Poles and Germans.
While the Lumière brothers’ films took center stage in the Russian Empire, American picture shows made their way through the partitioned lands in the Kingdom of Prussia. Zygmunt Pogorzelski, a Polish exhibitor, showed the Lumières’ L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat for the first time only in 1902 at an outdoor festival on the outskirts of Bydgoszcz (where a majority of the town’s Polish inhabitants lived).11 The reason for this division may lie with historical ties dating to the Romantic period between speakers of the Polish and French languages in the Russian Empire, which made French films attractive, and with a long-standing struggle for power between speakers of the Polish and German languages in the Prussian partition, which led Polish speakers to shun German films. Linguistic and cultural affinities—or antipathies—thus reflected political alliances and rivalries. That these political-linguistic relationships affected even the earliest exhibitions of silent films shows the extent to which early exhibitors regarded cinema as an international business venture based as much on established political practices as on creative entrepreneurship and a sense of adventure. From the outset, exhibitors found themselves—willingly or not—part of the political landscape.
During the five years that followed the debut of the Cinématographe in Kraków, entrepreneurs moved from town to town throughout the partitions to offer demonstrations of their short films. In this time of actualités (short nonfiction films, such as travelogues, sports films, and news event films), reenactments, short fictionalized historical films, and one-act comedies, programs inevitably varied from town to town. The first traveling exhibitors had much autonomy with regard to the order of the films shown in their programs. They added title cards in the languages that they saw fit as well as sound or music when they deemed it appropriate. Films often complemented theatrical or technological attractions. These traveling entrepreneurs (as well as those whom they employed as additional entertainment) were often circus managers or performers, illusionists, magicians, or mimes, though some ambitious early filmmakers such as Bolesław Matuszewski arranged projections of their own work. As film historian Stanisław Janicki claims, spaces for their demonstrations “started to sprout like mushrooms after the rain.”12 Until 1903, most of the venues were temporary, but the few permanent optical entertainment centers hinted at the future shape of the industry. As in many of the first demonstrations in Kraków, the traveling exhibitions of “live pictures” were usually additions to other presentations such as live theater or magic lantern shows.13
Generally, exhibitors chose a venue, set up the equipment, collected a small entrance fee from spectators (or demanded a part of the fee collected for entrance into the other parts of the spectacle), projected short films for around twenty minutes, dismantled the equipment, and moved on. Permanent cinemas had yet to be established. However, audiences could count on seeing short films at a few regular venues throughout the region. In Łódź, brothers Władysław and Antoni Krzemiński projected Lumière films at their Gabinet Iluzji and offered a space, called the Bioscop, to traveling vendors in need of a storefront to rent. Also in Łódź, regular projections of the “Edison cinematograph” were held in Helenów, a once-private park that had been offering access to a waterfall, playground, restaurant, candy store, and theater to paying visitors since the late 1880s. In a large concert hall in the park, the first projection using a Lumière apparatus took place on June 11, 1897. Audiences saw half-hour programs consisting of eight Lumière short films featuring coronations, royal parades, and other events from western Europe.14 According to film historians Hanna Krajewska and Stanisław Janicki, a locale for motion picture demonstrations might have been opened in a former restaurant at 120 Piotrkowska Street in Łódź in 1899.15
In Poznań, exhibitors regularly held projections at a popular restaurant owned by Leon Mettler. A successful entrepreneur, Franciszek Józef Oeser, opened the first storefront cinema in L’viv, the Teatr Elektryczny. According to Urbańczyk, Kraków, too, had a Teatr Elektryczny that advertised the novelty of electricity along with cinema as late as the summer of 1905, long after electricity had ceased to be a revelation in many European cities. It announced, “Electric people and electric animals! Tigers, lions, elephants! Everything that lives fights on the electric canvas. People walk and dance. Director Oeser transforms into an electric person on the screen in front of the public’s eyes!”16
Władysław and Antoni Krzemiński ran a permanent cinema at 4 Nowy Rynek Street in Łódź, which held forty-minute projections of short film programs from 1901 until 1903. Teatr żywych fotografii, as they called it, was equipped with an imported projector from Paris. Krajewska describes it as a three-room space—with an entry room, viewing room, and projection room—on the first floor of a building next to a candy store. The entry room, adorned with stereoscopes, functioned as both ticket booth and waiting room. The viewing room held thirty seats (priced according to proximity to the screen) and standing room for sixty, though twice this number generally crowded into it.17
Within a decade, almost every major city in the region had a permanent motion picture theater. The extravagant, Secession-style Teatr Elizeum-Palais d’Illusion in Warsaw, with room for four hundred people, was one such venue. Its repertoire included films by the first local filmmaker, Kazimierz Prószyński, in 1902. According to film historians Małgorzata Hendrykowska and Marek Hendrykowski, restaurateur Mettler dedicated one of his properties in the so-called Promenade Park in Poznań to motion picture projections beginning in December 1903.18 Permanent motion picture theaters were opened in Kraków and L’viv in 1906; in Toruń and Vilnius in 1907; in Bydgoszcz, Częstochowa, and Lublin in 1908; in Przemyśl in 1910; and in Rzeszów and Tarnów in 1911, although cinema in the partitions remained a predominately outdoor event for several more years.19
Small, permanent theaters specialized not only in motion pictures but also in vaudeville, cabaret, and other popular forms of entertainment. Only the largest cities could support extravagant theaters; in most places, motion picture theaters were still located in storefronts or freestanding cabins, designated only by a generic sign, well into the twentieth century. Ticket prices and ambience ranged from inexpensive and informal to expensive and formal, depending on the venue, the number of acts in the repertoire, the anticipated spending power of the crowd, and the size of the town (as well as the general economic situation of the given empire). Krajewska notes that a ticket to the cinema in Łódź before 1906 cost between twenty and thirty kopecks, while a ticket to the symphony cost fifty kopecks, and a pound of sugar cost thirteen kopecks.20 The failure of most attempts to create lavish, permanent places of entertainment on the model of the Elizeum is likely attributable to customers’ inability or unwillingness to pay higher ticket prices.
Between stints at these urban venues, traveling entrepreneurs visited small towns. They announced their shows with newspaper advertisements (concentrating on the novelty of the invention rather than the films themselves)21 and handbills, which they distributed to workers. The Krzemiński brothers, for example, handed out approximately fifty thousand handbills to inform people of upcoming shows each week.22 The smaller the venue, the more likely it was that the entrepreneurs would call their demonstrations “circuses” rather than the more urbane “theater.” Style and quality of facilities varied, as well. Traveling entrepreneurs often had to rent small stores, where they projected the short films and arranged the crowds in the best way that they could. Even in the more stable venues, such as the Krzemińskis’ Bioscop, building conditions could interrupt the flow of spectators. As one story goes, spectators at Bioscop had to leave the building through a window after the show. On another occasion, an exhibitor acted as both ticket seller and projectionist. When he was ready to project the films from his makeshift cubicle, he locked the door behind the spectators, trapping them inside the building.23
From the beginning, exhibitors situated permanent motion picture theaters near other, similar establishments to form entertainment districts. In Warsaw, the main entertainment district was located in the city center, on and around Marszałkowska, Nowy Świat, and Krakowskie Przedmieście streets. A few cinemas opened outside this area, as well. Most notably, the Kak w Paryże was located in the center of a mainly Jewish residential district on Dzika Street. The name of the theater (As in Paris) was Russian, but it was advertised using the Latin alphabet,24 and its patrons were