Cultural Report: Hollywood 1900-1940
Since even before its inception, the idea of “Hollywood” has been consistently concerned with a single underlying concept: spectacle. The earliest movies belonged to what film historians like Tom Gunning call a “cinema of attractions.” Primitive films, the earliest shorts from the late 1890s to the early 1900s, were directed at an audience looking for a new form of entertainment. The first films were screened as the final attraction of a vaudeville show, mostly in the lower-class areas of major cities. They were a far remove from the massive modern theaters we patronize nowadays. The vaudeville tradition continued into film as a showman would introduce the film as a single still image projected on a screen. He would explain the wondrous new attraction the audience was about to behold and all of a sudden the still image on the screen would slowly transition into movement, as if animated by an unseen force amazing the people in the audience.
The early cinema was truly a spectacle to behold as the technology behind the moving image was absolutely revolutionary to audiences. The attraction was originally focused on the single transitional moment between stillness and active life. The showman would set the mood within the theater and let the spectacle play off the audience’s anticipation of amazing new sights and for a while, this “cinema of attraction” was completely captivating. The relative newness of the moving image soon wore off though and filmmakers and producers such as D.W. Griffith, Edward S. Porter and Adolph Zukor stepped up to become innovators of cinematic technique, almost single-handedly pushing the evolution of film form forward.
Around 1910 people like Adolp...
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...de, one can see that America is still at the mercy of Hollywood’s dominating, hypnotic power.
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Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
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Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
explode in popularity and the introduction of theaters specifically for film. Firstly, amid the circuses, the wild...
A gambling man, Governor Leland Stanford of California needed visual proof to win a bet he had eagerly placed. Governor Stanford firmly believed that at some point in their stride, horses had all four hooves off the ground at the same time. After hiring a photographer who was to no avail, the Governor brought in John D. Isaacs, the chief engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, to have a look at the situation. Isaacs decided to rig up a system of magnetic releases to trigger a series of cameras, twelve total, as the horse ran down the track (Everson, 17). Mounting these images on a rotating disk and projecting them on a screen through a special lantern, they produced a moving picture of the horse at full gallop as it had occurred in real life (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1211).
Women are bombarded by images of a thin-ideal body form that is extremely hard, if not impossible, to emulate. Comparing themselves to these women can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, and an overall low self-esteem. (Expand on, need a good opening paragraph to grab the reader’s attention)
Jacobs, Lewis. “Refinements in Technique.” The Rise of the American Film. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974. 433-452. Print.
Gunning begins this article by referring to the “myth” of frightened audience screaming in horror at the image of a train approaching the screen, a film by the Lumiere Brothers titled Arrival of a Train. He proceeds to claim that these so called myths were about the audiences screaming due to being frightened by an image of an oncoming train, and that some audience members ran out of the cinema in terror. He begins to disprove this claim by providing context of the newer technology in cinema and the time era they were produced. As argued by Gunning, the audiences of the cinema were made up of audiences far more sophisticated than many modern film theorists would like to admit. Gunning points out that audiences were not only used to the illusionism of the cinema, but were indeed avid to actually consume it in that fashion. Far from being frightened enough to actually flee from the approaching cinematic train, the
Divorces are easy to obtain in the United States but the decision needs to be carefully examined. According to statistics, “divorce makes sense in the 10 percent to 15 percent of troubled marriages that involve high-level and persistent conflict with severe abuse and physical violence” (Dafoe 1). In the other 85 to 90 percent of marriages, the marriage can and should be reconciled. Many couples simply take the easy way out, find a lawyer, and end the marriage without ever trying to examine whether or not a conclusion can be reached other than divorce.
After reading the article “The Myth of Total Cinema” by Andre Bazin, it opens the discussion of the origins of cinema whether to consider the economic and technical evolution impacted inventor’s imagination causing fortunate accidents that created a phenomenon in cinema. However, this leads inventors to compete with each other over techniques of bringing their imagination to reality but, all agreed that cinema needed to be transparent, flexible, and have a resistant base that was capable of capturing an image instantly.
However, the cuts to legal aid along with the budget reductions for the court service may result in amplified number of people attempting to acquire divorce without legal representation. This may cause the government to re-evaluate the current divorce system in order to reduce the pressure on courts.
Throughout this course on American Cinema I have really enjoyed learning about the history of Hollywood. Looking at the golden age of Hollywood during the use of the studio system makes me wish I could go back in time and visit the studios to watch movies being made. Many people in today’s world have sadly never even heard of the studio system. In this essay I will describe what the studio system is ,especially during the golden age in Hollywood, and also I will analyze and discuss some of the reasons that contributed to the downfall of this system.
Divorce is a growing epidemic in Canada and the United States. It affects both parties involved, being the spouses, and also has a profound affect on children of the marriage. Recently our government has been revising the old divorce act. It was apparent that it was time to revise the act because it did not properly protect the children from being caught in the middle of things.
History and films can be observed in many ways. Today, films have an important role to play in these histories. Motion films provide information to show what it was like back then and provided visual information to the ways people lived in the past. Today, films such as “The Truman Show”, shows what life was like back in the late 1900’s. For example, people were obsessed with reality TV, and the clothing was more formal than the way it is today. The technology was much more advanced than what it is thought to really be. Many of us would much rather watch films rather than read about history.
When film first started, it started as a magic lantern, which is an object that presents dinner entertainment by spinning pictures. They were also known as “motion toys”. Motion toys soon began to compete with magic lanterns and the man who created the praxiniscope developed to praxiniscope theatre which