France preceded the USA in the formation of the cinema industry; Charles Pathe played the biggest role in this. By the early 1900s, Pathé had become the world's largest film equipment and production company, as well as a major manufacturer of phonograph records.
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of several French businesses founded and initially operated by the Pathé Brothers of France, starting in 1896.
The brothers dominated the world cinema market in the first years of the 20th century with their film production and distribution network.
Together with his brothers, he founded the Pathé Frères (Pathe Brothers) company in Paris in 1896, which produced and sold gramophones and gramophone cylinders. The company equipped theaters all over France with the kinetoscope, a film viewing device developed by Thomas Edison and William Dickson, and also shot many short films with the camera developed by the Lumière Brothers.
The subjects of these films were striking adventures, melodramatic love stories, and comedies. In 1909, Pathé made his first feature film, Les Misérables, a four-reel adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel.
Charles Morand Pathé (26 December 1863 – 25 December 1957) was a pioneer of the French film and recording industries. As the founder of Pathé Frères, its roots lie in 1896 Paris, France, when Pathé and his brothers pioneered the development of the moving image. Pathé adopted the national emblem of France, the cockerel, as the trademark for his company. After the company, now called Compagnie Générale des Éstablissements Pathé Frères Phonographes & Cinématographes, invented the cinema newsreel with Pathé-Journal.
During the same period, he launched the first weekly newsreel, Pathé-Journal. This series, which was shown in various countries, especially the USA and Britain, was watched with interest until 1956. In 1914, Pathé Frères prepared the first episodes of The Perils of Pauline, one of the first and most famous serials on the silver screen, in its studios in the USA.
The company also began publishing the cinema magazine Pathé Pictorial.
With film production units in France, Britain, and the United States, and distribution offices around the world, Pathé Frères was an extremely profitable enterprise. Earnings for some of his films ranged from 50 to 100 times their costs.
In 1917, Pathe began selling the company's equipment, film studios, and screening halls. He left the cinema in 1929 and retired to Monaco. However, the company maintained its effectiveness and important position as a distributor.
Important details from the lives of the Pathe brothers
France preceded the USA in the formation of the cinema industry; Charles Pathe played the biggest role in this. Leon Gaumont, Pathe's only rival, made significant contributions to the development of French cinema, although not to the same extent. Both companies, named after their founders, had established complete dominance over the European film market when the First World War began. However, they completely lost their competitiveness during the war and had to accept the superiority of the USA in cinema from 1918 onwards.
Charles Pathe, born in 1863, was an adventurous entrepreneur who started life as a worker at the age of twelve and went to Argentina in his youth with the hope of making a fortune and returned empty-handed. Many of his business endeavors had failed. However, his luck turned around in 1894, thanks to his fair performances with an Edison Phonograph.
Pathe soon began importing these devices and also selling movie screens. Meanwhile, he also shot films similar to Lumiere's. Charles Pathe, who founded the company called Pathe Freres (Pathe Brothers) with his brothers in 1896, expanded his company by finding significant financial support. In 1901, he abandoned Phonograph sales and accelerated film production.
When he got positive results from the collaboration that started with director Ferdinand Zecca in 1902, he had the large studio of the Pathe company built in Vincennes a year later. Here, for the first time, one or two films a day began to be produced in a way that could be called fabricated. These films, which were based on reality and often included humorous elements and sometimes execution scenes, attracted great attention from the public when they were shown at fairs.
Pathe managed to appeal to popular taste. Realistic mise-en-scènes prepared thanks to studio facilities ensured the credibility of the films, and this affected the audience. The Pathe company was evaluating the documentary atmosphere of British cinema on the one hand, and Melies' fantasies on the other. Thus, it quickly became France's number one, and even the only, film production company.
The period between 1903 and 1909 is considered to be the years when the Pathe empire dominated the field of cinema not only in France but all over the world.
The Pathe system, which made the transition from craft to industry, worked as follows: Films, whose production costs were covered by the first twenty copies printed of each, were sold abundantly outside France, and the company was able to produce and market at least a few hundred, sometimes a thousand copies of each film. The first month of each year covered all production expenses of that year, and all the income earned in the remaining months went to the bottom line. The company had already ranked second after the arms industry, with the high dividends it distributed to its shareholders.
Starting in 1902, Pathe began to open branches in major cities such as London, Moscow, and New York. These were followed by Kiev, Budapest, Kolkata, and Singapore.
By 1908 Pathe Freres had become an international empire. So much so that it started selling twice as many films in the USA as American companies produced and sold. In addition, the company owned a copying laboratory and studio near New York, as well as valuable real estate.
After this date, the company completed its horizontal growth and moved on to vertical growth. By starting the production of raw film, machinery, and equipment, it started to become a monopoly in this field. Until 1914, the majority of the screens used in movie theaters in many countries carried a Pathe license.
Pathe, which stopped film sales in 1907, started renting them for operation only to five large companies. During these years, the company was distributing Pathe Joumal, the world's first weekly cinema newspaper, to all countries and investing in color film production. However, the glory days of the rooster-emblazoned Pathe company, namely its dominance in the European film industry, came to an end with the First World War.
The company, which ended most of its ventures in France during the war, moved to the USA towards the end of 1914 and tried to continue its existence through the Pathe Exchange company there.
With the end of the war, when it became clear that the dominance of world cinema had passed into the hands of American companies, Pathe focused on France again. However, conditions in the country changed during and after the war, production costs increased, and the domestic market was invaded by foreign films. For a while, the company tried to stay afloat by making films that were planned to be sold to America; But when these efforts did not yield results, it began to shrink from 1918 onwards gradually.
In 1929, the collapse process was completed and Charles Pathe retired by transferring all his shares. In the same years, Leon Gaumont left the business altogether and transferred part of his company to Metro Goldwyn-Mayer, one of the Hollywood giants.