links to Kraków, L’viv, and other towns of the former commonwealth hindered travel. Electrification, too, came about only gradually. Inhabitants of cities in the Prussian partition were receiving limited benefits from electricity by the end of the nineteenth century, while the process took even longer in the cities of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian partitions. Lights came on slowly in the countryside of each region. Local variations in population and wealth likely influenced exhibitors’ opportunities, as well. Urbanization opened possibilities for exhibition to larger audiences. Warsaw and its suburbs, for example, experienced immense growth between 1890 and 1910, when their total population climbed to almost one million. Levels of wealth were lowest in Galicia and highest in Prussia.1 Moreover, although higher levels of education accompanied urbanization, literacy spread slowly. In 1897, Warsaw’s illiteracy rate of 41 percent among men and 51 percent among women was lower than the rates in other large cities (in Łódź, for example, 55 percent among men and 66 percent among women), and much lower than the 69.5 percent overall rate in the Russian Empire.2
An advertisement for an early demonstration of the Cinématographe. Biblioteka Narodowa
The first demonstrations of “a theater of live photography” took place in Warsaw at the end of 1895 and the beginning of 1896, when Thomas Alva Edison’s Kinetoscope (or, perhaps, a counterfeit version of it) appeared first on Niecała Street and next in the Panopticum on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street.3 In July of that year, exhibitors lured audiences to an enormous ballroom and meeting space on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street with a (presumably counterfeit) copy of Louis and Auguste Lumière’s patented Cinématographe, an apparatus constructed to record, print, and project films that had been demonstrated for the first time in Paris in 1895. They chose images of people walking along the street, a fire engine in operation, dancers, and cat pranks for this first demonstration. This makeshift cinematograph disappointed the Warsaw patrons, who complained that the presentation was of poor quality and that its exhibitors were not organized or competent in handling the new technology. The viewers also remarked that it was unoriginal in light of other inventions of the time. One commentator writing in Kurier warszawski (Warsaw Courier) in 1896 claims that the invention
would have been awe-inspiring, if in the age of telephones and phonographs there could be anything awe-inspiring. It is the cinematograph, a combination of photography and electricity. . . . The thing is unusual in itself, very interesting and worthy of admiration, but the apparatus, which is operated by a Warsaw entrepreneur, does not work properly. Because we are not able to compare, we cannot, of course, conclude whether this is the fault of the still imperfect idea, or the apparatus itself, which acquainted us yesterday with a solution to the problem of movement.4
In L’viv, Galicia, entrepreneurs presented the first program of short films in September 1896. It is not clear whether the equipment featured Edison’s Vitascope, Kinetoscope, or a counterfeit, although the last is most probable.5 According to historian Andrzej Urbańczyk, the first exhibition included a separate demonstration of a related invention, the phonograph. The performances took place in the Grand Hotel and at a hostel for workers located in the same section of the city. Underscoring the dubious aspects of this presentation, the program advertised an unlikely slate of films that combined, for example, the Edison Company’s Chinese Laundry Scene (1894) and Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894) with the Lumière production L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1895).6 Accounts of the first screenings give the impression that audiences arrived pessimistic, skeptical, and certain that the presentation would be second-rate, and they received no surprises. Writing some thirty-four years later, novelist Juliusz Kadren-Bandrowski recalls one of the first demonstrations in the city: “Some people said during the intermission that in spite of everything, the show would probably not make it to the end because, eventually, something must go wrong. Still others were certain that it all had to be some kind of false imitation and, sooner or later, it would turn out to be a devilish hoax.”7
On November 14, 1896, the first demonstration of the patented Cinématographe took place in Kraków’s Community Theater. The Galician city of Kraków—home to fewer than a hundred thousand people at the turn of the twentieth century—supported one of the most active theatrical traditions, including traditional stage theater, magic lantern shows, and demonstrations of other cerebral curiosities, in the partitioned lands. Lumière exhibitor Eugène Joachim DuPont brought the Cinématographe to Kraków from Vienna and advertised the demonstration in a local newspaper, Czas (Time). He re-created the program of twelve short films that had been shown during the famous first demonstration of the apparatus at the Grand Café in Paris eleven months earlier. It included, among others, Repas de bébé (1895), L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat, La Charcuterie mécanique (1895), Arroseur arrosé (1895), and Quarrelle enfantine (1896). So successful was the process this time that, after its solo premiere, the short films were added to the end of regular theater performances as a bonus for audiences. The program changed often, and projections were not regular; but in December 1896 and sporadically throughout 1897, around forty short films were shown in Kraków.8 Additions to the program included Partie d’écarté (1895), Photographe (1895), Dragons traversant la Saône à la nage (1896), Enfants pêchant des crevettes (1896), Démolition d’un mur (1896), and Les Bains de Diane à Milan (1896). The virtual itinerary of the Kraków audiences included Madrid, Paris, Milan, Tyrol, and London, but nowhere outside western Europe. Although the quality of the projections was poor, reviewers expressed the astonishment and intrigue that audiences felt when they saw moving images of trains, people, and, especially, ocean waves.
Demonstrations of the Cinématographe soon followed in other cities in the partitioned lands, including Poznań in the Kingdom of Prussia and Warsaw in the Russian Empire. In the Russian partition, demonstrations took place in storefronts and restaurants. The railway that connected Warsaw to smaller towns in the region connected it to western European cities, as well, making the city a rest stop for many traveling entrepreneurs. Because it was relatively large and easily accessible, Warsaw was the most logical place for the new industry to take root. Although urban theaters and cafés held exhibitions, many shows took place in outdoor venues, such as the circus, during the warm season. According to film historians Władysław Banaszkiewicz and Witold Witczak, projections were held at twilight during almost every summer event in Warsaw at the turn of the century.9
The history of cinema in the small city of Bydgoszcz in the Kingdom of Prussia offers an exceptional opportunity to reflect upon issues of film, language, politics, and cultural identity. Scholars know little about the first exhibitions in Bydgoszcz. Although it is clear that itinerant exhibitors appeared in the city in April 1897, the names of those first exhibitors and the titles of films shown in the first programs are unavailable—but information on traveling exhibitors in small cities and towns is always difficult to find. What makes Bydgoszcz interesting is its character as a meeting point for Polish and German cultures. The majority of people in Bydgoszcz at the turn of the twentieth century spoke German and identified with the cultures to the west rather than those to the east, even though Poles considered the city an inseparable part of Polish national identity. Not surprisingly, residents may have had a perspective on the subjects of itinerant exhibitors’ programs that differed from that of residents of other cities.
In Filmowa Bydgoszcz, 1896–1939 (Filmic Bydgoszcz, 1896–1939), Mariusz Guzek suggests that the beginnings of a local film culture can be found in the photographic exhibits at the Kaiser Panorama located on Fryderykowska Street (now Marszałka Focha Street). Guzek explains that through the subjects of these exhibits—he cites Constantinople, the Rhine Valley, Cyprus, and Syria as examples—the residents of Bydgoszcz grew accustomed to seeing photographic representations of different parts of the world on a regular basis. He writes, “Still images, just like the later live photographs, affected the imagination, satisfied the curiosity associated with the unattainable spheres of life, and supplied entertainment.”10 Guzek notes that the central location of the first projections of the Kinetoscope (or Vitascope) in a hall on Berlinerstrasse