On-screen Cameras: Mirrors of Cinematic Practice - Text 6
In Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong (1933), the “documentary” element is also in play for the diegetic camera operator, an explorer on the hunt for images in a manner part-way between the animal film and sensationalism.
Films about silent cinema appeared in the 1940s, featuring fictional situations involving hand-cranked cameras as representatives of a bygone era or even a “golden age.” This was true in particular of George Marshall’s The Perils of Pauline (1947), in which movie cameras (the Pathé Professionnelle, the Debrie Parvo, the Bell & Howell 2709) are depicted in a variety of situations: in some cases in the studio, where we see several scenes filmed at the same time on sets constructed alongside one another, the director standing next to the cinematographer, megaphone in hand; and in other cases out of doors, either travelling on a vehicle or present in great numbers to film different aspects of spectacular action scenes simultaneously.
