ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a four-year period of rapid change in the film industry, 1909-13, when new developments in film production, distribution, exhibition, and promotion allowed for more elaborate and far-reaching film adaptations. Dickensian film scholars tend to focus on either the origins of cinema, when the first generation of filmmakers relied upon Dickens to provide material for brief episodes, or on classical hollywood cinema, when directors such as George Cukor and David Lean immortalized Dickens in the first sound adaptations. These accounts tend to overlook adaptations from the misleadingly labeled 'primitive cinema', a pivotal moment of development for the narrative techniques that would become a hallmark of classical hollywood cinema. One of the most exciting contributions to silent film scholarship in recent years was made by Thanhouser company film preservation, who restored the oldest surviving David Copperfield film adaptation and made it available to the public on DVD.
