At 21:05 8/26/96 -0400, mylan p sloan wrote: >Would anyone care to comment: Was Tony Richardson's TOM JONES the first >instance of hand-held camera shots in a major theatrical film? Hand-held camera movements actually became a dominant style in silent chanbarageki (samurai) in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Japan, mostly for fight scenes. It is hard to say when and under what circumstances the style originated, since far too few films exist to do a decent stylistic history. The conventional history is that this style began with Ito Daisuke, who often had his cameraman run in between the fighting samurai/actors and swish pan between the actors. The few examples that remain are visually very confusing, but bold and exiting. Given Jeremy's citation of Abel Gance, it should be worth noting that this style in Japanese film was probably influenced by the French cinema of the time, which was popular in Japan. This style did become quite common for a few years, but began to die out in the mid-1930s with the coming of sound and the "monumental" cinema that Darrell Davis discusses, though it did continue to exist into the late 1930s in very low budget films by minor studios directed at kids (which were still silent up until about 1937, or after that, shot silent and a limited (often benshi) soundtrack added in post-production). Aaron Gerow Tokyo, Japan (formerly Univ. of Iowa, soon to be Meiji Gakuin University) [log in to unmask] ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]