Chapter 2 TOM GUNNING “NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T” The temporality of the cinema of attractions HE REVISION OF EARLY FILM HISTORY that began in the late 1970s was only partly a process of correcting the scholarship of previous generations of scholars (who had not had easy access to film archives) through more careful film analysis and a thorough winnowing of secondary material, such as trade journals, film catalogs, and business records The possibility of seeing and analyzing a large number of films from the period before World War I certainly inspired the guided by new schemata through which the history of early cinema was (re)constructed Inspired in a central way by certain insights of Noél Burch, other scholars and 1 began to envision carly film as less a seed bed for later styles than a place of rupture, a period that showed more dissimilarity than continuity with later film style. ansformation, But the new discoveries also created and were This sense of rupture and difference contrasted with previous assumptions about the begin nings of film style and practice. Although the history of early cinema had never been thoroughly theorized, | believe one can isolate three assumptions that underpinned what I will call the continuity model. This model sees early cinema as a preparatory period for later film styles and practices, the infancy of an art form, The first assumption appeared carliest historically and remained the least theorized because it was seen as a natural assumption. We could call this the evolutionary assumption, and it motivates the structure of carly film histories such as those of Terry Ramsaye and Lewis Jacobs. This assumption secs cinema before WWI as primitive, an early stage in which later potentials are sketched out but imperfectly realized Following a biological and teleological logic, this assumes that the later styles of cinema are a sort of natural norm that early cinema envisioned but was not yet capable of realizing because g lopment guided by a method of trial and error. This assumption sces film history as a linear evolutionary of technological and economic immaturity and a natural need for a period of dev Process in which the earliest stage is by definition a period of less development ' second assumption can be seen as growing out of the evolutionary assumption, giving it more specificity and defining the goals of the development of film art with more precision | will call this the cinematic assumption. The work of classical film historians Lewis Jacobs, Georges Sadoul, and Jean Mitry all show its influence. In this assumption, the development of film came from a discovery and exploration of its true cinematic essence. This development usually takes the dramatic form of a liberation of film from a false homology that restricted it to the technological reproduction of theater. In this assumption, editing usually plays the I EE ———————42 TOM GUNNING key role, but other inherently “cinematic” devices of camera mobilit 'y and freedom of shooting angle also help define a uniquely cinematic essence. Within this scenario, carly cinema makes the initial error of simple reproduction and the atricality and then dramatically discovers its own nature. The third assumption is perhaps the most subtle and was the last to be articulated, appearing in the semiological writing of Christian Metz, Metz reworked the assumption of a naturel cine matic essence by highlighting the narrative function, declaring that cinema only truly appeared “The very nature of the cinema rendered such an evolution if not certain at least probable.”' Mitry had already formulated the cinematic assumption by seeing early cinema as a struggle between theatricality and narrativity,’ and Metz extends this formulation into what we could call the narrative assumption, All three assump tions can Function together to form a tightly knit understanding ofthe continuity of early cinema with its later development. The telling of stories supplies the goal of the evolutionary assump tion (cinema must evolve as a better and more efficient teller of stories) as well a a motive for its differentiation from theater (since silent cinema w when it discovered the mission of telling stories: as mute, it had to compensate with other regimes of signifiers to carry narrative information and therefore developed its own language) When André Gaudreault and I introduced the term cinema of attractions in the early 1980s, umptions had on conceptualizing carly film simply illusions to be dispelled; they do contain schemata that have been important for certain periods of film history work on the carly films of D. W. Griffith reexamined the we were trying to undo the purchase these ass history.’ Of course, these assumptions are not In particular, my own jarrative assumption and found that the function of storytelling was determinate for stylistic transformations in Griffith's Biograph lilms.* But my historical work also questioned Metz’s theoretical assumption of a natural match between cinematic form and the mission of narrative. The dedic tive task that rules Griffith's early work was h gradual discovery of film’s essential nature ation of film form to a narra iardly the outcome of a previous evolution or Griffith and his contemporaries (and some immed- tate predecessors) were engaged in a redefinition rather than a discovery of film — a redefinition shaped by an economic reorganization attempting to re the enormous expansion of nickelodeon exhibition, It w alate the film industry in the wake of as at this point in history and within this intersection of economic and social forces that film “discovered” its narrative vocation However, cinema before 1908 (or so) presents a different landscape. Here the assump. Won Pt Ratrative primacy becomes more ofa barrier to understanding than a useful hypothesis, While storytelling is not totally foreign to cinema before the nickelodeon boom (1905. 1909), 4 number of apparent stylistic anomalies and an often radically different mode of exhibition cad us in another direction, Rather than early approximations of the later practices of the style of classical film narration, aspects of ¢ storytelling is factored in arly cinema are best understood if a purpose other than Cinema as an attraction is that other purpose. By its reference to the curiosity-arousing devices of the fairground, the term denoted carly cinema’s fascination with novelty and its foregrounding of the act of display. Viewed from this perspective, carly cinema did not simply seck to neutrally record previously existing acts or events. Rather, even the seemingly stylis. tically neutral film consisting of a single-shot without camera tricks involved a cinematic gesture of presenting for view, of displaying. The objects of this displ lay varied among current events (parades, funerals, sporting events); scenes of everyd: lay life (street scenes, children playin laborers at work); arranged scenes (slapstick gags, a highlight from a wel -known play, a acrobatics, dances); or even camera tricks romantic tableau); vaudeville performances (jugglin (Meliés-like magic transformations). But all such events were absorbed by a cinematic gestureTHE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS 43 of presentation, and it was this technological means of representation that constituted the initial fascination of cinema My emphasis on display rather than storytelling should not be taken as a monolithic defini- tion of early cinema, a term that forms a binary opposition with the narrative form of classical cinema. Rather, films that precede the classical paradigm are complex texts that occasionally interrelate attractions with narrative projects. My point is not that there are no narrative before the nickelodeon era but rather that attractions most frequently provide the dominant for film during this period and often jockey for prominence until 1908 or so (and even occasionally later). The desire to display may interact with the desire to tell a story, and part of the challenge of carly film analysis lies in tracing the interaction of attractions and narrative organization. The ambivalence that Noél Burch found in the work of Edwin Porter may be partly explained by this interaction, with the famous close-up of the outlaw firing the pistol at the camera in The Great Train Robbery functioning as a fairly autonomous attraction while most of the film strives for a sort of linear narrative.? In classical cinema, narrative int attractions still play a role (moments of spectacle, performance, or visual pyrotechnics) with their subordination to narrative functions varying from film to film. Similarly, I do not want to identify narrativity exclusively with the classical paradigm. There are many ways of telling a story in film, and some of them (particularly in cinema before the 1920s or, obviously, in avant-garde work) are clearly nonclassical. In some genres (musicals, crazy comedies) the attractions actually ‘gration functions as a dominant, but threaten to mutiny. By describing narrative as a dominane® in the classical film, I wish to indicate a potentially dynamic relation to nonnarrative material. Attractions are not abolished by the classical paradigm, they simply find their place within it I propose attractions, therefore, as a key element of the structure of early film rather than as a single-tracked definition of filmmaking before 1908 (although it may, particularly in the carliest period, function as a defining element). It can only be defined with precision through contrast, however, and I want to further specify some of the ways attractions differ from the cinema of narrative integration that comes after it, as well as from most forms of cinema based on a narrative dominant Asa new way of approaching carly cinema, attractions foreground the role of the spectator Cinematic attractions can be defined as formal devices within early film texts. However, they can only be thoroughly understood if these devices are conceived as addressing spectators in a specific manner. This unique spectatorial address defines the cinema of attractions and its difference from the classically constructed spectatorial address of later narrative cinema. While Tam not sure that the metapsychology of the spectator devised in the seventies is truly adequate to the complexity of even the classical style of narrative (let alone a revision which recognizes the continued role of attractions within classical Hollywood cinema), certain basic contrasts are apparent Narrative invokes the spectator’s interest (and even desire, in a psychoanalytical model) by posing an enigma, The enigma demands a solution and, as Roland Barthes and the Russian Formalists have shown, the art of narrative consists in delaying the resolution of that e that its final unfolding can be delivered as a pleasure long anticipated and well earned. Further, igma, so in classical narrative cinema this pursuit of an enigma takes place within a detailed diegesis, a fictional world of places and characters in which the action of the narrative dwells. From a spectatorial point of view, the classical diegesis depends not only on certain basic elements of coherence and stability but also on the lack of acknowledgment of the spectator. As the psycho- analytically shaped theory of Metz, claims, this is a world that allows itself to be seen but that also refuses to acknowledge its complicity with a spectator. In the classical diegesis, the specta tor is rarely acknowledged, an attitude exemplified by the stricture against the actor's look or44 TOM GUNNING gestures at the camera/spectator. As Metz says, the classical spectator becomes modeled on the voyeur, who watches in secret, without the scene he watches acknowledging his presence.” Attractions pose a very different relation to the spectator. The attraction does not hide behind the pretense of an unacknowledged spectator (in this respect it recalls Thelma Ritter's line as Stella in Hitchcock's Rear Window — “I'm not shy, I've been looked at before”). As | have stated elsewhere, the attraction invokes an exhibitionist rather than a voyeuristic regimie.* The attraction directly addresses the spectator, acknowledging the viewer's presence and secking to quickly satisfy a curiosity. This encounter can even take on an aggressive aspect, as the attraction confronts audiences and even tries to shock them (the onrushing locomotive that seems to threaten the audience is early cinema's most enduring example,” The metapsychology of attractions is undoubtedly extremely complex, but its roots could be traced to what St. Augustine called curiasitas and early Christianity condemned as the “lust of the eye.”"" We could list a number of inherently “attractive” themes in early cinema: a fascin ation with visual experiences that seem to fold back on the very pleasure of looking (colors, forms of motions ~ the very phenomenon of motion itself in cinema's earliest projections); an interest in novelty (ranging trom actual current events to physical freaks and oddities); an often sexualized fascination with socially taboo subject matter dealing with the body (female nudity evealing clothing, decay, and death); a peculiarly modern obsession with violent and aggres. sive sensations (such as speed or the threat of injury). All of these are topoi of an aesthetic of attractions, whether of the cinema, the sensational press, or the fairground. Attractions’ funda- mental hold on spectators depends on arousing and satisfying visual curiosity through a direct and acknowledged act of display, rather than following a narrative enigma within a diegetic © into which the spectator peers invisibly Rather than a desire for an (almost) endlessly delayed fulfilment and a cognitive involve ment in pursuing an enigma, early cinema, therefore, attracts in a different manner, It arouses a curiosity that is satisfied by surprise rather than narrative suspense. This diferent temporal configuration determines its unique spectatorial address as much as its acknowledgment of the spectator’s gaze, and it is the explosive, surprising, and even diso! tions that I want to explore in the rest of this essay First let's consider the temporality of narrative. Be ting temporality of attrac pnd stylistic devices of temporal manip ulation any narrative implies a development in time, In addition to the base of simple temporal progression and change, this implies what Paul Ricocur has called a configuration of time, time assuming a sort of shape through the interacting logic of events.! As Ricocur argues, it is through this configur ion that events become a story and narrative moves beyond the simply chronological. Time in narrative, therefore, is never just linear progression (one damn thing after another), itis also the gathering of successive moments into a pattern, a trajectory, a sense, Attractions, on the other hand, work with time ina very different manner. They basially do not build up incidents into the configuration with which a story makes its individual moments cohere. In effect, attractions have one basic temporality, that of the alternation of pres- ence/absence that is embodied in the act of display. In this intense form of present tense, the attraction is displayed with the immediacy of a “Here it is! Look at it.” While this temporality is most apparent in the many one-shot films, it also determines the temporal structure of films that include more than one shot, such as the carly multi-shot films of Mélies. The odd temporality of Méliés has been noted by John Frazer The causal narrative links in Méligs films are relatively insignificant compared to the discrete events. We experience his films as rapidly juxtaposed jolts of activity, We focus on successions of pictorial surprises which run roughshod over the conventionalTHE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS 45 niceties of linear plotting. Mélis’ films are a collage of immediat experiences which coincidentally require the passage of time to become complete Frazer here contrasts two types of temporality: the linear progression of plotting and causality, and the staccato jolts of surprise that characterize Méliés films. While the simple linear model may do a disservice to the possible complexities of narrative structure, Frazer’s invocation of jagged rhythm catches the irruption of a different, nonconfigured temporality, that of the attraction. The temporality of the attraction, therefore, is greatly limited in comparison to narrative, albeit possessing its own intensity, Rather than a development that links the past with the present in such a way as to define a specific anticipation of the future (as an unfolding narra- tive docs), the attraction seems limited to a sudden burst of presence, Restricted to the presentation of a view or a central action, the cinema of attractions tends naturally toward brevity rather than extension, Such restricted focus on a simple action is beautifully indicated by an Edison catalog description of its famous one-shot film The Kiss: “They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss in a way that brings down the house.”"! This docs not necessarily mean that the act of display was always restricted to the surprise burst of the instant or could not play with its temporality. Certain attractions — most obviously extended landseape panoramas or the railway journeys of the Hale’s tours sort — take longer to unfold without creating the patterning expectations that narrative implies, The Biograph 1904 film within the New York subway constantly 1 news its sense of revelation as the change of light and shadow. ‘The passing structures of subway supports, the appearance of stations, and turns in the track make the film frame a location of seemingly endless visual patterns,'* Likewise the very moment of display can be manipulated into a scenario of suspense unique to the aesthetic of attractions. Founded on the moment of revelation, the cinema of attractions frequently redoubles its effect of app of display. The most common of these are the literal gestures of the magician in magic films who through a sweep of the hand or a slight bow directs the audience’s attention to the trans- formation that then takes place. This gesture sets up a hierarchy between the magician as displayer and the transformation as the event displayed. Beyond enframing (and therefore calling attention to) the act of display, it also performs the important temporal role of announcing the event to come, focusing not only the attention but the anticipation of the audience The temporality of the attraction itself, then, is limited to the pure present tense of its appearance, but the announcing gesture creates a temporal frame of expectation and even ‘ance by framing the attraction with a variety of gestures suspense. It differs from diegetic suspense, of course, in being concerned less with how an event will develop than with when an event will occur. Early showman exhibitors were keenly aware that such focused anticipation played an important role in putting an attraction over. Since this temporality need not refer to diegetic unfoldings, the framing gesture could occur outside the actual film, embodied in the way the film was presented. The exhibitor’s role as a showman presenting an attraction embodies the essential gesture of the cinema of attractions and could be dramatically intensified through temporal manipulation, For instance, Albert Smith recalled his early days as a traveling exhibitor at the turn of the century with his partner, John Stuart Blackton, and the startling effect of Blackton’s lectures that accompanied their films. To empha size the novel illusion of motion, the first frame of their most popular film, The Black Diamond Express, a shot of a locomotive barreling toward the camera, was projected first as a frozen image. Over this curiosity-provoking suspended moment, Blackton would intone: “Ladies and Gentlemen, you are now gaving upon a photograph of the famous Black Diamond Express.46 TOM GUNNING [n Just a moment, a cataclysmic moment, my friends, a moment without equal in the history of our times, you will see this train take life in a marvelous and most astounding manner. It will rush toward you, belching smoke and fire from its monstrous iron throat." The act of display on which the cinema of attractions is founded presents itself as a temporal ‘ruption rather than a temporal development. While every attraction would have a temporal unfolding of its own and some (a complex acrobatic act, for instance, or an action with » clear trajectory, such asan onrushing train) might cause viewers to develop expectations while watch ing them, these temporal developments would be secondary to the sudden appearance and then disappearance of the view itself, In this sense Méli¢s’ transformations become emblematic exarn. Ples of the cinema of attractions, endlessly replaying the effect of surprise and appearance, as would a series of brief actualities of the Lumigre sort, appearing one after another The suspense created by Blackton in the delay of the moving image of the locomotive may have similar effects to suspense within a narrative, such as the sharpening of expectation and cven the growing anxiety as an event is announced but withheld. But it is not absorbed into a diegetic world of cause and effect, it has no relation to the fate of characters or the course of spnts: Rather, it simply redoubles the basic effect of an attraction, cathecting curiosity through delay and creating a satisfying discharge by unleashing the suspended rush of time. Not sll gestures of display need to be so violent or shocking, but the shock effect highlights the attrac tion's disjunctive temporality. Such disjunction could also be used to an erotic effect, as the scopophilia implied by this mode becomes thematized. Edison’s What Happened on Twenty. Third Street, New York City provides a complex example This film from 1901 seems to transform itself from a street scene actuality to an erotic scene in the course of its single-shot. Shot on the eponymous New York City street, our orig: inal attention is, as in so many early actualities, diffused across the shot, solicited by many little events, none of which seem to have any narrative purpose. Rather, we are simply absorbed in the act of viewing, responding to the display of a moment of big city life. As the shot progresses, a couple emerges from the background of street life detail, soliciting our attention as they rove toward the camera. As they near the foreground, an air current from a sidewalk grate lifts the woman's dress, and the film ends after the couple reacts to this moment of disclocare and moves on through the frame, Certainly this transformation from a decentered view to 4 ag centered on specific chatacters and a moment of erotic display possesses some temporal development, In fact, Judith Mayne in The Woman at the Keyhole sees it as moving toward a narrativization of the display of the female body.'° | auld not dispute Mayne’s insightful reading or deny the presence of a sort of temporal development in this film, which shows how difficult it might be to find moments even in carly cinema that are totally bereft of narrative development. Particularly when dealing with a film in which the issues of gender (and the relations of power and exploitation they imply) are so clearly inscribed, it is difficult to articulate such relations outside of a narrative framework However, I would emphasize that while the film can be viewed as a proto-narrative, itis still largely under the sway of a cinema of attractions. The act of display is both climax and reso lution here and does not lead to a series of incidents or the creation of characters with discernible traits, While the similar lifting of Marilyn Monroe's skirts in The Seven Year Itch also provides & moment of spectacle, it simultaneously creates character traits that explain later narrative actions, The film’s title also sheds light on the structure of attractions. Its precision of location seemed to me simply documentary overkill until Brooks MacNamara explained its significance Twenty-third Street near the Flatiron Building drew crowds of male loiterers during the turn of the century not only for the sight of New York's famous skyscraper but for less exultedTHE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS 47 visual pleasures as well. Known as the windiest corner in New York City, it was also know among the lascivious as a place where wome The immediate cause of such indecent exposure (in an era where a glimpse of stocking was worth an afternoon of idleness) in this film is a hot air grate (described in the Edison Company publicity as coming from one of the large newspaper offices on the block).'* To local audi ences, at least, the title instead of connoting dull documentary precision would set up an atmosphere of titillation. Such playing with expectations recalls the structure of Blackton’s 's dresses were frequently lifted by the bre: locomotive show: announcement of what is to come, a delay in its revelation, followed by a diminuendo as the display ends and the attraction moves out of the frame A similar interaction between narrative structure and the specific temporality of attrac tions is found in Biograph’s 1904 film Pull Down the Curtain Susie. Another one-shot film, Susie uses a multileveled set of an urban street front with residential windows to stage its drama of revelation, At the opening of the film, a man and a woman walk into the frame together. The shot is framed to focus on a second-story window so that only the heads and busts of the couple are included at the bottom of the frame as they walk (presumably on the street in front of the building). The woman gives the man a kiss, and they exit left, The woman reappears framed in the window of the set as the man reenters the street below, As the man watches excitedly, the woman begins to undress, taking off her skirt and blouse, She starts to remove her shift, then suddenly yanks down the curtain. The man throws up his arms in frustration and the film ends, Susie unfolds a drama of sexual exhibition with an intradiegetic voyeur. While our involve ment with the attraction is certainly mediated by the character of the man who shares our expectation and frustration (assuming, of course, the patriarchal ideology and sexual attitudes the film implies), and the disrobing entails some temporal development, the film nonetheless basically restricts itself to a demonstration of the simple temporality of the attraction: now you see it, now you don’t, The climax here (as well as the event announced by the film's sugges- tive title) comes more from the disappearance of the view than its revelation, The basic structures of attractions, then, revolve around the act of display and the anticipations that can be heightened by delaying or announcing it (or both) and its inevitable disappearance (which can be gradual or sudden and dramatic). Therefore attractions do show a sort of temporal structure, but the structure consists more of framing a momentary appearance than an actual development and transformation in time. The attraction can appear or disappear and generally needs to do both, While present on the screen, it may in fact change, but insofar as these changes begin to entail further development, we move out of the structure of attractions and into a narrative configuration But this does not necessarily mean that the cinema of attractions was restricted to single: shot films, A Méliés transformation film provides the most obvious model for the longer film of attractions with its succession of magical appearances, transformations, and disappearances One may string a series of attractions together as a magic film or a Lumiére program might The construction of such suites of attractions displays a highly paratactic structure with no attraction preparing the way for the next, but a simple rule of succession functioning, However, as with the vaudeville show, which would exemplify’ this variety format, a number of non narrative logics might determine the arrangement of attractions. This was a consideration not only in the production of a film but in the arrangement of a program of films, As Charles Musser has shown, the distinction between film and program was a vague one in this period in which the showman exhibitor asserted as much control over the final form of the film projected as the production company that issued the individual bits of celluloid with which he worked." One basic consideration of such showmen was whether48 TOM GUNNING to opt for a basic thematic consistency (for instance, assembling films dealing with similar topics, such as military actualities) 01 going for its opposite and maximizing variety (following an actuality film with a gag film or trick film). Another structure of attractions relevant for both an exhibitor’s program and an actual multi-shot film involved orchestrating the intensity, claborateness, and emotional tone of the attractions, The obvious example of this (evident in many trick films) would be ending the film with a particularly spectacular attraction or with a gag. Or, alternatively, attractions could be crossbred with narrative forms, but with attrac tions still dominating, so that narrative situations simply provided a mote naturalized way to move from one attraction to the next. This is clearly evident in Méliés’ or Pathé’s carly extended trick films in which a well-known fairy tale might provide a logical connection between a series of tricks and spectacular effects, the famous “pretext” of a story line on which Mélieés would hang his attractions.”° This capacity of an attraction to create a temporal disjunction through an excess of aston ishment and display rather than the temporal unfold g essential to narrative explains one of the most interesting interactions between narrative form and the aesthetic of attractions, the apotheosis ending. ‘This ending, which entered cinema from the spectacle theater and Pantomime, provided a sort of grand finale in which principal members of the cast reappear and strike poses in a timeless allegorical space that sums up the action of the piece, The apoth eoxis is also the occasion for scenic effects through claborate sets or stage machinery, as well as the positioning of the performers (often in the form of a procession, or an architectural arrangement of figures, with actual characters often supplemented by a large number of extras precisely for their spectacular effect). Such endings are frequent in the ferrique films of Mélies and Pathé, and examples can be found in Mélies” The K Porter's Jack and ngdom re Beanstalk, and Pathé’s Le Chat pe merveilleuse, Occasionally they also appear in more realistically but still spec tacularly conceived dramas, such as Pathé's Policeman's Tour of the World, which ends a tale of 2 worldwide pursuit with an allegorical image of detective and thief shaking hands over an image of the g f the Fairies and The Impossible Voyage eité, La Poule aux oeufs d'or, and Aladin d i globe, while extras parade by in native costumes of the various countries through which the course of the pursuit ran.?! What is striking about these apotheosis endings is the way more complex narrative films make use of their “show-stopping” nature to produce a honnarrative form of closure. Altho: Jack with the g often integrating the narrative outcome of the action nnt's treasure, Azurine and Belazor’s connubial bliss and assembled offsprin the rapprochement between thief and detective), they effectively halt the narrative flow throu an excess of spectacle, shifting spectator interest from what will happen next to an enjoyment of the spectacle presented to them. In other words, a change in spectatorial registers and tempo tality takes place with the nondevelopmental time of a crowning attraction closing off the narrative and guaranteeing spectator satisfaction on two levels: the resolution of narrative action and the satiation of visual pleasure The apotheosis ending demonstrates once again that in spite of (indeed because of) the structural differences between the temporality and visual pleasure offered by attractions and those structured by narrative, the two ways of addressing spectators can frequently interrelate within the same text. Rather than a developing configuration of narrative, the attraction offers 2 jolt of pure presence, soliciting surprise, astonishment, or pure curiosity instead of following the enigmas on which narrative depends. However, this burst of presence can itself be struc tured by playing with or delaying its act of presentation and disappearance. Further, it ean interact with narrative structures either by dominating them or by submitting to their domi nance and assuming circumscribed roles within a narrative logicTHE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS 49 If we consider the sorts of attractions [ have examined here in order to investigate their temporality, certain insights into the metapsychology of the spectator of carly cinema suggest themselves, The sudden flash (or equally sudden curtailing) of an crotie spectacle, the burst into motion of a terroristic locomotive, or the rhythm of appearance, transformation, and sudden disappearance that rules a magic film all invoke a spectator whose delight comes from the unpredictability of the instant, a succession of excitements and frustrations whose order cannot be predicted by narrative logic and whose pleasures are never sure of being prolonged Each instant offers the possibility of a radical alteration or termination, As one perceptive reader of an earlier draft of this essay pointed out, the title of this essay, a familiar phrase from midway ballyhoo and magic shows, implies precisely this discontinuous succession of instants now you see it, now you don’t, In contrast, narrative temporality moves from now to then, wrth causality a6 a frequent means of vectorizing temporal progression. My title phrase stresses and the punctual succession of instants, both the spectator awareness of the act of sceing while narrative temporality moves through a logic of character motivation (“First she , . ., then she...) If the classical spectator enjoys apparent mastery of the narrative thread of a film (able to anticipate future action through her knowledge of the cues and schemata of action), the viewer of the cinema of attractions plays a very different game of presence/absence, arrative space and one strongly lacking predictability or a sense of mastery. In this sense we can see the relevance ; of Lynne Kirby's description of the early film spectator as a victim of hysteria.2? The cinema of attractions truly invokes the temporality of surprise, shock, and trauma, the sudden rupture of stability by the irruption of transformation or the curtailing of erotic promise. Like | the devotees of thrill rides at Coney Island, the spectator of carly film could experience the thrill of intense and suddenly changing sensations. This strongly discontinuous experience of time may be scen as an ideal form of early cinema's difference from later classical narrative. Certainly not all carly attractions sought to shock their spectators, But rather than a purely passive recording of theatrical acts or slices of life, we see that the act of display in carly film also carried at least the possibility of an experi- ence of a time of pure instance. It was partly this temporality that explains the enthusiasm the early avant-garde had for the aesthetic of attractions, whether in variety theater, the fairground, the circus, or carly cinema, The gesture of display figured a time that seemed to escape from a linear or successive configuration of time. The potential shock of the cinema of attractions provided a popular form of an alternative temporality based not on the mimesis of memory or other psychological states but on an intense interaction between an astonished spectator and the cinematic smack of the instant, the flicker of presence and absence. Notes The author would like to thank Lucy Fischer for her comments on an earlier draft of this essay 1. Christian Metz, Filmy pp. 44.45. 2. Jean Mitry, Histoire du cinéma, vol. 1 (1895-1914) (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1967), p. 370. 3. André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning, “Le Cinéma des premier temps: Un dei a histoire du film?” in J- Aumont, A, Gaudreault, and M. Marie, eds, Histoire da « juage: A Semiotics of the Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 197 ma: Nouvelles approches (Paris: Publications dle la Sorbonne, 1989), pp. 49.63 (lirst presented at Cerisy Colloquium in 1985), See also Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Cinema, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde,” in Thomas Elsaesser, ed. Early Cinema: Space Frame Narrative (London: BEI, 1990), pp. 56 62. 4. See Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Nareative Film (Champaign: University of6 10. 18, 19, 20, 50 TOM GUNNING Noél Burch, “Porter or Ambivalence,” Screen 19 (Winter 1978-79), 91-105. The concept of the dominant comes from the Russian Formalists, For good summaries, see Vietor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History and Doctrine (New Haven, Conn,: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 212, 233: Peter Steiner, Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1984), pp. 76-77 104106, 111. Kristin Thompson has used the concept in a number of fruitful ways in film analysis in Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 43-45, 89-131 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Pyychoonalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), pp. 61 66, 91 97, Gunning, “The Cinema of Attraction p. 57, For a fuller discussion of the relation of the cinema of attractions to the on here, see Tom Gunni sxperience of shock touched “An Acsthetic of Astonishment: Early Cinema and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” Art and Text 34 (Spring 1989), 31-45. St. Augustine, The Confessions (New York: New American Library, 1963), pp. 245-247. See Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 66—77 T want to thank Vicente Benet of the Universitat Jaume, Castello, Spain, for pointing out to me the relevance of this concept to early film John Fraser, Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of George Méliés (Boston; G, K. Hall, 1979), p. 124 “Edison Film Catalogue” in Charles Musser, ed., Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors. 1894-1908: A Microfilm Edition (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985), The unfolding of a landscape may imply a different spectator reception than the shock of display found in many typical films of the cinema of attractions. However, as constantly changing views they still possess the essential nonnarrative emphasis on display that defines the cinema of attractions, Further, carly catalogs for films taken from trains also stressed the experience of speed and sudden changes in terrain and other experiences of shock and surprise. I thank Janet Staiger for her comments on this issue rat the 1991 SCS Conference at USC Albert E. Smith with Phil A, Koury, Two Reels and a Crank (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), p. 38 Julth Mayne, The Woman a he Kyte: Feminism end Wonans Cinema (Soom Press, 1990), pp. 162-164. This information can be found in print in the WPA. 1939 Guide ro New York City, Policemen assigned to scatter such loiterers coined the later familiar catch phrase “Twenty Three Skidoo.” My intense thanks to Brooks MacNamara for the information and the source and to Ben Singer for further confirmation, Musser, Motion Piture Catalogs, p. 86. Musser makes this point in a number of his writings; see The Emergence of Cinema, vol. 1 of Hisory of the American Cinema (New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons, 1990), pp. 179-181, 258-261 Georges Méliés, “Importance du scenario,” in Georges Sadoul, Georges Méliés (Paris: Segher, 1961), p. 118. An insightful discussion of this final shot can be found in Phil Rosen, “Disjunction and Ideology in a Preclassical Film: A Policeman’s Tour of the World.” Wide Angle 12:3 (1990), 20-37, Lynne Kirby, “Male Hysteria and Early Cinema,” Camera Obscura 17 (May 1988), 113-131 at a presentation of a shorter version of this p gton: Indiana University