Cinema of attractions

An early mode of filmmaking that foregrounds visual spectacle and direct address over sustained narrative. It was prominent in cinema from the 1890s through the early 1900s.

Direct address: A mode of communication in which a performer or speaker visibly addresses an audience. Performers look or gesture toward the camera, making the film’s audience part of the spectacle.
Early cinema: The period of film production and exhibition from cinema’s emergence in the 1890s through the early 1910s. The cinema of attractions describes a dominant tendency within this formative period.
Tom Gunning: An American film historian known for scholarship on early cinema and the concept of the cinema of attractions. He coined the influential formulation that gave this early mode its name.
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat: A short Lumière film showing a train arriving at a railway station, made in the 1890s. Its moving train and depth of view make the filmed event itself the attraction.
Classical Hollywood cinema: A narrative filmmaking system emphasizing causal plots, continuity editing, and psychologically motivated characters. It represents the later dominance of story-centered organization over exhibitionist display.
Tableau vivant: A staged, motionless scene in which performers pose to represent a dramatic or pictorial composition. Many early films present a framed scene as a display to inspect rather than a continuous story.
Auguste and Louis Lumière: French brothers and inventors whose Cinématographe camera-projector helped establish public film exhibition. Their short films often displayed striking views and events directly to audiences.
André Gaudreault: A Canadian film scholar whose work examines early cinema, narration, and modes of filmic presentation. His research developed the distinction between showing and telling in early films.
The Sprinkler Sprinkled: A short Lumière comedy in which a boy interrupts a gardener’s watering with a practical joke. Its simple gag presents comic action plainly for immediate audience recognition.
Continuity editing: An editing system that maintains coherent time, space, and action across successive shots. Its seamless construction differs from cuts that foreground surprise or display.

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