VV 301 – FILM STUDIES CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

Definition Classical Hollywood cinema / Classical Hollywood narrative: terms used in film history which describe the style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between the 1910s and the 1960s. Classical style mostly practice principle of continuity editing or "invisible" style (the camera and the sound recording must not get audients attention).

Period Classical Hollywood Cinema started with the movie release of "The Birth of a Nation." It incorporates both the Silent Era and Studio Era of filmmaking. Mode of production during this timeframe encouraged film directors to view their work from the perspective of an employee of the studios rather than as auteurists who exercised creative control over their works with an individual film style. The Classical Cinema time period ended in the 1960s, replaced by Post-Classical film style by auteurist film directors with the release of "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) as well as other landmark films of that decade.

THE AGE OF THE SILVER SCREEN The Silent Era is commonly referred to as the "Age of the Silver Screen" from 1917 to 1928. There was no sound or synchronized speech accompanying the character's on the movie screen. To accommodate for the lack of sound, on-screen captions were utilized to emphasize important points and dialogue in the story. Oftentimes, the projection of silent films onto the big screen was accompanied by live instrumental music (pianist, organist, or even a large orchestra).

The Golden Age Golden Age were the years starting from the end of the silent era in the late 1920s to the early 1960s. It started with the release of movie The Jazz Singer in 1927. This was the first movie with sound and full talking sequences ever produced and it hit box-office. Most Hollywood pictures shared similar genre —Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture)— and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio.

Studio Era Irving Thalberg was an important person for developing the Hollywood's Central Producer System during the Studio Era while he was Chief of Production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). In fact, the successful transition of classical Hollywood film production style from the Silent Era's Director-Unit System to the Studio Era's Central Producer System at MGM took place under Thalberg's leadership. His ability to produce a quality film with aesthetic value was demonstrated through his balanced view of budgetary controls, script and story development, and use of the "star system" in the successful movie "Grand Hotel."

The Big Five The marketing strategies for motion pictures utilized by the major Hollywood film studios was very straightforward and uncomplicated because the studios obtained most of their money from theater box office ticket sales throughout America. At that time, there were five major studios that owned a production studio, distribution arm, contracts with actors and technical support personnel, as well as a theater chain.

The Big Five These studios wereknown as the "Big Five" and included Warner Brothers Paramount Pictures Twentieth Century-Fox, Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), Loew's, Inc. (owner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/MGM). Their revenues came from monies paid by the theaters for renting films from the studios. Since the "Big Five" studios controlled almost every theater throughout America, they received the majority of their money from box office ticket sales.

The Downfall of Studio Era To further extend their power over the movie houses throughout America, these studios took steps to control almost all of the smaller independently owned theaters, as well. Through the contracting process of "block booking", theater owners were required to show a block of films (typically in blocks of ten) at their movie house. If the independently owned theaters did not agree to purchase a block of films from a studio, they received no films from the studio at all.

The Downfall of Studio Era Thus, during the Studio Era, the Hollywood film industry was tightly controlled by the powerful studio moguls. However, in 1948, a federal court case outlawed block booking. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the vertical integration of the majors violated federal anti-trust laws and ordered the "Big Five" companies to divest themselves of their theaters over a five-year period. This decision basically brought the studio system era to a close by 1954.

Production The mode of production came to be known as the Hollywood studio system and the star system, which standardized the way movies were produced. All film workers (actors, directors, etc.) were employees of a particular film studio.

Production This resulted in a certain uniformity to film style: directors were encouraged to think of themselves as employees rather than artists, and hence auteurs did not flourish (although some directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles, worked within this system and still fulfilled their artistic self).

Classical Style The style of Classical Hollywood cinema, as elaborated by David Bordwell, has been heavily influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance and its rebirth of mankind as the focal point. Renaissance? The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance intellectuals employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.

Classical Style Thus, classical stories always narrate through psychological motivation, i.e. by the will of a human character and its struggle with obstacles towards a defined goal. The aspects of space and time usually composed of two lines of action: A romance intertwined with a more generic one such as business or, in the case of Alfred Hitchcock films, solving a ditty/puzzle. Time in classical Hollywood is continuous. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the flashback. It is mostly used to introduce a memory sequence of a character, e.g. Casablanca.