Classic Hollywood Film Analysis

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One of the most prominent characteristics of Classic Hollywood cinema is romance. Aptly referred to as “a machine for producing the couple”, many of movies which fall under the umbrella of Classic Hollywood cinema include and/or showcase a white, heteronormative relationship that is ushered towards achieving endgame status throughout the duration of the plot. The usage of the word “machine” certainly captures the manufactured feeling Classic Hollywood cinematic romance possesses because of the scripted dialogue and picturesque settings. Two famous examples of both romantic comedy and the Hollywood couple are It Happened One Night (1934) directed by Frank Capra, and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. It Happened …show more content…

While one could watch both love stories in a surface level way for purely entertainment purposes, the acknowledgement of what the social orders were during time periods each movie was made in, as well as what the movie’s purpose was, creates a tension between the reality portrayed on screen and real life reality. Through the application and deployment of genre conventions common of the romantic comedy, Classic Hollywood cinema is able to produce two iconic couples which act as physical manifestations of both Singin’ in the Rain and It Happened One Night’s larger themes of the illusionary characteristic of movies and the challenging of traditional gender …show more content…

Interestingly enough, It Happened One Night was the beginning of romantic comedy as a genre, so many characteristics of Ellie and Peter’s dynamic evolved into widely used methods of portraying or suggesting romance on screen. The conventions of putting an older man with a younger woman, the two having a “meet cute”, or a zany first meeting of a couple, a juxtaposition of class or status, the relationship timeline of enemies to friends to lovers, and the romanticization of the man chasing after the woman are all covered by Ellie and Peter, as well as Don and Kathy. Additionally, both movies include a love triangle. The couples’ meet cutes involve a vehicle of transportation (i.e. the bus Ellie and Peter are traveling on and Kathy’s car, which Don gets into in order to escape fans and paparazzi), which act as a containment device for the two people. These containment devices are an easy and common writing and staging direction to obtain an ideal forced proximity between characters, so they have no choice but to interact on a speaking and physical level. The man’s problematic behavior, beginning in the forced proximity, especially in regards to pursuing a younger woman, and continuing to pursue her even when she expresses no interest is presented as comedic. This is basically It Happened One Night’s entire

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