Roberta E. Pearson

Dante's Inferno and Caesar's Ghost: Intertextuality and Conditions of Reception in Early American Cinema

at a theoretical level, with theory delimiting the evidence base. Fewer scholars have as yet taken up the daunting challenge of historical reception studies, which requires dealing with living subjects’ memories of initial reception or speculating about the reception of long-silent subjects. In both cases,the restricted evidence base presents immense theoretical complexities. In this paper, we wish to discuss the conditions of reception for two films made by the Vitagraph Company in 1908, Francesca di Rimini and Julius Caesar. Vitagraph’s prominence amongst American film producers would have insured that these films were widely distributed and widely seen. Vitagraph, one of the three most important of pre-Hollywood American film studios, exceeded its closest rivals, the Edison and Biograph Companies, in both film production and scale of operation Z An energetic and innovative publicity department helped the studio maintain its high public profile, advertising directly to film distributors and exhibitors through its in-house organ and constantly planting stories in the trade press. In an era when studio &dquo;brand&dquo; loyalty seems to have been a major determinant of film attendance, the Vitagraph name on a film most probably ensured good audience turnout. While Vitagraph’s status permits us to conclude that both Francesca da