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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Cell Life, Physiological Time, and Microcinematography, or the Chicken that Ate Manhattan
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2003-10-01
2022-12-03
2003-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Scott Curtis
2003/10/01
Northwestern University 
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Cell Life, Physiological Time, and Microcinematography, or the Chicken that Ate Manhattan
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CELL LIFE, PHYSIOLOGICAL TIME, AND MICROCINEMATOGRAPHY, OR
THE CHICKEN THAT ATE MANHATTAN
Scott Curtis, Northwestern University




  I’d like to start with some headlines, which I found in a story from a November 1925
edition of the New York Herald Tribune:

  “‘Immortality’ Is Achieved in Chicken Heart.”
  “Tissue Fed by Dr. Carrel Since 1913 Pared Daily to Prevent Frankenstein Monster, Prof.
  Green Says.”
  “It Might Live Forever.”
  “Flesh in Rockefeller Institute Would Cover Manhattan if Not Trimmed.”

  Never known for its balanced reporting, the Herald Tribune goes on to explain that,
according to Arthur G. Green, a former professor of chemistry at Leeds University who
recently visited the Rockefeller Institute, “a bit of tissue from a chicken’s heart kept
alive since 1913 would have grown large enough to blanket Manhattan had it not been
cut every 24 hours.” Furthermore, Dr. Alexis Carrel and his team made a motion pictu-
re record of the tissue’s growth:

  “It was one of the most amazing things I ever saw,” Professor Green said. “The film of the
  growth of the tissue was taken during twenty-four hours and must have involved a vast
  amount of reel. What takes place in the twenty-four hours is reduced […] to a comparatively
  few minutes. You see on the screen a growth and a development nothing short of cosmic.
  Combustions, spirals, pulsations – all the marvels of biology seem to condense themselves
  into those few moments.” 1

  The experiment to which Professor Green refers was not the product of some mad
scientist intent on dominating the world with chicken skin. It is, in fact, one of the most
famous experiments in the biological research method of tissue culture, in which frag-
ments of tissue from an animal or plant are transferred to an artificial environment in
which they can continue to survive and function. With the cell population thus isola-
ted, the researcher can better examine and manipulate cell behavior. In this case, Carrel,
a Nobel-prize-winning physician and a member of the Rockefeller Institute, created a
culture of cells from the heart of an embryonic chick in January 1912.2 Carrel did suc-
cessfully maintain the culture until he left the Institute in 1938, and (theoretically spea-
king) the culture could have doubled its volume every 48 hours, but whether Carrel’s
methods were rigorously scientific and repeatable was and is a matter of controversy.3
Still, noted biologists have admired Carrel’s technique and results, dubbing them “the
single greatest achievement in the field of tissue culture.”4

­58                                                                CINEMA & Cie, no. 3, fall 2003
                                                                CELL LIFE, PHYSIOLOGICAL TIME




                                                                Figure 1: Marey’s chronophoto-
                                                                graphic microscope, 1894


  What matters here is not so much the validity of the experiment as its cinematic record.
Professor Green describes seeing films of cell life and behavior made by Carrel at the
Institute. Green may not know much about how these films are made, but his reaction to
them is fairly typical, even in the scientific community: “You see on the screen a growth
and a development nothing short of cosmic. Combustions, spirals, pulsations – all the
marvels of biology seem to condense themselves into those few moments.” These films of
cell life contain within them a fascinating paradox: that a world so small could have
“cosmic” dimensions and implications; that a cinematic record of cell time – recorded in
the smallest possible increments – could result in the impression of an almost frightening
acceleration of life. The sense of awe triggered by these films is not unrelated to the sense
of awe provoked by Carrel’s experiment. In fact, I would argue that the rather incredible
idea that a tissue culture could overrun New York City is due in large part to the use of
motion pictures in the study of cell behavior. This essay, then, will offer an exploration of
the influence of early microcinematography on biological conceptions of cell life.
  Like most histories of scientific motion pictures, the story of microcinematography
begins with Etienne-Jules Marey. The precise date of the first moving pictures taken
through a microscope has not been recorded, but Marey devotes a chapter to the techni-
que in his 1894 book, Le Mouvement. Even at this early date, Marey recognized the tech-
nical issues that would continue to pester micro-cinematography: illumination, vibra-
tion, and the ability to focus and expose the image simultaneously. Marey’s design was
such that the researcher had to shoot “blind;” while he could find and focus on the object
with a microscope, a prism stood between the preparation plate and the film plane: “On
pressing this knob [Knob P in figure 1 indicates the prism mechanism in Marey’s device],
the prism is brought into play, and the image of the preparation is projected along the
tube of the microscope; on pulling the knob out, the prism is removed and the image falls
directly upon the ground glass or upon the sensitized plate.”5 Once the focusing is com-
plete, then, the knob has to be pulled and the photographic process initiated, by which
time the cells may be out of frame or the observed behavior completed.
  Marey’s experiments were continued by various disciples, most of them working at
the Marey Institute. Lucien Bull, for example, collaborated with Professor Antoine
Pizon in 1903 to record the multiplication of a colony of Botryllus, or sea squirts.6 His

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SCOTT CURTIS

apparatus aligned the camera and microscope horizontally, a partial solution to the
focusing issue, but left unresolved were problems with illumination and vibration. In
1909, Julius Ries, a biologist who worked at the Marey Institute, fashioned a similar
device, and encountered the same difficulties as Marey, although his experiments had
great success and enabled him to make important claims based on his microscopic
films.7 Another disciple of Marey and pioneer in the field, François-Franck, adapted
Marey’s apparatus and made chronophotographic plates of a variety of biological phe-
nomena from 1902 to 1908.8 Lucienne Chevroton, who worked at the Collège de France
alongside François-Franck, used a comparable design in 1909 (figure 2) to record micro-
cinematographic investigations of a sea urchin egg (figure 3).9




Figure 2 (left): Chevroton’s apparatus

Figure 3 (right): Sea urchin eggs, Chevroton, 1909


  In 1909, at the same time that Ries and Chevroton were publishing their work on cine-
microbiology, Jean Comandon presented his first films to the French Academy of
Sciences.10 With the resources of Pathé Frères behind him, Comandon was able to solve
the most vexing problems of this technique and to create films of unprecedented clarity.
His design combined the best of previous efforts to overcome lighting and vibration pro-
blems. In microcinematography, illumination is particularly troublesome as higher
magnifications require stronger light sources. If the source is too dim, the film will be
underexposed; but if the light is too hot, it will kill the specimen. Like François-Franck
and Chevroton, Comandon used an arc light far away from the microscope; as in the
Marey device, a shutter interrupts the light rays and protects the organisms from over-
heating. Vibration is the largest obstacle to microcinematography: at high magnification,
any movement at all can cause blurring. Comandon separated each of the parts of the
apparatus (light system, microscope, and camera) so that they were free from contact with
each other and bolted them securely to a wall (figure 4). By 1930, Comandon had modified
his design to make an even steadier apparatus, built on concrete and secured via four
pylons to the ceiling (figure 5).11 Yet the results of his 1909 equipment – clear, steady films
with good contrast and excellent magnification – have rarely been equaled (figure 6).
  Pathé Frères’ support of Comandon coincided with the company’s plan to expand its
production of educational films for theatrical and non-theatrical distribution.12 Charles
Urban had already had some success as early as 1903 with a series of microcinematic edu

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                                                                       CELL LIFE, PHYSIOLOGICAL TIME




                                                     Figure 4 (left above): Comandon’s apparatus, 1909



                                                     Figure 5 (above): Comandon’s apparatus, 1930



                                                     Figure 6 (left): Trypanosomes and spirochetes
                                                     Comandon, 1909


cationals titled The Unseen World, and both Gaumont and Éclair would soon follow
Pathé Frères’ lead.13 Shortly after Comandon started his cinematographic studies,
Charles Pathé made him director of the scientific branch of Pathé Frères, giving him a
special studio and laboratory for his work. From 1909 until 1920, Comandon produced a
wide variety of microcinematographic studies for Pathé Frères, which were seen by
scientists and the public alike, including a 1913 study that attempted to capture Carrel’s
results by recording cellular growth in a tissue culture taken from the spleen and heart
of a chicken embryo.14 With this proliferation of images – after all, film, like cells, repro-
duces easily and multiplies at an alarming rate – the boundary between science and its
popularization is hard to draw. The same films that were shown to professional gathe-
rings of physicians and biologists were distributed in Europe by Pathé and in North
America by George Kleine. The same awe that nickelodeon audiences expressed was
expressed by men of science. One such observer waxed eloquent:

  To see the micro-organism move, evolve, and revolve in the midst of normal cells, the spiro-
  chetes uncoil and undulate in the fluids which they inhabit, to see them hide behind the
  blood corpuscles, or in clumps of fibrin, turn, twist, and rotate inside of a red corpuscle as if
  in a cage – to see them apparently screw into each other as in a strange conjunction; to see
  trypanosomes moving back and forth in every direction, displaying their delicate undulat-
  ing membrane, shoving aside the blood cells that are in their way, while by their side the leu-
  cocytes lazily extend or retract their protoplasmic pseudopods – is to realize that we are in

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SCOTT CURTIS

  the presence of an unknown world, a world of the infinitesimally small, but a world as real
  and as complex as that which is visible to our eyes.15

   If any biologists at all frowned on the popular connotations of these films, they ulti-
mately could not deny their utility, for a variety of reasons. First, the motion picture
apparatus provided an unprecedented level of convenience for the cell biologist. No
longer would he or she have to sit hunched over the microscope, waiting endless hours
for something to happen. Now the cinematograph could watch for them – an automa-
tic, untiring observer of an endless, constant process. Second, the film itself provided an
inscription of the event, a recording that could be measured, manipulated, repeated,
stored, and reproduced, much like the cells themselves. Third, the projected image
amplified the work of the microscope by further magnifying the event, and thus
making it a more public event. Until then, cell biology had been a lonely field – the
majority of occurrences beneath the microscope could not be seen by fellow biologists
or students. Now, the event could be shared (and publicly validated) on the big screen,
altering the sense of cellular scale as well. Finally, the cinematograph – because it could
also alter the scale of cellular time – could capture events that were not otherwise visi-
ble. Without the cinematograph, these events are difficult to observe; in a real sense
they would not exist without microcinematography. With the advent of cinema, scien-
tific events become, as Walter Benjamin noted, our “optical unconscious.” The world is
revealed by cinematography in the same way that our psychic unconscious is revealed
by – and comes into being by virtue of – psychoanalysis.16
   The very existence of microcinematography not only supports cell biology’s research
agenda, it also redirects it and influences the questions the field asks.17 This dependent
relationship is most lucid in cell biology and cytology’s (cytology is the study of cells)
new emphasis on cell function, which coincides with the development of microcine-
matography. In his 1931 article “The New Cytology,” Carrel complains that, for nearly a
century, cytologists have “contented themselves with the study of form, and overlooked
that of function. […] When cells are considered only as structural elements, they are
deprived of all the properties that make them capable of organizing as a living
whole.”18 From the invention of the microscope to the twentieth century, biologists
had focused their efforts on descriptive morphology, on the anatomy and structure of
the cell. With the development of microcinematography and tissue culture, the cytolo-
gist can consider the cell in relation to its environment and, most importantly, to time.
Carrel again:

  A tissue is evidently an enduring thing. Its functional and structural conditions become
  modified from moment to moment. Time is really the fourth dimension of living organisms.
  It enters as a part into the constitution of a tissue. Cell colonies, or organs, are events which
  progressively unfold themselves. They must be studied like history.19

  Microcinematography allows this unfolding to occur, allows this new emphasis on
function. In one sense, the history of microbiology replays Ernst Haeckel’s maxim
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” the idea that the development of the individual
mimics the development of the species.20 The move from the still image of the micro-
scope to the moving image of microcinematography is replicated in the move in cell
biology from anatomy (structure, stillness) to physiology (function, movement).

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                                                                    CELL LIFE, PHYSIOLOGICAL TIME

  Microcinematography influenced cell biology in more subtle ways as well. The lan-
guage of cytologists, how they describe cell behavior, indicates a change in their con-
ception of cell life. An early handbook on tissue culture signals this shift:

  The observations described in this chapter emphasize the important fact that the cell is
  essentially dynamic. Even in the vegetative stage it has been shown that no cell organ is
  wholly at rest, whilst mitosis [cell division] marks a paroxysm of activity in which every
  structure is in almost violent movement.21

  This description of cell behavior, which actually occurs with almost glacial slowness,
is only possible under the influence of time-lapse cinematography. The new emphasis
on cell function and duration combines with microcinematography to generate
notions of cell life as continuously moving, dynamic, constantly growing. And from the
idea of cellular development as a constant, violent, and unstoppable process, it is only a
small leap to “The Chicken That Ate Manhattan.” In contrast to other types of time-
lapse films, such as that of a flower blooming, cell microcinematography shows thou-
sands upon millions of individual organisms running about chaotically, teeming with
alarming life. By condensing cellular time, time-lapse microcinematography gives the
impression of the expansion of cellular space.
  Carrel best illustrates this cinematic connection between cellular time and space in
his theory of physiological time, in which he expresses his fascination with the diffe-
rent rates at which our bodies heal – faster when we are young, slower when we are
older. Clearly, according to him, our bodies keep time in a way that is sometimes incom-
patible with both our subjective conception of time and with what he calls “physical
time,” the time of the outside world. Inside our bodies, we function at different rates at
different times. Like many of his generation, Carrel was impressed by Henri Bergson’s
conception of time and duration, and acknowledges his debt to the philosopher:

  Physiological time is part of the body, while physical time is foreign to it. The present of a
  living organism does not pass into nothingness. It never ceases to be, because it remains in
  the memory and enters in the tissues. Bergson has clearly shown how the past persists in the
  present. The body is obviously made up of the past. While the present glides into the past, it
  seems to assume a spatial form. During development, an animal extends simultaneously in
  time and in space. Temporal extension is absolutely indispensable to spatial extension.22

   Operating under the sign of Bergson, Carrel articulates the uniquely modern idea that
there are different types of time: physical (or clock time), psychological, and here physio-
logical. His theory brings attention to the relativity of physiological time, relativity that
Einstein and Proust have stressed in physics and literature, respectively. With Carrel, the
biological idea of “growth” becomes recast as a connection between time and space; not
merely as a mathematical equation – that is, a physical development of the organism
taking place over time. Both Bergson and Carrel argue that time – the past – imbeds itself
in the organism, that time eventually becomes space. Once imbedded, once reified, time
is analyzable only through marks and traces left in space, like the rings of a tree. But cine-
ma’s ability to separate kinds of time – via time-lapse or slow motion – offers the oppor-
tunity to explore this relation between time and space as it occurs.23 Time-lapse cine-
matography allowed biologists to indulge in the distinctly modern attempt to separate

                                                                                               ­63
SCOTT CURTIS

and examine different types of time. The exaggerations inherent in time-lapse microci-
nematography’s depiction of cellular scale eventually influenced their conceptions of
cell life and time, while simultaneously conjuring up nightmare visions of growth.



1 “‘Immortality’ Is Achieved in Chicken Heart,” New York Herald Tribune (November 22,
  1925), p. 26. This clipping can be found in folder 123, box 75, Alexis Carrel Papers, Special
  Collections, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington.
2 Alexis Carrel, “On the Permanent Life of Tissues outside of the Organism,” Journal of
  Experimental Medicine, no. 15 (1912), pp. 516-528. A survey of the Carrel Papers’ clipping
  files indicates that Carrel’s remarkable experiment received considerable publicity over the
  years, with peaks especially in May 1912, after the initial announcement, January 1924, mar-
  king the 12th anniversary, and November 1925 after an AP wire story was picked up by
  dozens of papers. The Herald Tribune story is a result of this last wave of publicity. Alexis
  Carrel (1873-1944) won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1912 for his development of a techni-
  que for suturing blood vessels. After moving to the United States from France in 1904, Carrel
  joined the staff of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City and began
  his tissue culture experiments. He returned to France during WWI and, with English chemist
  Henry Drysdale Dakin, developed both an ideal wound antiseptic and the Carrel-Dakin
  method of treating wounds with the solution. Carrel returned to the U.S. in 1919.
3 See, for example, J. A. Witkowski, “Alexis Carrel and the Mysticism of Tissue Culture,”
  Medical History, no. 23 (1979), pp. 279-296; and J. A. Witkowski, “Dr. Carrel’s Immortal Cells,”
  Medical History, no. 24 (1980), pp. 129-142.
4 Ross Granville Harrison, “The Status and Significance of Tissue Culture,” in Sally Wilens
  (ed.), Organization and Development of the Embryo (New Haven: Yale University Press,
  1969), p. 88.
5 Etienne-Jules Marey, Movement; trans. by Eric Pritchard (New York: D. Appleton and
  Company, 1895), p. 296. Other researchers continued to struggle with the problem of focu-
  sing and exposing at the same time: Scheffer’s device (built by Oskar Messter’s company) allo-
  wed the researcher to focus on the film plane itself – a fine innovation – but which required
  that the researcher stick his or her head into a light-tight black bag while viewing the phe-
  nomena, which was inconvenient, to say the least. See W. Scheffer, “Über mikrokinemato-
  graphische Aufnahmen,” Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, Vol. 47, no. 12 (March 21, 1910),
  pp. 536-537.
6 Cinémathèque Scientifique Internationale, Les Pionniers du cinéma scientifique: Lucien Bull
  (Brussels: Hayez, 1967), p. 11.
7 Julius Ries, “Kinematographie der Befruchtung und Zellteilung,” Archiv für mikroskopische
  Anatomie und Entwicklungsgeschichte, no. 74 (1909), pp. 1-31.
8 For a representative sampling, see François-Franck, “La Chronophotographie simultanée du
  cœur et des courbes cardiographiques chez les mammifères,” Comptes rendus hebdomadai-
  res des séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie, no. 54 (November 8, 1902), pp. 1193-
  1197; “Note sur quelques points de technique relatifs à la photographie et à la chronophoto-
  graphie avec le magnésium à déflagration lente,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séan-
  ces et mémoires de la Société de Biologie, no. 55 (December 5, 1903), pp. 1538-1540; “Études
  graphiques et photographiques de mécanique respiratoire comparée,” Comptes rendus heb-
  domadaires des séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie, no. 61 (July 28, 1906), pp. 174-

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     176; “Démonstrations de microphotographie instantanée et de chronomicrophotographie,”
     Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie, no. 62
     (May 25, 1907), pp. 964-967. Although many of his citations are incorrect, Thierry Lefebvre,
     “Contribution à l’histoire de la microcinématographie: de François-Franck à Comandon,”
     1895, no. 14 (June 1993), pp. 35-43, is an essential introduction.
9    L. Chevroton, F. Vlès, “La cinématique de la segmentation de l’œuf et la chronophotographie
     du développement de l’Oursin,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie
     des Sciences, no. 149 (November 8, 1909), pp. 806-809.
10   Jean. Comandon, “Cinématographie, à l’ultra-microscope, de microbes vivants et des particu-
     les mobiles,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences, no. 149
     (November 22, 1909), pp. 938-941. See also Isabelle O’Gomes, “L’œuvre de Jean Comandon,” in
     Alexis Martinet (ed.), Le cinéma et la science (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994), pp. 78-85.
11   Anthony R. Michaelis, Research Films in Biology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Medicine
     (New York: Academic Press, 1955), p. 45.
12   Richard Abel, “In the Belly of the Beast: The Early Years of Pathé-Frères,” Film History, Vol. 5,
     no. 4 (1993), pp. 363-385.
13   For more on this aspect of popular scientific cinema, see Oliver Gaycken, “‘A Drama Unites
     Them in a Fight to the Death’: Some Remarks on the Flourishing of a Cinema of Scientific
     Vernacularization in France, 1909-1914,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,
     Vol. 22, no. 3 (2002), pp. 353-374.
14   J. Comandon, C. Levaditi and S. Mutermilch, “Étude de la vie et de la croissance des cellules in
     vitro a l’aide de l’enregistrement cinématographique,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des
     séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie, no. 74 (March 1, 1913), pp. 464-467.
15   Anonymous, quoted in Rudolph Matas, “The Cinematograph as an Aid to Medical Education
     and Research,” Transactions of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association, no. 24
     (1911), pp. 19-20.
16   Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland,
     and Gary Smith (eds.), Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, 1927-1934
     (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 512.
17   I have recently found that Hannah Landecker comes to substantially the same conclusion in
     her “Technologies of Living Substance: Tissue Culture and Cellular Life in Twentieth Century
     Biomedicine,” Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999).
18   Alexis Carrel, “The New Cytology,” Science, no. 73 (March 20, 1931), pp. 297-298.
19   Ibid.
20   Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), German zoologist and evolutionist, put forth his (now discredi-
     ted) theories of recapitulation in a variety of books, most notably Evolution of Man: A
     Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny (New York: D.
     Appleton and Company, 1892) and The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth
     Century (New York-London: Harper & Brothers, 1900).
21   T. S. P. Strangeways, Tissue Culture in Relation to Growth and Differentiation (Cambridge: W.
     Heffer & Sons, 1924), p. 10.
22   Alexis Carrel, “Physiological Time,” Science, no. 74 (December 18, 1931), p. 620.
23   Carrel’s own summation of the importance of cinematography for cytology can be found in
     an unpublished manuscript, “Le mode de locomotion des cellules des tissues et du sang étu-
     dié par la cinématographie,” folder 92, box 22, Alexis Carrel Papers, Special Collections,
     Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington.


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