Screen Films vs Art

As soon as the cinema entered entertainment and art industry, the audience started discussing the "authenticity" and future of screen films. The thing is, the cinema was considered a "frivolous" activity that would die within 2-3 next years. Still, the screen films proved to be "seriously and for the long haul".

At that time, it was considered that any real art genre had to have a serious literary basis. It was not until 1906 that film companies had to hire professional writers from outside to obtain plots for their films. With screen films having grown to be more complicated and systematized, every cinema company employed at least one man of letters in its staff. What's more, the American tendency concentrated on the simplification of plots and borrowing them from literary novels that eased the creation of scripts.

The main division that was immediately established (in the same way as in the theater) was comedy and drama. Comedy could be either a slapstick or "serious comedy" (based on professional literary works). By the way, the forthcoming division of cinema genres was very similar to the theater what created a basis for involvement theatrical actors into cinema. At first, it was D.W. Griffith and Frank Powell that shot the first screen films based on certain stratification.

In Europe (and in France particularly) the most popular type of screen films was comedy. However, it was accessible for the upper middle-class only for the first twenty years.

In general, D.W. Griffith had a tremendous influence on the literary development of screen films between 1910 and 1920.