On screen, in frame

film and ideology

pp. 1-18

in: Stephen Heath, Questions of cinema, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1981

Abstract

Something changes between 22 March and 28 December 1895. Between the scientific and industrial presentation (the first Lumière demonstration of the cinématographe for the Société d"encouragement à l"industrie nationale) and the start of commercial exploitation (the first public performance in the Grand Café), the screen is fixed in what will come to be its definitive place. The spectators are no longer set on either side of a translucent screen but have been assigned their position in front of the image which unrolls before them — cinema begins.