Overview of French Cinema

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Overview of French Cinema
Introduction
France is considered the pioneer of cinema and was a major contributor in the creation of films. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the french film industry was among the most creative in the world. France is noted for having a strong film industry today and in this essay we take a look at the history of the french film industry and how it contributed to filmmaking.The film industry in france was practically initiated in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was considered by many historians as the most important in the world history in the initial days of the film industry .
During the inception of French cinema, the Lumiere brothers invented the Cinematographe which was the initiation of french film production. This was in the 19th century in the year 1895. During the following years several film production firms were conceived. They included Pathe Freres, Gaumont Film Company, the Georges Melies company and the Lumieres. This took place between 1896 and 1902, the initial years that french film production began. Georges Melies company put up together the the first background setup that inspired many movie makers around the world who took up the idea. During this time the invention of motion pictures and the silent era of film was created. These were the creativities of filmakers such as Georges Melies, Max Linder, Louis Feuillade, Louis Delluc, Abel Gance Rene Clair and Marcel L`Herbier (Lanzoni, 18). Several film makers began to work on different genres such as documentary (lumiere brother), comedy (max linder), crime series (Louis Feuillade) and melodrama (Ferdinand Zecca) (Lanzoni, 39). The comedy genre was among the most popular in the French industry.Several national French cinemas were conceptualised through the ideas of Charles Pathe, Leon Gaumont and several others. Melies was a significant character who idealized some of the techniques used in film production such as grammar and surreal short subjects which were evident in his science fiction film ‘a trip to the moon`.
Later in 1902, the Lumieres brothers left the film industry and Melies ventured solo in the film industry. Between the years 1904 to 1911, the Pathe Freres film company was intensively engaged in the film production and its distribution in the world. At Gaumont film company, Alice Guy Blache one of the company`s pioneer oversaw the production of over 400 films such as her first one ‘la Fee aux Choux` in 1896 and in 1907 Gaumont company was one of the largest movie companies in the world. It had some of the luxurious cinemas around the world such as Gaumont-Palace and the Pathe-Palace which were made in 1911.
However, with the advent of the first world war the state of the french film industry began to decline and was hit by a major financial crisis. The invention of talking pictures completely redefined the silent film production. In the early 1890`s a British scientist named William Greene invented a chronophotographic camera that saw the combination of animated pictures to produce animated films. This paved way for other photographic inventions such as the invention of photophone by Georges Demeny, which was used for photographing anima...