It is not necessarily peculiar to Istanbul, but can also be seen in countries other than the United States or Western Europe, that the cinematograph was not on permanent display for a few years. In the first two years, different showmen brought the apparatus to Istanbul for certain periods after which they may have travelled to the Balkans or to the Middle East. In his work on early cinema in Egypt, Michael Allan mentions the role of traveling showmen in cinematograph shows outside Western Europe. Alexandre Promio as a representative of the Lumière Brothers, travelled through North Africa and the Middle East, which may help to explain the occasional absences of the cinematograph:
74 Stamboul, 24, 25, 26 March 1897. 75 Le Moniteur Oriental, 6 April 1897. 76 Stamboul, 16, 17 April 1897.
Newspapers of the period tended to cover Promio’s travels as an imperial conquest and marveled at how ‘the entire world’ (‘le monde entier’) might soon be ‘the conquest of the Cinématographe Lumière’ (‘la conquête du Cinématographe Lumière’). Importantly, though, Egypt was just one of the numerous stops on Promio’s world tour, and it became, in the archives of early cinema, but one site from a range of international locations –among which, Paris, London, Belfast, Berlin, Istanbul, Moscow and Tokyo are just a few. The footage collected at each of these sites was circulated among a network of audiences worldwide, and from Venice to Buenos Aires to Montreal to Beijing audiences could marvel at sites on displays from disparate parts of the globe.77
The irregular screenings of the cinematograph might then be explained by the traveling showmen who took the cinematic apparatus from one city to another. Throughout 1897 and 1898 the cinematograph shows were organized infrequently. Other spectacle announcements increased in the periods the cinematograph announcements disappeared; which might be a sign of a public preference for the cinematograph. On the other hand, tableaux vivants, magic lanterns, Karagöz shows, puppet theaters, diorama and panorama were still among the popular visual delights of 1897 and 1898. The shows could be performed separately or mixed with two or three different performances. Diorama presentations included some ‘sublime’ scenes such as big trains or ships; magical transformations; scenic views (Naples and Vesuvius); an aquarium (‘with fish, of course’); macabre scenes in a graveyard; and a ship at sea in a storm.78
On 24 March 1898, a French language teaching school named the Collège of Saint-Benoit organized a study day for the geography, ethnography and natural history of the Congo with illuminated projections called tableaux vivants. The lecture was accompanied with discussions and music; meanwhile the presentation was a kind of visual travelogue followed by ‘An Expedition to Algeria’.79 On 5 April 1898
77 Michael Allan, ‘Deserted Histories: The Lumière Brothers, the Pyramids and Early Film Form’,
Early Popular Visual Culture, 6 (July 2008), 159-170 (p. 160).
78 Stamboul, 12 January 1898. Also for the relationship between the sublime and early cinema see
Tom Gunning, ‘Phantom Rides and Sublime Motion’ (Presentation given at SCMS Conference, March 2006).
an ‘exceptional display by the eccentric clown’ along with the chanteuse Mlle. Andie was performing at the Concordia Theater; where the tableaux were illuminated by electricity.80 In the following month a stage performance with Turkish music, singing, puppet shows, wrestling and Albanian dances took place at the Union Française.81 The highlight, however, was a Karagöz performance accompanied by a show of ‘elaborate lighting and [performers] wearing extremely sensual costumes that aroused libidinous desires’ from the audience.82
Debates over the techniques of the cinematograph continued despite the seeming absence of the shows in the city. However, we can still assume that the early cinema audience of Istanbul were positioning themselves as part of the global audience which was seen in a journalistic account about the various technical possibilities of the cinematograph offered by the French scientists.83 The enthusiasm and the obsession with scientific novelties may effortlessly be observed in the article entitled La Cinématografie du ciel (‘The Cinematography of the Sky’), which describes a performance in France as a sign of interest in the cinematographic novelties elsewhere:
The possibilities of cinema can be multiplied to infinity, more so than any other invention. After entrancing us with scenes representing traffic in the streets, waves breaking on the shore, the countryside seen from a moving train, life shown backwards [reverse motion], the cinema is going to show us something that surpasses all these a hundredfold. This is the rotation of the earth and other celestial phenomena.84
The paragraph seems to affirm the general characterizations of the ‘cinema of attractions’ created by a variety of spectacles of immense movements (such as waves, train voyages, traffic scenes and the reverse motions of life). Furthermore, it 80 Stamboul, 5 April 1898. 81 Stamboul, 12 April 1898. 82 Ibid. 83 Stamboul, 19 January 1898. 84 Ibid.
suggests a new project for increasing the effect of attraction by showing the movements of the earth and the stars. The journal introduces M. Camille Flammarion, an early author of science fiction and the secretary-general of the Astronomical Society of France, and his ‘strange idea’ to film the solar system and the whole horizon with a large field of vision. Providing many technical details and describing an early use of time-lapse photography, the journal exposes a celebration of the moving pictures technology:
As no camera is able to operate for six hours at a stretch (the length of the night at this time of year), and as the apparent movement of the stars is very slow, he takes during the night two or three thousand exposures on the same stretch of film at regular intervals, thus obtaining a continuous series showing the sunset, the stars appearing, the regular movement of the constellations from East to West, the luminous tracks of the stars, the break of day and finally sunrise. This whole series of phenomena can then be projected in two minutes on any projector, thus giving the illusion of the complete and rapid rotation of the earth.85
It is also understood that M. Flammarion informed the journalists of his plans to go even further for the cinematic representations of the sky. Accordingly, special effects would be created through the technological advancement of the cinematograph and thereby, the scientific phenomena of the solar system would be shown through an illusion. The attraction would be non-realistic, with only two minutes depicting the whole celestial movement; nevertheless it would undoubtedly be eye catching. Furthermore, such astrological observations would be accessible to the ordinary public, not merely scientists. Therefore, the newspaper claimed that such a development would intrigue a public that knew little of the extent to which the astronomers of the age examined these matters. Perhaps more importantly, the article asserted that at the end of the nineteenth century, the public would no longer be astonished by anything. Considering the current progress of the time to be at the pinnacle, it was assumed that the early cinema audience could easily imagine how
their great-great grandchildren, at the end of the twentieth century, could watch a film representing ‘scenes of life on Mars’ that would be more interesting than ‘banal views’ of the Place de l'Opéra or the Champs Élysées!86