Week 11 - Postwar Hollywood

What causes the main characters in Rebel Without a Cause to 'rebel'?

- Issues with their parents.
Plato - Lives with house keeper, lonely child
Jim - Father weak - Nuclear family
Judy - Dad does gives her a clap over a kiss, ellektra complex between the two

All the other students in High School don't like him - slash his tires.

Rebelling against their conformist parents with their subversive behaviour. The ending of the film cannot erase what has come before

Plato has homosexual traits.

Filmed in widescreen colour

the colour red connects the characters of Jim and Judy.
Judy, Red Dress
Jim, Red Jacket
Plato, Red Sock

Mise-en-scene is an important consideration throughout the film as it connotes meanings behind character identities.

Camera makes the family home seem unstable and uncentered.

Widescreen frame gives more horizontal depth.

Hierachy is established through character heights

Stairs are used in the sets and locations as an intentional motifs.

Week 8 [Seminar Notes]

Number Four from Behlmer Reading

Studio Manager to the Executive in Charge of Production

• Weather impacts on the economics of the film. When it rains, outdoor sets get wet and take a day to dry for continuity reasons. 
• Costs of organisation and transportation of staff, props and equipment for filming - all for nothing.
• Was it worth risking all that money for locations that were 'vastly superior' from ones in Hollywood compared to Chico.

Week 5 [Seminar Notes]

Censorship, The Production Code, Public Enemy (1931)

MPPDA created the production code in 1930 and try to implemented but the PCA were the ones to bring this through in 1934.

http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html


Public Enemy

Tailor scene, his character is too feminine and was taken out by the

Matt & Tom kill a police officer and run from the police

He gets sexual assaulted and the lady takes his shoes off, un-buttons his shirt and kisses him

Make criminals seem justifiable, the anti-hero

Smuggling scene, Gasoline tank full of alcohol

Plenty of alcohol is excessively shown, they steal it and drink it (film was made during the prohibition)

Matt and Mamie rolling around on the bed - location treatment

Dynamite scene - rival gang drive by Paddy Ryan's with grenades and blow it up

Tom Powers sticks up a gun shop - theft and robbery should be kept to a low


Responses to Points

Week 4 [Lecture/Seminar Notes]

Transition to Sound

It affected all 3 branches of industry.

1925-31 --> Transitional Sound Era

Period of radial technological change, affecting all 3 branches of the cinema industry (P/D/E)

--> Temporary shake-up of Hollywood’s established stylistic norms
--> Profound long-term consequences for the organization of the industry
--> Myth of The Jazz Singer (WB, 1927)

The film after the Jazz Singer by Al Jolson in 1928 which was much more successful was The Singing Fool which was a combination of a musical and talkie

Aesthetic Objections to the Sound Film

The automatic introductionn of pre-recorded synchronized sound

--> Inaccuracy of term ‘silent cinema’: films always experienced with (live) sound, delivered at point of exhibition.

--> Transition to sound - brings automatic reproduction & synchronization of sounds that have been pre-recorded.

--> Sound fixed at source: intensifies mechanization & standardization of cinematic experience as well as relations between sound and image (soundtrack physically ‘married’ to image track in sound-on-film systems)

--> Eisenstein & Pudovkin - Talkies threatened visual sophistication of the art of film.

--> Danger of 'canned theatre', it contaminated the medium

--> Film theorist Rudolph Arnrnheim (1938); film "cannot become the servant of speech without giving up its own self (SEE POWERPOINT FOR QUOTE)

--> Inherent stylization of the silent film owing to lack of synchronized sound

BUT

- Sound allows showcasing of styles of (e.g. musical or comic) performance not available to film in the silent era .

- Power of the voice – actual voices replace “dreamed voices” of the silent era (Michel Chion, Voice in Cinema, p. 8) - e.g. vernacular speech..

The Transition to Sound & The Hollywood Cinema Industry

- Concept of the sound film predates advent of silent movies. 

e.g. Thomas Edison conceived of film as a medium that would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" (qtd. S. Neale, Cinema & Technology, 63). 

- Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.

Griffith's Dream Street synch sound in open cinema

De Forest amplifying tube device bore the industry known as phonofilm. Sound could be amplified in huge musical halls and theatre's. He then went into sound production.

In 1925, since radio was so popular, to bring back audiences, studios started to produce films in colour with bigger budgets, also they created bigger screens for the films to be exhibited on. but they didn't try to synch sounds, the only studio that hopped on it first were Warner Bros.

Technical Problems with the Transition to Sound

- Recording – e.g. microphones with poor sensitivity 

- Synchronization – smooth coordination of sound & image 

- Amplification – ensuring sounds were sufficiently audible in large auditoria

Limitations of exclusively technological explanation:

• Can't explain gap between solution of technological problems & adoption of technology.
• Can't account for particular (ideological) uses to which the industry put the technologies of sound recording, mixing and reproduction.

The Technology of Sound Film

--> Technological change part of a broader industrial and institutional process in Hollywood

--> Sound technology developed in corporate research labs of:

-  American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T – owned Western Electric) &
-  the Radio Corporation of America (RCA – division of General Electric, until 1930) 

Industry Opposition to Sound Technology

The dominant film companies in the mid 1920s were:

1. Famous Players

2. Paramount

3. Loew's MGM

4. First National

(i) Failure of earlier sound systems.

(ii) Cinema business already highly stable & successful, after a period of intense competition.

(iii) Sound-film promised long term economic advantages, but conversion would be very costly in the short term.

(iv) Worry about box-office prospects of major silent-films and movie stars (e.g. Clara Bow).

(v) Sound-film threatened international distribution empire - addition of speech introduces linguistic boundaries. 

Laurel & Hardy filmed all sequences in different language to keep up with the international market with the endorsement of sound.

Warner Bros.

- Myth of WB’s reckless gamble on sound
- Gomery: investment in sound technology as part of long-term strategy of corporate expansion masterminded by Wall Street financier Waddill Catchings
- Attempt to challenge majors by exploiting sound film as differentiated product
- WB partnership with Western Electric in the Vitaphone Corporation (1926)
- Proprietary Vitaphone sound sound-on-disc system
- Exploiting of: (a) prerecorded performance as USP (‘canned vaudeville’) + (b) prerecorded soundtracks 

Fox

ß Fox set up Movietone company in 1927 to exploit sound-on-film system developed by Theodore Case

ß Released several films with Movietone soundtracks (e.g. Seventh Heaven, Sunrise)

ß Fox also competed with radio & newspaper journalism by adding sound to newsreels (cf. huge success of newsreel of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight) 

Week 3 [Seminar Notes] - Hollywood Star System

The Hollywood Star System

When we consider the 'star image' we must consider their function inside and out of the film and how they are represented to the public. These could be:

• Advertising - Magazines, Posters, Make-Up promotion
• Merchandising - Toys, costume replicas

Films can exhibit resolutions to real life problems and can shape and distort ideologies through contradictions within the narrative.

What is a flapper?

• A new breed of western woman 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behaviour. 
• Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.
• In the United States, popular contempt for Prohibition was a factor in the rise of the flapper as well as the End of WWI, it was caused by the lack of men for women during the war period.

Week 2 [Reading Notes]

Balio, Tino (1985): “Struggles for Control,1908-1930”, The American Film Industry, Revised Edition, University of Wisconsin Press: 103-131

[Notes start from page 113]

The Strand - 3,000 seat cinema, Opening night = April 14th 1914 

There was performances, orchestral accompaniment, souvenir programmes, costuming of ushers, intermissions.

The Star System

Stars provided means of differentiating product and boosted sales (p114)
It affected all 3 branches of the industry:

1. Production - Stabilised the financial side of it. The process revolved around the star - the narrative, acting, settings and lighting were all manipulated to enhance the star's qualities for their beloved fans.
2. Distribution - The star's name and image dominated the marketing strategy and provided a basis of bargaining rental price.
3. Exhibition - Ticket prices rose to keep up with the star's salaries, the film's budget and the elaborate promotional campaigns.

• Acting became the best-paid profession on earth! Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were earning $10,000 a week!
• The system worked because the public endorsed it (p116)
• A few stars from the system including Chaplin and D.W. Griffith became independent producers. In 1919 United Artists were born and this was the Apex of the star system.

Rise of Paramount (1914)

• A former General Film exchange man named W. W. Hodkinson convinced 11 regional state's rights exchanges to join forces in 1914 to form the Paramount Pictures Corporation.
• Paramount would help producers finance and advertise their films for a 35% return on the films gross which attracted some of the best producers such as Zukor's Famous Players
• Although production costs then ranged from $10,000 - 30,000, Paramount's distribution grosses soon reached the unprecedented amounts of $100,000 - 125,000 per picture. To accommodate the growing audiences, a wave of theatre construction began across the country and as this "feature craze" spread, other national distributers entered the market. (p117)
• Hodkinson believed that the 3 branches of motion pictures should be kept separate within as better pictures, better distribution and cinema/theatre management would occur only if they were separated. (p118)

Resistance to Zukor: First National

• First National Exhibitors Circuit had 26 of the country's important exhibitors signed up to this and they owned in total : 100 theatres, 30 of which were in first-run key cities.
• If first-run exhibitors from every metropolitan area joined forces and financed independent productions and distributed them amongst their respective regions, the could assure themselves a steady supply of outstanding motion picture product (p120)
• They didn't have to waste time buying or building studios, they could spent their money on buying 'stars' --> e.g. signed Pickford from Paramount with $1m contracts.

The Industry as Big Business

• By the 1920s, the movies ranked as a major industry. The 3 branches corresponded to the manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing activities of other firms in America. It was vertically integrated.

Gomery, Douglas (1992): “The Hollywood Studio System”, in Nowell-Smith, G (1992): Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford University Press; 43-53

• The emergence of the Hollywood studio system as a vertically integrated system can be found in the failures of the MPPC's (Motion Picture Patents Company) attempt to monopolise the film business
• MPPC was a combination of 10 leading American and European producers and manufactures of film equipment. They formed a 'Trust' to inflate prices of equipment that they alone could manufacture (p43)
• Other independent exhibitors and filmmakers differentiated their products from the Trust, making longer and more complicated narratives whilst the Trust stuck with two-reel, fifteen minute stories.
• Pre-talkies were cheap to distribute to foreign markets as only inter-titles had to be translated 
• Independent producers made their own theatres in major metropolitan cities, running their first-run films creating millions of dollars of profit which eventually merged into a system, which the MPPC had previously failed to accomplish - vertical integration. 
• From the demand from international markets and the profits being made, production of film was non-stop
• In less than 2 decades, the industry had moved from selling movies as a novelty to developing a finely-honed publicity machine to promote and entire system and its nationally advertised products. (p46)
• Stars provided an effective means of differentiating films, making each individual title an unmissable attraction.
• United Artist, formed in 1919 achieved great success with The Mark of Zorro [1920 Fairbanks], Robin Hood [1923 Fairbanks], Little Lord Fauntleroy [1921 Pickford] and the Gold Rush [1925 Chaplin] 
• Adolph Zukor's Famous Players film company became the largest film company in the world by 1921
• Marcos Loew owned MGM and Carl Laemmle owned Universal
• WWI offered the crucially opening for international distribution of Hollywood film's as it offered huge profits abroad which Zukor took lead on compared to other film company's in Hollywoods system of studio
• Zukor and Paramount had all the top stars, the most worldwide distribution and the most extensive and prestigious theatrea chain - the very model of the integrated business through which Hollywood's power was asserted (p51-2)
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Week 1 [Reading Notes]

STUDYING HOLLYWOOD - CONCEPTS & CONCETEXTS

READING NOTES

1.Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell (2003): “Introduction: Film History and How It Is Done”, Film History: An Introduction (Second Edition), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1-10

WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT OLD FILMS?

• Films have been the most influential media in the past 100 years and have an impact on our daily lives in various forms
• "Some offer intense artistic experiences or penetrating visions of human life in other times and places. Some are documents of everyday existence or of extraordinary historical events that continue to reverberate in our times."
• We must adjust our own field of view to accommodate what was, astonishingly, taken for granted by others.

WHAT DO FILM HISTORIANS DO?

• Film historians mount research programs
• The historian tries to describe a process or state of affairs. They asks what and who and where and when. What is this film, and who made it, and where and when? In what ways does this director's work differ from other?
• They try to explain a process or state of affairs. They ask how does this work and why does this happen? 
• They propose and explanatory argument by having asked and answer how or why based on evidence and knowledge
• Regarding evidence, there are primary and secondary resources see page 5 for details

TYPES OF EXPLANATION IN FILM HISTORY

• Biographical History: Focusing on an individual's life history
• Industrial or Economic History: Focusing on business practices
• Aesthetic History: Focusing on film art (form, style, genre)
• Technological History: Focusing on the materials and machines of film
• Social/Cultural/Political History: Focusing on the role of cinema in the larger society

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