The visible and the invisible: From ‘tricks’ to ‘effects’

Abstract

Gunning argued that ‘tricks’ largely disappeared from cinema between 1907–13 as narrativisation became dominant. But if we trace the use of ‘sensation’ devices, with their roots in many popular nineteenth-century narrative modes, then two crucial new film genres of the 1910s made extensive use of trick-based effects: the fantastic crime thriller and the ancient-world spectacle. While ‘effects’, as they were now known, remained crucial to many genres, the status of their expert practitioners declined as effects became invisible.