Includes bibliographical references (pages 414-424).

General introduction: Early cinema: from linear history to mass media archaeology -- Part I: Early film form: articulations of space and time -- Film form 1900-1906 / Barry Salt -- Deep staging in French films 1900-1914 / Ben Brewster -- The cinema of attractions: early films, its spectator and the avant-garde / Tom Gunning -- Let there be Lumière / Dai Vaughan -- Film, narrative, narration: the cinema of the Lumière Brothers / André Gaudreault -- From Lumière to Pathé: the break-up of perspectival space / Richard deCordova -- Non-continuity, continuity, discontinuity: a theory of genres in early films ; 'Primitive' cinema: a frame-up? or, the trick's on us / Tom Gunning -- Shots in the dark: the real origins of film editing / Stephen Bottomore -- The infringement of copyright laws and its effects (1900-1906) / André Gaudreault -- The travel genre in 1903-1904: moving towards fictional narrative / Charles Musser -- Detours in film narrative: the development of cross-cutting / André Gaudreault -- Part II: The institution cinema: industry, commodity, audiences: introduction / Thomas Elsaesser -- Economic conditions of early cinema / Michael Chanan -- Combination and litigation : structures of US film distribution, 1896-1917 / Janet Staiger -- In the beginning was the word : six pre-Griffith motion picture scenarios / Patrick G. Loughney -- A primitive mode of representation? / Noël Burch -- Early cinema : whose public sphere? / Miriam Hansen -- Some historical footnotes to the Kuleshov experiment / Yuri Tsivian -- The nickelodeon era begins : establishing the framework for Hollywood's mode of representation / Charles Musser -- Showing and telling : image and word in early cinema / André Gaudreault -- Silent films : what was the right speed? / Kevin Brownlow -- The continuity system : Griffith and beyond : introduction / Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker -- A scene at the 'movies' / Ben Brewster -- 'A properly adjusted window' : vision and sanity in D.W. Griffith's 1908-1909 biograph films / Anne Friedberg -- Weaving a narrative : style and economic background in Griffith's biograph films / Tom Gunning -- Griffith : the frame, the figure / Jacques Aumont -- To alternate/to narrate / Raymond Bellour -- Spatial and temporal articulation in pre-classical Swedish film / John Fullerton -- 'The student of Prague' : division and codification of space / Leon Hunt.

In the twenty years preceding the First World War, cinema rapidly developed from a fairground curiosity into a major industry and social institution, a source of information and entertainment for millions of people. Only recently have film scholars and historians begun to study these early years of cinema in their own right and not simply as first steps towards the classical narrative cinema we now associate with Hollywood. The essays in this collection trace the fascinating history of how the cinema developed its forms of storytelling and representation and how it evolved into a complex industry with Hollywood rapidly acquiring a dominant role. These issues can be seen to arise from new readings of the so-called pioneers--Méliès, Lumière, Porter, and Griffith--while also suggesting new perspectives on major European filmmakers of the 1910s and 20s. Editor Thomas Elsaesser complements the contributions from leading British, American, and European scholars with introductory essays of his own that provide a comprehensive overview of the field. The volume is the most authoritative survey to date of a key area of contemporary film research, invaluable to historians as well as to students of cinema [Publisher description].