Silent Film Meets the Talkies: A Brief History
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).
American cinema's next big break came with beginning of World War I. Until this period, the industry had been dominated by France, Italy, and Germany, particularly in the area of feature length presentations and the construction of permanent theaters. However, when the war broke out in Europe, film production abroad nearly ceased due to the overlap of chemicals used in film and the manufacturing of gunpowder (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1213). Simultaneously, American Cinema experienced a period on unprecedented prosperity and growth. By the end of the war, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, 90 percent of all films screened in Europe, Africa, and Asia were American (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1213). Germany however, was the exception, because it had been cut off from America since 1914.
When the Germans did finally reconnect with the world, the United States benefited greatly from their techn...
... middle of paper ...
...me box office hits, regardless of the acting or recording quality.
As talkies became more refined and commonplace, silent films started to dwindle. A backlash occurred and these pantomimed movies were labeled as the true art (Geduld, 253). Yet, nothing could be done to slow down the continual development of cinema as sound poured out of studios on a daily basis. In fact, this new cinematic style was so popular, the film industry turned out to be one of the few prosperous enterprises during the Depression (Geduld, 253).
Works Cited
Ellis, Jack C. A History of Film. eedham Heights, Mass: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britanica Inc.; vol. 24, 15th ed. Chicago, IL: 1995.
Everson, William K. American Silent Film. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.
Geduld, Harry M. The Birth of the Talkies. London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1975.
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...
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.
In 1929, America experienced a stock market crash that led the country into what is historically known as the Great Depression. Many industries across America experienced alterations in order to fit the social and economic changes that America was undergoing as a nation. Specific industries included Hollywood and the film industry. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the movies that Americans enjoyed viewing were considered immoral at the time. This was f...
The silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
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).
Released September 29, 1950, Sunset Boulevard is a film noir of a forgotten silent film star, Norma Desmond, that dreams of a comeback and an unsuccessful screenwriter, Joe Gillis, working together. Ultimately an uncomfortable relationship evolves between Norma and Joe that Joe does not want a part of. Sunset Boulevard starts off with an establishing shot from a high angle shot with a narrative leading to a crime scene from a long shot (a dead body is found floating in a pool), this narrative throughout the film establishes a formalist film.
However, the U.S. did participate in the Eight Nation Alliance in the Boxer Rebellion, as well as invade other sovereign nations, such as the Philippines and Cuba, at the turn of the 19th century. However, in the United States, there was a large ethnic group of German-Americans that was beginning to be perceived as a threat to American culture due to the rise of German nationalism. For instance, the problem of German nationalism had become a problem due to the conflicting ethnic identity of German-Americans: “ A Philadelphia woman later recalled how, before the war, the beer wagons of German-American brewers in her city had an American flag on one side and German one on the other” (Boemke et al, 1999, p.117). In this ethnic and nationalist conflict, many Americans became suspicious of German loyalties to the Kaiser, which was part of the expanded nationalist and militaristic growth of the United States as a competing imperial power. In this climate of nationalism, many Americans became suspicious of Germans, which led to increased political support for overturning Woodrow Wilson’s promises of neutrality when the war broke out in Europe in July of 1914. The sinking of the Lusitania in 1914 was a major event that defined a rationale for Americas entering the war, since the Germans were creating major disruptions in American trade routes by sinking civilian and merchant ships in the Atlantic. In this hostile act, the Kaiser had broken international rules of law, which forced President Wilson and the United States to enter the war to stop the threat of German military power from taking complete control of Europe. Certainly, the Kaiser had awoken the “sleeping giant” of American industrial and military power, which allowed the Allied Powers to eventual defat Germany in 1918.
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.
It is true that movies have a certain connection to the time period in which they were created. For example, during the Depression, movies like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) were a way for people to escape worry from everyday life surrounding the economy. In this way, silent films in
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.
Thompson, K 2003, ‘The struggle for the expanding american film industry’, in Film history : an introduction, 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill, Boston, pp. 37-54
It is no doubt that Martin Scorsese has heavily influenced the emulating of American film making from European influences. He is a prime example of a ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ director, not only from his ethnicity and background, but from his sheer interest in this form
Film was not always as it is today due to the digital sounds and graphic picture enhancements of George Lucas's THX digital sound in the late 1970s to enhance the audience's perceptions. Sound was first discovered in 1928 and the first films before that were silent. There is a social need to heighten an audience's film going experience and it allows each person to color their own views of what they see and presents either directly or indirectly society's moral values.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.