Classical American Film Texts
Hollywood Films
between 1917 and 1960
Table of Contents
1. Film as Illusion
2. Classical American Film as Realist Film
3. The Paradox of Classical American Film
Film as Illusion
‘The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees
the world outside as an extension of the film he
has just left (because the latter is intent upon
reproducing the world of everyday perceptions), is
now the producer’s guideline. The more intensely
and flawlessly his techniques duplicate empirical
objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to
prevail that the outside world is the
straightforward continuation of that presented on
the screen. This purpose has been furthered by
mechanical reproduction since the lighting was
taken over by the sound film.’ Theodor V. Adorno
and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment,
p. 126
Film as Illusion
FILM IS ILLUSION OF WHAT?
• Illusion that what you are watching is ‘real’
‘… spectators experience the diagetic world as
environment.’ Noël Burch
(diegesis = telling, recounting)
Film as combination of ‘imaginary signifiers’
Christian Metz
(imaginary = the state in which you cannot distinguish
between real and fantasy > Lacanian psychoanalysis
(signifier = sign)
Film as Illusion
• Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
• Extreme exposition that film could work as
illusion
Film as Illusion
• Play it again, Sam
• Film about a man who has lost the sense of
difference between reality and film and try to be
Humphrey Bogart, his screen hero.
Film as Illusion
CLASSICAL AMERICAN FILM AS
ILLUSIONIST FILM
• American cinema developed its techniques
and styles in order to dupe the spectator to
take narrative and image for reality;
• Or in order to increase its reality and truth
effects
• The spectator is willing to accept illusion or
demand it in film.
American Classics as Realist Films
• Classical Hollywood products between 1917and
1960 are considered as a type of realist films.
• Why 1917 and 1960?
• By 1917 most American fiction adopted
fundamentally similar narrative strategies;
PROSIBILITY
American Classics as Realist Film
• The studio mode of production had been
organized around the division of labour,
hierarchical managerial system, factory-like
system of filmmaking
CONTINUATION of the Established
Uniformity of Narrative and Visual Style
Classical American Film as Realist Film
• The 1960s - the end of Hollywood’s mature
existence
• Studios moved to the production of television
programmes → The breakdown of studio system
(stars turning free agents; producers becoming
independent; the death of B-movies and decrease in
demand for studio directors and staff)
American Classics as Realist Films
• Challenge from international art cinema, e.g.
Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Italian
neorealists and French directors of Nouvelle
vague
DIVERSIFICATION
American Classics as Realist Films
• TECHNIQUES, STYLES AND STRATEGIES
EMPLOYED TO CREATE AN ILLUSION OF
REALITY IN AMERICAN CINEMA
A) telling a story is the basic formal concern.
B) uniformity is a basic attribute of film form.
Classical American Film as Realist Film
C) The Hollywood film purports to be
realistic in an Aristotelian sense - true to the
probable.
D) the Hollywood film strives to conceal its
artifice through techniques of uniformity
and 'invisible' storytelling.
E) the film should be comprehensible and
unambiguous.
American Classics as Realist Films
F) it possesses a fundamental emotional
appeal which transcends class and nature.
PROBABLE, CREDIBLE, NATURAL
AND REAL
American Classics as Realist Films
• Best Years of Our
Lives (1946) directed
by William Wyler
• About three exservicemen who try to
cope with their lives
after returning from
the WWII.
American Classics as Realist Film
•
•
•
•
•
Story is the primary element of the film
Uniform film style
Probable story
Stylistic understatement
Unambiguous,
Comprehensible
• Emotional appeal to
everyone
American Classics as Realist Films
• Bonnie and Clyde (1967) directed by Arthur Penn
• One of the earliest New American Cinema
• Departure from the norms of Classical American
Film
• Story-telling is still the most important ingredient
• Constant change of tone and style - from comic
to serious, and from serious to comic
• Certain improbable elements
• Stylistic bravura and extravaganza
• Moral ambiguity: glorificationof crimes and
criminals
• Emotional appeal not
universal
• Strong criticism from older
generations
Paradox of Classical American Film
• Art vs. Nature / Artificial vs. Natural
PARADOX
• Art is needed to make a film look artless
(natural), or artificiality is necessary to
make a film seem natural.
• If you can make a film look not artificial but
natural, then it is very likely that it looks
realistic.