Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television’s Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- 6 Fast Worker: The Films of Sam Newfield
- 7 The Power of Resistance: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
- 8 Beyond Characterization: Performance in 1960s Experimental Cinema
- 9 Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- 10 “Let the Sleepers Sleep and the Haters Hate”: An Interview with Dale “Rage” Resteghini
- 11 Margin Call: An Interview with J. C. Chandor
- 12 “All My Films Are Personal”: An Interview with Pat Jackson
- 13 Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O’Hara
- 14 Andrew V. McLaglen: Last of the Hollywood Professionals
- 15 Pop Star, Director, Actor: An Interview with Michael Sarne
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
3 - Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television’s Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- 6 Fast Worker: The Films of Sam Newfield
- 7 The Power of Resistance: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
- 8 Beyond Characterization: Performance in 1960s Experimental Cinema
- 9 Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- 10 “Let the Sleepers Sleep and the Haters Hate”: An Interview with Dale “Rage” Resteghini
- 11 Margin Call: An Interview with J. C. Chandor
- 12 “All My Films Are Personal”: An Interview with Pat Jackson
- 13 Working Within the System: An Interview with Gerry O’Hara
- 14 Andrew V. McLaglen: Last of the Hollywood Professionals
- 15 Pop Star, Director, Actor: An Interview with Michael Sarne
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Motion picture serials, the forerunner of today's serialized television dramas, have been around since the earliest days of the narrative cinema. Exhibitors rapidly realized that, in order to assure continued audience attendance, openended “cliff hangers” were needed, as they keep viewers returning week after week to find out the latest plot twists, character developments and, of course, how the hero or heroine escaped from the previous week's peril. The first real serial – with multiple episodes and a running weekly continuity – was Charles Brabin's What Happened to Mary? (1912), starring Mary Fuller as an innocent young woman who inherits a fortune while the villain of the piece tries to separate her from her newfound wealth.
The sequel to the serial, Who Will Mary Marry? (1913), serves as proof of the new format's success. But the real breakthrough came in 1914 with Louis Gasnier's The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White. Pauline established the hectic, action-packed formula that would persist until the production of the very last serial – Spencer Gordon Bennet's Blazing the Overland Trail – in 1956. Fistfights, nonstop action, minimal character exposition and a sense of constant, frenetic danger permeated The Perils of Pauline and this recipe generated a host of imitators.
Soon the “damsel in distress” format used in The Perils of Pauline was being employed by a number of other serials, including Francis J. Grandon's The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), starring an equally athletic Kathlyn Williams, and Louis Feuillade's epic mystery Fantômas (1913). Early serials were shown in weekly installments, a practice that continued throughout the lifetime of the genre, but early serial chapters could run as long as an hour – particularly in the case of Feuillade's Les Vampires (1915), one of the most popular of the silent serials. These weekly screenings usually took place as a major part of the cinema program and early serials were aimed at both adults and children. Occasionally, an enterprising entrepreneur would run a serial chapter throughout the week to maximize attendance.
By the late teens and early ‘20s, a fairly rigid structure had been defined through trial and error. Serials ran 12 to 15 episodes, with the first episode usually running a half-hour to set up the situation and introduce the protagonists (and their adversaries) to viewers.
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- Information
- Cinema at the Margins , pp. 19 - 30Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013