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A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current and entertainment for millions of moviegoers until television supplanted its role in the 1950s. Newsreels are now considered significant historical documents, since they are often the only audiovisual record of historical and cultural events of those times.1
Newsreels were typically featured as 'shorts' preceding the main feature film into the 1960s. There were dedicated newsreel theatres in many major cities in the 1930s and 1940s2 and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theatrette where newsreels were screened continously throughout the day.
History
Created by Pathé Frères of France in 1908, this form of film was a staple of the typical North American, British, and Commonwealth countries (especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and throughout European cinema programming schedule from the silent era until the 1960s when television news broadcasting completely supplanted its role. Nonetheless some countries such as Spain continued producing newsreels into the 1980s.
The first official British news cinema that only showed newsreels was the Daily Bioscope that opened in London on 23 May 1909.3 In 1929 William Fox purchased a former Broadway theatre called the Embassy. He changed the format from a $2 show twice a day to a continuous 25 cent programme establishing the first newsreel theatre in the USA. The idea was such a success that Fox and his backers announced they would start a chain of newsreel theatres across the USA.4 The newsreels were often accompanied by cartoons or short subjects.
In some countries, newsreels generally used music as a background for usually silent on-site film footage. In some countries, the narrator used humorous remarks for light-hearted or non-tragic stories.
An example of a newsreel story is in the film Citizen Kane (which was prepared by RKO's actual newsreel staff), which includes a fictional newsreel that summarizes the life of the title character, Charles Foster Kane.
In 1948 NBC launched a 10 minute television programme called Camel Newsreel Theatre that featured newsreels. Later the show produced their own news film. Newsreel cinemas either closed or went to showing continuous programmes of cartoons and short subjects, such as the London Victoria Station News Cinema, later Cartoon Cinema that opened in 1933 and closed in 1981.
See also
Pathe and Gaumont
References
- ^ Australian Screen: Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreel Collection (1929 - 1975)
- ^ King, Barrie, Newsreels , OzFilm, Culture and Communication Reading Room, Murdoch University
- ^ p. 56 Popple Simon & Kember, Joe Early Cinema: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory Wallflower Press 2004
- ^ "Newsreel Theatre", Time magazine (November 18, 1929). Retrieved on 31 October 2008. "The six or seven minutes of newsreel exhibited in ordinary program houses are selected from many reels of current events. Nowhere could one be sure of seeing all the newsreels made in any one week. In Manhattan William Fox, in collaboration with Hearst Metrotone, found what to do with the newsreels discarded weekly by their companies. He took over a Broadway theatre (Embassy) and changed its program from a $2 show twice a day to a continuous 25¢ show. He made the program all newsreels, to run for an hour, a full photographic report of the pictorial parts of the week's news."