(To be filial about it) Iowa's own Charles F.(Rick) Altman has done a lot
of work on this subject. A good place to start is his piece called on the
Cricket on the Harth (entitled something like Griffith, Eisenstein and
Film Theory today) in the South Atlantic Quaterly a few years back. Robert
C. Allen has also dfone al ot of work on the relation between film and
Vaudeville. Finally there is a great chapeter in Noel Bruch's *Life To
Those Shadows" and the development of multisghot liniar narratives in the
cinema and the passion play and the vaudeville chase.
good luck.
lgs