Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
History of cinematography
Sound in classic hollywood films academic essay
The evolution of filmmaking
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The 1930s was the beginning of the great film industry we have today. The 1930s (and some of the 1940s) was dubbed “The Golden Age of Hollywood”. This was the decade color and sound were introduced to film industry. Because of the Great Depression many families did not have any money and therefore wanted a cheap source of entertainment. Movies not only included a full length movie, but a cartoon, a newsreel and second movie called a “B-film”. This second film was not as good of quality as the main movie (A-film) and had lower quality. These films were allowed to experiment more with their topics than “A-films”. The prestigious films were expected to be about a topics that were popular and would then produce higher profits. The first drive-in
was created in 1933 just outside of Camden, New Jersey. They showed “B-films” at these and were also cheaper than the regular movie theaters this allowed their popularity to soar. I chose the movies The Rules of The Game, M, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Gone With The Wind and Blonde Venus. The significance of some these movies is important. Snow White was Walt Disney’s first full length animated film and The wizard of Oz was one of the first movies to use Technicolor (highly saturated color).
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 ...
...Depression, artists and authors took inspiration from their daily lives. Creating art that focused on the despair and chaos of the depression, many representations of social issues can be seen in the different types of art. Although the thirties was a weary time for most, this did not stop it from having some fun. The popular music at the time included the ‘big band sound’. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Dorsey and Benny Goodman were popular crooners, to name a few. In cinema, “King Kong” was released (one of the original horror/adventure films). It was a huge hit because of the special effects included in the movie. Filmed in colour, “The Wizard of Oz” was another popular movie at the time, and is now a classic. There were good things in the 1930’s, such as culture, music and art, but the Depression brought the social conditions plummeting down (overall).
During this decade, the film industry went through massive changes that would completely change what movies were or stood for. After the Great War, more people began considering movies as a form of entertainment. This increased attention caused change in the industry, allowing the experience of the movie goer to massively change for the better. Many new genres, ideas and technologies emerged in the 1920s that would later dominate the industry. The 1920s saw massive changes happening in the movie industry that would help it to get one step closer to what it is today.
The Great Depression is when the film industry boomed with new types of movies like: gangster films and musicals. They were both born in the Great Depression. Most films show the hardships of the time period. Some of the films display this very well for example Modern Times staring Charlie Chaplin. One of the more well-known gangster films was The Public Enemy.. 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.
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...
During the Great Depression, people went to the movies to get their mind off things and to forget about things temporarily. Life was portrayed a few different ways during the Great Depression. Different genres of film gave different perspectives on what life was like. The three genres compared are comedy, gangster, and musical films. Room Service and Modern Times are two films in the comedy genre and they portrayed a worry-free lifestyle. The Public Enemy is a gangster film and it had a dangerous lifestyle. Last, but not least, is Gold Diggers of 1933 and it is a pretty happy film. These films all had one thing in common though; the characters all had problems with money, which greatly relates to the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was a time full of fear and uncertainty in the U.S. The unemployment rate was above 20% and hundreds of banks had failed resulting in a delicate and arduous economic situation. While many industries suffered greatly through this time, one industry seemed to do just fine: film. Film was a relatively new industry without many regulations which had become the most exciting and influential form of media that existed. During the Depression, this importance was identified by both private and government organizations, film technology advanced, and stories were tailored to the needs of a suffering population. As a result, film during The Great Depression was characterized by innovation, censorship, and escapism.
The roaring twenties would be nothing without the roar of the MGM Lion. “If Hollywood had no other studio than Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the town still would have been the movie capital of the world” (Fricke para 1). MGM enchanted audiences with its high-budgeted films and glamorous list of stars (Hanson para 1). Three failing movie companies came together in 1924 in hopes to make it big in the motion picture industry, and it did (Fricke para 3). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer created spectacles of movies after its merging which made MGM one of the most prosperous motion picture companies in the 1920’s (Hanson para 2).
The fifties was a learning year and the 60's became the time to express everything that they learned. The 60's was a time for new and innovative ways to entertain the people. Since the blacklisting continued in Hollywood, the making or films became very difficult to express. The restrictions, such as the production codes, kept the big corporations to produce films that had no interesting subjects. These films also had to be films that show no signs of communistic values. The film industry was failing to bring in the audience to the theaters. With the TV making a big wave all over, the U.S. the film industry was losing it is money. Then in 1961 something big happened, 20th Century Fox took apart its lot. This act was one that led to a chain reaction. Studios were assuming the role of distributors. This would allow the independent companies to come in and add a new flavor to the silver screen. During this time films changed it's traditional film making ideas. Things started to get graphic, more violent, sexual and more expressive. Movies had found a new look and with the production codes now gone and the blacklisting ending, there was an explosion of ideas that would be presented to the United States.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
Watching a movie in the 1920s was a cheap and easy way to be transported into a world of glitz and glamour, a world of crime, or a world of magic and mystery. Some of these worlds included aspects of current events, like war, crime, and advances in technology; while others were completely fictional mysteries, romances, and comedies. Heartbreakers, heartthrobs, comedians and beautiful women dominated movie screens across the country in theaters, called Nickelodeons. Nickelodeons were very basic and small theaters which later transformed into opulent and monumental palaces. When sound was introduced into film by Warner Bros. Pictures, “talkies” took top rank over silent films. “Movies were an art form that had universal appeal. Their essence was entertainment; their success, financial and otherwise, was huge” (1920-30, 3/19/11). Films offered an escape from the troubles of everyday life in the 20s, and moviegoers across the country all shared a universal language: watching movies.
Largely influenced by the French New Wave and other international film movements, many American filmmakers in the late 1960s to 1970s sought to revolutionize Hollywood cinema in a similar way. The New Hollywood movement, also referred to as the “American New Wave” and the “Hollywood Renaissance,” defied traditional Hollywood standards and practices in countless ways, creating a more innovative and artistic style of filmmaking. Due to the advent and popularity of television, significant decrease in movie theater attendance, rising production costs, and changing tastes of American audiences, particularly in the younger generation, Hollywood studios were in a state of financial disaster. Many studios thus hired a host of young filmmakers to revitalize the business, and let them experiment and have almost complete creative control over their films. In addition, the abandonment of the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code in 1967 and the subsequent adoption of the MPAA’s rating system in 1968 opened the door to an era of increased artistic freedom and expression.
The 1940s changed through just about everything: war, technology, and presidents. After the great depression in the 1920s the American Dream went in a new direction and began the postmodernist era. The American Dream in the 1950s was different from the American Dream in the 1940s because of the culture and by many factors throughout the twenty year span like government, technology, war, and women's rights.
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.
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.