LITMIR.BIZ

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this refuge.”³² Krzemiński, on the other hand, recalls that “90 percent of the audience was from the working or skilled-trade class and the other 10 percent from the theater-going public, who went to the newly opened Bioscop in disguise, embarrassed, and under the impression that it was not a suitable place for their entertainment.”³³

      Stefania Beylin writes, “Crowds, mainly juvenile boys curious about the moving images, who saw in them some kind of magic, gathered at the first short films. That same audience had come there before in order to watch the so-called disappearing pictures—the magic lantern that showed scenes from Paris, Rome, the seaside, and a waterfall—in a large hall (in which there had once been a riding school). Compared to the new invention, what not long before had seemed so attractive now lost its charm. Those images were immobile, and the public, particularly school-age youth, demanded movement.”³⁴

      In other sections, describing the social makeup of the first cinema crowds, both Krzemiński and Beylin mention the presence of people with a connection to the theater; but for the former, these people were theater audiences, while for the latter, they were actors. Where Krzemiński saw workers and skilled tradespeople, Beylin saw schoolboys. Moreover, who were the intellectuals? Were they the actors or regular theater attendees? Did agriculturalists attend the cinema at a different time of day than tradespeople?

      The few mentions of audience demographics attest to the presence of certain social groups, but there is little evidence that only certain social groups attended the cinema. There is not enough information available for it to be stated with any degree of certainty that the working class enjoyed cinema more than the intellectual class. First, in the relatively less industrialized cities of the partitions, the working class may have been little more than an invention of ideologues or mistaken traveling entrepreneurs, who associated certain dress and mannerisms with the working classes in their native cities. Second, in a society in which only 2 percent of the population completed higher education and in which the inteligencja remained relatively small, intellectuals in all of the partitioned lands necessarily constituted a minority.

      Could it be the case that people of all ages and classes attended the cinema? Perhaps Józef Jedlicz (Kopuściński) gives the most accurate assessment in 1924, when he writes, “Everyone—well-wishers and naysayers, the bothered and the indifferent—gave in to irresistible temptation and went to the cinema. Some went more often, others less often, but we can say with certainty that almost everyone went. The elderly went, and the young went; the masses and the spiritual aristocracy went; the intellectuals, the illiterate, and the semiliterate; the refined dame, the chambermaid, and the servant; the landowner, the worker, the university professor, and the priest.”³⁵ In the first years of traveling cinema, many people went whenever and wherever they could. They slipped into the rented storefronts or gathered at outdoor festivals to relish the novelty. Cinema might have been a social event for the working youth, an art form for the inteligencja, and a curiosity for everyone. By all accounts, people congregated at the sole theater established (sometimes with government support) in each small town or shtetl, or in the theaters of each large city in order to watch silent films. At this time, audiences were not as segregated by language as they would be several years later. Projection of Polish-language intertitles onto foreign films did not begin until 1908.

      Perhaps because of the paucity of sources, little research has been done on spectatorship or audience awareness—how audiences comprehended what they saw on the screen—in Poland. The types of features produced and the recorded responses of nonprofessionals to them suggest that people looked to the cinema for entertainment as well as advances in technology. They also celebrated newcomers to the industry, particularly movie stars. To a certain extent, they supported the nation-building process through attendance at patriotic historical films and by championing the cause of domestic film production. However, they also may have gone to the cinema as an escape, as demonstrated in the excitement that nonprofessional critics—mainly poets, both distinguished and amateur—expressed about the darkened rooms in which audience members became anonymous. Many people, regardless of social class, gender, and education, probably appreciated the accessibility and lack of pretension of the cinema. As philosopher Marian Stępowski writes in 1914, “The secret to cinema’s success really lies in this: it is easily and inexpensively available, and you can enter and exit the auditorium at any moment without even the obligation of taking off your overcoat.”³⁶ For early audience members, cinema was relatively inexpensive, pleasant, and hassle-free. Audiences also may have found it an entertaining way of learning about themselves, distant lands, and exciting cultures. Still, because these generalizations do not take into account the broad range of professional, social, and religious backgrounds that people brought with them to the cinema in Poland, they are not sufficient to constitute a serious study of changes in audience composition over time in the different cities and regions of the nation.

      Early Film Production and Distribution

      During the first ten years of moving picture exhibition in partitioned Poland, repertoires originated mainly in other countries. Only a few creative individuals were interested in doing more than simply importing the new medium. Among the first inventors of film equipment in Poland were Piotr Lebiedziński, Jan and Józef Popławski, and Kazimierz Prószyński. Among the first producers were Bolesław Matuszewski and Prószyński, whose Pleograf is synonymous with both a camera-projector of his invention and Warsaw’s first film production company. The number of people involved in turn-of-the-century film production was limited—so much so that these five pioneers of early cinema constituted the film industry in Poland through 1905. They imitated and attempted to improve upon the apparatuses built by others, with the ultimate goal of marketing their own equipment regionally. The sense of “too little, too late” that surrounded their work lingered throughout most of the era with regard to technological developments in filmmaking and projection equipment.

      The five film pioneers in the partitioned lands achieved some remarkable accomplishments. The Popławski brothers, working with Lebiedziński, built a Zooskop Uniwersalny, with which they recorded scenes on glass plates in the mid-1890s. The individual contributions of Lebiedziński include the construction of prototypes for motion picture cameras and the manufacture of paper for photographic purposes. Supporting himself with a camera store and photochemical laboratory in Warsaw, Lebiedziński also developed a bulky two-camera system to take and project motion pictures, which he used to make very short films in 1895 or 1896. Documentary and comedy, these short films featured actors from popular garden theater productions. Lebiedziński continued to serve as adviser and vendor to filmmakers until the end of his life.

      Kazimierz Prószyński, the son of a successful Warsaw photographer, was educated as an engineer in Belgium but began working on the development of live photography in his mid-twenties. He created the first model of his camera-projector—first called the Kinematograf Uniwersalny, then the Pleograf, and then the BioPleograf before it came to be known permanently by its second name—between 1894 and 1896 in Warsaw. In 1898 and 1899, he began offering public demonstrations of his invention.

      The Pleograf was considered more than a new form of entertainment; reviewers hailed it as a victory for the educational, public, and private life of the nation. Tygodnik ilustrowany (Illustrated Weekly) called it less an object for play than a device for scientific education.³⁷ An anonymous reporter for a small Polish-language periodical published in the Prussian partition, Gazeta toruńska (Toruń Gazette) describes a demonstration of the Pleograf: “The camera functioned very lightly and exactly. In general, one may decide that this invention is a finished thing that does not need improvement. Because of its low cost, the camera is very well suited to use by amateurs. It will not be long before every family will be able to own a similar camera and to make enduring live portraits of their loved ones together with their various facial expressions.”³⁸ The editors of Kurier warszawski found that the Pleograf was simpler and quieter, functioned more easily, and allowed more exact movement of the film through the camera than did the Cinématographe.³⁹

      Prószyński put the Pleograf to use in Warsaw’s first production company, also called Pleograf, which he founded in late 1901 or early 1902. Between then and its closing in 1903, the company managed to complete and exhibit at least thirteen productions averaging

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