Chapter 11: Conventional Film History Evolutions, Masterpieces and Periodization

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1 Film Exam Study Notes (2 nd Half of Term 2) Chapter 11: Conventional Film History Evolutions, Masterpieces and Periodization Evolutionary movie histories establish points of origin that is, movies or events that mark the beginnings of cinema. There are three kinds of historical origins commonly identifies with early cinema: the technological origins, artistic origins, and economic origins. Scientific/ Technological Origins The Lumieres rehected the peephole technology of the Kinetoscope to project movies for public viewings. On March 22, 1895, the brothers showed Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory. More of their films include Arrival of a Train at a Station. This was the beginning of cinema history proper. Artistic Origins According to this perspective, cinematic images are foreshadowed in cave drawings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and stories found on tapestries. These images reflect the creativity of individuals and societies and provide the pleasures of seeing human history re-created in pictures and words. Economic Origins Since the rise of a middle class in the eighteenth century, art, entertainment, and technology have had an important economic dimension. Throughout the nineteenth century, institutions such as vaudeville halls and popular literature identified a growing public appetite for amusements, encouraged by the increased leisure time and disposable incomes of the middle and lower classes. Advancing Realism The depiction of reality on film becomes more accurate as film technology becomes more advanced. Along with the evolution of realistic narratives and characters, a major technical advance in cinematic realism was the arrival of sound (refer back to notes on sound). Certain directors began identifying themselves with specific genres, starts and styles so that they could efficiently reproduce and make money (look up notes on auteurs) Vertical integration the studies owned both the production companies and the theaters, and they could dictate that exhibitors book less desirables films to in order to get the ones they wanted to show. Studio Classics and Classicists: 1930 s The term classical suggests movies that work efficiently within established formulas while also infusing those formulas with unusual creativity and artistry. Example: John Ford s Stagecoach (1939) combines establishing shots of the frontier with narrative formulas. Stagecoach represents the structural perfection of the western. It also documents the struggle for a national identity across a uniquely American terrain of violent frontiers and dramatic personal conflicts. Transitional and Turbulent Visions: 1940 s/1950 s Films in this era such as Orson Welles Citizen Kane are admired in part because they challenge the realism, continuity, and clarity of classical Hollywood cinema. The narrative structure and style reflect the fragmentations and divisions of a character through the use of multiple points of view and complex shots that create tensions and contradictions within single images. - exaggerated emotions and visual style both elicit and undermine the intense pathos at the heart of melodrama Rebels and Visionaries, Dealers and Deals: 1960 s 2000 s The most recent era of Hollywood film-making, from about 1980 to the present, has been driven by deals and deal makers, individuals whose commercial and entrepreneurial expertise, as much as, or more than,

2 their artistic ability, accounts for the success of the movie (think Brad Pitt, ect). In 1980 s/90 s directors begin to have a lot to deal with the success of the movie. Film History as Periodization Another important and conventional way to organize film history is through historical periodization. With this method, the timeline of Hollywood history is divided into segments that describe groups of years during which movies share thematic and stylistic concerns. Early Cinema ( ) - Rapid development and experimentation in filmmaking before Hollywood settled into more defined patterns - In the US, massive industrialization attracted large number of immigrants and rural citizens to urban centers where the center of the movie industry began - Industrialization fostered the growth of leisure time and commercialized leisure activities - In 1910: the rise of the star or celebrity : the beginning of the international dominance of Hollywood - First movies relied on the impact of a single shot of a specific scene or event Classical Cinema ( ) - Divided into two parts: silent and sound films. The first part encompasses Hollywood s silent period from 1913 to NYC becomes the new cultural center of the world - The US began to assert itself as both a powerful global force after WWI as well as the embodiment of the progressive promise of the 20 th century. - Hollywood itself came of age in the 1910 s and 20 s with 3 major historical developments: 1) the standardization of film production 2) the establishment of the feature film and 3) the cultural and economic expansion of the movies throughout the society - The feature-film model become the dominant commercial practice of the 20 th century and is still in place - Movies found more sophisticated subject manner and more elegant theatres for distribution, reflecting their rising cultural status and their ability to attract audiences - The most pronounces and important aesthetic changes during the Early Classical Period included 1) the full development of narrative realism as the center of film form and 2) integration of the viewer s perspective into the editing/narration - The second part of the classical cinema period, from brought sound to film and represents the golden age of Hollywood. The Great Depression, triggered in part by the stock market collapse of 1929, defined the American cultural experience at the beginning of the 1930 s - Hollywood followed industrial shifts with two important stylistic changes 1) the elaboration of movie dialogue and the growth of characterization in films and 2) the prominence of generic formulas in constructing film narratives Postwar Cinema ( ) - Defined by several overriding historical events and motifs: WWII (the inhuman nightmare of Nazi concentration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), doubts about human nature and social progress. Unease after the war permeated traditional institutions, especially the family and sexual/social relationships. The Cold War with the Soviet Union/ Communist bloc began an extended period of tension - The civil rights movements began to challenge social injustice - Three key events defined the period of postwar Hollywood: 1) after the 1948 Paramount decision, the traditional power of the studios dissolved 2) the arrival and rapid spread of television in the 1950 s and 3) in 1968 the Production Code standards were relaxed and rating systems were introduced

3 - Movies started to explore more controversial themes and issues as part of a new standard of realism and developing a more self-conscious and exaggerated sense of image composition and narrative structure - These topics led naturally to more unstable and unpredictable characters and narratives as well as to sometimes subversive and violent visual styles (ex: Psycho 1960) Contemporary Cinema ( ) - The movie industry shifted noticeable in response to four forces: 1) youth audiences becoming the dominant group of moviegoers 2) European art films becoming an increasing influence in Hollywood 3) globalization and 4) the arrival of conglomerates, blockbusters, cable and home video. - The elevation of image spectacles and special effects, and the fragmentation and reflexivity of narrative constructions Chapter 12: Global and Local Inclusive Histories of the Movies Film History Before WWII Early films were not necessarily fiction films, but films that delighted in the new medium s capacity to simply show things actualities showing real events, scenic views, and brief skits - This era dubbed the cinema of attractions by Tom Gunning was not a false start on the way to a more sophisticated storytelling form 1. Soviet Silent Films - The early internationalism of the cinema allowed stylistic innovations in one country to have an impact elsewhere - From about 1917 to 1931, Soviet silent films provided a major break with the entertainment history of the movies - This movement developed out of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and suggests its distance from the assumptions and aims of the capitalist economics of Hollywood resulting in 1) an emphasis on documentary and historical subjects and 2) a political concept of cinema centered on audience response - Sergei Eisentstein s The Battleship Potemkin (1925) quickly became the most renowned film outside the USSR - Display of dialectical montage which shows how conflicting or unrelated images can be linked together to generate an emotional, intellectual and political understanding of real events 2. German Expressionistic Cinema - From Detoured movies from their realist drive, with aims to 1) concentrate on the dark fringes of human experience, and 2) to represent irrational forces through lighting, set, and costume design - Camera pans, tilts, and other innovative movements express the subjective horror - Weimar-era cinema differed from Hollywood models in that it successfully integrated a commitment to artistic expression into a nationalized industry - During the rise of Nazism, much of the Weimar cinema s creative personnel emigrated to the US, where they introduced expressionist formal elements and moral ambiguities to Hollywood films 3. French Impressionist Cinema and Poetic Realism - From Destabilized familiar or objective ways of seeing and revitalized the dynamics of human perception - Concentrates on the consciousness of the central character, who remembers, hallucinates, and fantasizes within a dream logic of split screens and other strange imagistic effects

4 - Developing out of the avant-garde films of the 30 s are the more narrative and commercial examples of poetic realism by such directors such as Rene Clair, Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir - They integrated poetic innovations into traditional movie realism to unsettle perceptions in a way that exhibits a socially conscious perspective - Brought the perceptual freedoms of the avant-garde to a realistic narrative field in which the aesthetics of seeing informed the politics of living Film History After WWII The war marks the midpoint of the century, and it reshaped world geography and politics. In the wake of conflict, film-making changed dramatically. 1. Italian Neorealism - From At a critical juncture of world history, Italian cinema revitalized film culture by 1) depicting postwar social crises and 2) using a stark, realistic style clearly different from glossy entertainment formulas of Hollywood - Bicycle Thieves (1948) Zavattini 2. European New Wave Cinemas: France and Germany - Significantly influenced by Italian neorealism, this period of cinema occurs between 1950 and It appeared in countries such as Brazil, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, Japan and others - Despite their exceptional variety, these different new waves share two common post war interests that counterpoint their often nationalistic flavor: 1) a break with past filmmaking institutions and genres and 2) the investigation of film form as a communication system - French New Wave: In 1951, Bazin helped establish the journal Cahiers du Cinema a forum form which emerged some of the most renowned directors from the movement - The revitalization of film language occurred in conjunction with the journal s policy of auteurism, which emphasized the role of the director as an expressive author - New German Cinema was launched in 1962, when a group of young filmmakers declared a new agenda for German film in a film festival called the Oberhausen Manifesto - The extraordinarily vital and stylistically diverse cinema can be characterized by 1) a confrontation with Germany s Nazi and postwar past, approached directly or through an examination of the current political and cultural climate and 2) an emphasis on the distinctive, often maverick, visions of individual directors 3. Postwar Cinemas outside Europe: Japan and India - These films tend to 1) allow character rather than action to be the center of a narrative and 2) emphasize the contemplative aspect of images - One of the most widespread influences on contemporary transnational cinema today is anime, Japanese animation - Indian cinema is the most prolific film industry in the world, dominating the domestic box office and accounting for almost 75% of the movie attendance in the Asia-Pacific region - Often referred to as Bollywood films, they are a dominant cultural form notable for: 1) rootedness in Hindu culture and mythology and 2) elaborate song-and-dance numbers erupting in almost any genre 4. Third Cinema: Latin America and Cuba - Another aspect of global film culture emerged in the politicized atmosphere of the Third World decolonization in the 1960 s - A term coined to echo Third World, third cinema united films from many countries under one rubric, including some made by Europeans (Example: The Battle of Algiers)

5 - Third cinema aimed to 1) reject technical perfection in opposition to commercial traditions and 2) embrace film as the voice of the people - Many nations set up state-run or subsidized film industries to foster domestic production in the face of U.S imports, thereby promoting serious film art or promulgating state ideology - Testified to the cultural collisions in free-market nations 5. Contemporary Global Cinema: Africa, China and Iran - The post-cold War context of globalization, which describes the movement of finance, information, commodities and people across international lines, is characterized by and interdependent world film culture and the aesthetic and economic emergence of new cinemas - African cinema encompasses an entire continent and, hence, many nations, languages, styles of governments and levels of economic development - Taking shape in the 1960 s after decolonization, and often linked to third cinema, sub-saharan African cinema encompasses the relatively well-financed francophone cinema of West Africa - Some of the most influential features have been united by 1) a focus on social and political themes rather than commercial interests, and 2) an exploration of the conflicts between tradition and modernity - One of the biggest hurdles to the development of cinema in Africa is not only the lack of financial and technical resources for film production but also the lack of distribution and exhibition infrastructure that would enable African audience to see African-Made films - Chinese cinema poses its own challenge to models of national cinema because it includes films from the three Chinas mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - These films are notable for their 1) austere rural settings observes with an almost ethnographic eye and 2) metaphorical stories critical of current society - Hong Kong new wave: international success of low-budget Hong Kong kung-fu films led by producer-director Tsui Hark they introduced sophisticated style, lucrative production methods and canny use of Western elements in the genre - Islamic nation films were made to 1) spare pictoral beauty, often of landscapes or scenes of every day life on the margins and 2) an elliptical storytelling mode developed in response to state-regulation - More recently, filmmakers have used the international approval accorded Iranian films to tackle volatile social issues such as fugs and prostitution in portrayals of contemporary urban life, and they have tested the limits of government tolerance - One of the most interesting apparent contradictions in Iranian cinema is the prominence of filmmakers. Strict religious decrees forbid a number of onscreen behaviors African American Cinema - The dominant American cinema has afforded only a limited range of representation for African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans - Some of the earliest US films featured racial themes, usually drawn from the egregious stereotypes circulating in such forms of popular culture (think Birth of a Nation) - Recently, alternative representations by Asian American, Native American, Latino and African American filmmakers have emerged in conjunction with identity politics (the practice of putting social, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender identity at the center of political and cultural activity. - African American identity bears a symbolic weight in a nation that is increasingly willing to acknowledge its historical conflicts between black and white Orphan Films - Films that have survived but have no commercial interests to pay the costs of their preservation are called orphan films, it is no accident that these films to tend to be rare or marginal - When they enter the public domain, nobody claims them Film, History and Cultural Context

6 Contextual analysis of individual films and of film history itself may be conducted in different ways by looking through several cultural lenses Celluloid Communism - Best examples of film propaganda - Movies are autonomous from the state, thus government interests can be expressed in film - The concept of ideology is used to discuss a film s critical, compliant or contradictory attitude towards the status quo or dominant ideology The Blacklist Era - Certain films are banned because of anti-government content - Occurs during the Cold War period Lesbian and Gay Film History - Provokes reflection on the relationship between representation and sexuality in general - Tells us not only about changing representations of same-sex desire, but also about continuity and discontinuity in definitions of any form of sexual identity and community