The idea of progress : to what extent the cinema is related to progress ?

SYNTHESE

      Going to the cinema is my hobby and I have always found it interested how it changed since the beginning. The notion I am going to deal with is "The Idea Of Progress". To start with I would like to define the notion. Progress is a change, an evolution for a better life. There is a lot of forms of progress but I'd like to focus on the cinema.                                                                                                  

We may wonder to what extent the cinema is related to progress.

I have chosen to illustrate this notion with the documents we studied in class. In a first part, I will talk about the technological aspects of progress. In a second part, I am going to illustrate the drawbacks of this progress. And in a last part, I will mention the movies as mirrors of society.

    The Lumière Brothers who are french invented the cinématographe and the first cinema opened in Paris in 1895. At this time, movies were short, silent, and in black and white : the opposite of today's movies .A lot of the cinema's revolutionner are french like Georges Méliès who created the "telling of stories" in movies. He was a magician who added his tricks in his movies, that way, he is the first to create special effects. Méliès has also been the first to colour his films, he took his frames and coloured them with his hands and some pencils. Hugo Cabret is a 2009's movie that illustrate the life of Georges Méliès.

Today, movies are long, coloured and with dialogues. They even made some bigger progress like with the 4D. The 3D is a process pretty known in the world, people see objects come at us, but 4D is way more than that. It allows specators to feel like they are IN the movie. This is an unique experience that is spreading in the world and this has a gigantic success. Spectators love the fact that they receive water, wind, smoke, smells and that their chairs move. Another big progress is the movie Avatar that uses a lot of new technology that stunned the public.

However, these progress has drawbacks.

   There has been a moment when progress was a problem for actors. Indeed, there is a mpvie called "singing in the rain" that explains the transition between silent films and talkies. It explains that actors were not used to talk in their movies and now, some of their careers are ruined. The story is about a famous and beautiful actress called Lina. She has to act in a musical but she has an unpleasant voice. Their solution is to hire Kathy, in order to dub her. But Lina is furious because everybody will be aware that she can't sing and nobody knew that when she acted in silent films.

We can assume that everybody love talkies but during this hard transition, people hated them. Paul Auster explains in his book "The Book Of Illusions" that he hates the fact that with talkies you can't use your imagination and it ruins the whole art. He says it doesn't provide the same feelings and sensations that books or silent films. He prefers by far old silent and black and white movies. He says "The closer the movies came to simulating reality the worse they failed at representing the world". I think that all movies need some science fiction and big sound to  be a success. I only watch those kind of films and I love it.

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