Cinema prior to 1916 was the bastard child of the stage. The fixed camerawork, mannered acting and phony sets of this era make that impossible to forget, even for a moment, and indeed, it was not something anyone wanted forgotten, because a connection to legitimate theatre was what most quality filmmakers aspired to. Before The Birth of a Nation (1915) and other super-epics began displacing theatre as the supreme populist entertainment, there was no better endorsement.
Filmmakers had to find their own way. They had to learn how their art differed from stagecraft, then learn to love it for those reasons, then learn to exploit it to do great work. But good films could be made by men and women who hadn’t learned all those lessons yet. I’ve seen several. Snow White is one.
