Paintings on The Early Cinema

      In the early to mid 1900's, going to the cinema had still been a fairly new experience. Although the paintings Movies, Five Cents by John Sloan and New York Movie by Edward Hopper were painted more than thirty years apart, and visually have very little in common, they each portray something unique about early cinema. Before visual analysis, you would think that the general concept of the paintings couldn't be more different.
      In Sloan's painting we are given a scene that focuses solely on the people and the movie they are watching. We are actually looking in at them as they all watch this new movie.The "muddy" color scheme gives us that dark movie theatre feeling, and we notice that the brightest thing in the room is (as it should be) the movie screen. In 1907, when Sloan painted this, cinema wasn't more than fifteen years old, so in this painting we see people dressed in nice hats and fancy suits, making it a sort of formal occasion. We notice this in the couple on the right hand side that look like they are coming in a little late. A crowd of shadowed people all blur together as they watch a couple kiss on screen, with rapt attention. All except the woman in the center of the audience. She is seemingly turned directly toward the artist, making her smiling face the focus of the painting. I think that this makes her the most important aspect of the work too because her face is showing the wonder and the awe that coupled early cinema. In this pre-World War painting, the magic is still there. In Hopper's painting, we get a few of the same things, but in a completely different way.
       In 1939, when Edward Hopper painted New York Movie, we are in a post-World War, post-Depression state of mind. Differing from Sloan's right off the bat, Hopper chose to focus just outside of the theatre. In the center of the painting is (anticlimactically) a wall. It provides separation to the two world we are provided as different focal points. On the left, we see the darkened movie theatre, but only one movie-goer. On the right, we are given a brighter setting, and shown a female usher leaning against the wall, deep in thought. Not only do the two sides contrast each other, but they might also contrast the mood of the people portrayed on the side. After noticing the contrast, I find that the focus of the painting, is the woman deep in thought. Much like the lady in the first painting, she embodies the mood of the time period.
     After comparing and contrasting the paintings with each other, it took me a while to decipher what the painters were maybe saying about films. And that's when the idea of time periods popped into my head. The woman in Sloan's painting looks as if to not have a care in the world, and is completely mystified by the new things around her. The woman in Hopper's painting has too many worries it seems, and is missing all the magic that's in the world. The painters both captured the essences of what people thought about movies in their time. They show the loss of the feelings towards movies and movie makers in just two peoples expressions.