The Movie Industry During the Great Depression

515 Words2 Pages

The Great Depression was an era that was extremely successful to the movie industry. Citizens crowded movie theaters weekly to attempt to cope with the disappointing reality of unemployment. No matter the circumstance the people were determined to find a way to get their minds off of their current statuses. The movie industry took advantage of this time of desperation. What made the movies so popular was the unbelievable comparability of their own lives to the main characters or plots in the film. In the movies “The Public Enemy” and “Modern Times” show the directors/producers look at life during the Great Depression.
Comedy movies seemed to boom during this time period. Laughing at a comedy at the movies turned into a weekly routine for adults. In the movie “Modern Times” Charlie Chaplin stars as the regular factory worker, an obvious relation to the 1930’s the machine age, and goes through a series of challenges to earn money for his self and later on in the film the girl he loves. He often finds himself in conflict with the world trying to maintain a single job. When he finally do...

Show More
Related

  • Bud Not Buddy Figurative Language

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Depression is one of the worst time for America. Books, cartoons, and articles have been written about the people during the Depression and how they survived in that miserable period. For example, the book Bud not Buddy takes place in the time of the Great Depression. Bud is a ten year old orphan, who was on the run trying to find his dad. There are many feelings throughout the book like sadness and scarceness. There are many diverse tones in the book about what people were feeling at the time.

    Read More

  • Digging In By Robert J. Hastings Essay

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    The great depression was a very sad and hard time. This was a time where people had little money, no available jobs and just had a hard time with everything. Many people had nd any way to make money whether it was cutting kid’s hair in neighborhood, picking fruit, selling iron cords house to house or even painting a house for 5 dollars. Even though this was a very hard time some people still had hope that things would get better. This was a really bad time until Franklin Roosevelt who was for the government supporting the Americans and not the other way around became president.

    Read More

  • How Did The Great Depression Affect Families

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Depression is a an era when the US economy was at its lowest. It is after the Roaring 20s. The depression was caused mainly because of the crash of the stock market in 1929 and the government’s failed attempts to help the people. Many people’s belongings are bought with credit so they lost all their money and most of their things when the bank system failed. Others lost their jobs and many men left their families because they felt ashamed that they can’t support their family. The social fabric of the Great Depression changed greatly from the previous era. The changes in the social, the political, and the economic part of the US are part of the change in the social fabric.

    Read More

  • American History: The Stormy Weather and Over and Well: 1930-1941

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1930’s was dominated by the Great Depression. There was not much time of money for people to spend on entertainment, but there were a few pin pricks of light. People, especially kids, went to the movie theater. They could spend ...

    Read More

  • The Great Depression In The Film Cinderella Man

    1501 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Great Depression was a time in American history where economic difficulties affected almost every person. It could turn the “best of the best” into just another beggar on the street. It is difficult for a movie to portray the true struggles of people who lives during that time. Although Cinderella Man is a fictional account of the life of Ray Braddock, it is an accurate portrayal of the problems faced by many Americans during the Great Depression. The struggles of daily life during the depression, references to problems later addressed by the New Deal, and social issues brought on by the Great Depression are all realistically described in this movie.

    Read More

  • Grapes of Wrath and It's a Wonderful Life

    1093 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following the relatively prosperous era nicknamed the "Roaring Twenties" came the Great Depression. Unemployment skyrocketed and good times were hard to be found. In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" - we see the transformation from stability to utter chaos.

    Read More

  • The Film Industry During the Great Depression

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    These films have very different views of the time period, but still have things in common. This paper will compare Modern Times and The Public Enemy. Modern Times, produced in 1936, was written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin. This film was about the Little Tramp trying the get through the modern times. The film starts in a factory where Little Tramp works.

    Read More

  • entertainment in the 1930's

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early 1930’s entertainment started to become popular. The reason for that was due to the Great Depression. Entertainment took people’s minds off of the struggles that were being faced. Country and blues were forms of music that were introduced during this time, but the 1930’s was mainly a time of jazz. Broadway and movies became more advanced and more popular then too. “Movies, music, and Broadway all combined to provide as an escape from the dreary life of the depression.”(Walker n.pag.) Throughout the 1930's people would turn to entertainment to forget about the hard times.

    Read More

  • Fred Astaires iImpact on the Great Depression

    1776 Words  | 4 Pages

    The arts played a significant role in the Great Depression- not only as a means of escapism for some people, but also a psychological and ideological role that provided inspiration and optimism in a time of severe doubt and fear. For example, film provided an escape for a couple of hours, but also portrayed success during this time period. Many films focused on social realities of the time period, so that people could relate to these films. Films gave images of hope and success because they portrayed ordinary people, such as a girl winning a role in a play, or a man and a woman randomly meeting and falling in love. Andrew Bergman explains the effect of these films in his article Hollywood and the Great Depressi...

    Read More

  • World War II and Hollywood

    1381 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before the Second World War began Hollywood’s purpose lied within entertainment for the American people. After the war started, the main focus shifted to wartime propaganda. Film was used to display the war in a way that did not show its true colors—including the censorship of soldier causalities and other negative connotations that are a simple fact of war. There was even a time in which some actors became better known to America than politians. Through films, Hollywood began to make a statement of their anti-Nazi beliefs. They began to make motion pictures for American recruitment into the Army as well as many that supported the war effort, and intended to make other Americans more aware of the war’s effect on the United States, and how people can get involved. Many European countries banned these Hollywood films, as they began to affect not only America but many other countries that were involved in the war as well.

    Read More

  • Riding The Rails

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Depression was a very difficult time in American history. The Great Depression was the longest and most severe depression that was experienced in the Western World. The movie Riding the Rails is a good example of times during this depression. The movie presents a story of ten men and women in their youth, who gave their accounts about leaving their homes in search of a better life. I think Riding the Rails gives a very clear and accurate view of how life was for young teenagers during these historical times.

    Read More

  • The Great Depression in "Cinderella Man"

    1586 Words  | 4 Pages

    The observer can see this through the explicit cinematography of the movie and depiction of the Great Depression made by the director. However, the director left out a key aspect of the events of the depression, the stock market crash. Perhaps, this catastrophic event was irrelevant to the plot and message of the movie, but it is important to the actual Great Depression of the United States. Furthermore, the nation of 2010 is well on its way to repeating history. There are frightening similarities between that dreadful time of the 1930’s and the present that should not be overlooked, or the United States might condemn itself back into that horrific state it has so long tried to avoid.

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Modern Times By Charlie Chaplin

    1685 Words  | 4 Pages

    Charlie Chaplin is an American modern and contemporary history’s symbolic person. He is an actor and a director who was severely criticized about the society in those days through his films. One of his most famous works is the Modern Times. Modern Times is an immortal work, because many people still love the film. There is a person who says, “History is repeating, so we should learn from it.”

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Golden Age Of Hollywood

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Golden age of Hollywood marked a time in American films history in which films were produced and distributed at rate never seen before or since. During this period, the film market in America was basically entirely run by 8 major companies. This period would also be known as the American studio years. Within these 8 companies there were two categories of power that each major studio system fell into. The big 5 consisted of studios that functioned as vertical integrated which meant that they produce film, distribute films, and they own theater chains. The 5 studios in this category were Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, and RKO. Then we have the big little 3, which was composed of Columbia, Universal, and United Artist. They were called the big little 3 because these companies either distributed or made films but they did not on movie theaters, so they had a lot less power. The studio era was not only largely controlled big studio companies, but also by various amounts of expectations and assumptions about hoe movies should be made, what kinds of stars should be on different kinds of films, and a need to acknowledge the ordinary conventions of society

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Modern Times By Charlie Chaplin

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    The film “Modern Times,” directed by Charlie Chaplin, is set in the mid nineteen thirties. This time frame places the characters in the middle of the Great Depression and the industrial revolution. The film depicts the lifestyle and quality of living for people in this era by showing a factory worker who cannot take the monotony of working on an assembly line. The film follows the factory worker through many of his adventures throughout the film. The film’s main stars are Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard.

    Read More

More about The Movie Industry During the Great Depression

Open Document