Film as History / History as Film - Stephan Michael Schröders: History as Diegesis

This document is part of Patrick Vonderau (ed.): Film as History / History as Film
The numbering of footnotes varies from number 31 to the end compared to the original word document!

What is the difference between an historian and a poet? Aristotle had a clear answer: "The essential difference is that the one tells us what happened and the other the sort of thing that would happen".⁽¹⁾ This Aristotelian certainty of being able to distinguish between historiography and fiction because of their different ontological status as writing about something which either is truly happening or else merely possibly, is, in the meantime, for historians only a sentimental reminder of not only simpler, but also theoretically less reflective times. The seed of the argument with which this certainty was eventually destroyed can itself be detected in Aristotle's work. In his argumentation he makes the objection that "the difference between the historian and the poet is not merely that one write verse and the other prose".⁽²⁾ For Aristotle this is a false criterion for differentiating between the two because it is entirely possible to write poetic work in prose form and historical work in verse. Here Aristotle is indirectly emphasizing the dependence on narration and language which is common for both historiography and poetry. This indifference is not important for Aristotle, but in the course of de-ontologization it had, in fact, become the decisive problem, resulting in the 'linguistic turn'. Prior to the 'linguistic turn', language was seen to represent reality (which is why lingual statements could be subjected to a true/false dichotomy). After the 'linguistic turn' language was understood as an action (and this action could not be seen as true or false, but only as viable or not viable). Language became in a semiotic sense pragmatized, which is why linguists also prefer to speak of the 'pragmatic turn.'⁽³⁾

This development implies that even historiography cannot transcend the limits of its own linguality, and, for its intelligibility, historiography has to fall back on narrative structures. From Northrop Frye's dictum that historiography is "a verbal imitation of action, or events put into the form of words",⁽⁴⁾ logically it should have been only a short distance to Hayden White's thesis that historiography means historical narratives, whose depth structure is metahistorically committed to certain genre paradigms,⁽⁵⁾ "verbal fictions the contents of which are as much invented as found, and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature, than they do with those in the sciences".⁽⁶⁾ This expounding of the problem of historical discourse, or more exactly, the definition of historiography as discourse, runs aground in the constructivistic differentiation between past and history: 'past' as that which is gone, which can neither be found nor represented, and 'history' as a discursive construction, that is, as a (in the academic institutionalized) discourse about the past. This implies, too, that the demand for scholarly objectivity has to yield to a demand for intersubjectivity, and that 'truth' is changed from an ontological value to a regulative concept.

As the pictorial media are taking an ever more prominent place in the late 20th century, this understanding of historiography as a discourse has led to film being viewed as a historical document or source.⁽⁷⁾ At the same time, this 'discursivation' means autoreflectively expounding the problem of the logographic mediality of the historiographical discourse, which has been undisputed since classical antiquity: Does historical knowledge necessarily have to be logographic, or can film be used as a medium for 'writing' history, and, if so, what are the consequences?⁽⁸⁾

Film has penetrated the study of history, and is here to stay. Proof of this is, not least of all, seen in the lively academic discussions about the crossover from film and history.⁽⁹⁾ But the fashionable enthusiasm for film as 'source' or 'representative medium' should not lead one to methodologically fall back to a period prior to the 'linguistic turn'.⁽¹⁰⁾ This especially concerns the source status of films, as films are no more able to represent 'the' reality than other types of sources. Even non-fiction films are discursive formations, observer-dependent narratives and not the past itself. The difference between film as source and film as historical medium cannot be accounted for ontologically, but instead from an observer's point of view: a film which always functions as a historiographical medium as soon as it tries to represent the past, must, from the perspective of an historian, necessarily be viewed as a source. In the process, however, the historiographical-medial function cannot be ignored.

This essay deals first of all with the 'filmasmedium' question. That is to say, with how and in which way historical films of the early silent film era take history as a theme. The logical question which follows is that of the 'film-as-source', that is, for what statements and purposes can historians meaningfully employ films. Two interconnected variables therefore must be examined: (1) which 'past' or 'history' is being taken as a theme; (2) in which way is this discourse about the past dependent on the possibilities of the early silent films?

What is a 'Historical Film?'

The distinction between a 'costume drama' on the one hand, that is, "a tale of romance and passion set in an exotic past" (an example of this would be Gone with the Wind (1939)), and the 'serious', 'fully fledged' historical film on the other, is omnipresent in research literature.⁽¹¹⁾ A typical handbook definition is for example given by Lopez:

This differentiation has become so commonplace among researchers that its legitimation(s) and limitations are no longer examined. Lopez' reasoning for the differentiation, for example, is a contradictory muddle and methodologically primitive: Is the degree of historical 'reproduction' (Lopez seems to assume that history is objectively existing, independently of the observer) the decisive factor for classification as a 'true historical film'? What degree must be achieved: 50% 75% 100%? However, even a 100% reproduction does not appear to be sufficient if the reproduction is subsequently used for "spectacle, romance, and entertainment". At the very least, 'entertainment' cannot seriously be a criterion which excludes: Do 'true' historical films have to be deadly boring?⁽¹³⁾ And after Lopez at first argued using historical reference and plot, he suddenly brings up (supplementary?) the intentions of the author, when he establishes the criterion that the "filmmaker" (the director? what about the scriptwriter? the actors? the lighting technicians? the costume designers, etc.?) must reproduce "the historical material as truthfully and as well as he can" (italics are mine). Does this mean that whether a film is a 'true' historical one or not depends on the talent and commitment of the filmmaker? Does a less talented filmmaker, who has diligently dedicated himself to his task, necessarily produce a historical film that is 'truer' than the film of a filmmaking genius, who only applied minimal effort to the 'reproduction' even if the two films, in the end, are viewed as equally 'historical'?

For Rosenstone the difference lies in whether the past has been treated "as a site less of adventure then of social meaning".⁽¹⁴⁾ As with Lopez, this sounds like a pejorative evaluation of 'adventure', and as with him a pseudo-opposite pole is constructed. Mere entertainment through 'adventure' is set in opposition to social meaning, as if 'adventure' did not produce social meaning and were not produced through social meaning.

Strictly speaking, one could even criticize these authors' presupposed minimum requirement for the fully fledged and not so fully fledged historical film: that these films' settings have to be situated in the past. The question necessarily arises, however: which past is being discussed here? The spectators' past or the past at the time of the film production?

Can one, in the face of all these objections, still meaningfully employ the notion of 'historical film'? First, as to the minimum requirement that the setting be in the past: here one can argue that the reception of a film never takes place without paratextual information. This includes such things as the film's opening credits or advertisement on radio and television, all of which make the spectator conscious of the film's year of production and, thereby, its position on the historical timeline. In addition, the experienced spectator also locates a film chronologically by means of its style, its actors, etc. Therefore, it is meaningful to refer to the time of production when talking about the past horizon of a historical film.

Second, we must turn to the problem of whether it is possible to meaningfully differentiate between categories of 'historical films'. Can a costume drama be distinguished from a 'true' historical film in such a way that one does not end up in the aforementioned aporia? At this point, it is worthwhile examining literary history, from which this differentiation has been adopted. In German literary history, for example, historical drama ('historisches Drama') tends to be distinguished from history play ('Geschichtsdrama'), and a novel with a historical tone from an 'actual' historical novel. This differentiation derives from the poetic practice of the second half of the eighteenth century which, starting at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was theoretically reflected upon by A.W. Schlegel, (Wiener Dramenvorlesungen, 1808), Solger (commentary on the Wiener Dramenvorlesungen, 1818) and Tieck (Dramaturgische Blätter, 1826), among others. The differentiation is based not upon the degree of historical reference, the intentions of the author or the plot, but rather upon whether the conception of history itself is being reflected in the play or novel, even perhaps treated as a theme. The crucial point is whether the play or novel deals with the notion of history itself. Structurally, plays or novels normally considered to be truly 'historical' do not only create a narrative discourse about the past, but are autoreflexive discourses about narrative discourses about the past. Correspondingly, one could say that true 'historical films' need some degree of double-discursive reflexive narrativity.

This, of course, is only an ideal-typical definition of a historical film which takes for granted particular historical premises. A priori the possibility of a polished narrative ability is presupposed an ability which one can as confidently expect from the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as one can from the classical film developed in the 1910s with its diegetic abilities.⁽¹⁵⁾ To refer to the preinstitutionalized silent film using this definition, however, would be a fatal anachronism. If one accepts the definition of a 'true' historical film as one which not only takes place in a historical setting but also reflects, in a metadiscourse, its own view upon history then this study would end here since this type of historical film could hardly exist before the 1910s. Therefore the task is to historicize the above discussed definition of the historical film by connecting discourse about history and/or the past with the development of the film discourse. Thus, when talking about the 'historical film', I will from now on be referring to a historical film in the broadest sense: a tableau, a series of tableaux or a plot which takes place in a historical setting, a type of historical film which can even be found in the earliest silent film era.

The Little Trumpeter as Film and as Cultural Narration

The film in question here is undoubtedly the most successful Danish historical film of the early silent film era. Den lille Hornblæser (The Little Trumpeter) was produced in 1909 by a company in Århus called A/S Th.S. Hermansen.⁽¹⁶⁾

The main character, Christian, a boy from Nyboder, an impoverished district of Copenhagen, voluntarily enlists himself as a trumpeter and marches against the Schleswig-Holsteiners (continuously referred to as 'the Germans' in the film program) together with his father, who was drafted, and his sister Maria, who enlisted as a nurse (with a Red Cross band, even though the Red Cross was not founded until 1863). Maria is courted by two brothers, Lieutenant Orla (who shares his first name with Orla Lehmann (181070), the leader of the Danish national liberals) and the insufferable Frans, who was banished from the family house in Nyboder after behaving impudently towards Maria. During a dangerous assignment, the brave Christian finds out that Frans is working as a spy for the enemy. Frans attempts to trap him, but Christian, although suffering from a leg wound, manages with his trumpet to summon three Danish dragoons who save him. Despite the superior strength of the enemy (which, surprisingly enough, is fighting under the tricolor), the three dragoons manage to hold the entrenchment until reinforcement arrives. Frans is captured and Christian, who is nursed back to health by his sister, reveals Frans' true identity as a spy. Finally, an attempted break-out is thwarted by Christian who happens to be passing by and who shoots Frans dead. In the last scene, which takes place three months later, Christian, Orla and Maria return to the mother, who has lost her husband in the war.

Unfortunately, only two-fifths of the originally eighteen part film still exists (150 meter which, depending on the projection speed, is approx. 57 minutes). Besides the introductory seven scenes in Copenhagen, there exists another scene in which the mother receives the news of the death of her husband,⁽¹⁷⁾ as well as the scenes in which Frans the spy is put into prison and subsequently shot dead by Christian during his attempted break-out.⁽¹⁸⁾ Unfortunately, all the war scenes which make up the (narrative and historical) main focus of the film are missing. However, these war scenes can, to some extent, be reconstructed by way of the program and remaining production stills. Besides a comprehensive plot summary, the program also contains five production stills from the missing middle section of the film. In addition, eleven other production stills which deviate from those in the program can also be found in the picture collection of the Danish Film Museum.

In many ways, The Little Trumpeter is a film which is typical of its times. This can be seen, for example, in the pointed recourse to a popular literary classic, a recourse which attempted to enhance the status of the new medium among the bourgeois spectators by encompassing material which involved their own traditions. The film's title refers to a work by H.P. Holst (181193) from 1849, entitled Den lille Hornblæser. Translated as The Little Trumpeter, the work is an over two-hundred pages epic poem full of nationalistic pathos for the war of 1848, in which Holst took part as a middle-ranking civil servant under the North Jutland general command.⁽¹⁹⁾ Although the author is not explicitly mentioned (in the film program it merely reads: "Den lille Hornblæser. Scene fra Krigen mellem Danmark og Tyskland 18484950, udsat for Kinematografi" ["The Little Trumpeter. Scene from the war between Denmark and Germany 18484950, adapted for cinematography"]), the attentive spectator will recognize the starting and concluding scenes in Nyboder, and the program refers explicitly on several occasions to the epic poem. Christian's cheeky utterance in the program (which could possibly be an intertitle as well), "The Germans won't shoot me dead because they aim too high",⁽²⁰⁾ echoes, for example, his letter to his mother in the epic poem in which he writes, "Don't you fear/ For the Germans aim much too high/ And hit only the tall ones!"⁽²¹⁾

On the whole, however, the film itself does not call to mind very much from its literary original. In this regard, only Christian and his parents, the starting and finishing scenes, and the war itself can be traced back to Holst's poem. In the poem the little trumpeter proves himself in battle and, in the process, becomes close friends with two other soldiers. One is a nameless fifty year old lieutenant, portrayed as a good-natured, true-blooded Dane, who is more familiar with the beer-mug than with the quill. The other is a student, who stills the little trumpeter's thirst for knowledge. A national education program is referred to in the book here, one that is as much for the heart as for the soul, a popular and academic education united under the sign of true Danish nationality. After the little trumpeter succeeded in escaping captivity, the king gives him the opportunity to develop his natural aptitude through education (now: book-learning).

The little trumpeter does not have a sister in the literary version, while the love and spy story lines were also added in the film version. The film, on the other hand, does not include the academic education program. Instead, the only theme which is expanded upon is the heroic battle for the fatherland. In this way the film is also a witness to the change in reception which the cultural narration of The Little Trumpeter experienced over the course of time. This cultural narration was known throughout Denmark in 1909, but not necessarily in the original version by Holst, even though his version enjoyed enormous popularity and numerous reprints.⁽²²⁾ An abridged and annotated version, to be used in the classroom, was published by the Danish Teacher's Association in 1905.⁽²³⁾ However, The Little Trumpeter had also long since been circulating as a cultural narration within various other discourses or media:⁽²⁴⁾ as a children's story,⁽²⁵⁾ as a picture book⁽²⁶⁾ (see illustration 1) and as a children's play⁽²⁷⁾. It also took the form of a so-called folk comedy⁽²⁸⁾ or music to be performed at home, whether as a piano-accompanied song⁽²⁹⁾ or as a "trumpet-polka" ("Hornblæser-Polka") for violin⁽³⁰⁾ and the film refers to these popular cultural narrations about the little trumpeter rather than to Holst's original epic poem, as will now be shown.

Illustration 2: "Landsoldaten med den lille Hornblæser" (["The foot soldier with the little trumpeter"], erected in 1899; sculptor: H.P. Perdersen-Dan). (Picture: Sven Türck)*

Engberg, in her history of the early Danish silent film, makes a typical minor error which effectively illustrates that The Little Trumpeter must be viewed in the overall context of a cultural narration. According to Engberg the epic poem, which the film adapts, is about the war in 1864.⁽³¹⁾ This error suggests not so much a historical confusion about the Schleswig wars, but instead points to the national monument "Landsoldaten med den lille Hornblæser" ["The foot soldier with the little trumpeter"] from 1899, which can be seen today on the edge of the Copenhagen town hall square (see illustration 2).⁽³²⁾ The sculptor, H.P. Pedersen-Dan (18591939), was allegedly inspired by Holst's The Little Trumpeter. However, according to the inscription on the monument, he sculpted not only for the fallen soldiers of the victorious first Schleswig war of 18481850, but also for those of the second Schleswig war of 1864, in which the Danish soldiers were defeated.

Engberg's error can now be explained by the central scene of the film (see illustration 3) which reproduces precisely this national monument. The wounded little trumpeter is being carried (in a very uncomfortable fashion, one might add) by a 'typical' Danish foot soldier, while undauntedly still blowing his trumpet for the command to attack a scene which does not even exist in the literary 'original' where the wounded little trumpeter is gathered up by the Prussians in an unconscious state and imprisoned. The scene is the fabrication of the sculptor, who, as is true of others before him, amalgamated the two most popular narrations of 1848/49 which as national myths had long since become "national possessions"⁽³³⁾: Holst's epic poem and the broadsheet "Den tapre Landsoldat" ["The Brave Foot Soldier"], written by Peter Faber (181077) and set to music by Emil Horneman (180970). The popular song, which Holst also mentions in his epic poem,⁽³⁴⁾ was a great success; 18,000 copies were printed in the month that it was published, April 1848.⁽³⁵⁾ The brave foot soldier had already been given a national monument in 1858 in Fredricia to commemorate the Fredericia battle of 1849 at that time an unprecedented occurrence: the sculptor, Herman Bissen (17891868) chose to commemorate the battle not by representing a commander or a king, but instead a private (see illustration 4).

Illustration 3: Scene from The Little Trumpeter
(© Nordisk Film, courtesy of Danish Film Museum)

The Copenhagen National Monument (and later the corresponding tableau in the film) shows that the little trumpeter has long since been a cultural icon with a dynamic life of its own and this icon is alluded to much more in the film than is Holst's original text. In fact, for many years a man in uniform and with a trumpet made the rounds of the Copenhagen pubs claiming to be the little trumpeter and, for a small contribution, recounted his war experiences. Not until 1882, when a public collection for his widow was carried out, did Holst intervene.⁽³⁶⁾ He could not, however, (and probably did not wish to) prevent his literary figure from becoming the most popular historical myth of the Schleswig wars, a myth which had less and less in common with Holst's text. Typically, in the popular reception as in the film the starting and finishing scenes are retained and the Danish fatherland continues to be diligently trumpeted and fought for. In the children's book Den lille Hornblæser fortalt for Børn [The little Trumpeter Told for Children] (1899) the scene is retained for obvious genre purposes in which the little trumpeter asks the king for an opportunity to receive an education. However, the captivity scenes are left out, as they are in the children's play Landsoldaten eller Den lille Hornblæser (1905), which, to a large extent, is based upon texts by Holst, Carl Ploug (181394) and Faber. Even the fact of the wound seems to be somewhat embarrassing for the narrator of the latter text ("Peter came to the field hospital/ I do not wish to conceal that").⁽³⁷⁾

Georg Emil Betzonich (18291901) also leaves out the captivity scenes in his drama, Landsoldaten [The Foot Soldier] (1887),⁽³⁸⁾ which presents the version of the cultural narration closest to the one in the film. In this version the starting and concluding scenes take place in Nyboder. Here one is already introduced to the other main characters: the little trumpeter's rural comrade, Jens Daglykke (which will be his name in the film as well), and a character named Orla, whose brother joins the enemy's side and pays for this treason with his life. In an adaptation by Vilhelm Østergaard the drama was staged very successfully in 1886/87 for the first time in the Copenhagen Dagmarteater, and it was played about 1909 at the Copenhagen Det nye Teater.⁽³⁹⁾

The Preinstitutionalized Film

That The Little Trumpeter functions so explicitly as an illustration of a memorial and its accompanying cultural narration is typical for a film of the last years of the first decade of this century. These years are known in film history as a transitional period between two basically very different forms of cinema and film. Until approximately twenty years ago, in accordance with the so-called 'continuity model', it was assumed that, since its primitive beginnings, film has continuously come to realize its own inherent possibilities and capacities. That is to say, that film had gradually succeeded in finding its 'natural' grammar. Since the legendary conference of the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) in Brighton in 1978 this Aristotelian-teleological interpretation of film history as a continuous relevation of film's 'true nature' has ceased.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The interpretation of the earliest silent films as primitive and merely an embryonic preliminary stage of the classical style, which became institutionalized in the 1910s, has been explicitly rejected. No longer is the development of film syntax regarded as the telos of film history. Instead, one now focuses on the mise-en-scène before the camera,⁽⁴¹⁾ as well as films' pragmatic dimension.⁽⁴²⁾ In this post-Brighton perspective, the earliest films are now considered as something strangely different ("extranéité")⁽⁴³⁾ to the later films.

The revisionist film historiography, presented most of all by Stephan Bottomore, Noël Burch, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning and Charles Musser, is still in agreement with regard to the cessation of the teleological viewpoint, and the fundamentally different nature of the earliest films. These authors readily diverge, however, on discussions of the term appropiate for the early cinema, that is, with regard to what one should adopt instead of the unfortunate term 'primitive period'⁽⁴⁴⁾: Gaudreault's and Gunning's expression, 'Cinema of Attraction(s)'⁽⁴⁵⁾ competes with Burch's term 'PMT' (='Primitive Mode of Representation'),⁽⁴⁶⁾ with the neutral French term 'CPT' (='cinéma des premiers temps')⁽⁴⁷⁾, and with Bottomore's latest suggestion to call the earliest cinema 'Cambrian cinema'⁽⁴⁸⁾. In addition, with regard to how long this form of cinema or film prevailed and how long the following transitional period took,⁽⁴⁹⁾ different answers have been put forth. For Gunning 1903/04,⁽⁵⁰⁾ 1906⁽⁵¹⁾, and even 1908 "or so"⁽⁵²⁾ is the year of the borderline, while the transitional period lasted until about 1913.⁽⁵³⁾ For Burch, since 1906, the PMR was slowly replaced by the IMR,⁽⁵⁴⁾ while this process was finished by 1914/15⁽⁵⁵⁾. For Gaudreault and Simard the CPT lasted until 1915⁽⁵⁶⁾, and Thompson assumes that the transitional period took place from approximately 1909 to 1917.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Despite the disagreement on dates, all these scholars emphasize that the given time periods are only ideal-typical and that the early film mode has never completely disappeared, but has, instead, continued (for example, in avant-garde films or in specific genres) to exist as an undercurrent.

Despite the many differences the larger common concept is still visible. This should not conceal, however, the fact that the varying labels and periodizations result from distinctly different concepts and references. Is reference being made, for example, to all films or only to fictitious scenes, that is, to 'feature films' (a word which is, of course, much too bombastic when talking about films of that era)? For example, with their 'Cinema of Attractions' and PMR concepts, Gunning and Burch describe the aesthetics and the mode of representation relevant primarily for fictious 'feature films' even though their aesthetic considerations are connected with a film's pragmatic dimension (circumstances surrounding film projection, context of the nervous constitution of the modern city dweller, etc.) which implies reference to much more than only 'feature films'.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Gunning's and Burch's primary reference to fiction film might also be a main reason why both regard the earliest cinema and the earliest films as being principally monolithic, that is, as being a fairly elaborate system of widely unified cultural practices.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The opposing concept is represented by Bottomore, Gaudreault/Simard, etc., who consciously do not n, systematization, homogenization, conventionalizing, institutionalization, etc.⁽⁶⁰⁾

As there is not enough space to deal with the details of these concepts and their variations, I have attempted to draw up, in schematic form, some of the most important features of the earliest cinema, vis-à-vis the 'classical' mode which developed during the 1910s. This will be used as a starting-point in the discussion of The Little Trumpeter. As the film is a fictitious one, I have relied heavily upon Gunning's work.⁽⁶¹⁾ At the same time, this schematic form gives the impression, firstly, that I consider both forms of cinema to be mutually exclusive, and, secondly, that I regard the earliest cinema to be an already standardized set of cultural practices. This is, however, definitely not the case. My use of Gunning is strictly heuristic, while with regard to Bottomore's, Thompson's and Gaudreault's/ Simard's research, I suggest referring to the earliest cinema as 'preinstitutionalized'.

Preinstitutionalized Cinema

['Cinema of Attractions', 'Cambrian Cinema', 'CPT', 'PMR']

Institutionalized Cinema

['Cinema of Narrative Integration', 'Cinema of Narration', 'Classical Cinema', 'IMR']

emphasis on display ('attractions') rather than on telling. Takes and scenes are "successions of more or less autonomous tableaux"⁽⁶²⁾.

This implies:

principally, predominance of space over time (i.e. temporal overlap)⁽⁶³⁾

time structure: "Now you see it, now you don't" (Gunning): sudden burst of presence, punctual: surprise, punctual succession of instants, not continuous. The paradigm is a vaudeville performance

exhibitionistic: the spectator is acknowledged and therefore vulnerable; he/she is aware of the act of looking

non-diegetic: non-closure, the narrative plot relies on a story which is not in the film but somewhere else (i.e. exists already as a cultural narration outside the film or is being told by the lecturer which is the reason for Musser's⁽⁶⁴⁾assertion, that preinstitutionalized cinema is indeed narrative, only the narration is not in the films, but originates in 'post-production' during the presentation, for example, through a combination of different films or through a lecturer's commentary)

narrative primacy: emphasis on storytelling.

This implies:

principally, predominance of time over space (i.e. Griffith's 'last-minute-rescue')

time structure: temporal development; temporal linearity; past and present get linked together: (narrative) suspense. The paradigm is the 19th century novel (for example, Dickens) and other literary models

voyeuristic: the spectator is not acknowledged, is invisible and therefore invulnerable: taboo of looking directly into the camera

diegetic: enclosed fictional narrative space with the intention of absorbing the spectator; "spectatorial identification with a ubiquitous camera"⁽⁶⁵⁾

Dealing with History in The Little Trumpeter

During the (rather brief) discussion of preinstitutionalized cinema various connections should already be apparent in The Little Trumpeter whose production time occurred exactly within the transitional period between preinstitutionalized and institutionalized cinema. Accordingly, The Little Trumpeter is a hybrid. On the one hand, the film (which, with its originally 380 meters, was until that time the longest feature film made in Denmark)⁽⁶⁶⁾ achieved an astonishing amount of narrative continuity and fluidity for a film made in 1909, which undoubtedly is due to the cameraman's, Alfred Lind's skill. On the other hand, the film also embodies earlier film practices. The film consists entirely of long shots, and there are only one-shot scenes (with the exception of the scene which was incorrectly mounted together during the reconstruction). As to the historical nature of The Little Trumpeter, the film is still very much be attributed to the preinstitutionalized cinema which I would like to prove, on the basis of two closely related central features, with reference to the above discussion:

(2) the film's missing diegesis potentially leads to a reflexivity concerning the act of looking. This prompts one to ask whether this reflexivity could be extended to the film's representation of the past as well, whether the pragmatic reflexivity could even imply a semantic reflexivity, thus pointing at the constructiveness of history.

With reference to (1): It would be utterly misleading not to identify The Little Trumpeter's basic structure as a narration. The film has a clear plot in the Aristotelian sense.⁽⁶⁷⁾ One might still ask, however, whether the narration is also intelligible when considered in its own right. Unfortunately, the existing fragments of the film no longer have any intertitles. Without these, the film by itself is incomprehensible, but this would also and perhaps to an even greater extent apply to most silent films produced, for example, at the end of the 1910s. Perhaps, however, the wrong question has been posed, since through the choice of the omnipresent cultural narration of the little trumpeter one could be sure that the question of whether the narration is intelligible in its own right would never come up. After all, the film's narration does not have to be self-explanatory.

With regard to The Little Trumpeter, there is no question that the audience is very familiar with the widespread cultural narration.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Concerning the film's 'historical' character, it is noteworthy that precisely in the 'historical' scenes one typically resorts to the external narration as can be seen when comparing illustrations 2 and 3. In these scenes, the film adheres to the older tableau mode of representation, as the film becomes a pictorial 'realization' of an iconic episode. The past is staged as a more or less autonomous tableau vivant, which was defined in 1885 in a French theatre encyclopedia as "the precise reproduction by living but motionless people of celebrated and universally familiar pictures or sculptural groups".⁽⁷⁰⁾ Thus, the past is illustrated instead of told or, more precisely, it is not the past, but instead already existing and presumably well-known cultural codifications of this past as history which are illustrated. This specific mode of representation in the earliest historical films is, of course, not limited to Denmark, but can be found in, for example, France⁽⁷¹⁾ and the USA⁽⁷²⁾ as well.

With reference to (2): In illustration 3 it is obvious that the Danish entrenchment is being defended with a cardboard cannon. This is not necessarily the consequence of a small décor and costumes budget. Films of this time do often not even attempt to follow the principle of verisimilitude or to create the illusion of a haptic space but instead explicitly draw attention to the artificial quality of their scenery. The point, therefore, is that to a large extent it did not matter if the entrenchment was defended with a real cannon or one that was obviously a painted piece of cardboard because (as discussed above) the objective of the animated pictures is, above all, simply to illustrate the historical events, or more precisely, their cultural codification in a tableau style. The objective is not primarily to construct a diegetically closed world. However, does this missing diegesis lead necessarily, or at least potentially, to a reflexivity concerning the act of looking, and thereby to a reflection on history's constructiveness?

Gunning describes the spectator's experience of the 'cinema of attraction' as follows:

After examining Danish testimonial about the earliest reception of film, Tybjerg repeatedly criticized Gunning's thesis that the 'cinema of attractions' is radically opposed to 'absorption'.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Gunning's postulate and Tyberg's observations do not, however, necessarily contradict each other, as Gunning's concept seems ambiguous. To me the concept seems to be a mixture of, roughly speaking, a reception-orientated and, just as roughly speaking, a structuralist approach, with a consequential insecurity about whether the notion of the spectator refers to a real spectator or an expectation of a spectator inscribed in the structure of the film.

My own findings concerning audience reactions around the turn of the century and its first decade show that there were spectators paying attention to the non-diegetic, reflexive nature of the films, as well as others who were totally absorbed in these films. For Victor Klemperer, writing in 1912 at the end of the preinstitutionalized cinema, these two stances were solely a question of reflection levels and therefore historically invariable:

Klemperer's ontological differentiation (between "real objects" and "silhouettes"), is, from a historical film perspective, a result of both a historically invariable 'educated' perspective, which reflects the ontological status of the medium, and a historically variable mode of representation, which has just begun to develop diegesis and to standardize its aesthetic devices.

In summary, it can be stated that structurally preinstitutionalized films point to their own constructiveness and at the same time, through this refraction, to the act of looking, but that this in no way is accompanied by a unified cultural practice. Therefore, these early films should perhaps rather be conceived as two-dimensional, where one could choose either to enjoy the film's aesthetic illusion or to enjoy the play of the shadows, the aesthetic constructiveness of the performance.

For this reason I find it risky to support the (theoretically not implausible) thesis that early historical film, as a result of its auto-reflexivity, has been instrumental in inciting (critical) reflection on history's constructiveness. With regard to the 'post-modern' historical film, it is precisely the circumstance that film "foregrounds itself as a construction" which according to Rosenstone raises "questions about the evidence on which our knowledge of the past depends, creatively interacting with its traces".⁽⁷⁶⁾ Regarding the preinstitutionalized film, this operation can definitely not function (and there is nothing in the reception testimonial which indicates that it should have functioned). The fact that a preinstitutionalized 'historical' film breaks with its potential diegetic illusiveness cannot impart critical treatment of the presented history about the past, since the film is not directly dealing with the past, but instead with the past's already consummated and widespread cultural codification. As this extratextual cultural codification is more or less a requirement for the film's internal narrativity, it gets confirmed rather than criticized. The great public success of The Little Trumpeter (see below) is, therefore, surely mainly due to the reinforcement of the culturally pervasive narration about the Schleswig war(s).

Historical Film as Historical Source

As shown above, every film can be, depending on the spectator's viewpoint, not only a medium for historical representation, but also a source, though not a source of the past itself. Instead, the source is already received as a construction in the 'double construction' (Peter Burke) of the historian, who creates its own construction based on the construction of historical players. When the source consists of a historical film in the early silent film era, then the film's source value cannot be disassociated from its function as a historiographical medium.

In the past, when discussing the source value of historical films, one tended, most of all, to examine and criticize the supposedly reconstructing representativity of historical films. Ferro calls this the 'positivist approach' which concerns verifying whether the reconstruction is precise.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Such an approach falls back before the 'linguistic turn' and takes for granted that the past is findable and that history truly can represent the past. If, on the other hand, the concept of language as action is to be taken seriously, it seems more sensible to read historical films with regard to the discourse about the historical 'subject' at the time of film production.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Translated into semiotics, this means that the historian should not regard the somehow conditioned reconstructed representation of past events as the semantic dimension of historical films, but instead taking the film's pragmatic dimension into consideration the representation of an individual or collective interpretation of this past.

My thesis is that it is essential to bring the third Peircean dimension, the syntactic dimension, into the debate about the source value of historical films. How can one know whether the semantics of film is an individual or a collective interpretation of the past? In case of doubt, the examination of reception testimonial can of course be decisive. However, the example of The Little Trumpeter shows that the film's syntax, that is, its internal 'design', at least opens or closes certain possibilities. A truly individual interpretation of the past could first be achieved after the historical film's diegetic closure, as found later, for example, in classical Hollywood cinema. This diegesis allowed a supposed representation of the past in the form of a coherent and self-sufficient narration. This is not, however, the case in preinstitutionalized film. Here the semantic dimension is in the absence of, or in the weak presence of, a narration intrinsic to the film referring to those indispensably already existing and widely circulating collective cultural codifications of the past, which the film merely illustrates. As an historian one should regard this not as a weakness, but instead as a windfall. As the preinstitutionalized film has to, more or less, completely rely on a culturally pervasive narration outside the film, it is an excellent source of, for example, the Danish discourse of 1909 on the first Schleswig-Holstein war.

The Historical Film and the 'Golden Age' of Danish Film

Historical film's dependence on the pragmatic knowledge of the spectator, which is typical for the earliest films, proved to be problematic for the expansion of the Danish film industry. Although historical films experienced a boom around 1909, the film industry soon turned away from this genre. The largest and almost monopolistic Danish film company, the Nordisk Filmskompagni, for example, apodictically forbade any historical reference in its "Instructions for Scriptwriters," which potential scriptwriters were sent: "The action must take place in the present [...]. Knightly, historical, and national plays will not be accepted".⁽⁷⁹⁾ In 1910 Nordisk still produced six films, out of a total production of 56 'feature films', with historical milieus. In 1911 only one feature film can be characterized as historical in the broadest sense, while in 1912 and 1913 not a single historical film was produced. Finally, in 1914 a new film version of Sophus Michaëlis' drama, Revolution Wedding (Revolutionsbryllup), which played during the French Revolution, was produced, but this film remained the only Danish historical film in 1914.⁽⁸⁰⁾

Engberg, the author of the standard work on early Danish film history, believes the reason for this 'hodiezation' lies in the Nordisk's strategic decision in 1910 to decide upon 'bourgeois drama' as film's main genre.⁽⁸¹⁾ In addition, the high costs of décor and costumes involved in the production of historical films most likely played a role as well (especially for the smaller, financially weaker production firms). The Little Trumpeter is a counter-argument to this only at first glance. Allegedly, the film, whose productions costs were 1,600 Danish crowns, made a profit of 23,000 crowns.⁽⁸²⁾ For the crowd scenes all the dragoons and infantry in Århus were hired as extras,⁽⁸³⁾ but the low production costs suggests that these were detailed to deliver, free of cost, the appropriate scenes for the (local) patriotic enterprise, the first feature film from Århus. Even the director had to content himself with an allowance of 200 crowns, while the female lead received a total of 75 crowns.⁽⁸⁴⁾ However, after it became general knowledge that money was to be made in film production, such inexpensive or free labor could no longer be counted upon.

Another reason, in my opinion, why the production of historical films was discontinued, lies in the Danish film industry's consistent export orientation. As early as 1910 Nordisk made the following request to a potential scriptwriter: "The plot is not to be specifically for a Danish audience, but instead must be tailored to an international audience."⁽⁸⁵⁾ Immediately before World War I, less than two percent of Nordisk's earning came from the Danish market,⁽⁸⁶⁾ and the production of films for foreign markets, which in these years generally were characterized by nationalistic tendencies, called for sensitivity. Although, for example, The Little Trumpeter was quite a box office success in Denmark (the company itself claimed that 150,000 Danes had seen the film during the first six months before it reached Copenhagen)⁽⁸⁷⁾, it would have been impossible to sell the film in Germany, where Danish film companies soon found their most profitable market. The production of Danish historical films around 1909 revolved around less export-promoting years of the Danish national history like 1219, 1807, 1848, or 1864, and the viewpoint of these films was, of course, a patriotic or even nationalistic one.

It is hardly a coincidence that The Little Trumpeter was produced by a small firm (moreover as a first production), whose target audience was limited to Denmark. Nordisk, which at that time had already become internationally market-oriented, could not resist producing a remake with the motif of the little trumpeter. To be on the safe side, however, Nordisk transplanted the story geographically and temporally to the Napoleonic Wars, and from the Danish anti-German little trumpeter, it created a trumpeter in the Napoleonic army, who fights the Italians and the Austrians.⁽⁸⁸⁾

My thesis is that, besides these economic reasons, there is also an aesthetic reason why the production of historical films was temporarily discontinued in Denmark, so that the time between approximately 1910 to 1914, the 'Golden Age' of Danish film, was, an age in which no historical films were produced. More than likely, the Danish film producers understood consciously or unconsciously that few historical events are so strongly culturally pervasive and coded, that one can present them to a mass audience without relying on foreknowledge. There were other more appropriate, curiosity-satisfying themes which befit the aesthetic level of development in film: white-slave traffic, eroticism in all its forms, and stunt-sensationalism.⁽⁸⁹⁾

Footnotes

1. Aristotle: "Poetics". Translated by M.E. Hubbard, translation originally published in: D.A. Russel and M. Winterbottom (eds.): Ancient Literary Criticism. Oxford, 1972. Here quoted from: J.L. Ackrill (ed.): A New Aristotle Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, 547f.

3. Antje Hornscheidt: "Der 'linguistic turn' aus der Sicht der Linguistik". In: Bernd Henningsen and Stephan Michael Schröder (eds.): Vom Ende der Humboldt-Kosmen. Konturen von Kulturwissenschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1997, 206.

4. Northrop Frye: Fables of Identity. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963, 53.

5. Hayden White: Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

6. Hayden White: "Historical Text as Literary Artifact". In: Robert H. Kamry and Henry Kozucki (eds.) : The Writing of History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978, 42.

7. See for example Marc Ferro: Cinema and History [Cinema et histoire; 1977]. Translated by Naomi Greene. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988.

8. Robert A. Rosenstone: Visions of the Past. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

9. See for example the following anthologies: Hans-Arthur Mariske (ed.): Zeitmaschine Kino: Darstellungen von Geschichte im Film. Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1992; John D. Simons (ed.): Literature and Film in the Historical Dimension. Selected Papers from the 15th Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. A current brief survey of the relationship between film and historical writings, including comprehensive literary reference is found in Rainer Rother: "Film und Geschichtsschreibung". In: Hans-Michael Bock and Wolfgang Jacobsen (eds.): Recherche: Film. Quellen und Methoden der Filmforschung. Munich: edition text + kritik, 1997 (= Ein CineGraph-Buch), 242246. In this context it is furthermore absolutely essential to refer to the journal Historical Journal for Film, Radio and Television, as well as to Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft with its special issue on film and history (1997:4).

10. Rosenstone's and Ferro's historical understanding are, for example, deeply rooted in pre-'linguistic turn' concepts. For Rosenstone the historical film "represents" (2) or "renders" the past (6); the function of a film as a source he describes in "that [it] provides a window onto the social and cultural concerns of an era" (3; italics are mine) a metaphor which implies a visual impression. For a more profound discussion of Rosenstone and Ferro see Patrick Vonderau's essay in this volume.

12. Daniel Lopez: Films by Genre: 777 Categories, Styles, Trends and Movements Defined, with a Filmography for each. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993, 142.

13. It cannot be denied that certain film genres exist which are highly incompatible with historical films as a result of having their own conventions and rules. Ellen Draper has, for example, shown that melodrama and historical film are not compatible: "'Untrammeled by Historical Fact': That Hamilton Woman and Melodrama's Aversion to History". In Wide Angle 14 (1992:1), 5663.

15. For a description and discussion of the narrative abilities of this 'classical' cinema see: David Bordwell: "Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures". In: Philip Rosen (ed.): Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, 1734; even more comprehensive from the same author is his monograph Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

16. Den lille Hornblæser (1909). Production: A/S Thomas S. Hermansen. Director and scriptwriter: Eduard Schnedler-Sørensen. Danish release: 18.10.1909. Length: 380 m. (Marguerite Engberg: Registrant over danske film 18961914, vol. 1: 18961909. Copenhagen: Institut for filmvidenskab, 1977, no. 544.)

17. This scene is in the only existing copy put before the 'prison scene'. According to the program, however, the 'prison scene' should have been cut off at the point where the supervising soldier falls asleep. The sequence in the program can be confirmed as the original one by the fact that the 'prison scene' is the only scene in the available copy of the whole film which is made up of two almost indistinguishably different shots. The second shot begins where the soldier falls asleep, that is exactly at the point in the program where the scene with the mother is inserted.

19. Around the turn of the century this work was praised for its "uninhibited and warm patriotic tone" and for being "a true echo of the contemporary mood of the national fusing of seriousness and fun". (P. Hansen: Illustreret dansk Litteraturhistorie. Vol 3.2., extended edition. Copenhagen: Det nordiske Forlag, 1902, 306.) However, by the second half of this century, Holst was seen as not more than "an imitator of his contemporaries" who, however, had the ability to express the exact mood of these contemporaries. (F.J. Billeskov Jansen: Danmarks Digtekunst. Vol. 3: Romatik og romantisme. 2nd edition. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1964, 173.) The Little Trumpeter was as much an expression of the contemporary mood as was the famous verse which Holst wrote in 1872 (with recourse to Tegnérs "Svea") for an industrial exhibition, and which was to become the Danish nationalization motto after the loss of Schleswig: "With every loss there is a reimbursement whatever is lost on the outside, is to be gained on the inside."

20. In the original Danish: "Mig skyder Tyskerne ikke, thi de sigter for højt!" Program of Den lille Hornblæser in the Danish Film Museum.

21. In the original Danish: "Vær Du blot ikke bange,/ Thi Tydsken skyder altfor høit/ Og træffer kun de lange!" (H.P. Holst: Den lille Hornblaeser. Et Digt. Second edition. Copenhagen: Bing, 1850, 52.)

22. By 1909 eight unchanged versions of the original had been published, four during the first Schleswig-Holstein war and another four between 1873 and 1896, not coincidentally the period of time in which the great defense discussions occurred in parliament. At the same time a reprint appeared in Holst's Udvalgte Skrifter [Selected Works] (1888), as did illustrated versions in the years 1894, 1902, and 1906 (the last one of which was part of the popular series "Gyldendals Bibliothek").

23. H.P. Holst: Den lille Hornblæser. In selection by the Danish Teachers Association by Knud Bokkenheuser. Copenhagen: Danish Teachers Association, 1905 (= Dansklærerforeningens Skoleudgaver af danske Forfattere/Danish Teachers Associations school editions of Danish authors). A second edition appeared in 1914, after that The Little Trumpeter never again appeared independently after the horrors of World War I and after the German-Danish agreement in 1920, the text had apparently lost its historical function.

24. Vilhelm Andersen's statement in Illusteret Dansk Litteraturhistorie that "the tableau of the poem [is] an old Lieutenant resembling Thor, and a boy, who looks like a disguised girl", makes it clear that the film The Little Trumpeter took part in this circulation as well. (Vilhelm Andersen: Det nittende Aarhundredes første Halvdel (= Carl S. Petersen and Vilhelm Andersen: Illustreret dansk Litteraturhistorie. Vol. 3. Copenhagen et al.: Gyldendal, 1924, 657.) There is no clue of this looking like a disguised girl in Holst's work, but in the film the trumpeter, played by Christel Holch, is a small girlish-looking woman. Here the academic is revealing himself as a cinema-goer!

25. Den lille Hornblæser fortalt for Børn. Illustreret af Alfred Schmidt. Copenhagen: no publishing house mentioned, 1899, new edition 1907.

26. Den lille Hornblæser. Min første Billedbog. Copenhagen: N. Hansen, [1901] (= Alfred Jacobsens Danske Billedböger; 143).

27. [Vilhelm Eriksen:] Landsoldaten eller Den lille Hornblæser: 6 Tableauer. Med et Forspil ved Fr. Hillebrandt. Arrangeret for Børnenes Teater af Suffløren. Copenhagen: Carl Larsen, 1905. (By 1917 in the fourth edition.)

28. Viktor Jørgensen: Dem derhjemme: Sang af Folkekomedien "Den lille Hornblæser". Lyrics by Julius Andersen, music by Viktor Jørgensen. Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1912.

29. Emil Horneman: Episode af Den lille Hornblæser, af H.P. Holst, for Pianoforte med Tekst. Copenhagen: Horneman & Erslev, no year given (Copenhagen is written in Danish as 'Kjøbenhavn', which indicates that its publication probably occurred before the film). The "Episode", the title is referring to, is the recruitment of the little trumpeter. A "Den lille Hornblæser"-song, composed by Viggo Sanne, can also be found in the Sang-Album: for en mindre Stemme, no. 6. Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, no year given (= Wilhelm Hansens 50 Ør's Bibliothek, no. 133).

30. A.F. Lincke: "'Den lille Hornblæser' Polka". In: Udvalgte Dandse af yndede Componister udsatte for een Violin, no. 22. Copenhagen: C.C. Lose & Delblanco, [1854], 7.

* The picture is from the collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen on the World Wide Web (website adress: http://rexweb.kb.dk, DT001015, D. top.bl. 4to).

31. Marguerite Engberg: Dansk stumfilm de store år. Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1977, 215.

32. For more information on the memorial see Bent Zinglersen: Københavnske monumenter og mindesmærker. Copenhagen: Politikens forlag, 1974, 161f.

33. In the original Danish: "Nationaleje". Knud Bokkenheuser: "Indledning". In: Holst 1905, 9.

35. Lorenz Rerup: "Folkestyre og danskhed. Massenationalisme og politik 18481866". In: Ole Feldbæk (ed.): Dansk Identitetshistorie. Vol. 3: Folkets Danmark 18481940. Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1992, 345.

** The picture is from the picture collection of the Academy of Arts in Copenhagen.

36. Søren Koustrup: Den lille Hornblæser. Jens og ånden fra 1848. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1980, 59.

37. In the original Danish: "Paa Lazarettet Peter kom/ jeg vil det ikke dølge". Landsoldaten eller Den lille Hornblæser, 8.

38. G. Betzonich: Landsoldaten. Krigsskuespil i fem Akter. Copenhagen: Andr. Schou, 1887.

39. Kela Kvam, Janne Risum and Jytte Wiingaard (eds.): Dansk teaterhistorie. Vol. 2: Folkets teater. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1992, 50, 74.

40. For more information see David Bordwell's comprehensive and differentiated passage through film history writings in: On the History of Film Style. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1997, 12157.

41. As, for example, Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs: Theatre to Cinema. Stage Pictoralism and the Early Feature Film. Oxford University Press, 1997, and Bordwell (1997), especially his study on "Staging in Depth", 158ff.

42. This is another argument as to why one cannot work with the above definition of the 'actual' historical film. In this case the classical Hollywood film, with its diegetic closure and its narrative possibilities, would be accepted as the standard. In this teleological perspective, earlier films could only represent a preliminary stage (and consequently would be regarded as being primitive).

43. André Gaudreault and Denis Simard: "L'extranéité du cinéma des premiers temps: bilan et perspectives de recherches". In: Jean A. Gili and others (ed.): Les vingt premières années du cinéma français. Actes du colloque international de la Sorbonne nouvelle 4, 5 et 6 novembre 1993. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1995 (= Association française de recherche sur l'histoire du cinéma), 22.

44. Also according to Kristin Thompson in: David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson: The Classical Hollywood Cinema. Filmstyle & Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, 1985, 157ff. Thompson emphasizes, however, that the term "is in many ways an unfortunate one", and that she uses it only "because of its widespread appearance". (158)

45. For example in Tom Gunning: "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Cinema, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde". In: Wide Angle. Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism and Practice 8 (1986:34), 6370.

46. For example in: Noël Burch: Life to those Shadows. Translated and edited by Ben Brewster. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

48. Stephen Bottomore: "Introduction: The Cambrian Cinema". In: FilmHistory. An International Journal 10 (1998:1), 37.

49. Richard Abel is even proposing to talk about a tripartite model, as the transitional period should be considered as a period in its own right. (The Ciné Goes to Town. French Cinema 18961914. Updated and expanded edition. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994, 102.)

50. Tom Gunning: "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator". In: Linda Williams (ed.): Viewing Positions. Ways of Seeing Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995, 121.

51. Gunning 1986, 64; Tom Gunning: "Enigmas, Understanding, and Further Questions: Early Cinema Research in Its Second Decade Since Brighton". In: Persistence of Vision 9 (1991), 6.

52. Tom Gunning: "'Now You See It, Now You Don't': The Temporality of the Cinema of Attractions". In: Richard Abel (ed.): Silent Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996, 73.

53. Gunning 1986, 68; the same: "An Unseen Energy Swallows Space: The Space in Early Film and Its Relation to American Avant-Garde Film". In: John Fell (ed.): Film before Griffith. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1983, 356.

58. Gunning explicitly attempted in his last essays to refer to non-fiction films in his 'Cinema of Attractions' concept in order to take the wind out of the sails of, for example, Bottomore's (4) criticism that he only takes fiction films into consideration: "Vor dem Dokumentarfilm. Frühe non-fiction-Filme und die Ästhetik der 'Ansicht'''. Translated by Frank Kessler. In: KINtop. Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films. Vol. 4: Anfänge des dokumentarischen Films (1995), 111121.

59. It should be noted, however, that even Gunning at least once has underlined the plurality of early cinema (in Gunning 1991, 6), although this statement, as far as I can see, contradicts his own research results.

60. As, for example, in Thompson, 196212; as well as in Miriam Hansen: "Early Cinema, Late Cinema: Transformations of the Public Sphere". In: Linda Williams (ed.): Viewing Positions. Ways of Seeing Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995, 138.

62. André Gaudreault: "Temporality and Narrativity in Early Cinema 18951908". In: John L. Fell (ed.): Film before Griffith. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1983, 328.

64. According to Charles Musser, for example, in: "Pour une approche du cinéma des premiers temps: Le cinéma d'attractions et la narrativité". In: Jean A. Gili and others (ed.): Les vingt premières années du cinéma français. Actes du colloque international de la Sorbonne nouvelle 4, 5 et 6 novembre 1993. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1995 (= Association française de recherche sur l'histoire du cinéma), 147175.

65. Noël Burch: "Primitivism and the Avant-Gardes: A Dialectical Approach". In: Philip Rosen (ed.): Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, 491.

66. Bernhardt Jensen: Da Århus var Hollywood. Et kapitel af stumfilmens historie. Århus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus, 1969, 28.

68. Burch 1986, 489; as well as Charles Musser: "The Nickelodeon Era Begins: Establishing the Framework for Hollywood's Mode of Representation". In: Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker (eds.): Early Cinema. Space, Frame, Narrative. London: BFI Publishing, 1990, 256273.

69. Unfortunately, it seems this film has not been shown outside of Denmark, otherwise it would have been informative to study foreign reception testimonials.

70. Quoted from Brewster and Jacobs, 38. They point out that the cinematic tableau was "rendered more dynamic than its theatrical equivalent" and, for example, careful movement of the actors, camera movement and emblematic close-ups were possible without destroying the tableau-quality of a scene.

71. For the earliest French historical films, see Richard Abel 1994, 96 and 246ff.

72. For the historical films produced by the Vitagraph company, see William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson: Reframing Culture. The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films. Princeton, N.J.: University of Princeton Press, 1993, 111ff.

74. Casper Tybjerg: An Art of Silence and Light. The Development of the Danish Film Drama to 1920. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Copenhagen: Department of Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen, 1996, for example 54f.

75. In the original German: "Denn während der naive Zuschauer mit unbefangener Illusionskraft die bewegten Bilder als etwas wahrhaft Körperliches wahrnimmt, dem er die Seele abfragt, kann der bewußtere Betrachter keinen Augenblick das Gefühl dafür verlieren, daß er es nicht mit den realen Dingen, daß er es vielmehr mit Schattenbildern zu tun hat." Victor Klemperer: "Das Lichtspiel". In: Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte 26 (1912:8); hier zitiert nach: Fritz Güttinger (ed.): Kein Tag ohne Kino. Schriftsteller über den Stummfilm. Frankfurt/Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1984 (= Schriftenreihe des Deutschen Filmmuseums Frankfurt), 83f.

78. Pierre Sorlin: The Film in History. Restaging the Past. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Imports, 1980.

79. In the original Danish: "Handlingen skal foregaa i Nutiden [...] Ridderstykker, historiske Stykker og nationale Stykker [antages] ikke". Quote from: Erik Nørgaard: Levende Billeder i Danmark. Fra Den gamle Biograf til moderne tider... København: Lademann, 1971, 99. These "Instructions for Scriptwriters", of which a German translation existed as well, was irrefutably used starting in January 1912 (the first time such a written instruction was mentioned, was in a letter to Ellen Margarethe Ladegaard, dated 29.1.1912, Nordisk Brevkopibog XVIII, 558, Danish Film Museum). Before that, copies of exemplary scripts would be sent to potential authors. One cannot, however, rule out the possibility that even before 1912 earlier versions of these "Instructions" were used.

83. "Hvor man morer sig". In: Politiken, 5.3.1910; Engberg: Dansk stumfilm, 216.

85. In the original Danish: "Handlingen maa ikke være specifik for det danske Publikum, men maa være lagt til Rette for det internationale Publikum." Letter to Holger Ibsen, dated 7.11.1910, Nordisk-Brevkopibog XIV, 92, Danish Film Museum.

88. Napoleon og hans lille Trompetist eller Napoleon og den lille Hornblæser (1909; English title: The Little Trumpeter): Nordisk Films Kompagni, director: Viggo Larsen. Length: 180 m. Danish release: 11.9.1910. (Engberg: Registrant, no. 661.)

89. For the corresponding Danish film genres, see: Tybjerg, 55ff, and the essays in: Manfred Behn (ed.): Schwarzer Traum und weiße Sklavin: deutsch-dänische Filmbeziehungen 19101930. München: edition text + kritik, 1994 (= Ein CineGraph Buch).

Stephan Michael Schröder: History Without Diegesis

The Little Trumpeter (1909) as an example of a Danish historical film of the early silent film era

What is a 'Historical Film?'

The Little Trumpeter as Film and as Cultural Narration

The Preinstitutionalized Film

Dealing with History in The Little Trumpeter

Historical Film as Historical Source

The Historical Film and the 'Golden Age' of Danish Film

Footnotes