was invented. In America, which in most recent times has become the
classical land of the moving picture production, the history may be said
to begin with the days of the Chicago Exposition, 1893, when Edison
exhibited his kinetoscope. The visitor dropped his nickel into a slot, the
little motor started, and for half a minute he saw through the
magnifying glass a girl dancing or some street boys fighting. Less than
a quarter of a century later twenty thousand theaters for moving
pictures are open daily in the United States and the millions get for
their nickel long hours of enjoyment. In Edison's small box into which
only one at a time could peep through the hole, nothing but a few trite
scenes were exhibited. In those twenty thousand theaters which grew
from it all human passions and emotions find their stage, and whatever
history reports or science demonstrates or imagination invents comes to

life on the screen of the picture palace.
Yet this development from Edison's half-minute show to the "Birth of a
Nation" did not proceed on American soil. That slot box, after all, had
little chance for popular success. The decisive step was taken when
pictures of the Edison type were for the first time thrown on a screen
and thus made visible to a large audience. That step was taken 1895 in
London. The moving picture theater certainly began in England. But
there was one source of the stream springing up in America, which long
preceded Edison: the photographic efforts of the Englishman
Muybridge, who made his experiments in California as early as 1872.
His aim was to have photographs of various phases of a continuous
movement, for instance of the different positions which a trotting horse
is passing through. His purpose was the analysis of the movement into
its component parts, not the synthesis of a moving picture from such
parts. Yet it is evident that this too was a necessary step which made
the later triumphs possible.
If we combine the scientific and the artistic efforts of the new and the
old world, we may tell the history of the moving pictures by the
following dates and achievements. In the year 1825 a Doctor Roget
described in