It was a cinema based on spectacle, shock and sensation. As Gunning puts it, “It is the direct address of the audience, in which an attraction is offered to the spectator by a cinema showman, that defines this approach to film making (Gunning 1990: 58). According to Gunning unlike contemporary narrative cinema, which solicits a voyeuristic spectatorial gaze, early cinema is an exhibitionist cinema where the spectator is overtly acknowledged and invited to look.
Tom Gunning has described cinema prior to 1906 as a cinema of attractions (Gunning 1990: 56).
