This study examines the traditional claim that in 1903, while an employee of the Edison Manufacturing Company, Edwin Stanton Porter discovered the principle of editing construction which made possible the fictional motion picture narrative. It will show that Edison studio policy in the period would have discouraged such an achievement and that the crucial first step in the elaboration of the early film narrative was the development of a compositional aesthetic derived from the staged or 'fake' newsreel. Based on that aesthetic between 1904 and 1907 film directors including Edwin Porter turned out a short-lived, tableau-action narrator-dependent story film in actuality style that became the basis of the nickelodeon boom dating from 1906. The social and industrial pressures engendered by that success led to the fragmentation of the complete action tableau and the displacement of the tableau narrative by a shot-dependent, autonomous narrative constrained by the formal features of actuality composition. The final chapter analyzes a leading example, the 1907 emergence of parallel editing in the production of one-reel screen tales of last-minute rescue.

No description available.