Making sense of films
Films as Social and Cultural History
Increasingly historians have moved away from a history that chronicles battles, treaties, and presidential elections to one that tries to provide an image of the way daily life unfolded for the mass of people: how they worked, what they did for fun, how families were formed or fell apart, or how the fabric of daily life was formed or transformed. Film has an important role to play in these histories. While traditional historical documents tend to privilege great events and political leaders, historians now use other records to discern the lives of "ordinary" people: census records, accounts of harvests and markets, diaries and memoirs, and local newspapers. Film is perhaps more like these records of daily life than it is like the documents that record great events. Motion pictures may provide the best evidence of what it was like to walk down the streets of Paris in the 1890s, what a Japanese tea ceremony was like in the 1940s, what the World Series in 1950 looked like, or how people in factories did their work or spent a Sunday afternoon in the park. All of these subjects could be staged and distorted, of course, and film can be transformed in many ways. But as a record of time and motion, films preserve gestures, gaits, rhythms, attitudes, and human interactions in a variety of situations. In almost any film archive, and in numerousplaces on the Internet, one can glimpse images of simple actions, from the way a Buddhist monk in Ceylon folded his robe in 1912 to the way people boarded trolley cars in New York City in the 1930s. While film shares much of this information with other forms of documentation, especially still photography, motion pictures allow viewers to see and compare the everyday physical actions of people across the globe and throughout the twentieth century.
This is not to deny that film provides indelible images of some of the twentieth century's great events. Our horrified consciousness of the Holocaust relies partly on the filmed images from the liberation of the camps, and our knowledge of the devastation of the Atomic bomb comes partly from motion pictures of Hiroshima or of A-bomb test explosions. Conversely, twentieth-century disasters or traumas that went unrecorded by motion pictures -- such as the genocide of the Armenians or mass starvation in Asia -- are less present in public consciousness because of the lack of vivid images. But when we focus on social and cultural history, especially the important role of leisure in the lives of ordinary people, film not only provides evidence and records but takes on a key role.
In addition to the primarily non-fiction or documentary films discussed above, we must consider Hollywood's primary output, feature films. Can fictional film be used as historical evidence? As evidence of what? Fictional films serve as historical evidence in the same way that other representational art forms do -- by making events vivid, portraying social attitudes, and even revealing the unconscious assumptions of past societies. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation cannot be viewed as an objective or accurate view of the era of Reconstruction, but it does -- painfully, and even unintentionally -- indicate the sorts of hysterical anxieties and aggressive fantasies that underlay American racism, especially in the early twentieth century. Attitudes about gender, class, and ethnicity, as well as heroism, work, play, and "the good life" are all portrayed in fictional films as they are in an era's novels, plays, and paintings. But as a form of mass visual entertainment, films reflect social attitudes in a specific and vivid manner.
From 1915 to about 1955, movies were arguably America's most popular form of narrative entertainment. Movies, therefore, aimed at a wider target audience than that of most novels and plays. Does this mean that movies reflect social attitudes more accurately than any other medium, since they reached the greatest number of people? Possibly. But a mass audience does not mean that movies in America represented all points of view. It often indicates the opposite, with film studios avoiding certain controversial points of view in order not to offend a wide-ranging audience. Since films were released nationally and globally to make a profit, producers tried not to offend groups they recognized as influential and usually avoided political controversies or minority opinions.
Further, from 1916 until the 1950s, movies were not protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. A court ruling in 1916 (concerning the state of Ohio's ban of The Birth of A Nation) held that film could legally be subject to censorship because of its vivid psychological effects and audiences (including women, children, and the "lower classes") who the court deemed more impressionable than the readers of printed matter. A number of states and localities created film censorship boards. Although Hollywood studios occasionally released controversial films, they usually avoided such themes as racial prejudice, child labor, and venereal disease. Likewise, in contrast to the current trend of niche marketing, Hollywood ignored small specialized markets. A small, and financially marginal, series of independent producers did make films targeted at minority markets (such as the African-American films produced by Oscar Micheaux or the Yiddish films directed by Edgar G. Ulmer). These independent films provide fascinating evidence about the issues and assumptions current in smaller communities, often in sharp contrast to Hollywood films.
Interpreting Hollywood movies as a reflection of prevailing social attitudes or generalizing from specific films requires great caution. Fictional films are complex industrial and social products and how they are made, distributed, exhibited, and received by audiences and critics must be investigated to fully evaluate their roles as historical evidence. For example, it is dangerous to interpret a few films from a specific period as simple reflections of American society. The attitudes portrayed in a specific film may represent a series of compromises carefully designed to be non-offensive. In addition, individual films can indicate very different attitudes toward labor unions, big business, race relations, or women's rights.
One Hollywood strategy for creating and pleasing a mass audience included designing films so that audiences could interpret movies in different ways. This is clearest in the carefully regulated portrayal of sexual behavior during the period of Hollywood's dominance (1917-1960). An adult or sexually aware audience member may decide that Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart have sex when Casablanca cuts from their passionate kiss to a brief image of the control tower beacon at the nearby airport. But a child or a socially conservative viewer may assume nothing happened. Most important, the studio could deny to a censor that any sexual activity took place. The Production Code Administration (an industry-created "watchdog" committee charged with locating scenes that might be considered objectionable and proposing ways to modify them) often suggested such ambiguous scenes to film producers to avoid problems with state or local censorship boards.
Ambiguous scenes provide rich material for studying social history, but they require complex interpretation and investigation. Such investigation requires moving beyond the evidence on the screen (whether movie theater, video, or computer monitor) to ask how reviewers, censors, and fans understood films. Likewise historians need to investigate the actual process of filmmaking and the variety of viewpoints involved in production. Hollywood studio archives are filled with discussions of what material should be cut from scripts, what might be offensive to different audiences, how to soften images of sexuality or violence, or how to blur political references. Every Hollywood film involved compromises between divergent viewpoints, often aimed at creating room for multiple interpretations.
Thus, a broad range of materials are needed to write a full history of the cinema as part of cultural life. Film production and film-going are social practices and important aspects of twentieth-century life. To understand them we need to investigate technology, economics (including business and industrial organization), advertising, and distribution -- all of which influenced where films were shown and who came to see them. A wide range of documents provide evidence in this quest, including letters, trade journals, movie reviews, contracts, financial information, scripts, and studio memos. In addition, many non-traditional sources are key to writing the social history of the movies. For example, the design of movie theaters or the switch to video rental stores; censorship and pressure group protests; fan magazines and movie-based souvenirs; fashion designs introduced by films; educational matinees for school children; and reactions by specific communities as gathered through oral histories. The actual role films play in people's daily lives, in their sense of themselves and their world, especially for the early part of the century, however are extremely difficult to document. Those vanished audiences will always remain somewhat elusive.
This is not to deny that film provides indelible images of some of the twentieth century's great events. Our horrified consciousness of the Holocaust relies partly on the filmed images from the liberation of the camps, and our knowledge of the devastation of the Atomic bomb comes partly from motion pictures of Hiroshima or of A-bomb test explosions. Conversely, twentieth-century disasters or traumas that went unrecorded by motion pictures -- such as the genocide of the Armenians or mass starvation in Asia -- are less present in public consciousness because of the lack of vivid images. But when we focus on social and cultural history, especially the important role of leisure in the lives of ordinary people, film not only provides evidence and records but takes on a key role.
In addition to the primarily non-fiction or documentary films discussed above, we must consider Hollywood's primary output, feature films. Can fictional film be used as historical evidence? As evidence of what? Fictional films serve as historical evidence in the same way that other representational art forms do -- by making events vivid, portraying social attitudes, and even revealing the unconscious assumptions of past societies. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation cannot be viewed as an objective or accurate view of the era of Reconstruction, but it does -- painfully, and even unintentionally -- indicate the sorts of hysterical anxieties and aggressive fantasies that underlay American racism, especially in the early twentieth century. Attitudes about gender, class, and ethnicity, as well as heroism, work, play, and "the good life" are all portrayed in fictional films as they are in an era's novels, plays, and paintings. But as a form of mass visual entertainment, films reflect social attitudes in a specific and vivid manner.
From 1915 to about 1955, movies were arguably America's most popular form of narrative entertainment. Movies, therefore, aimed at a wider target audience than that of most novels and plays. Does this mean that movies reflect social attitudes more accurately than any other medium, since they reached the greatest number of people? Possibly. But a mass audience does not mean that movies in America represented all points of view. It often indicates the opposite, with film studios avoiding certain controversial points of view in order not to offend a wide-ranging audience. Since films were released nationally and globally to make a profit, producers tried not to offend groups they recognized as influential and usually avoided political controversies or minority opinions.
Further, from 1916 until the 1950s, movies were not protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. A court ruling in 1916 (concerning the state of Ohio's ban of The Birth of A Nation) held that film could legally be subject to censorship because of its vivid psychological effects and audiences (including women, children, and the "lower classes") who the court deemed more impressionable than the readers of printed matter. A number of states and localities created film censorship boards. Although Hollywood studios occasionally released controversial films, they usually avoided such themes as racial prejudice, child labor, and venereal disease. Likewise, in contrast to the current trend of niche marketing, Hollywood ignored small specialized markets. A small, and financially marginal, series of independent producers did make films targeted at minority markets (such as the African-American films produced by Oscar Micheaux or the Yiddish films directed by Edgar G. Ulmer). These independent films provide fascinating evidence about the issues and assumptions current in smaller communities, often in sharp contrast to Hollywood films.
Interpreting Hollywood movies as a reflection of prevailing social attitudes or generalizing from specific films requires great caution. Fictional films are complex industrial and social products and how they are made, distributed, exhibited, and received by audiences and critics must be investigated to fully evaluate their roles as historical evidence. For example, it is dangerous to interpret a few films from a specific period as simple reflections of American society. The attitudes portrayed in a specific film may represent a series of compromises carefully designed to be non-offensive. In addition, individual films can indicate very different attitudes toward labor unions, big business, race relations, or women's rights.
One Hollywood strategy for creating and pleasing a mass audience included designing films so that audiences could interpret movies in different ways. This is clearest in the carefully regulated portrayal of sexual behavior during the period of Hollywood's dominance (1917-1960). An adult or sexually aware audience member may decide that Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart have sex when Casablanca cuts from their passionate kiss to a brief image of the control tower beacon at the nearby airport. But a child or a socially conservative viewer may assume nothing happened. Most important, the studio could deny to a censor that any sexual activity took place. The Production Code Administration (an industry-created "watchdog" committee charged with locating scenes that might be considered objectionable and proposing ways to modify them) often suggested such ambiguous scenes to film producers to avoid problems with state or local censorship boards.
Ambiguous scenes provide rich material for studying social history, but they require complex interpretation and investigation. Such investigation requires moving beyond the evidence on the screen (whether movie theater, video, or computer monitor) to ask how reviewers, censors, and fans understood films. Likewise historians need to investigate the actual process of filmmaking and the variety of viewpoints involved in production. Hollywood studio archives are filled with discussions of what material should be cut from scripts, what might be offensive to different audiences, how to soften images of sexuality or violence, or how to blur political references. Every Hollywood film involved compromises between divergent viewpoints, often aimed at creating room for multiple interpretations.
Thus, a broad range of materials are needed to write a full history of the cinema as part of cultural life. Film production and film-going are social practices and important aspects of twentieth-century life. To understand them we need to investigate technology, economics (including business and industrial organization), advertising, and distribution -- all of which influenced where films were shown and who came to see them. A wide range of documents provide evidence in this quest, including letters, trade journals, movie reviews, contracts, financial information, scripts, and studio memos. In addition, many non-traditional sources are key to writing the social history of the movies. For example, the design of movie theaters or the switch to video rental stores; censorship and pressure group protests; fan magazines and movie-based souvenirs; fashion designs introduced by films; educational matinees for school children; and reactions by specific communities as gathered through oral histories. The actual role films play in people's daily lives, in their sense of themselves and their world, especially for the early part of the century, however are extremely difficult to document. Those vanished audiences will always remain somewhat elusive.
Early films often served, according to film historian Charles Musser, as "living newspapers." Filmmakers, film exhibitors, and early film audiences highly prized filmed records of celebrities or current events. Film companies sent cameramen around the world, providing a priceless record of the people and events that shaped the first two decades of film. However, at this same time standards of visual authenticity were still being formed. Newspapers at the turn of the century were only beginning to be able to print photographs, and the practice of illustrating events through drawings and sketches was still current. Likewise, early film companies frequently produced films of current events using actors and re-staging. Did audiences of the time see these as fakes or simply as useful vivid re-enactments?
Most likely their judgment depended on how the films were exhibited. Many re-enactments were announced to their audiences as such, but some exhibitors undoubtedly claimed that films showed "the real thing." So we must ask whether an early film image is a representation of an event or a re-enactment. For instance, Edwin S. Porter produced a film entitled The Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison for the Edison company in 1901. Leon Czolgosz, a mentally disturbed anarchist, had assassinated President McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Czolgosz was executed with the fairly new invention of the electric chair in the prison of Auburn, New York. Porter's film begins with a panorama of the actual prison seen from outside, followed by a scene staged in the Edison studio of the execution, which carefully reproduced the actual electric chair and descriptions of the electrocution process. While the film is certainly an important historical document, revealing popular fascination with both the fact and the manner of Czolgosz's execution, it cannot be taken as a record of the actual execution.
Researchers can determine which films are inauthentic by using documents that surround the films. The Edison bulletin for the Czolgosz film makes clear what is authentic (the view of the prison) and what is inauthentic (the reenactment of the execution). In addition, close examination of films themselves often reveals the theatrical nature of sets (painted backdrops and flats), the compression of events, and clear overall lighting that indicates a film studio rather than an actual location. Other elements, such as behavior and are "staginess," are more subjective judgments but also can alert a viewer that a purportedly documentary scene was arranged for the camera.
Most likely their judgment depended on how the films were exhibited. Many re-enactments were announced to their audiences as such, but some exhibitors undoubtedly claimed that films showed "the real thing." So we must ask whether an early film image is a representation of an event or a re-enactment. For instance, Edwin S. Porter produced a film entitled The Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison for the Edison company in 1901. Leon Czolgosz, a mentally disturbed anarchist, had assassinated President McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Czolgosz was executed with the fairly new invention of the electric chair in the prison of Auburn, New York. Porter's film begins with a panorama of the actual prison seen from outside, followed by a scene staged in the Edison studio of the execution, which carefully reproduced the actual electric chair and descriptions of the electrocution process. While the film is certainly an important historical document, revealing popular fascination with both the fact and the manner of Czolgosz's execution, it cannot be taken as a record of the actual execution.
Researchers can determine which films are inauthentic by using documents that surround the films. The Edison bulletin for the Czolgosz film makes clear what is authentic (the view of the prison) and what is inauthentic (the reenactment of the execution). In addition, close examination of films themselves often reveals the theatrical nature of sets (painted backdrops and flats), the compression of events, and clear overall lighting that indicates a film studio rather than an actual location. Other elements, such as behavior and are "staginess," are more subjective judgments but also can alert a viewer that a purportedly documentary scene was arranged for the camera.
Films go through many transformations as they are copied or transferred to video, but the most important visual aspects of a film are those that can give clues to its production. What can we see about how the film was made by looking at the film itself? How was it shot and how was it arranged for the camera? Was the camera on location or in a studio? Where was the camera placed and why was it placed there? What sort of lenses were used? Did the camera operator use artificial or available light? Was the scene specially arranged for the camera and how was it framed? What angle of view was it taken from? Was the camera on a tripod or hand-held? If there was camera movement, how was it done? After examining individual shots, you must also consider how the film was edited. What scenes may have been cut out by the editor? How do shots begin and end? With the shots that follow each other, how much time actually took place between them? Do the shots form a sequence or are they only loosely connected? If they form a sequence, did the original event really occur in this order?
While many of these questions (such as what footage was cut in the editing process) cannot be answered with certainty by simply examining the film, careful examination can reveal some important features. Only rarely are sets so convincing that a viewer cannot tell if the film was shot on a set or not. The image reveals camera angle, distance, composition, and even lenses. Occasionally such aspects can be very revealing of a film's authenticity. A too carefully arranged composition -- such as camera operators capturing a battle from an ideal viewpoint that would have placed them in mortal danger from enemy fire -- can reveal it as a re-enactment.
Editing can make historical interpretation of film tricky for three reasons. First, it can utterly re-work or determine the meaning of a film sequence. Second, it can be done after the filming. Third, films can be re-edited in ways not immediately obvious to a viewer. Many early filmmakers and theorists understood editing as perhaps the most powerful tool filmmakers had for making meaning. While a single shot usually supplies some sort of record of what the camera filmed (even if artificially arranged), editing always presents a reconstruction and can greatly change the meaning of what was shot, creating relationships of space and time that may not have existed originally.
As I mentioned earlier, one must be especially aware of editing when watching a compilation film. Editors can create a sequence of a battle, a riot, or a political convention by cutting between combatants or political orators and their audiences, but they are combining shots taken at very different times and sometimes different places. Thus, in Hearts of the World, a fictional feature film made during W.W.I., D.W. Griffith used documentary images of the war to heighten the film's drama. But as film historian Russell Merritt has shown, the images that seem to show one battle actually combine footage from several events and even mix footage shot by both British and German cameramen.
While many of these questions (such as what footage was cut in the editing process) cannot be answered with certainty by simply examining the film, careful examination can reveal some important features. Only rarely are sets so convincing that a viewer cannot tell if the film was shot on a set or not. The image reveals camera angle, distance, composition, and even lenses. Occasionally such aspects can be very revealing of a film's authenticity. A too carefully arranged composition -- such as camera operators capturing a battle from an ideal viewpoint that would have placed them in mortal danger from enemy fire -- can reveal it as a re-enactment.
Editing can make historical interpretation of film tricky for three reasons. First, it can utterly re-work or determine the meaning of a film sequence. Second, it can be done after the filming. Third, films can be re-edited in ways not immediately obvious to a viewer. Many early filmmakers and theorists understood editing as perhaps the most powerful tool filmmakers had for making meaning. While a single shot usually supplies some sort of record of what the camera filmed (even if artificially arranged), editing always presents a reconstruction and can greatly change the meaning of what was shot, creating relationships of space and time that may not have existed originally.
As I mentioned earlier, one must be especially aware of editing when watching a compilation film. Editors can create a sequence of a battle, a riot, or a political convention by cutting between combatants or political orators and their audiences, but they are combining shots taken at very different times and sometimes different places. Thus, in Hearts of the World, a fictional feature film made during W.W.I., D.W. Griffith used documentary images of the war to heighten the film's drama. But as film historian Russell Merritt has shown, the images that seem to show one battle actually combine footage from several events and even mix footage shot by both British and German cameramen.
Do most people recognize film and photography as an objective form of evidence? The idea that photographs and movies "do not lie" has a long history, with many legal cases (and many more fictional cases) resting on photographic evidence. Some argue that films and photographs can indeed lie -- they can be doctored, staged, or faked in many ways. However, this very practice confirms the dominant belief that photographs are evidence. Why would someone try to alter a photograph except to capitalize on its credibility? In a legal context, however, photographs and motion pictures count as legal evidence only when accompanied by detailed testimony as to the nature and context of the photograph.
Photographic evidence, therefore, must be both scrutinized and interpreted by experts. Clearly the same is true for films as historical evidence. The interpreter must know or at least speculate how films were produced in order to ask what they can tell us, and must understand not only what films show but how they show it. Given the levels of interpretation, can we claim motion pictures as a unique form of evidence?
Most theorists agree that photography has a unique relation to what it represents because the photographic image has a direct causal relation to the subject it represents. The light reflected from the objects or people photographed causes the image to be captured on light sensitive film. A photographic image not only resembles its subject, but indicates its existence, which is why journalists try to obtain (or to fake) photographs of things whose existence is in doubt, whether flying saucers, American prisoners still held in Vietnam, or Bigfoot.
But the photographic process is not simple. An object must first pass through the sophisticated apparatus of the camera before it is imprinted on the film. This journey includes a lens, an aperture, and a shutter that, in combination with the film, all have certain qualities that influence the nature of the image. Second, the camera has been placed by a human agent. A photographer carefully arranges the framing and other aspects of the images (focus, f-stop, speed of film, and time of exposure). In the case of mechanical set-ups, like surveillance or satellite cameras, a human-devised program operates the camera automatically.
Of course, all historical evidence should be subject to skepticism. Historical documents, eyewitnesses accounts, and archeological objects all claim a direct connection to events or situations that historians evaluate and interpret. Film, however, offers a unique ability to reflect and resemble historical figures and events. A motion picture of Teddy Roosevelt does not simply claim to be related to the president and big game hunter, but to show what he looked like and how he moved. This is perhaps film's greatest attraction and seduction: by capturing images in time, it seems not simply to represent things but to make them present. Because of this ability to, in the words of one theorist, "mummify time," some early audiences saw cinema as a defense against death.
Photographic evidence, therefore, must be both scrutinized and interpreted by experts. Clearly the same is true for films as historical evidence. The interpreter must know or at least speculate how films were produced in order to ask what they can tell us, and must understand not only what films show but how they show it. Given the levels of interpretation, can we claim motion pictures as a unique form of evidence?
Most theorists agree that photography has a unique relation to what it represents because the photographic image has a direct causal relation to the subject it represents. The light reflected from the objects or people photographed causes the image to be captured on light sensitive film. A photographic image not only resembles its subject, but indicates its existence, which is why journalists try to obtain (or to fake) photographs of things whose existence is in doubt, whether flying saucers, American prisoners still held in Vietnam, or Bigfoot.
But the photographic process is not simple. An object must first pass through the sophisticated apparatus of the camera before it is imprinted on the film. This journey includes a lens, an aperture, and a shutter that, in combination with the film, all have certain qualities that influence the nature of the image. Second, the camera has been placed by a human agent. A photographer carefully arranges the framing and other aspects of the images (focus, f-stop, speed of film, and time of exposure). In the case of mechanical set-ups, like surveillance or satellite cameras, a human-devised program operates the camera automatically.
Of course, all historical evidence should be subject to skepticism. Historical documents, eyewitnesses accounts, and archeological objects all claim a direct connection to events or situations that historians evaluate and interpret. Film, however, offers a unique ability to reflect and resemble historical figures and events. A motion picture of Teddy Roosevelt does not simply claim to be related to the president and big game hunter, but to show what he looked like and how he moved. This is perhaps film's greatest attraction and seduction: by capturing images in time, it seems not simply to represent things but to make them present. Because of this ability to, in the words of one theorist, "mummify time," some early audiences saw cinema as a defense against death.
What issues come up when evaluating film as historical evidence? How can we know that an early film is authentic? What does the film show and how might its images have been manipulated? Finally, what are film's strengths and weaknesses as a historical record?
A recent experience will help explore these questions. A producer preparing a film on Teddy Roosevelt sent me a bit of film (transferred to video). He doubted the film's authenticity, and asked me to judge the nature of the images it contained. An authentic image of Roosevelt, particularly one not well known, would be rare and valuable evidence. Given the physical deterioration of early film, I was likely to be viewing a later print, made either from the original negatives or by duping (photographing a film to make a copy rather than making a positive print from the original negatives) a positive print. These processes not only remove the physical material of the original film but can also change the framing of the image and contrast of tones. (Read more about the physical properties of film). Duping reduces an image's clarity, and sometimes duped prints go through several generations -- a photograph of a photograph of a photograph -- and lose clarity at every point.
These changes are compounded when viewing a film electronically, whether on video or computer. The original frame area may be altered to fit the screen, cutting off essential information. The proportions of the film frame most frequently found on video monitors and computer screens is based on the film frame that existed until the 1950s, when theatre owners widened movie screens to compete with television. Because of the overspill built into most monitors, film images lose information from their left and right edges when shown on a monitor, and color can vary greatly when color film is transferred to an electronic format. Film images hold more information, and more detail, than current electronic modes of presentation (except for high definition TV) can display.
In other words, the film image as it was originally produced may have undergone an enormous number of transformations before we actually look at it. While these transformations can make studying film difficult (for example, if the footage of Teddy Roosevelt had been duped so many times that I could hardly see his facial features), knowledge of them allows historians to make use of films as historical documents. Therefore film documents must be treated with the same skepticism and scrutiny that you bring to any evidence. In the case of the Teddy Roosevelt film, the footage was in black and white and had the same original proportions as the monitor, so some distortion was minimized. Although some clarity of detail was missing (probably due to both duping and the transfer to video), the images were still recognizable.
Understanding a film as historical evidence requires informed judgement based on knowledge from outside of the film. The Teddy Roosevelt footage showed a mustached, bespectacled man in a hunting suit and pith helmet waving from a hill. This was followed by a shot of African natives looking off-screen, as if frightened, then a close-up of Roosevelt as the "great white hunter." It is well documented that in 1909 Roosevelt went big game hunting in Africa and took a cameraman with him to record his exploits. Could these images be authentic documentary evidence of that hunting trip? Two clues led me to confirm the suspicion that the film was staged. First, the figure, while clearly made up to resemble Roosevelt (the glasses, the mustache), did not really match other photographs of Roosevelt from this period. This was an actor portraying the former president. Second, and perhaps most important, the cut to the African natives indicated images that had been arranged to give the impression of simultaneity -- to indicate that the natives were looking at, and reacting to, Roosevelt). But the hunter and the African natives were almost certainly not filmed at the same time (the lighting and backgrounds of the two shots did not match). This points to one of the aspects of filmmaking most significant in the use of film as historical evidence: film cutting or editing.
A recent experience will help explore these questions. A producer preparing a film on Teddy Roosevelt sent me a bit of film (transferred to video). He doubted the film's authenticity, and asked me to judge the nature of the images it contained. An authentic image of Roosevelt, particularly one not well known, would be rare and valuable evidence. Given the physical deterioration of early film, I was likely to be viewing a later print, made either from the original negatives or by duping (photographing a film to make a copy rather than making a positive print from the original negatives) a positive print. These processes not only remove the physical material of the original film but can also change the framing of the image and contrast of tones. (Read more about the physical properties of film). Duping reduces an image's clarity, and sometimes duped prints go through several generations -- a photograph of a photograph of a photograph -- and lose clarity at every point.
These changes are compounded when viewing a film electronically, whether on video or computer. The original frame area may be altered to fit the screen, cutting off essential information. The proportions of the film frame most frequently found on video monitors and computer screens is based on the film frame that existed until the 1950s, when theatre owners widened movie screens to compete with television. Because of the overspill built into most monitors, film images lose information from their left and right edges when shown on a monitor, and color can vary greatly when color film is transferred to an electronic format. Film images hold more information, and more detail, than current electronic modes of presentation (except for high definition TV) can display.
In other words, the film image as it was originally produced may have undergone an enormous number of transformations before we actually look at it. While these transformations can make studying film difficult (for example, if the footage of Teddy Roosevelt had been duped so many times that I could hardly see his facial features), knowledge of them allows historians to make use of films as historical documents. Therefore film documents must be treated with the same skepticism and scrutiny that you bring to any evidence. In the case of the Teddy Roosevelt film, the footage was in black and white and had the same original proportions as the monitor, so some distortion was minimized. Although some clarity of detail was missing (probably due to both duping and the transfer to video), the images were still recognizable.
Understanding a film as historical evidence requires informed judgement based on knowledge from outside of the film. The Teddy Roosevelt footage showed a mustached, bespectacled man in a hunting suit and pith helmet waving from a hill. This was followed by a shot of African natives looking off-screen, as if frightened, then a close-up of Roosevelt as the "great white hunter." It is well documented that in 1909 Roosevelt went big game hunting in Africa and took a cameraman with him to record his exploits. Could these images be authentic documentary evidence of that hunting trip? Two clues led me to confirm the suspicion that the film was staged. First, the figure, while clearly made up to resemble Roosevelt (the glasses, the mustache), did not really match other photographs of Roosevelt from this period. This was an actor portraying the former president. Second, and perhaps most important, the cut to the African natives indicated images that had been arranged to give the impression of simultaneity -- to indicate that the natives were looking at, and reacting to, Roosevelt). But the hunter and the African natives were almost certainly not filmed at the same time (the lighting and backgrounds of the two shots did not match). This points to one of the aspects of filmmaking most significant in the use of film as historical evidence: film cutting or editing.