Richard Abel 
The Cine Goes to Town 
French Cinema, 1896-1914, Updated and Expanded Edition

Richard Abel’s magisterial new book radically rewrites the history of French cinema between 1896 and 1914, particularly during the years when Pathé-Frères, the first major corporation in the new industry, led the world in film production and distribution. Based on extensive investigation of rare archival films and documents, and drawing on recent social and cultural histories of turn-of-the-century France and the United States, his book provides new insights into the earliest history of the cinema.


Abel tells how early French film entertainment changed from a cinema of attractions to the narrative format that Hollywood would so successfully exploit. He describes the popular genres of the era—comic chases, trick films and
féeries, historical and biblical stories, family melodramas and grand guignol tales, crime and detective films—and shows the shift from short subjects to feature-length films. Cinema venues evolved along with the films as live music, color effects, and other new exhibiting techniques and practices drew larger and larger audiences. Abel explores the ways these early films mapped significant differences in French social life, helping to produce thoroughly bourgeois citizens for Third Republic France.


The Ciné Goes to Town recovers early French cinema’s unique contribution to the development of the mass culture industry. As the one-hundredth anniversary of cinema approaches, this compelling demonstration of film’s role in the formation of social and national identity will attract a wide audience of film scholars, social and cultural historians, and film enthusiasts.


This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Richard Abel’s magisterial new book radically rewrites the history of French cinema between 1896 and 1914, particularly during the years when Pathé-Frères, the first major corporation in the new industry, led the world in film production and distribution.

Table of Content

Illustrations 

Preface 

Note to the 1998 Edition 

Acknowledgments 

Note on Terms 


1. Turn-of-the-Century France

2. The French Cinema Industry, 1896-1914 

The Big Four, 1896-I902 

Pathé Comes to Power, 1902-1907 

Strategies of Dominance, 1907-1911

Strategies of Survival, 1911-1914 


3 The Cinema of Attractions, 1896-1904 

Trick Films and Féeries 

Comic Films 

Diverging Paths: From Actualités to Historical and Realist Films 


4. The Transition to a Narrative Cinema, 1904-1907 

The Bricolage Model 

The Comic Chase Film and Company 

The Pleasure and Pain of Just Looking: Erotic Films and Others 

The Dramatic and Realist Films 

Dissemination and Difference 

The Cinema of Attractions (continued) 


5. The Pre-Feature, Single-Reel Story Film, 1907-1911 

Contemporary Melodramas: Light and Dark Variants 

Comics Come in Series 

Film d’Art and Films d’Art: The Historical Film and the Literary Adaptation 

Trick Films and Féeries 


6. The Rise of the Feature Film, 1911-1914 

The Historical Film Comes of Age 

Life As It Is: In and Out of Fashion 

Crime Pays: Detectives Versus Criminals 

The Comic Series in Full Swing 


Afterword 

Filmography 

Notes 

Bibliography 

Index 

About the author

Richard Abel is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of English at Drake University. His books include French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-1929 (1984), winner of the Theatre Library Association Award, and French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939 (1988), winner of the Jay Leyda Prize in Cinema Studies.