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When the movies went west (2018)
Scorned by stage actors and mocked by the theater-going upper classes, filmmakers nevertheless developed a bold new art form — but they needed better weather.
The films were simple at first, depicting either actual events (the arrival of a train at a railroad station; President McKinley strolling in his garden) or brief, often comic situations (a woman’s skirts blown up by a stiff wind; a man sneezing). When early audiences watched Edison’s eighteen-second-long The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots — whose director, Alfred Clark, used a dummy and a stop-camera trick to simulate the monarch’s beheading — they could thrill to an experience more visceral than any they could have in a live stage production. Now thirty-three, Griffith was old enough to take on the responsibilities of director, which at this point in the industry’s development mainly involved rehearsing the actors and keeping them in line on the set; all other functions — like choosing camera angles and lighting schemes — were performed by the cameraman.
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