FILM 2700: HISTORY OF THE MOTION PICTURE
PROFESSOR SHELDON SCHIFFER
MAYMESTER VERSION
Office hours: 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM Daily
Office: 25 Park Place South – Room 1023
phone: 404-413-5623
email: schiffer@gsu.edu
http://schiffer.gsu.edu/wordpress/history
[Lecture 6 Slides]
Evolving Empire and Illusions: American
Resurgence and Industry Domination
Like the Soviets co-opted Constructivism and Montage, any government (capitalist
democracies, and capitalist-fascist dictatorships) can use cinema to overtly or covertly
spread ideology.
Government can referee the operations of cinema to protect business internationally (trade
quotas and tariffs) or it can sponsor it directly (arts agencies), or it can protect the door of
entry for those not able to enter the industry (anti-trust, anti-monopoly, anti-oligopoly).
Oligopoly
The Big Five “Majors” – All exploited vertical
integration: development, production,
distribution/exhibition, and all diversified
content in some combo with historical
spectacles, comedies, dramas.
Historical Question 6.1
Who were the oligopolists in the American
Film industry during the period from 19141948?
What were each of their specific tactics and
specializations at controlling their market
segment?
The Big Five
• Paramount – came out of Depression era bankruptcy,
brought in European directors and actors – Von Sternberg
(director) and Marlene Dietrich (actress), comedy with Bing
Crosby and Bob Hope, and Cecil de Mille history films
• Loewe’s/MGM – survived Depression in tact. Focused on
big budget musical, and protected with B-film serials for
comedy and crime, i.e.Andy Hardy
• 20th Century Fox – Fox and 20th Century merged to survive
Depression. Made films with popular non-actor starts, e.g.
Will Rogers (cowboy), Shirley Temple (little girl), Sonia
Henie (skater)
The Big Five
• Warner Bros. – sold property to survive during
Depression. Relished in mid-budget genre films, evenly
balanced: musicals, gangster films, social problem
films, biography films
• RKO – Came out of radio past, and grew primarily with
edge on technology for sound exhibition through radio
patents and engineering. Lacked a clear business
strategy for the studio, though two major films in
history: Young Mr. Lincoln, and Citizen Kane.Also tried
to adapt Broadway plays.
The Little Three
Little Three were less integrated, and relied on their distribution
niche.
• Universal – B-Movie focus on genre films that appeal to small town
(“low brow” culture) e.g. Horror, mystery, slapstick, with Bela
Legosi, Abbott and Costello.
• Columbia – Used the model of rent-a-star. Would negotiate for use
of star when studio actors were off and free. Payment would go to
studio, not actor.
• United Artists – origins in independent film actors/directors of silent
era (Chaplin, Pickford, Griffith, Fairbanks) continued. Became the
studio for early “auteurs” like Hitchcock, slapstick, Broadway,
London and classical plays
The Independents
Independents were resilient entities that
worked with no stars, all genres, and highly
target audiences.
• Monogram and Republic – both focused on
crime stories, Westerns, serials, action/thriller
• Ethnics – Black filmmakers, eg. Oscar Michaux,
Jewish filmmakers,eg. Edgar Ulmer
Historical Question 6.2
What improvements were made in the
production and distribution sectors that
continued to attract an audience?
How might the improvements be used as
market competition?
Architectural and Schedule
Adjustments from Depression to WWII
• End of urban movie palace construction
• Replaced/competed with more economical,
smaller auditorium, less plush theaters
• Double features continued, but B-movies were
getting so good, they became A-level in
pleasure and artistic control, if not in name
recognition
Advancing Technologies
• Microphones improved – from omni-directional
to directional (cardiod and shot gun design) –
sound recordist professional specialist
• Sound mixing for movies was born – taking
various categories of sounds and mixing them to
one track – creation of DME separation and
expertise: (D)ialog, (M)usic and (E)ffects.
• Sound mixer professional specialist
Advancing Technologies for Spectacle
• Color – Technicolor –prism directed 3 colors of light
(Red, Green and Blue / Cyan, Magenta and Yellow)
onto 3 separate black and white strips of film. Then
each was printed to a color sensitive print stock (Ten
Commandments)
• Special Effects – originally a cinematographers job, now
a specialty job, the VFX director, used for
postproduction effects with optical printing. Enabling
specialized transitions and superimpositions using
compositing techniques in optical
printer: wipes, dissolves,mattes, traveling
mattes and chroma-key compositing. (Ben Hur)
Artistic Specializations
• Cinematographers – expertise to the level of directorial
recognition rose as lenses enabled deeper focus,
shallower focus, controlled and stylized lighting (in
Europe this had been going on for a while), and
acrobatic/expressive camera moves –great
example: Citizen Kane(1941) Greg Toland for Orson
Welles
• Art Directors – With so many super spectacles of
historical, biblical and musical style, art directors
became important specialist with name recognition
Historical Question 6.3
Why were the Big Three, the weakest of the
Big Five and the Independents the most
suitable companies to produce films that
featured the director as star, as opposed to
the actor as star primarily?
Rise of Auteur / Genre film – Name
Recognition for Directors vis-à-vis Style
• The studios that worked in genres that
were not actor-star driven saw that directors
could be narrative stylists that could stand out
in ways similar to actors – giving audience a
pre-conceived idea of what that director’s
style will likely be.
Rise of Auteur / Genre film – Name
Recognition for Directors vis-à-vis Style
• Orson Welles – psychological dramas with, eg. Citizen
Kane
• Alfred Hitchcock – mysteries, crime and murder, Dial M
for Murder
• Howard Hawkes – adventure dramas, often war films
• John Ford – Westerns, and other character-driven
genres eg. Stagecoach
• Busby Berkeley – not cheap to make, but musicals were
his specialty,eg. 42nd Street
Rise of Auteur / Genre film – Name
Recognition for Directors vis-à-vis Style
• Frank Capra and George Cukor – screwball
comedies where mis-adventure and mis-perception create
humorous misunderstanding and awkward
situations, eg. You Can’t Take it With You and It Happened
One Night, or Philadelphia Story
• Tod Browning and Karl Freund (note both German) – horror
films. Dracula (1931), and The Mummy (1932)
• King Vidor, William Wellman and John Ford – social
problem films, such as Our Daily Bread, Wild Boys of the
Road and The Grapes of Wrath