Edison’s achievements in motion picture technology are outstanding:
-the first full-length motion picture (“The Great Train Robbery”)
-the first synchronized audio track with a movie
-the first short colorized movie (hand tinted)
But after about 1918, he seemed to lose interest-the movie business left New Jersey and moved to California-and empires rose ( 20 Century Fox, MGM, Warner Brothers, etc.).
Why was this? Edison knew a money making business when he saw one-why did he drop out?
Edison’s patents on motion picture film technology were strangling the industry. By 1915, the patents either expired or were struck down under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The breakup of the Edison Trust hurt him financially, and he sold his remaining industry assets.
He lost the patent battle.
The game was already lost before the patents were.
Like most monopolies, the Trust made conservative decisions about its product. The product worked, it brought in money, so why take expensive risks for the sake of change?
But the independents were moving toward longer and more crowd-pleasing films for years. And they were inspired by foreign companies who pioneered what we consider to be full-length films - over 60 minutes - even earlier. The Great Train Robbery was all of 12 minutes. The other firsts given are equally meaningless. There were plenty of music players before the iPod. So what? Being first is virtually always meaningless for product development.
Edison himself was never really interested in making real movies. He was interested in selling his devices for viewing films. He was never a good businessman in the way we think of Moguls. You needed to be obsessed with the way a particular business ran for success and he never was. He lost out on movies the same way he lost out on records. Other people cared more about the product and the consumer. He never at any time in his career did.
Just like to point out that Great Train was 1903, the first feature film The Story of the Kelly Gang was 1906 and feature films were still a few years away from being common.
I’d also like to point out that Edison didn’t really have much to do with films himself, he didn’t invent the devices and he never shot or wrote the films his employees did, he just held the patents and ran the business. Edison films were years behind just about everyone. It was the Lumiere brothers who sent cameramen across the world and introducing films and film making to international audiences, it was people like Méliès and Blaché who were pioneering effects and basic storytelling.
Yes Porter was important in making films that told real and sequential stories, but he wasn’t the first. Méliès was telling stories more complex than The Great Train Robbery years before with films like Joan of Arc and Bluebeard. Heck even The Great Train Robbery is often acknoledged as being heavily influenced by A Daring Daylight Burglary.
Edison’s film company was a giant of industry, and through that they had some influence because of their sheer size. But they had far less importance and influence on the films itself than is usually given to them.