 Arguments against the film's cinematic innovations were made as early as 1946 when French historian Georges Sadoul wrote that "the film is an encyclopedia of old techniques." Sadoul pointed out such examples as compositions that used both the foreground and the background in the films of Auguste and Louis Lumière, special effects used in the films of Georges Méliès, shots of the ceiling in Erich von Stroheim's Greed and newsreel montages in the films of Dziga Vertov.
