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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005
Paramount
Loew's/MGM
Fox
Warner Bros
RKO and the Minors: Universal, Columbia and United Artists.
The second part goes on to cover ‘The Classic Studio Era 1931-51' when the studios were at their apogee producing hundreds of films every year before the threat of declining audiences (because of urbanisation and competition from TV etc). Although the ranking was virtually the same (except that Gomery couples Disney with its distributor RKO and to the minors, and he adds the B-film factories like Republic and Mongram [noted for churning out westerns and serials etc]), this period also saw the sorry demise of RKO- Radio, destroyed by the mismanagement and regrettable taste of the reclusive Howard Hughes who considered the studio to be his play toy.
The last section covers ‘The Modern Hollywood Studio System' and how the studios were taken over by big business including Rupert Murdoch (Twentieth Century Fox) and huge multi-media conglomerates such as Time Warner AOL (Warner Bros) - these businesses even embracing major TV networks. The ranking now being:
Universal
Paramount
Warners
Twentieth Century Fox
Disney
Columbia and Sony Pictures
There are also sections on the Hays Office and the Academy and unions and agents and a chapter on the rise of Lew Wasserman the Hollywood agent who took Universal into the major league of studios and reinvented the studio system.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 W29 2001
In the chapter “Mr. Movies—Cecil B. Demille and Filmmaking in Hollywood’s Golden Age,” the author chronicles Cecil B. Demille’s professional and personal life in Hollywood from 1913 until his death in 1959. DeMille came to Hollywood in 1913 when he could no longer make money working for stage productions. Early on, DeMille revealed he was a stickler for detail. This proved successful, as the majority of the films he turned out were popular. As his career progressed, DeMille had a clear progression of styles, from sex comedies in the 1920s to overblown epics with seven figure budgets in the 1940s. Following his financial success (he made more in a week than most people made in a year), DeMille stayed true to stereotype—he bought a fancy car, a fancy house as well as a weekend home with a pool and the iron gates from the set of The King of Kongs.
The immediate connection to the film The Day of the Locust in this chapter is the mention of the film The Buccaneer starring Anthony Quinn. This is the film whose premiere immediately preceded the riot at the end of the film. However, as the chapter goes on to describe the productions and life of Cecil B. DeMille, more similarities to The Day of the Locust appear. The big budget epics that DeMille was known for directly coincide with the production that appears in the film. It seems almost arbitrary when Tod is asked, “What do you know about Waterloo?” and this fascination with epic historical recreations coincides with those that brought DeMille success. Even the autocratic style with which the director in the film shouts at the cast of the film matches the reported personality of DeMille. Further, DeMille’s excesses–a large, elaborate house with a pool as well as fancy cars and dress—directly tie to those of Claude Estee in the film. However, the chapter conveys a depth to DeMille’s life that clearly differentiates him from Estee. While Estee is a caricature designed to illustrate the alleged emptiness that pervades even the lives of the successful in Hollywood, DeMille lived a rich life that included interests and successes distinct from the film world.
Chris Morris writes this article in August 2001, just as the popularity of the relatively new home video format DVD was starting to gain popularity. Movie titles were released incrementally in this new all-digital format.
Morris writes that the popularity of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane has created a high demand for the film to be released to the new DVD video format. Warner Home had been working on a 60th anniversary release and it was planned for the 25 of September in that same year. This new release was widely expected to be visually and sonically ungraded from the previous releases to home video. Morris writes that Warner, in their attempts to rerelease Citizen Kane, had originally not been able to find a suitable quality source film. RKO’s original camera negatives had been burned in a 1980 vault fire and as a result had also hampered past efforts a restoration. The 1991 VHS release had featured the copy owned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, however this print had dirt and scratches on it, among other defects. Morris reports, however, that after patient and careful searching, Warner had found a new nitrate fine-grain print in a European archive and that this copy has offered better picture quality and served as an improved audio source. The improved audio quality is very important because the original score had a very high dynamic range. He also reports that the new DVD release would include an interview with Roger Ebert, a 1941 newsreel about the film’s premiere, and the documentary film of the Hearst-Welles conflict, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.
One might think that just like a personal computer user, large Hollywood movie studios would have countless backup copies of their master reels. This seems not to be the case. A fire at a single film vault destroyed RKO’s only master copy. Orson Welles was the recipient of the actual production negatives and his copy was also lost in a fiery accident in the 1970s. By re-mastering and fully digitizing the remaining high quality prints, the data can be stored in numerous locations very inexpensively and very safely. As we learned in class, nitrate has a propensity to catch on fire and is very dangerous in that respect. We also learned in class that Hollywood is usually very slow to adopt new media formats. DVD hit store shelves in mid-1997 yet this movie was released in late 2001, almost 4 years later. The studios might have an excuse in this case – the long and lucky search for a suitable master copy.
an in-depth look at the genres that overwhelmed it for much of the twentieth-century.
An understanding of the many factors that drove films to be centered
on the topics that they were then lends to a more comprehensive picture of what
the film industry and American culture were during the studio period. Schatz
divides his book into two main parts: a theoretical look at genre film-making followed
by case studies of six dominant genres characteristic of the Hollywood studio system.
The genre that Schatz explores that is most relevant to "The Philadelphia Story" is
the one on The Screwball Comedy (Chapter 6, p. 150-185). Schatz outlines the general
convention of the screwball comedy, often characterized by portrayals of the American
elite and social and sexual tensions between the sexes- usually between a frustrated
man and woman from different backgrounds who fight their way through fast-paced and
witty dialogue only to realize that they are destined for each other. The themes in
screwball comedies usually deal with class issues and romantic or sexual ones.
Schatz notes the
huge popularity of these films during the Great Depression. He mentions "The
Philadelphia Story" specifically in order to discuss a variation of the archetypal
screwball comedy that became popular in the 1940s: the divorce-remarriage variation.
In these films the screwball couple have already been joined together in marriage
but then something goes awry and the movie is spent reconciling this differences.
"The Philadelphia Story" is a prime example for this sub-genre, with the relationship
between Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven occupying its plot and manifesting itself
in typical, and highly entertaining, screwball manner.
Biographer Charlotte Chandler relies mostly on direct quotations from Billy Wilder to let the story of his life come across. Her book's chapter on Sabrina contains Wilder's reflections and memories of writing and directing the film. These thoughts come from the perspective of decades after the film's original release, and give insight into what could have been a very different movie, but turned out to be Sabrina.
The film was adapted from a play, Samuel Taylor's Sabrina Fair. Wilder began work on the adaptation, along with Taylor, before the play even opened on Broadway. Wilder had no qualms about making changes when adapting this play for the big screen, and he wanted to tweak the dialogue to fit the stars he was hoping would appear in the film (Audrey Hepburn and at the time, Cary Grant). Once the play opened successfully though, Wilder and Taylor began to disagree about the degree of change necessary, leading to Taylor quitting and being replaced by another writer, Ernest Lehman.
It was Lehman who convinced Wilder to steer clear of a sex scene between Sabrina and Linus Larrabee, because it would have hurt Hepburn's image. Lehman and Wilder both agreed that Hepburn was a special actress. Because of her grace, she was perfectly suited for the film's Cinderella allegory. Hepburn had a similar respect for Wilder. This is in contrast to the director's often adversarial relationship with Humphrey Bogart, who played Linus Larrabee.
Chandler notes that Wilder chose to play up Hepburn's "Cinderella quality," and this is evident in her first appearance in the film, when a full moon sits over her shoulder. This fairy tale theme is also echoed in the film's opening narration. Though Hepburn narrates, she is not in character as Sabrina, and this sets the scene for the idyllic story. The class shift and Sabrina's infatuation with older men are also fairy tale-type elements.
Chandler's snapshot of Wilder provides a way for moviewatchers to see the human side of film--though a commodity for making money, directors, writers, and actors could leave personal marks by infusing films with their own ideas.
Some of the reason for the May-December theme had to do with casting, and were not originally intended. In Sabrina, the role of Linus Larrabee was originally meant for Cary Grant, so when it went to Humphrey Bogart, a man much older than Audrey Hepburn, the role took on new layers of meaning. Linus came to be seen additionally as a father figure to Hepburn's young Sabrina. Casting Gary Cooper opposite Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon yielded similar results, as did choosing the iconic Marilyn Monroe to portray what had been a more average role on the Broadway stage in The Seven Year Itch. But Dick also tries to connect this motif to a theme or motivation in Wilder's life. He notes that Wilder's age when he was working on these movies might have affected his outlook. In middle age, the theme of rejuvenation may have been of particular interest to him, and the fatherly relationships may have reflected his own love for his daughter at the time.
In Sabrina, Dick sees one father-daughter bond being replaced with another, the first biological, the second metaphorical. Dick argues that in her relationship with Linus, Sabrina re-channels the love she used to reserve for her father towards her beau. Linus provides financial security and protection for Sabrina, just as a father would. This situation is only believable because the film operates as a fairy tale, Dick says.
Grouping these films together is interesting, but from the descriptions of Love in the Afternoon and The Seven Year Itch, it doesn't seem that the films have as much in common with each other thematically (aside from romance) as Dick might have us believe. And some of what they do have in common, as Dick admits, has do with coincidences of casting. This grouping seems to serve best simply as a way for Dick to organize Wilder's many films.
Hollywood was no stranger to employing immigrant talent by this time, and Billy Wilder himself had fled Nazi Europe. Hepburn left Holland for similar reasons. Though many of Wilder's film deal with internationalism, their meanings can be laced with ambiguity, perhaps because of Wilder's own conflicted personal history (his family had died in concentration camps.) These ambiguities echo weightier political and cultural questions.
Smith notes that foreign starlets like Hepburn were celebrated in this time period, but the most famous males were mostly American. Indeed, Bogart was known for his ruggedly American role in Casablanca. This gendering goes back to the reconfiguring of the May-December romance into a symbol for the triumph of American culture in Europe.
Smith traces the history of competition between Hollywood and the French cinema, arguing that the Larrabees' business in Sabrina reflexively mirrors America's "cowboy-style" business tactics. Sabrina's time in Paris teaches her feminine skills that make her attractive for American consumption, and because Sabrina must be out of the way for David Larrabee to marry into the sugarcane business, Linus's courtship with her is originally just another business move for the greater good. When asked why the merger is necessary, Smith quotes Linus, painting America as a postwar savior: "So a new industry goes up in an underdeveloped area and once barefooted kifs have shoes, washed faces, and their teeth fixed." American commodities, as in the Kitchen Debate, came to signify American superiority.
Once Sabrina remakes herself, she becomes an object for men to possess and exchange, sometimes without her knowing it. Smith points to Sabrina's enigmatic and changing class status as a symbol of the promise Americanization would hold for postwar Europe. Though initially reading a political agenda into this fairy tale story might seem like a bit of a stretch, Smith makes a convincing argument that might apply to many films of the age, when Hollywood was selling not just movies, but the American way of life.
In this article, Dowd and Pallotta offer a sociological perspective on the movie genre of romantic comedies. Cultural ideals of romance, they say, have changed throughout time, and the changes of the 20th century can be analyzed through movies. Movies are imbedded with cultural scripts that reflect the social norms of various ages. Dowd and Pallotta aim to complete a systematic analysis of romantic comedies, and to do so, they set strict definitions for what would constitute such a movie, leaving out movies that were no longer available, movies that featured romance only as a side plot, movies that mixed genres, and more. After using their definitions to rule out all inapplicable films, they ends up 182 films that qualified, all made between 1930 and 1999. Though not individually analyzed, Sabrina was included in this group of films, thus contributing to the analysis as a whole.
Because this article takes a methodological approach, it is not very accessible for the average film scholar. It also talks about trends as a whole, leaving out the detailed scene analyses that those interested in films often enjoy. But the article does a good job of trying to examine what the medium of film might have to say about our culture, and its strength lies in its ability to offer empirical evidence of trends, such as an explosion of romantic comedies in the 1990s, as opposed to individual examples. In this way, we can look at the trends of particular decades. When Sabrina was released, in the 1950s, for example, romantic drama was more popular than romantic comedy, a reversal of what is currently true. Other subsets that are popular now, such as teen romances or romances that feature supernatural elements (like 1990's Ghost), were nearly nonexistent in the 1950s.
The study also found that cultural conditions have effectively killed many formerly popular plotlines of romance movies. Couples in different classes, for example, no longer offer a "convincing dramatic impediment." Movies that feature these aging romantic conventions," then, can only remain popular today as "relics of an earlier era." This statement serves to justify Sabrina's ongoing popularity despite its perhaps hard-to-swallow plotline. All in all, romantic films, even the current ones, do continue to reinforce some of the more conservative romantic tendencies in our culture, namely the importance of marriage and fidelity, and this has not changed since the days when Sabrina was released.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 C495 2006
For Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), the masculinity associated with his uniform plays an integral role in his relationship with his wife Marie (Virginia Mayo), who has only known him as an Air Force Captain. This masculinity is what draws Marie to Fred, and she insists he continue wearing the uniform despite his attempts to adjust into civilian life. Military uniform also plays an important role in Fred’s story because of what it represents, which is a glamorous life much separated from his working class existance. Fred himself seeks masculinity through maintaining remnants of his uniform, such as his bomber jacket, especially during a meeting with the upper class Al Stephenson. In this scene, the prestige associated with Al’s civilian suit is countered with the prestige associated with Fred’s Air Force bomber jacket, demonstrating the importance of uniform in equating their masculine status in different domains.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.A3 G67 1976
In this book Marx examines the life of Samuel Goldwyn, the Polish immigrant who became one of the most influential producers in film. Chapter 23 focues The Best Years of Our Lives, which won Goldwyn an Oscar. Through its entertaining anecdotal narrative, Marx follows the story of film, which began as an idea that came to Goldwyn as he read an article in Time in 1944 documenting the difficult transition many returning soldiers went through upon their return home. Goldwyn then called upon MacKinlay Kantor, a novelist, to turn the idea into a novel, which he would then adapt into a screenplay. Kantor delivered a short novel called Glory for Me about three men coming back to face civilian life in blank verse, which Goldwyn hated and wrote off as a loss.
It wasn't until Willy Wyler, who in the war, returned that the idea of making a film based on Glory for Me was revisited. Wyler wanted to make a film about the war, and he and writer Bob Sherwood adapted the novel to a screenplay. Goldwyn was never an ardent supporter of the film, and was ready to halt its production at many points. It was not until he consulted the Audience Research Institute (ARI), which gauged the American theatergoer's interest in a film, and received very positive results that he threw his support behind the film. The result was a wildly successful film which enjoyed great success.
This story gives insight to the studio-based methods of production of 1946, before the Paramount Decision, and to the postwar movie-making atmosphere. Goldwyn's doubts initally plagued the production of this film, as he was unsure if a serious, socially critical film was what American audiences really wanted to see after the war. The response he received from the ARI raises the ever-present issue of the divide between what audiences want to see and what Hollywood thinks they want to see. This response represents the readiness of American society to address the problems that postwar life created in 1946. The ability of Goldwyn, Wyler and Sherwood to capture the clearly struck a chord with the American public that wanted to confront the social issues of the day rather than sweep them under a rug.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.H5 C36 1997
In this book Kenneth Cameron goes through the 20th century, attempting to create an appropriate historical and cultural context for the film produced in each decade. Of particular interest in the chapter entitlted “1940-49: Good War, New World.” Cameron claims that despite war, the forties produced a wide variety of films that were difficult to analyze. Some generalizations he was able to draw were between films made before 1942 and those after 1946. Particularly, the movies made after 1946 and the end of the war tended to be more forward-looking and socially contemplative. Cameron sites The Beginning or the End? as a film that confonts the moral issues of the day, particularly the decision to drop the atomic bomb and its implications. He also praises Pride of the Marines for counterring the prevailing attitude of portraying war as glorious. Though limited by the Production Code, it attempted to reveal the harsh realities of war, in addition to difficult subject of a returning veteran who suffered an injury that made him blind.
Though The Best Years of Our Lives is never explicitly mentioned in the chapter, one can easily see how it fits into Cameron’s perception of what films were trying to do after the war. Rather than a nostalgic and glorious rendition of the return of war heroes, it examines the lives of three more or less ordinary men, who in their diverstity represent the socio-economic and age spectrum. The film concerns itself not with their heroes’ reception, but with the difficulties and harsh realities to adjusting to life at home, accompanied by alcoholism, adultery, ostracism, and alienation. It is also a socially conscious film, containing cultural critique and commentary in its exploration of questions such, should we have dropped the bomb?, or, did we really fight the good war? Though patriotic in nature, the film does not shy away from interjecting the varying ideas of Americans regarding the war.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.62 .L4 2001
This book deals with Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration, his interpretation and strict adherence to the Production Code, and the effect it had on the film industry at the time. The Production Code was a set of guidleines governing the production and content of motion pictures, spelling out what was and was not considered morally acceptable in film. Adopted in 1930, it began to be enforced in 1934 by Breen, and this changed the way film looked. Risque material, including toilet humor, sexual explicitness and gratuitous violence, was often cut from films. Breen’s approach to film directly conficted with that of screenwriters and directors. He “tended toward the literal…and he had a dollars-and-cents approach to the movies: they were more entertainment than art.”
Jeff and Simmons point out that it is for this reason that Wyler worried Breen, for Breen perceived him to be “a new kind of Hollywood filmmaker, independent, uncompromising and fiercly committed to cinema as an art form.” Wyler resented the Code and saw it as an impediment to making mature, realistic films that deal with examine adult themes. Wyler’s original ending to The Best Years of Our Lives as an ambiguous one, with Fred (Dana Andrews) frustrated and disillusioned, wandering alone among the old planes in the airfield. Due to Samuel Goldwyn’s, the producer, insistence, it was changed to a more positive ending, with Fred finding love and hope, and this change was heavily supported by Breen. Though the ending still has an ambiguous sense of openness (it leaves one feeling that though the protagonists have found momentary relief and happiness, but real life will continue), the information in this book demonstrates the limitations of the time period on creative expression. Even though the movie deals with adult themes such as alcoholism and adultery, it does so in a somewhat subtle manner, and even the message of the film conveyed by the film was altered due to standards of the the time. Depsite all this, however, the The Best Years of Our Lives is still a powerful and moving film, a testament to its expressiveness and timelessness.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.H5 B87 1997
Films like Forrest Gump, Burgoyne argues, allow the audience to re-experience the past more dramatically and sensuously. It is their way of more personally experiencing the event – a way to more closely examine it. Through film, the viewer can feel as if the memory of the event is his own rather than a recompilation of facts and images interpreted with the benefit of hindsight. In this sense, memories “circulate publicly,” and become part of the psychology and the identity of a nation, serving as “the basis for mediated collective identification.” Ultimately, films like All the President’s Men and Forrest Gump, which deal centrally with recent cultural and historical events, help to reorganize the historical past by creating a collective memory in the form of a film.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.U64 H65 2003
Like Cameron, Sorlin, and Toplin, Myron Levine brings up the fact that the film belittles the contributions of people other than Woodward and Bernstein to bringing some members of the Nixon administration to justice. However, Levine states, Woodward and Bernstein played an extremely important role in maintaining pressure on other investigators and government bodies to act against corruption. The author also points out that the editor of the Washington Post, Benjamin Bradlee (portrayed in the film by Jason Robards) was extremely careful about publishing only substantiated allegations. Levine believes that this journalistic standard has also changed over time. He finds it unfortunate that, as a result of the near instantaneous speed with which news gets to today’s readers, media outlets no longer seem concerned with confirming the facts before print. Ultimately, All the President’s Men reflects the backlash against the modern White House’s attempt to strictly control the flow of information about the president and his administration.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.P6 S36 2000
According to Scott, films of the 1970’s reflected a general cynicism resulting from political events of the first few years of the decade. Society had become paranoid as a result of conspiracy theories that sometimes turned out to be true, and this paranoia was reflected in a Hollywood style of “seedy politicians” and “dark and shadowy urban scenes.” In this sense, Scott states, a very real sense of paranoia could be written off as merely an aspect of trendy movie scenarios.
While many movies of the decade dealt with conspiracy, All the President’s Men dealt with the process of uncovering a conspiracy. For the sake of entertainment, Woodward and Bernstein were heroized and the meetings with Deep Throat were portrayed as a perfect example of the “dark and shadowy urban scenes” that Scott mentioned as a characteristic of many conspiracy films of the 70’s. However, Scott believes that the film “made documentary political filmmaking respectable,” and that its performance in the box office (the film was one of the two top grossing films of the year with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) reflected a general but short-lived mood of anti-authoritarianism in the United States.
Roffman and Purdy describe the social problem film as politically rather tame, arguing that “there is no direct relationship between the problem film and social change” (304). However, they posit as an exception to this paradigm “examples of isolated reforms—in chain-gang regulations after Fugitive” (304). Chain Gang’s lack of narrative closure at the end, which suggests the failures of a malfunctioning society, approaches, they argue, a sincere and radical criticism of Great Depression politics and culture.
Roffman and Purdy’s reading of the film demonstrates a counter-argument to my own. Despite Chain Gang’s uniquely bleak ending, historical evidence refutes Roffman and Purdy’s claims. Warner Brothers, who enjoyed a longstanding political collaboration with President Roosevelt, released the film a week after FDR’s election to office. In a production context, I group Chain Gang with other films that propagandize the New Deal Administration. Its criticism of Depression society condemns Hoover’s failures thereby aligning a potentially desperate viewer’s political energies with subsequent New Deal propaganda campaigns.
Chain Gang’s historical misreading of the southern penal system, which Roffman and Purdy also overlook, reinforces its function as New Deal agitprop. By depicting the South’s cultural backwardness as antithetical to modernity (epitomized by industries like Hollywood), Chain Gang fosters a dichotomized interpretation of malfunctioning Depression American society. According to the film’s logic, anti-modern Georgia opposes modern Chicago, whereas evidence suggests that the South’s convict labor and subsequent chain gang penal systems evolved in with Northern industry. The film annihilates the chain gang’s profound complexities framing it as purely antagonistic in a typical codified Hollywood good-cop/bad-cop conversation.
In other words, I strongly disagree with Roffman and Purdy’s historical reading of the film’s politics.
Pfaelzer, J. (1999). Salt of the Earth: Women, Class, and the Utopian Imagination. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 16 (1): 120-31.
This is an article that deals with representations of working women and class in the film.