Which of the following is not a novelty adopted by Hollywood in the 1950's-1960's?

Static camera, minimal cutting.

Decor/mise-en-scene was no longer expressive- became something to talk into.

Talking to bodies huddles around microphones

Difficulty of silencing whirring camera.

-soundproof booth

-no tilt or travel

-only slight pans

Difficulty of recording with a single fixed microphone

-conversion was expensive

-popular stars and directors became a liability due to accents/broken english, and their way of speaking didnt match star persona

-diction coaches and dialogue writers

-reliant once again on theater for stars and stories

-Blimps- box that went over camera to quiet it.

-microphone booms

Live musicians,

moving camera and editing,

silent film actors,

and studio independence

Directors (gained a lot more power),

screenwriters,

diction coaches,

and genre of the film musical

The industry was disorganized; hoarded film stock.

-production, distribution, exhibition

=extremely disorganized

Little production, predominantly newsreels and propoganda (Agit-vehicles)

Spectator infers spatial and temporal continuity from shots of seperate elements. (editing can transcend time and space)

(In state film school, Kuleshov's workshop)

-brought country out of crisis

-film industry recovered

-hoarded film stock reappeared

-flims focus on education and entertainment

-creation of a central...

first five year plan (in 1928),

theatres closed

portable projection units were established

art put together from parts,

montage: put together from parts

focused on human labor, factory, the machine

studios were seen as factories

-characters represent a social class instead of portrayal as psychologically distinct individuals

-downplay of individual characters as central causal agents

-social forces are the source of causes and effects

-dynamic, with large # of shots

-stimulates audience

-overlapping editing

-elliptical editing (jumpcut)

-rhythmic editing

camera work- dramatic angles

special effects

realistic elements

use of contasting textures, volume, shapes, and colors to create visual tension and effects (montage not just between shots, but within a shot- montage cell)

antithetical elements clash to produce larger meaning

-intellectual cinema

-thesis + antithesis = synthesis -Marxist theory of dialect

*the extent to which he achieves it is questionable

a documentary filmmaker,

committed constructivist

-social utility of documentary, fiction films were "cine-nicotene"

influence of intolerance

montage: dynatmic, often discontinuous editing

-charges formalism by govt

-levied against any director who's films were too difficult for the average citizen to understand

- too much focus on style, not enough on idealogy

-1st five year plan implemented(1928)

-cinema was centralized

-move towards "socialist realism"

it was highly influencial to mainstream narrative filmmaking,

hollywood has adopted much of montage cinema's style, if not its ideaology

-experimentation (focus is on perspective- how do you see the world? Avant Garde plays with the form)

-creation of new forms

-manipulation of shapes and colors

-unique comparisons & combinations

-not external reality, visual sensation

-depiction of the subconscious

-fantasy

-movement in painting, film, and literature that aims to depict the workings of the subconscious, combining incongruous imagery, presenting a situation in dreamlike, irrational terms

preserving films of the past

challenged accepted notions of what film was

pure visual form, plays w/ shapes, images

surrealistic fantasies

naturalistic study of human passion and sensation/poetic realism

creates experimental cinema of visual sensation

not interested in conventional story

influenced by populist culture, cinema of expressionism disenchantment and actors. represented human condition. popular heroes on the margins of society. pessimistic atmosphere. tragic destiny/doomed quest for happiness. chiaroscuro lighting

Jean Vigo

Jean Renoir

Marcel Carne

Marcel Pagnol

Julien Duvivier

Jacques Feyder

(vertically integrated, oligopy)

Paramount

MGM

Fox

Warner Bros.

RKO

Universal

Columbia

United Artists

A Pictures: Goldwyn and Selznick

B Pictures (poverty row): Republic and Monogram Pictures

MPPDA

-public relations, foreign quotes

enforcement of code

-JOseph Breen took over production code administration (PCA)

-would be $25,000 fine; barred from most 1st run theaters

-the PCA was not actively enforced until 1934 with the PCA

-“don’ts and be carefuls”

-more risqué content produced

-i.e gangster films, sex comedics

-avoid depicting: brutality; sexual promiscuity

-marriage was a sacred institution, “Hollywood beds”

-forbid using certain words: sex, God, hell, damn, or terms deficient in gentility and tone

-Depression Era income & marketing

-concession sales

-double & triple features

-giveaways, dish nights

-attendance improved during WWII

sound recording

-unidirectional mic

-lighter booms

-multiple track recording

-symphonic score

camera movement

-1932: bell & howell rotambulator

-1936: panorama dolly

-technicolor

-musical

-screwball comedy (displaces sexual tension onto verbal sparing) *His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)

-horror film

-social problem film

-gangster film

-film noir

-the war film

Hollywood in Transition

-1946: top-earning year ever at the domestic box office in the U.S.

-$1.5 billion in admissions

-over half the population was going to the movies

-post-war industrial boom

-new prosperity

-1946: $1.7 billion gross, 98 million theatergoers

-1962: $900 million gross, 47 million theatergoers

-1930s: studios release almost 500 films

-1960s: studios release under 150 films

-american migration to the suburbs

-baby boom

-new leisure activities

-television:

-1954: 32 million tvs

-1959: in 90% of homes

-to compete: color, widescreen, stereo, 3D

-Hollywood used tv to its benefit

-HUAC  (house un-American activities committee) Hearings

-congressional hearings to investigate ties to communism within American industry

-the Hollywood ten & the blacklist

-1st session convened in 1947

-set out to prove that the screen writers’ guild was dominated by communists

-2nd session in 1951

-only 1 of 10 victims were able to resume careers

-the Hollywood ten refused to testify before congress and were imprisoned

-monopoly suit

-1938: justice department initiates suit

-1948: decision reached

-accused the big 5 of colluding to monopolize the film industry

-studios forced to divest (sell) their theaters

novelty abounds

size of screen

cinerama

cinemascope

technical gimmicks

-3D

-smell-o-vision

-color film

-improved sound technology

-more daring films

-exploitation

-film studios get into tv production

-drive-ins

-1933: first theater

-1956: 4000

-between 1933-1956: 4000 INDOOR theaters closed

-appeal: cost, target demographic (baby boomers)

-art cinemas

-1950: fewer than 100

-mid 1960s: more than 600

-importance of agent

-lew wasserman pioneered this approach, percentages

-package units

-script&talent

-exploitation films

-roger corman (AIP), saturation booking, tv ads and summer releases

-subjective narrative techniques

-intricate narrative construction

-realism (setting, lighting, narration)

-long takes, deep focus

-reevaluation of old genres

-term developed by French film critics after WWII

-noticed a prevailing sense of cynicism, pessimism, and darkness

-many of the films are based on pulp detective novels of the 1920s and 1930s

-the closest mainstream HW cinemas has to an “art cinema”

-dark, rain-slicked streets

-crime and corruption

-urban environment

-private eye, hardboiled detective

-femme fatale

-chiaroscuro

-disorientation and confusion

-repressed sexuality

-masculinity in crisis

• Historical Context
  • Devastation of World War II in Europe
    • 35 million people dead
    • Millions homeless
    • Factories destroyed
    • Massive debt
  • U.S. influence in Europe
    • Marshall Plan
      • U.S. offers aid to European countries

• Limit imports

• Levy charges on expected earnings

• Freeze profits
  • Earnings kept and invested in country

• Establish quotas

• European governments invest in film industry

• Create cash prizes

• European co-productions ("Runaway productions")
• Film Festivals

• In opposition to CHC
• Non-linear and episodic plot structure
  • Ellipsis (…)

• All detail motivated by:
  • Realism or Authorial Expressivity

• Characters lack defined goals
• Realism affects Space and Time
• Ambiguity
• Cinema of Auteurs

• Challenge Hollywood norms

• Change the way we see the world

• Change the way we watch movies

• Narrative Transitivity-Intransitivity
• Identification- estrangement

• Transparaency- foregrounding

• Single diegesis- multiple diegesis
  • Diegesis= the world of film

• Closure- aperture

• Pleasure- displeasure

• Fiction- reality

• Film industry under Mussolini
  • Outside films banned
  • Cinecitta
  • Dominated by fascist propoganda

• Escapist comedies

• Musical romances

• Historical spectacles

• White telephone (family melodramas)

• Little international appeal or artistic innovation

• 1948: Unemployment at 22%

• Infrastructure destroyed by the war, including cinecitta and its studios

• Little money for film production

• Shortage of equipment and film stock
• Actors difficult to find employment

• 1942: called for new approach to cinema

• Abolish contrived plots

• Ged Rid of Professional actors

• Take the the Streets

• "the ideal film would be 90 minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens."

• Loose plot, improvisation
• Non-professional actors

• On location shooting

• Visual roughness of documentary

• Open ended

• Social commentary