The youngest films of the movie industry were not sheer matter of creative worth, but moderately scientific creations. At the time of the early 20th century era of making films, a cluster of scriptwriters, producers, and directors gradually transformed films into an intermediate tool for expression. A key player to the American film industry was Cecil B. Demille, an American film director and producer, known for both his renowned films in both the silent era and post silent era. DeMille is credited as being a visionary of the film industry, venturing into uncharted territories of film and pushing social norms. Prior to his career as a filmmaker, the film industry was on the verge of arriving at a new period of modernism. The old attitude among citizens that was brought on by Victorianism in the 19th century was progressively fading. The Victorian era had been comprised of, “virtues’ of sexual repression and restriction…. a code of positive morals that include[d] perseverance and an aversion to idleness; a sense of moral uniformity…self control, discipline, self-confidence, [and] self-sufficiency” (Belton 96). In other words, the era bred close-minded individuals, rigid to change and new ideas. As DeMille started his path into the movie business, he highlighted an upcoming subset of individuals and showcased the expanding diversity in the populace of America. Cecil B. DeMille influenced American film cinema to take on more diverse scripts in which the public had never seen before, through the implementation of both foreign actors and characters in his films and interwove them into his theatrical storylines.
DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts and birthed into an artistically inclined family. DeMille’s father and ...
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2004. Print.
“Bullfight Scene from Carmen will be Unique.” Los Angeles Times. 9 July 1915: III4. Print.
Higashi, Sumiko. Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era. Berkeley: University
Of California Press, 1994. Print.
Marchetti, Gina. “‘They Worship Money and Prejudice’: The Inevitabilities of Class and the
Uncertainties of Race in Son of the Gods.” Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Ed. Daniel
Bernardi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 76-77. Print.
Niiya, Brian. Japanese American History: An A-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. New
York, New York: Facts on File Inc., 1993. Print.
Pratt, George, C., Herbert Reynolds, and Cecil B. DeMille. “Forty-Five Years of Picture Making:
An Interview with Cecil B. DeMille.” Film History Vol. 3 No. 2 (1989): 139-140. Print.
A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial
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...
Clara’s experience with the motion picture industry gives us a picture of what it was like in the 1920’s. It was new and intriguing, enticing and corrupt. The motion picture industry underpaid Bow, which is almost inconceivable today. The environment of Hollywood now pays actors and actresses corpulent amounts of money...but that may be the only change. The “star-maker” environment is still as enticing and corrupt as yesterday’s.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
Jacobs, Diane. Hollywood Renaissance: The New Generation of Filmmakers and their works. 1977. New York. Dell Publishing.
From the beginning of cinema as an art form to cinema today, film has evolved and developed drastically. Each era of film from the Silent Film to the French New Wave was influenced by prior film generations and influenced those films that came after it. The era of Silent Film was very basic as it emerged when motion pictures had only begun. Across the sea, the age of German Expressionism, a film genre with features of the Silent Film era which conveyed the German people's struggle after World War I had started. Afterwards, the Studio Era surfaced and portrayed larger than life heroes in narratives with the gloss of a storybook. During the Studio Era, films like these were produced quickly because of success and began to appear mass produced
Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood propaganda of World War II. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Print.
Griffith, David Wark. "The Beginnings and Silent films." n/a n/a n/a. The Silent Era. March 2014. .
The Great Depression opened a gateway for cinema to be the greatest form of entertainment for those who lived in the 1920’s. The audience were looking for escapism and self-gratification. US President Franklin Roosevelt once quoted “When the spirit of the people is lower than at any time, during this depression, it is a splendid thing that for just fifteen cents an American can go to a movie”. The movie industry was growing with the big 5 being the main distributors of film. Even in the beginning, cinema was a way an audience can take some time out, open their minds and forget about reality.
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.
The dawn of Hollywood as a center of motion picture production accrued in the years from 1907 and 1914. According to E. Ann Kaplan "Classical Hollywood film was the dominant popular form through which the bourgeoisie increasingly represented itself, its values, and the working classes- to whom cinema was earlier largely addressed" in the first half of the twentieth century (American Cinema and Hollywood, 2000:46). "Hollywood has always drawn upon the national ethos of the United States for cinematic inspiration" (T.Cowen,2001). This essay will describe Classical Hollywood style and explain how it has come to dominate film production in the West.
Before the downfall of the industry “the studios not only controlled filmmaking from development through release but also exerted almost complete control over theatrical exhibition”. (Lewis 194) The “Big Five” were the ones who ran the show. They were Fox, Paramount Pictures, Loew’s, Warner Brothers, and RKO. Because they were so big in the industry, and they had such a rapport with moviegoers they took advantage of it and
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
During the early 1900’s in the U.S., the film industry was at its commencement just as World War 1 was emerging. With the ever growing fear of the U.S. entering the war, the film industry decided to step in and take control of the matter. At the time, films were an easy way to get messages across to a wide range of people and the film industry used this to their advantage to influence their audiences. The film industry was highly successful in influencing the public with their films about espionage, supporting the war, and war bonds. With their influential films America was able to win the war, but more importantly win over the people that helped win the war.
Films have been a large part of the world for many years, but without the beginnings of cinema in the late nineteenth century and the advancements in technology that began in the early twentieth century, the brilliant films of today would not be possible. From silent films to talkies, black and white films to color films, the short and bland movies which were created years and years ago have led to the masterpieces filled with vibrant colors and stimulating sounds of today. Thomas Edison once said, “I had some glowing dreams about what the cinema could be made to do and ought to do in teaching the world things it needed to know—teaching it in a more vivid, direct way…” Thomas Edison had no doubt that the cinema industry would amount to something