Media Analysis Project - Thesis and Outline
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Chapter
12Motion Pictures
According to the Internet Movie Data- base (imdb.com), there have been 578,442 motion pictures made throughout the world from 1895 to 2010, or an average of about 5,000 movies a year.
Only one of those movies is consistently rated the best film ever—Citizen Kane (Fig- ure 12.1).
The American Film Institute (AFI), founded in 1967, is a nonprofit organiza- tion that helps to preserve the future of filmmaking. In 2007 it polled 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians to deter- mine the greatest movies of all time. The top ten, starting from tenth place, were The Wizard of Oz (1939), Vertigo (1958), Schindler’s List (1993), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Gone with the Wind (1939), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Raging Bull (1980), Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), and Citizen Kane (1941).
The AFI website hints at the reason for the movie’s exalted position: “[Orson] Welles broke all the rules and invented some new ones with his searing story of a newspaper publisher with an uncanny resemblance to William Randolph Hearst.” Orson Welles was fortunate that his first Hollywood movie matched his brash, self- confident personality.
But he could not have made such a respected film alone; he had a lot of help. Herman Mankiewicz, a Hollywood writer for the previous 15 years for more than 50 movies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928) and uncredited for The Wizard of Oz (1939), helped Welles write the screen- play. Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and several other radio actors—many making their film debuts—were brought to Hollywood for the picture. Welles also assembled a technical team second to
The movies are the only
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Will Rogers (1879–1935) COWBOY, ACTOR, HUMORIST
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none. Vernon Walker, a photographer for the spectacular movie King Kong (1933), coordinated the many special effects in the movie. The film editor, a young RKO staff employee named Robert Wise, would go on to direct The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Mercury Theater colleague Bernard Hermann, who won an Academy Award for his scoring of All That Money Can Buy (1941), composed and arranged the music for Kane and other productions such as Psycho (1960), “The Twilight Zone” (1959–1963), and Taxi Driver (1976). Famed cinematographer Gregg Toland, who had just won an Academy Award for his work in Wuthering Heights (1939), was in charge of photography.
Yet despite its best intentions, Citizen Kane was a financial disaster. Although
praised by critics, mass theater audiences of the day were accustomed to seeing lightweight action and comedic films— not a dark, moody psychological drama with an unhappy ending. Film critic André Bazin wrote that the motion picture was “decidedly above the mental age of the average American spectator.” Although nominated for several Oscars, the film won only one award—for best screenplay.
Born on May 6, 1915, George Orson Welles was the second son of a troubled, yet creative, family in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His father, Richard, was a frustrated inven- tor who died early from alcoholism. His mother, Beatrice, was a strong supporter of women’s rights, an excellent rifle shot, and a failed professional pianist.
From an early age Orson attracted media attention. In newspaper articles he was praised as a “boy genius”—at the age of two he could read fluently, at seven he could recite passages from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and at ten he started produc- ing backyard plays of his own. At 16 years old Welles made a walking tour of Ireland and ended up at the famous Gate Theater in Dublin. He convinced the Irish owners that he was a famous actor from the New York Guild Theater. Consequently, he became the first American actor ever to guest star with the Abbey Players of Dub- lin. After returning to New York and get- ting more acting experience, his booming voice landed him radio work (Figure 12.2). For the NBC broadcast “The March of Time,” he supplied the voices for the dic- tators Mussolini and Hitler. He also played the popular mystery character Lamont Cranston on “The Shadow.”
In 1938, CBS offered the theater group a contract to produce radio dramas, nam- ing the program “Mercury Theater on the Air.” The acting troupe regularly produced classic works such as Treasure Island and Jane Eyre. But Welles wanted to stage a
Figure 12.1 A “one sheet” for Citizen Kane not designed by Saul Bass shows the lead characters and their opinions of Kane.
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science fiction piece for Halloween and selected H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. The night before the broadcast, however, he thought the script too dull and rewrote it in a documentary style similar to the “March of Time” news program of the day. The result was one of the most sensational broadcasts ever produced. Despite numer- ous reminders that the show was a fiction- alized account of a novel, millions of radio listeners were convinced that Martians had invaded Earth. People fled in all directions to escape cities, limbs were broken in fights as people tried to get away, and priests were called to hear final confessions. One of the readers of the “War of the Worlds” controversy was RKO Pictures president George Schaefer. At the time the studio was close to bankruptcy. Schaefer thought Welles could offer a lifeline. With a prom- ise of complete freedom over production and a three-picture deal worth $100,000 ($1.5 million today) each, Schaefer lured Welles to Hollywood to make movies.
After considering and rejecting sev- eral ideas, Welles decided to produce a
movie that he and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz had conceived. Originally titled American, it was an obviously critical biography of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (Figure 12.3). As a former newspaper reporter, Mankie- wicz was familiar with the intricacies of Hearst’s financial empire and his personal strengths and failings. As a visitor to Hearst’s castle in central California, San Simeon, Mankiewicz had witnessed many of the excesses made possible by the publisher’s enormous wealth (Figure 12.4). Hearst’s passion for collecting art objects from around the world, staging elaborate picnics, and supporting his mistress, the actress Marion Davies, all were a part of Mankiewicz’s screenplay. The script was written by Welles and Mankiewicz with editorial supervision by the actor John Houseman during the summer of 1939, and the idea might have come from a novel by Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies The Swan. Published that same year, Huxley’s book told the story of an egomaniacal newspaper magnate who
Figure 12.2 (left) Orson Welles in 1937 when he was 22 years old, four years before the release of Citizen Kane.
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Figure 12.3 (right) The American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1906 when he was 43 years old.
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lived in an even larger castle than San Simeon and who had a mistress. Although Welles always denied the connection between Hearst and Kane, no one was convinced there wasn’t one.
Shooting for Citizen Kane began on July 30, 1940, and was completed on Octo- ber 23. Extremely tight security fanned rumors about its connection to Hearst. The film was scheduled to be released on Valentine’s Day, 1941, but the open- ing was delayed after Louella Parsons, Hollywood correspondent for the Hearst newspapers, viewed an early screening. She relayed the message to Schaefer that Hearst would sue the studio if it released the film. Schaefer quickly invited the press for a sneak preview after which the movie received favorable reviews. But because of the threats from Hearst’s organization, Schaefer had trouble finding theaters that would show the movie. For the pub- lic openings in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, RKO-owned theaters were hastily prepared. When Hearst felt that the published attacks on the film gave it
too much publicity, the negative stories ceased, but Hearst allowed no advertising about the movie to appear in any of his newspapers. In a last, desperate attempt to have the film shown, Schaefer sent the picture as a package deal with other RKO movies. Nevertheless, most theater owners did not show the movie (Weblink 12.1).
Despite receiving nine nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Welles and winning an Oscar for the screenplay, the film was booed at the Academy Awards ceremony. In 2003, Beatrice Welles, the youngest of the director’s three daughters, tried to sell the golden statue at an auction sponsored by Christie’s of New York. It was expected that someone would buy it for more than $300,000. However, the piece was withdrawn after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bought back the Oscar for $1, an arrangement it has with its awardees.
Welles was labeled a troublemaker, but he continued to direct and act in such highly revered motion pictures as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), and Chimes at Midnight (1965). The prestigious British Film Insti- tute rated him the greatest film director of all time over Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean Renoir. The Institute also rated Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time.
Late in his life, grossly overweight but still in possession of a Shakespearean voice and able to tell insider Hollywood stories, Welles made commercials for Eastern Airlines and Paul Masson wines and appeared regularly on the talk shows of Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. Two hours after he taped an interview on Merv Griffin’s show, Welles died of a heart attack at the age of 70 in his Los Angeles home in 1985 (Weblink 12.2). Unlike
Figure 12.4 The Hearst castle, called San Simeon, now a California historical monument, over- looks the central California coastline and features 30 fireplaces and 38 bedrooms. It is so large there are five sepa- rate tours visitors can take. A view of the Roman-style indoor pool gives a hint of the castle’s excessive opulence.
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Kane, no one heard his last word. Welles once said, “Hollywood is a golden suburb for golf addicts, gardeners, men of medi- ocrity, and satisfied stars. I belong to none of these categories.”
ANALYSIS OF CITIZEN KANE
The opening of the movie is a metaphor for the entire picture. In a series of tracking shots that begin outside the castle gate of the once stately Xanadu estate showing a NO TRESPASSING sign, the camera moves us closer to a light from Kane’s bedroom window, which always maintains the same position in various shots.
And just when the window is reached, the light suddenly goes off and Kane speaks his last word, the enigmatic “Rose- bud” (Figure 12.5). The scene loudly shifts to a newsreel that serves as an obituary for the publishing tycoon. But toward the end of the footage, the documentary stops and the scene shifts to a smoky room filled with journalists who are given the task to discover, through interviews with his associates, why Kane uttered the word “Rosebud.” The rest of the film is divided into four sections in which his banker reveals Kane’s early life, his busi- ness associate tells about the newspaper empire and details of his first marriage, his former best friend analyzes his personal- ity and the reason for his downfall, and his second wife, in an alcoholic haze, gives details about the frustrated and sad old man Kane had become. In the end, none of his associates could solve the mystery of “Rosebud.” But the audience learns the secret. The scene of workmen burning some of the objects that had accumu- lated over the years in his castle shows the name “Rosebud” on a sled given to Kane as a boy (Figure 12.6). A symbol of
lost youth, missed opportunities, or an acknowledgment of Kane’s love of objects over people—viewers are left to make sense of the movie’s central riddle on their own.
As with Gutenberg’s invention in which established components were com- bined into a commercial printing press, Welles didn’t invent the film techniques used in the movie. He simply combined many different ideas into one work. Until Kane, movies of the day were dominated by snappy dialogue and unusual situa- tions, but the visual messages weren’t as important. Orson Welles combined the
Figure 12.5 One of the most famous dying words ever uttered by a real or fictional person, “Rosebud,” is said at the start of the movie by the Orson Welles’s character Charles Foster Kane. Close-up photography and enhanced audio effects emphasized this important scene in the movie.
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Figure 12.6 In the end, the mystery of Kane’s last word was relatively simple—the name of the sled young Charles possessed as a child. But the symbolism of the toy is quite complex. While clutching “Rosebud,” eight- year-old Kane (Buddy Swan) is introduced to Thatcher (George Coulouris), his future guardian, while his parents (Harry Shannon and Agnes Moorehead) observe.
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most recent technical innovations for producing visual messages with choreo- graphed actions by actors to move the plot along on several levels. Gregg Toland took advantage of new lighting and film stock to perfect a technique called “deep focus.” With higher-quality lights, faster film, and wide-angle lenses, Toland could
have a depth of field that carried from 20 inches to several hundred feet (Figure 12.7). Consequently, Welles was able to exploit this technical advantage in his staging of the actors. Action could take place simultaneously in the foreground and in the background. Film critic André has written that the technique gave view- ers much more freedom in deciding which part of the screen they wanted to watch.
Welles also requested that the sets include muslin ceilings so that extreme up-angle perspectives could be used. Few directors ever thought to bother with ceilings for their sets because most shots were at eye level. Also, lighting and microphones were hung from the top of sets. Nevertheless, Welles presented a much more realistic visual message with the addition of ceilings. Lighting was high in contrast and usually from behind. The effect dramatically separated the actors from their surroundings.
When asked if he knew that he was making a masterpiece, Welles answered simply, “I never doubted it for a single instant.” The trouble with creating a perfect work of art your first time out is: Where do you go from there? Unfortu- nately, Welles could not improve upon his initial work because such an effort would have been almost impossible for anyone.
David Denby, movie critic for The New Yorker magazine, wrote about motion pictures, “Almost every movie, of course, is a fantasy, or a fable, or a fairy tale of one kind or another. In a great movie, though, narrative and technological magic com- bine to produce heightened intimations of the real, and that ecstatic merging of magic and reality is what imprints the movie on our emotional memory.” Citi- zen Kane, as a great movie, will always be remembered (Figure 12.8).
Figure 12.7 The “deep-focus” effect cre- ated by cinematographer Gregg Toland, as evident in this scene from Citizen Kane, allowed the viewer more control in selecting which part of a set to watch. Note also that the top of the set is covered—another innovation of the motion picture.
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Figure 12.8 Orson Welles during the filming of Citizen Kane. Ev
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MOTION PICTURES AND THE SIX PERSPECTIVES
Personal Perspective
Motion pictures began as jerky films of everyday activities, capturing ordinary events to show the capabilities of this new medium. Soon, however, visionaries discovered that motion pictures could be much more than static camera shots. Early in the history of the movies, film- makers exploited aesthetic, political, and economic advantages. The three primary functions probably explain why so many different terms—motion picture, cinema, documentary, film, show, picture, movie, and so on—have been used to describe the presentation of single-framed, sequen- tial images that move through a machine so rapidly that they create the illusion of movement when projected on a screen.
Historical Perspective
The history of the motion picture can be summed up in one word— adaptation. Innovative inventors, directors, and
studio executives worked to make sure that movies would become and remain a popular source of entertainment. When- ever movie sales dipped, the industry created better stories, turned up the publicity about the stars, and developed innovative technology to attract more viewers.
With the invention of Richard Mad- dox’s gelatin-bromide dry plate process in 1871, fast action could finally be captured on film. One of the first to take advan- tage of this new medium was the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. He was famous for helping the governor of California, Leland Stanford. He took stop-action pictures, clocked at 1/500th of a second, which proved a horse ran at some point with all four legs off the ground (Figure 12.9). He also invented an early movie projector, the zoopraxiscope in 1879. It used rotating glass discs to simulate movement with separate images. Muybridge sold collections of images on discs as well as prints of people and animals in various poses. However, there is no evidence that he realized the signifi- cance of combining his images with his projector.
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Figure 12.9 “The Horse in Motion,” 1878, by Eadweard Muybridge. To publi- cize the successful technical feat of taking stop-motion images of Leland Stanford’s horse “Sallie Gardner,” Eadweard Muybridge arranged to have a postcard made for sale by Morse’s Gallery of San Francisco. As his unusual name might suggest, Eadweard Muybridge, born Edward Mug- geridge in England, was a unique character in the history of pho- tography. He changed his last name to Muybridge when he started his photographic career in San Francisco and then changed his first name to match that of King Eadweard who was consecrated at Muybridge’s hometown in 900 ce. In 1855 he arrived in San Francisco, but had to return to England after he suffered brain damage from a stagecoach accident. Returning in 1866, he became known for his landscapes of Yosemite and was asked to be a photographer for the U.S. Army’s expeditions of the Western states. In 1872 Stanford contacted him to take pictures of his running horse. Two years later, he discovered that his wife had a lover, whom he then murdered. During the trial he pleaded insanity because of his earlier head injury. Nev- ertheless, the jury found the action “justifiable homicide” and acquitted him. Stanford had paid for his defense. The trial is the subject of the 1982 opera “The Photographer” by Philip Glass.
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to be preserved in the collection of the Library of Congress. The short film was a close-up of a slightly self-conscious Edi- son mechanic pretending to sneeze for the camera in Fred Ott’s Sneeze (Figure 12.10). Within three years, Edison had established Kinetoscope arcades in which phonographs, another Edison invention, could be heard, and 30-second movies could be seen. Dickson made most of the
Figure 12.10 The first motion picture in the Library of Congress col- lection is the short Thomas Edison film Fred Ott’s Sneeze of 1891. Ott’s sneeze should be viewed column-by-column starting from the top left. Edi- son believed if anyone wanted to watch a motion picture, it would be through a peephole viewer, and the subject would be fictionalized works.
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Someone who did see the potential of these flickering images was the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison. In 1888 he bought 90 of Muybridge’s motion studies. After numerous experiments, he and his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson invented the first motion picture camera, the Kinetograph and the Kinetoscope, a peephole viewer. In 1891, Edison and Dickson made the first motion picture
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films, which were 50 feet long, with no editing or camera movements. Early mov- ies simply showed dancers, clowns, and other entertainers performing in front of the camera. However, one of the first commercial productions for the public was called scandalous by social critics of the day. Directed by William Heise who worked with Dickson, The Kiss (1896) showed a reenactment of an amorous exchange between two characters in the play The Widow Jones (Weblink 12.3).
But Edison never thought much of the new medium. He was content to offer peephole films in his arcades where he featured what he thought would be more popular phonograph recordings. Consequently, he didn’t bother to secure patent rights for his film equipment in Europe. An English scientific instruments maker, Robert Paul, bought a Kineto- graph and made an important techni- cal improvement—he replaced Edison’s electrified mechanism with a more por- table hand crank. In 1894, two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, purchased one of Paul’s Kinetographs.
The brothers improved the device so that not only could they make films with it but could also use it to process and project the movies. They named their invention the Cinématographe, which soon was shortened to cinema.
The Lumières’ first films were similar to those created by purchasers of video cameras—glorified home movies. Early in 1895, the two previewed their first effort, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, with a group of friends and family members (Figure 12.11; Weblink 12.4).
On December 28, 1895, the first public audience for motion pictures was treated to a series of short films in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris and the modern concept of motion pictures—movies seen with an audience—was born (Figure 12.12).
Edison’s short films differed from the Lumière works in a fundamental way. Instead of a documentary approach, in which the camera filmed people and situ- ations often without their being aware of its presence, Edison favored heavy-handed staged productions in the fiction genre that could be seen by only one viewer at a
Figure 12.11 Unlike Edison, Auguste and Louis Lumière thought motion pictures would be viewed in theaters with large audi- ences and that the type of films most would want to see would be documentaries. One of the first films by the Lumière brothers is the 1895 film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory. With its objective camera approach, the work has a contemporary documentary style.
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But what they clamored for were fiction- alized productions seen in a theater.
One of the first to realize the aesthetic potential of movies was George Méliès of France, considered the founder of special effects (Figure 12.13). The son of wealthy parents, Méliès started his career as a caricaturist, stage designer, magician, and actor. Méliès purchased a camera from Robert Paul and made his first movie, A Game of Cards, in 1896. By 1900 the pub- lic had grown bored with documentaries. Méliès filled the void with surreal films inspired by his experiences as a magician and stage performer. His most famous work is the 10-minute classic A Trip to the Moon made in 1902. Roughly based on the Jules Verne stories of From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the movie shows a group of professors who take a voyage in a rocket ship that lands in one of the “eyes” of the face on the moon (Weblink 12.5).
One of the early innovators in filmmak- ing who understood the public’s desire to see action movies produced outside a studio was the American Edwin Stratton Porter.
In 1896, he had left the U.S. Navy and went to work for Edison as a mechanic, electrician, and film opera- tor. He soon left Edison, bought his own camera, made films, rented a theater, and showed his movies under the name of Thomas Edison, Jr. He made his two most famous pictures in 1903—The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, in which much of the action was shot outside of a studio (Figure 12.14). He also invented the important concept of “cinematic time.” Instead of simply leaving the camera on during an entire film, Porter edited scenes to create interest for the audi- ence (Weblink 12.6).
Figure 12.13 The grave of French direc- tor George Méliès, located in Pére Lachaise cemetery, Paris, is adorned with flowers laid by fans of the man who introduced the field of special effects to the motion picture industry.
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Figure 12.12 On a busy street in Paris, the plaque mounted on the wall at the top left commemorates the location of the Lumière brothers’ motion picture theater, then called Le Salon Indien du Grand Café.
time. As it turned out, both the Lumières and Edison had it wrong and right. What most of the public did not want to see were documentaries through a peephole.
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During the silent era, the rise and fall of David Wark Griffith is a metaphor for the entire early time period. Born in Kentucky to a Confederate Civil War hero, Griffith had been a reporter for a Louisville news- paper and had written and acted for the stage when he was signed up as an actor at five dollars a day ($120 today). With his stage experience, Griffith was offered a director’s position with Biograph Stu- dios in New York City and then moved to Hollywood. Griffith is best known for the infamous Birth of a Nation (1915). The movie is a demonstration of the maturity of Griffith’s film work, but unfortunately is a mean-spirited and racist story. Originally titled The Clansman from Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s book The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the movie tells of the history of the United States immediately after the Civil War. When a struggling community is attacked by a ravaging group of African Americans (Anglo actors played with heavy black makeup), the people are saved by white-
Figure 12.14 The first action-adventure motion picture was the 1903 classic The Great Train Robbery by Edwin Porter. Unlike the films produced by Thomas Edison, Porter filmed his movies outside of a stage set. Here, three train rob- bers make their escape while ducking gunfire.
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Figure 12.15 In this scene from the 1915 movie Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan (with toilet plunger head ornaments that today’s Klan decline to wear) catches up with Gus, played by the Anglo actor Walter Long in blackface makeup. Thought responsible for the death of a young Anglo woman, Gus is tried, convicted, and executed by the Klan.
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hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) who ride into town on horseback (Figure 12.15).
Compared to the other Biograph mov- ies, Birth was an incredible gamble. Most films of the day cost no more than $100 (about $2,300 today) for the total pro- duction. Birth cost about $83,000 (about $1.8 million)—the most ever invested in a motion picture at that time (Weblink 12.7). To offset the cost of making the movie, the ticket price was an incredibly
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high $2—that is the equivalent of $45 today. Obviously, the movie was intended for wealthy audience members. The three- hour movie premiered at Clune’s Audito- rium in Los Angeles (a grand movie palace that was demolished in 1985) to immedi- ate controversy as Klansmen in full robes helped publicize the movie. The NAACP issued a pamphlet called “Fighting a Vicious Film” and began a boycott of the studio. Many leading politicians and civic leaders were unanimous in their condem- nation because of the racist message of the movie. When it was shown in Boston, a race riot followed, but attendance at road show engagements was high. Never- theless, after President Woodrow Wilson saw it in the White House, he said it was “like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Although the KKK had disbanded in 1869, the film was responsible for the rac- ist extremist group’s revival.
Over the years, Birth of a Nation reportedly made $20 million (almost $300 million today). In 1919, Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford formed their own film company that they named United Artists (Figure 12.16). But in his later years, Griffith lost much of the creative energy associated
with his early films. In the 1930s, he tried to make movies with sound, but his lack of technical experience and his reputation among audio and studio executives who viewed him as a quaint, silent-movie dino- saur prevented him from doing so. For the last 17 years of his life he lived as a virtual hermit in Los Angeles. He died in 1948 on his way to a Hollywood hospital from a hotel where he had been living alone.
This early, silent film era is important because during that time the motion pic- ture industry established itself as a power- ful business force, started the careers of numerous directors, and began the con- cept of “stars,” which were elevated to a higher status than mere actors. The triad of dealings, directors, and stars was crucial to filmmaking during that time, and the relationships between the three remain vital in today’s world of moviemaking.
Because many European movie compa- nies were forced to stop commercial pro- duction during World War I, Hollywood was able to dominate the business with its good climate, varied geography, inexpen- sive real estate, and war-free environment. By 1915, most American studios had established complexes in the Los Angeles suburb of Universal City. Many Europeans who migrated because of the war became successful in the film industry. The pro- liferation of studios indicated the rise in popularity of motion pictures generally, with the public asking for new movies to satisfy their film appetite. The numerous business deals among producers, distribu- tors, and banking groups (e.g., J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller) reflected the rising costs of movies.
Although making movies has always been a collaborative effort, the role of the director is the key to a production. A director turns the words of a screen- writer, the talent of the actors, and the Lib
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Figure 12.16 Standing behind a seated, camera-aware Charlie Chaplin are D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks as they prepare to sign the contract establishing United Artists motion picture studio in 1919.
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expertise of the technical crew into an art form with a unique visual style. Some of the most powerful studio executives had humble beginnings. Mack Sennett was an actor under Edison and later worked for Griffith. In 1912, he financed his own production company, the Keystone Film Company of Los Angeles. The studio became famous for its madcap chase scenes involving the Keystone Kops and romantic comedies featuring the sophis- ticated star Gloria Swanson. Keystone launched the careers of writer-turned- director Frank Capra and comedic actors Harold Lloyd and Charles Chaplin, the most famous silent film star. But when the silent film period ended, Sennett’s com- edies were no longer popular. Hal Roach was Sennett’s biggest competitor. Roach wooed Lloyd away with more money. With his alter ego, whom he called the “Glass Character,” Lloyd made more than 100 one-reel comedies that exhibited his acrobatic skills and a sophisticated sense of visual humor (Figure 12.17). Roach went on to direct Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in several comedy classics as well as the Our Gang comedy series, which was popular in theaters and on television.
One of the most famous silent film directors was Cecil B. DeMille, who often clashed with studio executives over his high budgets. His 1923 The Ten Com- mandments cost more than a million dollars ($12.8 million today) to produce. DeMille had been inspired to become a director after watching Porter’s The Great Train Robbery. He initially worked for Samuel Goldwyn and moved his produc- tion facilities to a barn in Hollywood in 1914 to begin making feature films. DeMi- lle was popular with the public because his movies always contained a hint of sensuality as opposed to Griffith’s senti- mentality.
One of the most influential directors in the history of silent films was the Rus- sian Sergei Eisenstein. Like Orson Welles, Eisenstein was known primarily for his innovative film technique in one motion picture. He studied architecture and engi- neering before being bitten by the theater bug. He gave up his engineering career when he landed a job with an experimen- tal theater where he designed sets and directed plays. He became interested in filmmaking after watching Griffith’s use of montage sequences in Birth of a Nation to tell the story of rich and poor characters. In 1925, he released his classic The Battle- ship Potemkin, which told the story of the 1905 sailors’ rebellion in Odessa and the Tsar’s brutal reprisal. The movie is prob- ably best known for its famous “steps” scene in which montage and quick-editing techniques created dramatic tension (Fig- ure 12.18). Eisenstein was inspired by the dada art movement, in which multiple images were shown on the screen at the same time for maximum visual effect.
Figure 12.17 Suspended above Los Angeles during the filming of Safety Last! in 1923 is Harold Lloyd, one of the most popular phys- ical comedians of the silent era, lesser known than Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Lloyd made about 200 pic- tures, and is best known for his “Glass Character” who thrilled audiences with his elaborate chase scenes and self-performed stunts. Attest- ing to his popularity, his hand- and footprints, along with the outline of his eyeglass frames (in reality, sunglass frames) are preserved in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Holly- wood Boulevard. In 1994 the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp that included a carica- ture of him by Al Hirschfeld.
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With film pieces as short as 1/16th of a second, the murder of Russian civilians by the Tsar’s troops (an incident that prob- ably was not as severe as shown) is one of the best examples of the art of edit- ing in the history of film (Weblink 12.8). Eisenstein became a teacher of motion picture art and wrote several books about the power of film as a communication medium before his death in 1948.
Hollywood sensuality on and off the big screen caused many people to become concerned that movies could have a cor- rupting influence on the morals of the nation. Sparked by the sensual love scenes on the screen and the personal scandals of a handful of stars, a private censorship board was established to regulate the industry. In 1920 Mary Pickford divorced her husband and two weeks later married
Douglas Fairbanks. Fans were shocked, thinking Pickford’s own personality was the same as her sweet, girl-next-door characters. The actor and director Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was involved in a 1921 scandal when a young actress died during a party at his rented 12th-floor suite in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and Arbuckle was charged with rape and mur- der. Even though he was found not guilty, his reputation was ruined because of vicious attacks in the Hearst newspapers.
Mary Pickford’s hasty post-divorce marriage and the Arbuckle affair led to the 1922 formation of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America by Will Hays, former Postmaster General during the Harding administration. A Presbyterian elder, Hays and his com- mittee members offered informal advice
Figure 12.18 Adding to the horror of the famous steps scene in the 1925 classic by Russian direc- tor Sergei Eisenstein, The Battleship Potemkin, is the abandoned baby carriage that is left on its own to peril- ously travel down the steps between dead and dying citizens.
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to movie executives about studio scandals and movie content. More important, the office issued a seal of approval for work that they considered acceptable for mass audiences. Without that approval, a film was doomed to a low-budget status. This early form of censorship led to sanitized and banal works in the 1930s and 1940s that could win easy approval from the Hays office. From that idea came the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) rating system, initiated in 1968. Kirby Dick directed a documentary about the MPAA’s rating procedure in This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006).
As a public relations ploy to help dig- nify the criticized film industry, the Acad- emy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences first presented its Academy Awards on May 16, 1929. The treasured eight-pound, gold-plated award originally was called “The Statuette,” but when an Academy librarian remarked that the standing man looked like her uncle Oscar, the name stuck.
The 1930s and 1940s are considered by most motion picture historians to be Hollywood’s great technical age. Techni- cal innovations brought improvements in presentation, and the public flocked to films in record numbers. One of the inno- vations, sound, was an instant success.
Sound
Amplified sound that could be heard by large audiences was made possible by Lee De Forest’s invention of the audio tube. Based on an earlier idea of Edison’s, De Forest created a vacuum tube that even- tually led to public address systems, radio, stereo equipment, and television. The American Telegraph & Telephone Com- pany (AT&T) bought De Forest’s technol- ogy and developed it in the company’s
Western Electric Bell Laboratories subsid- iary. General Electric’s scientists also were working on sound development. Both Western Electric and General Electric announced their amplification systems at about the same time.
The advent of “talking pictures” was delayed because there were two differ- ent sound systems that competed for adoption by the studios. Another reason for the delay was that theater owners were not convinced of the necessity to fit their movie houses with expensive sound equipment.
Sound for movies required that syn- chronized dialogue, music, and sound effects be recorded during a movie’s filming. Two sound systems—the Vita- phone (sound on disc) and the Phonofilm (sound on film)—became available to filmmakers at about the same time. The Vitaphone process was an adaptation of Edison’s phonographic cylinder invention in which a recording disc was made when the film was shot. To produce sound dur- ing a movie, a theater exhibitor had to run the picture and the cylinder with two different machines. Occasionally problems arose (considered humorous by early audiences) when the two didn’t match or a haphazard projector technician acciden- tally played the wrong disc. Phonofilm, the technology that eventually won the competition, was a sound-on-film innova- tion that converted recorded sounds into visual representations that were printed on the film itself. Consequently, no sepa- rate machine was required because the visual and the audio components of the movie always matched.
Warner Bros. invested heavily in Vitaphone, whereas 20th Century Fox advocated Phonofilm. On October 6, 1927, Warner debuted Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer using the Vitaphone process.
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Although not the first sound picture— there had been earlier experiments with recorded voices and music—The Jazz Singer was the first movie in which sound was used in a feature motion picture to tell a story (Weblink 12.9). The movie is forgettable except as a footnote in the history of sound presentations, although it included Jolson’s famous ad-libbed line, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” Nevertheless, it made $3.5 million ($42 million today) at the box office, and Warner’s production head, Darryl F. Zanuck, received an Oscar during the first Academy Awards ceremony for the technical achievement.
More recent sound innovations include Ray Dolby’s noise reduction technology introduced in the 1970s. Stanley Kubrick first used the process in the 1971 movie A Clockwork Orange. In 1990 Kodak introduced its Cinema Digital Sound for Dick Tracy. Dolby Digital was first heard in Batman Returns (1992), and in 1993 Digital Theater Systems (DTS) introduced its technology for Jurassic Park. Columbia used Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) for Last Action Hero.
Color
Another technical innovation was the use of color. The tedious method of hand- tinting individual frames of a motion picture was used commercially as early as Porter’s The Great Train Robbery. The first color film innovations were complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. The first full-length movie filmed and projected in color was The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914). That British production used a short-lived, two-projector process called Kinemacolor. In 1915, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation announced its two-color process. A more advanced
three-color Technicolor process was intro- duced in 1932. The next year the Walt Disney Studio won an Academy Award for its all-color animated classic Flowers and Trees (Weblink 12.10), and Becky Sharp (1935) was the first live action film shot with the three-color innova- tion (Weblink 12.11). Public acceptance of color began with the classic fantasy motion picture The Wizard of Oz (1939). Audiences reportedly burst into wild applause when Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, opened the door of her drab, sepia-toned Kansas home and entered the brightly hued world of Oz after her tornado trip.
Widescreen
Widescreen presentations were another attempt to lure viewers to the theater. Early in its history, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected the 4:3 width-to-length aspect ratio as the industry standard for screen presentations in order to avoid costly differences in film stock, cameras, and theaters. The earlier, almost square proportions of the film image had to be widened in the 1930s for the Phonofilm process to allow for the sound track to run along the side of the film. Eventually, widescreen became the standard presentation format. In 1952, the first commercial widescreen format— Cinerama—was introduced. Although it was a complicated process that required a movie to be shot with three cameras and shown with four projectors (one reserved for the sound track), the wide- screen, expansive look was a great success with the public. The next year Cinema- Scope (later called Panavision) provided directors with a widescreen process that needed only one camera and projec- tor. Some early widescreen hits included
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The Robe (1953), How the West Was Won (1962), and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) (Weblink 12.12). The widescreen trend continues today with the IMAX and OMNIMAX presentation formats that require specially built audi- toriums. IMAX theater screens are 40 × 28 yards.
With television enjoying its “Golden Age” in the 1950s and fewer leaving their couches for a movie theater’s cushioned seat, another idea to bring in audiences were movies that took advantage of the fears sparked by the Cold War, the atomic bomb, and teenage alienation in the 1950s. Consequently, the studios pro- duced low-budget “red menace” movies such as I Married a Communist (1949), several science fiction movies with subtle links to political issues such as The Inva- sion of the Body Snatchers (1956), movies with atom-bomb-created mutant crea- tures such as Them! (1954), and alienated teenager movies such as The Wild One (1954) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) (Weblink 12.13).
Three-Dimensional Films
Three-dimensional (3-D), double feature, and drive-in movies were promoted to also try to compete with television. As early as 1915, Edwin Porter showed 3-D test films to audiences, but noth- ing became of his early attempt. In Los Angeles, the first 3-D movie shown to a paying audience was called The Power of Love in 1922. In the 1950s 3-D took off with Bwana Devil (1952), and the first feature-length 3-D motion picture pre- sented in stereo sound was The House of Wax (1953), starring the great horror actor Vincent Price, who went on to star in three other 3-D movies. The great director Alfred Hitchcock even filmed
a 3-D version of his classic thriller Dial M for Murder in 1954. Audiences soon grew tired of the passing fad. However, the genre is enjoying a comeback with high quality 3-D effects as seen in Henry Selick’s animated puppet movie Cora- line (2009) and Disney’s first computer- generated 3-D cartoon with Pixar, Up (2009) (Weblink 12.14). The 3-D technol- ogy company RealD supplies comfortable glasses for audience members and installs digital screens for theater operators such as AMC Entertainment, Cinemark USA, and Regal Entertainment Group. In James Cameron’s Avatar (2010) the per- formance capture technology combined with 3-D movie making represent a quan- tum leap in motion pictures as important as sound, color, and widescreen.
Double Features and Drive-Ins
Double features began in the 1930s as a way to convince money-conscious view- ers that they would get more for their money. With a newsreel, a cartoon, trailers, and two feature-length movies, moviego- ers stayed in the theater for several hours while owners made money from drinks, popcorn, and candy sales. Double feature presentations survived until the 1970s and spawned a motion picture genre known as the “B” movie, a term that came from an ancient time when pop songs were pro- duced on small, vinyl discs and played at 45 revolutions per minute. The “A side” was the popular tune of the time; the “B side,” not so much. Cheaply produced, short B movies were needed to fill the bill with the main feature. One of the most notable movie directors of this era was Roger Cor- man, known as the “King of the B Movies.” He produced almost 400 motion pictures and gave many in Hollywood their start in the industry, including James Cameron and
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Ron Howard. During the 1950s, drive-in movies prospered throughout the country, with over 4,000 screens across America. Owners of cheap land away from city lights saw drive-ins as a way to put the unproductive real estate to better use. But television viewing competed with drive- ins too. Despite being a haven for lovers and parents with young children, drive-ins, with their colorfully painted front screens, are hard to find. Today, many are used as convenient open spaces for flea markets (Figure 12.19). Drive-in movies are making a bit of a comeback with large inflatable screens set up on swap meet locations, where the theaters used to be established. Home versions of the large screen can be purchased for as low as $200 for a back- yard viewing party.
Multi-Screen Theaters
Other casualties of the war with televi- sion were the large, often enchanting movie theaters that could hold up to 3,000
people. With architectural and sculptural curiosities, moody and mysterious light- ing effects, and a huge screen behind a heavy maroon or blue curtain, these movie houses were truly magical places that matched the wonder of the motion pictures themselves. Today the trend is against large, single screens because owners can make more money with multi-screen theaters. Some cineplexes have as many as 27 separate theaters under one roof. The- ater managers receive the films via mailed discs, satellite, or internet connections and project them digitally (Figure 12.20).
Multi- and megaplexes are here to stay with their stadium seating and convenient showing times. A fairly new trend are lux- ury theaters such as the ArcLight movie complex in Los Angeles, with reserved seating in plush leather chairs and pre- mium food and drinks served to your seat. For about $30 a ticket with food and drinks extra, Gold Class Cinemas founded in Australia with theaters in California, Illi- nois, and Washington state offers “online seating reservations, free valet parking, [and] in-theater food and beverage ser- vice with a call button” that makes you feel like William Randolph Hearst watch- ing a movie in his castle.
Technical Perspective
As with the cartoon and photography media, movies primarily communicate in a visual format. By studying previous works and by being creative, directors have learned to exploit the visual con- siderations inherent in static or dynamic shots and film choices.
The Shot
The basic unit of a movie is the shot, defined as a continuous picture in which
Figure 12.19 Drive-in theaters have been nearly eliminated as places for showing movies, except in a few, mostly rural communi- ties. In 2009 “The Spud” drive- in outside of Victor, Idaho, still serves up first-run movies such as Night at the Museum and Angels and Demons dur- ing the summer season, along with their famous french fries.
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the camera doesn’t stop. A shot can be as quick as 1/30th of a second—one frame— or can last the entire length of a picture. Graphic designer Saul Bass created the storyboards for one of the most memo- rable scenes in Hollywood history—the shower murder in Psycho (1960). Alfred Hitchcock, using storyboards from Bass, created an impressionistic murder with shocking intensity by using 67 separate editing cuts for the 90-second scene (Fig- ure 12.21). On the opposite side of the quick cut, an incredible technical achieve- ment was accomplished in 2002 when the Russian director Alexandr Sokurov used one continuous shot for his motion picture Russian Ark. The film traced over 300 years of Russian history by taking the viewer on a rhythmic, rambling stroll through 33 rooms of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (Weblink 12.15).
Film Choices
Motion pictures can be shot in black and white, color, or a combination of
the two. Movies also can be tinted or colorized. Black and white always has been associated with serious, documen- tary-style subjects, whereas, at first, color was thought to be a distracting attribute better used for fantasies. But black and white can be as colorful and sensational as color. Richard Brooks’s haunting retelling of the story of two killers and their capture in the film In Cold Blood (1967) and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), the story of boxer Jake LaMotta, were shot in black and white. The rich tones contribute to a documentary atmosphere in the telling of the brutal stories. Such directors as the indie favor- ite Jim Jarmusch in his Stranger than Paradise (1984), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), and Broken Flowers (2005), and the Hollywood iconoclast Francis Ford Coppola in his personal story Tetro (2009), known for his colorful classics The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979), preferred to tell their stories in the less distracting format of black and white. Some directors combine
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Figure 12.20 The movie complex at Uni- versal Citywalk in Los Angeles includes 19 screens with one a giant IMAX theater all with stadium seating.
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black and white and color for dramatic contrast. Oliver Stone switched quickly back and forth between the two film formats in Natural Born Killers (1994). The same technique was employed by Guy Maddin in his wonderfully strange musical The Saddest Music in the World (2003) (Weblink 12.16).
Ethical Perspective
Besides the issues associated with the other media discussed, there are three main ethi- cal concerns for the movie industry: ste- reotypical portrayals, emphasis on violent themes, and the promotion of smoking. However, a fourth ethical consideration
Figure 12.21 One of the most unforgettable moments in motion picture history is the shower murder scene with Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho. The terror of the scene is enhanced by the quick cuts, but after the Leigh character is killed, a slow transition between the shower drain and her eye is breathtaking.
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is taking hold within the industry due to the availability of motion pictures on the internet—copyright infringement.
Stereotypes
In 2001 the Oscars for best male and female actors went to two African Americans— Denzel Washington and Halle Berry for their work in Training Day and Monster’s Ball, respectively, a first for the Awards. But since that time such films as Soul Plane (2004), White Chicks (2004), and Norbit (2007) were released (Weblink 12.17). Director Spike Lee said that Plane is “coon- ery and buffoonery,” while another critic wrote that the film is “among the most offensive ever in terms of showing African Americans in a negative light.” It seems that progress against stereotyping is always tempered by movies that are made to sell tickets and not to advance society.
African Americans aren’t the only group to feel the sting of stereotyping in motion pictures. Native Americans, although seen in films frequently in the early westerns, almost always were portrayed as murderous savages. Lob- bying from Arab groups, upset over the stereotypes in Disney’s Aladdin (1992), convinced the studio to change offend- ing lyrics in a song, although many other common Arab stereotypes remained. On the other hand, Sacha Baron Cohen’s parody Borat: Cultural Learnings of Amer- ica for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) revealed in a comedic way the stereotypes and prejudices of middle-class Americans. His next film was produced for the same purpose and fea- tured his character Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion writer, in Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Mak- ing Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfort- able in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a
Mesh T-Shirt (2009). The full title didn’t fit on theater’s marquees. Nevertheless, gay activists criticized the film for the char- acter’s stereotypical obsession with “anal sex, bondage wear and sex toys.”
Violence
Offering the simplistic argument that the violence seen in motion pictures is responsible for all of the social problems in a society is always politically popular. Undeniably, action-adventure movies, always a popular genre, are filled with vio- lent activities. Despite momentary sensi- tivity among U.S. film producers, violence will continue to be a staple of American films because violent films are enormously popular. One of the main reasons that the number of violent movies is increas- ing is the economic situation of the major studios. Studio executives need big block- buster hits to maintain the economic health of their enterprises. And since about 80 percent of all movies shown in Europe are from the United States, execu- tives have learned that action-adventure films are popular throughout the world because violence translates across cul- tures.
Smoking in the Movies
A five-year content analysis of U.S. motion pictures conducted by academic research- ers and reported on the website “Smoke Free Movies” found that 80 percent of the “776 Hollywood and independent movies included tobacco use” (Weblink 12.18). About 90 percent of R-rated films, 80 percent of PG-13 movies, and 50 per- cent of G and PG motion pictures had at least one scene with an actor smoking. Furthermore, the major studios of “Time- Warner, Disney, and Sony accounted
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for more than half of all movies released with smoking.” The number of scenes with characters smoking is higher today than it was during the 1950s, when the health issues related to smoking were not as well known. Because children are highly influenced by seeing stars smoke and the brands they choose, the advocacy group recommended that movies with characters who smoke should have an R rating and that cigarette brands not be visually identified in the films. In 2007 Dis- ney announced it would no longer show characters smoking in its movies and discouraged directors of its Touchstone and Miramax adult labels from showing characters lighting up. In 2008 the six major movie studios announced that they would include anti-smoking public service announcements on DVD versions of any movies that depict smoking.
Copyright Infringement
An open letter presented on the website of the MPAA reads, “As with any business, the people and companies that create music, movies, and other copyrighted material rely on getting a fair reward for their creativity, time and hard work. That happens when people buy these works, but not when they steal them—including by copying or transmitting them without the permission of the copyright own- ers.” Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said in 2004 that the organization would combat piracy through three approaches: “improve [piracy deterring] technology, enforce the laws, and educate people.” Computer network systems make the downloading of music, movies, and other materials easier than ever before in the history of the medium. Just as movie pro- ducers adapted to the competition from television, they will once again need to be
creative to overcome the trend toward an all-download future.
Cultural Perspective
Motion pictures, just like any art form, reflect the archetypes and myths that are popular within a particular culture at a particular time. All visual messages, movies included, help shape what we think of our society and ourselves. Hol- lywood stars give us ideals to strive for, and the mythic stories of good versus evil, social order versus anarchy, and group dependence versus independence strike deep, cultural chords. At least 12 genres, or types of stories created on film, reflect a society’s cultural values—comedy, crime, documentary, epic, horror, musical, romance, science fiction, social impact, thriller, war, and western.
Comedy: City Lights (1931), Some Like It Hot (1959), and Tropic Thunder (2008)—from sophisticated situations and dialogue to a cynical production that parodies the war film genre and the motion picture industry (Figure 12.22).
Crime: Scarface (1932), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and The Dark Knight (2008)— from stories with clear good and evil characters to sympathetic psychological profiles of dangerous criminals (Weblink 12.19). In his last performance, which won him an Oscar, Heath Ledger provided a brilliant and sympathetic look at a seri- ously disturbed criminal in The Dark Knight.
Documentary: Nanook of the North (1922), Primary (1960), and Man on Wire (2008)—balanced reporting, as with a journalistic report, is not as valued as advocating a point of view. Man on Wire
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was a sensitive and intimate portrait of a fascinating personality and is an example of the best the genre has to offer (Figure 12.23).
Epic: Napoleon (1926), Lawrence of Ara- bia (1962), and Australia (2008)—an important genre that is always underrep- resented in filmmaking (Weblink 12.20). Australia is a sweeping, old-fashioned love story with beautiful people, scenery, and not much else.
Horror: Frankenstein (1931), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Saw VI (2009)— from human-created to inhuman mon- sters (Weblink 12.21). With each sequel for Saw, audiences become harder to shock.
Musical: The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Sound of Music (1965), and Footloose (2010)—from unrealistic fantasies to seri- ous character studies. The remake of the teen favorite Footloose indicates a lack of new ideas (Weblink 12.22).
Romance: Gone with the Wind (1939), Casablanca (1942), and The Love Guru (2008)—from love in the midst of civil and world war to a movie voted the worst of the year by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation (Weblink 12.23).
Science fiction: Metropolis (1926), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Push (2009)— from thoughtful commentaries about the future to a visually arresting feature with little interest in its characters and plot (Weblink 12.24).
Social impact: The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Smoke Signals (1998), and An Inconve- nient Truth (2006)—always a strong film
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Figure 12.22 Joe E. Brown (left) and Jack Lemmon in the famous final scene for Some Like It Hot. After Lemmon removes his wig, he confesses, “I’m a man” to Brown, his groom- to-be. Brown responds, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” Back screen projection is often employed by directors to simulate an outdoor view. Here, the actors sat on a stationary boat in a studio while film of the ocean was displayed behind them.
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Figure 12.23 A good example of a “one sheet” promotional poster before the influence of the graphic designer Saul Bass is the one for Nanook of the North (1922), considered the first true documentary dramatic film. Instead of one central graphic element, three textual descriptions and five illustrations attempt to intrigue a potential theater- goer to watch the black-and- white silent movie.
genre. Truth is essentially a lecture on the dangers of global warming to the planet by Academy Award, Grammy, and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, which rivets your attention from start to finish (Weblink 12.25).
Thriller: The Maltese Falcon (1941), Psycho (1960), The International (2009)—from
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well-written dramas with fine acting to a movie with fast-paced and intense action scenes that add dramatic effect to an oth- erwise ordinary plot (Weblink 12.26).
War: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Waltz with Bashir (2008)—the best in this genre are critical examinations of why wars are sometimes necessary (Weblink 12.27). Waltz with Bashir, a critical examination of what happens to people on both sides of a gun’s barrel, shows how moving and effective the animation medium can be (Weblink 12.28).
Western: Stagecoach (1939), The Wild Bunch (1969), and Appaloosa (2008)—as with the best films in this genre, the need for violent actions is questioned but some- times cannot be avoided (Weblink 12.29).
Because motion pictures are visual media, they tell their mythic stories through visual symbolism. Myths are the stories of our culture, whereas symbols are the way those stories are communicated. Motion pictures are cultural artifacts. Movies affect us emotionally because the powerful visual messages, on a screen as large as a house and with sound qual- ity that is better than being on a set, tell stories that we understand.
Critical Perspective
Movie attendance has been declining slowly since the 1950s because of the popularity of television, the computer, and the internet. The number of tickets sold annually in the United States imme- diately after World War II averaged about four billion. In 2008, the number of tickets sold dropped to about 1.37 billion. The movie industry is still profitable because
ticket prices have risen, sales of refresh- ments have increased, and screens have been added to the 5,800 local theaters in the United States. With multiplex subur- ban theaters, first-run blockbuster movies with huge marketing budgets are sold out the first few weeks of their runs. But after attention wanes, you’ll easily find a the- ater seat without anyone sitting in front of you. Nevertheless, total box-office sales for 2009 was $10.5 billion, a record year.
Today, many forms of entertainment are available to those who can afford them—restaurants, lectures, art museums, music concerts, comedy clubs, shopping malls, traditional theaters, athletic activi- ties, and sporting events. But by far the biggest threat to the existence of motion pictures is in the home, with radio, broad- cast television, cable and satellite televi- sion, videotapes, DVDs, board and video games, web presentations, reading, yard work, talking, dinner parties, and sex all keeping people occupied.
Moviemaking is a business. If antici- pated blockbusters bomb embarrassingly at the box office, the studio executives responsible sometimes get the axe. This blockbuster mentality, in which most of the profits for a studio are made during the summer months, forces producers to make films that appeal to large audiences. More often than not, proven formulas from the past—remakes and sequels with sexual and violent themes—do well at the box office.
Moviemaking, it is sad to report, is still a man’s business. During the sum- mer blockbuster season of 2007, women directed none of the 30 top-grossing motion pictures. On average, only a paltry 6 percent of all the movies made during a year have women directors. Neverthe- less, standout women directors include Kathryn Bigelow for Point Break (1991),
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Strange Days (1995), and The Hurt Locker (2009), which was named the best drama of the year by the Los Angeles Film Crit- ics Association and the American Film Institute, Gurinder Chadha for Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and It’s a Wonder- ful Afterlife (2010), Jane Champion for The Piano (1993) and Bright Star (2009), Sanaa Hamri for Sisterhood of the Travel- ing Pants 2 (2008) and Acceptance (2009), Catherine Hardwicke for Twilight (2008) and Maximum Ride (2010), Christine Jeffs for Sunshine Cleaning (2008), Phyllida Lloyd for Mamma Mia! (2008), Jennifer Lynch for Boxing Helena (1993) and Sur- veillance (2008), and Nia Vardalos for I Hate Valentine’s Day (2009). In addition, women are being noted for their writing abilities, particularly Lorene Scafaria for her screenplay for Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008), Dana Fox for What Hap- pens in Vegas (2008), and Diablo Cody who wrote Jennifer’s Body (2009) and won an Oscar for her script for Juno (2007) (Weblink 12.30).
TRENDS TO WATCH FOR MOTION PICTURES
The most exciting trend for the motion picture medium involves technology and funding—admittedly not two of the most compelling topics. But high definition (hi-def) camcorders, called “Hollywood’s filmless future” offer high-resolution, high- quality images and audio in a portable format using laptop editing software pro- grams, combined with the steadicam, a stabilizing unit mounted to a camera that keeps the picture stable despite move- ments by the operator, allow independent directors to make movies with almost the same ease as multimedia presentations with sound.
With high quality but relatively inexpensive equipment, independent productions will continue to be vital to the movie industry. The 2009 Academy Award Best Picture and winner of seven other Oscars, the much-touted Slumdog Millionaire, for example, was a British production, co-financed by a French company, and starred an all-Indian cast. It debuted in only 10 theaters, but was marketed wisely by a small studio within media giant News Corp., Fox Searchlight. It also handled such surprise independent hits as Juno (2007), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), and Sideways (2004). Searchlight paid $2.5 million for distribution rights to Slumdog. As of this writing it has grossed more than $100 million.
With the six major studios—20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.—feeling the pinch from an economic downturn in 2009, independent movies (“indies”) are having their way with the help of film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, televi- sion channels such as the Independent Film Channel, and the Spirit Awards that celebrate “independent, low-budget film- making.” To attract attention to their work and also because they appreciate the aesthetic, some indie producers turn to 3-D technology. For his science fiction thriller Duel (2008), director Pavel Niko- lajev made the $100,000 film in 3-D (Fig- ure 12.24). Many indie directors are also bypassing traditional theater distribution and making their films available for inter- net downloading. For example, Robert Greenwald, director of Rethinking Afghani- stan (2009), released the documentary in five parts from his website, and other independent producers make their work available through video-on-demand
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(VOD) via cable providers or web services such as Amazon on Demand or YouTube Screening Room (Weblink 12.31).
A genre of indie film that is gaining in popularity is called “mumblecore.” Concerning the first example, Funny Ha Ha (2005), David Denby notes that these “micro-budget independent movies . . . made by buddies, casual and serious lov- ers, and networks of friends . . . [are] a kind of lyrical documentary of American stasis and inarticulateness” (Weblink 12.32). Craig Brewer, director of Hustle & Flow (2005) and Black Snake Moan (2006), produced a mumblecore series in 2009 with his Memphis musician friends in “$5 Cover” for web and MTV (Weblink 12.33).
Film directors will continue to chal- lenge themselves and sometimes their audiences by making movies based on traditional board games, turning video games into movies and movies into video games, and making commercials for television and the web. For example, Kevin Lima, director of Enchanted (2007), directed a movie based on the children’s game Candy Land. The success of the 1996 video game “Tomb Raider” inspired directors Simon West and Jan de Bont to cast Angelina Jolie to play Lara Croft in the movie versions. Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean (2003–2007) movies, produced a first- shooter video game, “Bioshock,” and Mike Newell of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) made “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” Famous directors are also enticed to produce television and web commercials. Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, 1996, and No Country for Old Men, 2007) made a humorous public service com- mercial for the “Reality Campaign” that criticized the concept of a clean coal facil- ity (Weblink 12.34). Roman Polanski, the controversial director of the classic film noir Chinatown (1974), made an ad for a fake perfume brand, which was the con- cept of the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, in which actresses Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams fought over a bottle of “Greed,” as a commentary on the state of the world in 2009 (Weblink 12.35).
With one-dollar rentals from Redbox vending machines located at many super- markets, you can rent a DVD movie for a day and watch it wherever you want. But there are other, even more conve- nient ways to watch movies. The website Crackle.com, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment Company, produces and presents original movies and series as well as previously released motion pictures.
Figure 12.24 Written and directed by Pavel Nikolajev, the indie 3-D film Duel (2008), in its storyline and visual style, attempts to emulate the Japanese anime style of movie-making. Except for the miscellaneous typeface family used for the title, the poster, on the other hand, does not reflect the anime style.
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Netflix.com users can also download mov- ies to their computers and watch them on their large, high-definition, widescreen monitors with digital sound connected to cable or satellite operators with seamless wireless access to the web that provides viewing of first-run movies before they are shown in local theaters. Perhaps taking a tip from Netflix, Warner Home Video announced in 2009 that it would make approximately 5,000 motion pictures in its DVD collection available per a customer’s demand.
But in the short run, fads such as 3-D and 4-D (live action players on stage); guest lectures from movie producers, critics, and academics; concert perfor- mances in 3-D or live, simulcast operas; and seats installed with computer moni- tors for value-added information about the film won’t get a mass audience off their couches. To remain a viable medium and to get people away from their home entertainment centers, movie producers will need to rely less on blockbuster mov- ies to improve their bottom line and more on smaller, well-made, and compelling stories that are now mostly supplied by
independent filmmakers. Theater owners must also think of new ways to enhance the viewing experience, including higher quality and healthier food offerings, Face- book-style friend group special screenings, and better soundproofing so that the explosions from the theater next door are silenced.
Will people continue to go to movie theaters? Of course they will. Humans are social animals and simply enjoy the com- pany of one another too much to stay home for long.
KEY TERMS
• Archetypes • Aspect ratio • Black Power • Camcorder • CinemaScope • Cinerama • Contrast • Golden Raspberry
Award • Indie • Kinemacolor
• Kinetograph • Kinetoscope • Ku Klux Klan • One-reel film • Shooter video game • Steadicam • Technicolor • Tracking shot • Two-color process • Vacuum tube • Zoopraxiscope
To locate active URLs for the weblinks mentioned in this chapter, please go to the compan- ion site at http://communication.wadsworth.com/lester5 and select the proper chapter.
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