ABSTRACT

Late in 1914, Universal released The Master Key, a motion picture serial in 15 installments. Robert Z. Leonard directed and starred, and the project was marketed as the ‘most expensive serial yet’. The weekly film release was paralleled by a syndicated newspaper feuilleton, illustrated by stills from the motion pictures. Stills were also incorporated into an illustrated reissue of Fleming Wilson’s story, as well as in promotional materials, like illustrated ads and a 20-page poster stamp album published by the Wentz Printing Company. By way of a cross-media investigation of the (1914) serial The Master Key, this study contributes a case in point of how film stills circulated outside the movie theater. The film material has been reported lost, but some reels have been preserved at the Library of Congress. One of the preserved reels contains the episode set in San Francisco’s Chinatown. For this paper, various materials from The Master Key’s-cross media release have been acquired through online fan forums and collectible auctions. Following recent historical studies on film serials and the ”seriality” of stock characters, Chinatown scenes and the picturesque and efforts to write spatial film history, this paper argues that the proliferation of film images across media formats conceptualized The Master Key’s imagery of San Francisco Chinatown as a ”serialized” space, standardizing cinemat_ic iconography in the public eye.

摘要

1914 年末，环球公司发行了 15 部连续剧《万能钥匙》。罗伯特 Z. 伦纳德执导并主演，该项目被宣传为“迄今为止最昂贵的连续剧”。每周一次的电影发行与联合报纸 feuilleton 并行，由电影中的剧照说明。剧照也被纳入弗莱明威尔逊故事的插图再版，以及宣传材料中，如插图广告和由 Wentz 印刷公司出版的 20 页海报邮票专辑。通过对 ( 1914 ) 系列The Master Key的跨媒体调查，这项研究提供了一个电影剧照如何在电影院外流传的案例。据报道，电影材料丢失了，但一些卷轴已保存在国会图书馆。其中一个保存的卷轴包含以旧金山唐人街为背景的剧集。对于本文，来自The Master Key跨媒体发布的各种材料是通过在线粉丝论坛和收藏品拍卖获得的。继最近对电影连续剧和股票角色的“连续性”、唐人街场景以及写空间电影历史的如画和努力的历史研究之后，本文认为跨媒体格式的电影图像的扩散概念化了万能钥匙的旧金山唐人街图像作为一个“系列化”的空间，标准化电影_ic 公众眼中的图像。