Overview of the Late Silent Era
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Expansion of the Film Industry
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The American film industry expanded
during WWI and afterwards.
Central to it’s growth was the buying
and selling of movie theatres.
By owning theatre chains, producers could:
o-Ensure an outlet for their films, and
o-consequently, raise film budgets
If the 1910s had seen the formation of the
film industry, the 1920s witnessed its
expansion.
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Vertical Integration
•During the 1920s, the film industry became
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increasingly vertically integrated.
This meant that studios not only created films,
but also distributed and exhibited them.
o (Definition) Vertical Integration within the film industry refers
to one large company having various departments (or owning
a series of sub-companies) that produce, distribute and
exhibit movies, i.e. Owning a theatre chain and having a
national distribution operation.
•Three-tiered vertical integration guaranteed that a
company’s films would definitely find distribution
and exhibition.
Expanding Hollywood Companies
•As one Hollywood studio vertically
integrated, others were forced into the
same practice in order to stay competitive.
•As a result, many Hollywood studios that
had both production and distribution
divisions began buying up movie theatres
and creating national theatre chains.
The Big Three / The Little Five
•The three largest vertically integrated companies
at the top of the American filmmaking industry
became known as the Big Three.
oParamount-Publix, Loew’s MGM, First National
Firms that were smaller, but also significant to the
industry became known as the Little Five.
oUniversal, Fox, Producers Distributing
Corporation, Warner Bros, the Film Booking
Office
The distinction between these two groups is that
the Big Three all owned many theatres, but the
Little Five owned few to no theatres
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United Artists (UA)
•Aside from the Big Three and Little Five was
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United Artists, formed by Mary Pickford, Charlie
Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith in
1919.
UA was an umbrella distribution firm.
It did not own production facilities nor theatres.
Instead, UA existed to distribute films that were
produced independently by its artists, each of
whom owned small production companies.
UA developed throughout the early 1920s and
eventually became one of Hollywood’s important,
minor studios.
“Poverty Row” Studios
• During this time, some small and
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independent studios existed in a
shady area of Hollywood that was
nicknamed “Poverty Row” (Sunset
Blvd & Gower St.).
These studios created independent
pictures on low budgets and with
stock footage and second-tier actors.
• Many of these small companies
were acquired by or merged with
larger film companies to create
some of the major studios still in
existence today, i.e. Disney
Block Booking
•As the big Hollywood companies expanded,
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they developed a system of distribution that
would maximize their profits and keep other
firms at the margins of the market.
This practice was called block booking.
This meant that any exhibitor who wanted to
show films with high box-office potential had
to rent other, less desirable films from the
same company.
Picture Palaces
• Since big theatres for movie exhibition became an
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important component of the film industry’s business
model, companies made them opulent to attract
patrons.
They sought not only to exhibit films but also captivate
audiences with the movie-going experience.
As a result, many large companies built picture
palaces, huge movie theatres that sat thousands of
patrons and offered fancy lobbies, uniformed ushers
and full orchestral accompaniment to their exhibited
films.
Picture Palace Features
Picture palaces offered patrons:
•An experience of luxury and entertainment
•Air-conditioned venues (previously the theatre
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business had dropped off in summer months due
to heat)
Additional components to the film program, ie.
Newsreels, comic shorts, musical interludes
Live performances and musical numbers
interspersed with the film program
1920, there were more than
20,000 movie theatres operating
in the US.
The largest theatre in the world
(with over 6,000 seats), the Roxy
Theater, was dubbed "The
Cathedral of the Motion Picture."
It opened in New York City in
1927 with a 6,200 seat capacity.
It was opened by Samuel Lionel
"Roxy" Rothafel and cost 10
million dollars.
Impresario Sid
Grauman built a
number of movie
palaces in the Los
Angeles area in this
time period, including
the “Million Dollar
Theatre,” the
“Egyptian Theatre,”
and the famous
“Chinese Theatre.”
Grauman started the tradition of having
Hollywood stars put their prints in the
cement in front of movie houses. The first
10 stars to leave their prints behind were:
1927:
•Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Apr.,
•Norma Talmadge, May
•Norma Shearer, Aug.
.Harold Lloyd, Nov.
.William S. Hart, Nov
.Tom Mix and Tony (his horse), Dec.
.Colleen Moore, Dec.
.Gloria Swanson, 1927 (month unknown)
.Constance Talmadge, 1927 (month ?)
Charlie Chaplin, Jan., 1928
Mary Pickford and Douglas
Fairbanks leave their mark
outside Grauman’s Chinese
Theater (1927)
MPPDA
•As the American film industry
expanded, so did regulations
regarding movie content.
To stall the censoring process,
the main studios banded together
and formed the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of
America (MPPDA)
The organization pressured
producers to eliminate any
offensive content and to include
moral clauses in their studio
contracts.
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MPPDA – “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”
•The MPPDA compiled a list of content that
film companies should be weary of or not use.
oDon’t show illegal drug trafficking
oDon’t show suggestive nudity
oBe careful when using the American flag
oBe careful when showing brutality or gruesomeness
•Producers successfully circumvented these
guidelines and in the early 1930s these
“don’ts and be carefuls” were replaced with a
much more elaborate production code.
Style and Technological Changes
•The expansion and consolidation of the
Hollywood film industry was paralleled by
a refinement and development of the
classical continuity style that had been
established in the 1910s.
Dark Studios
• By the 1920s, the big
production firms had dark
studios that kept out all
sunlight and allowed entire
scenes to be illuminated by
artificial lights.
• The existence of dark studios
caused filmmakers to
experiment with light, hereby
creating a new system to
illuminate scenes.
Three-Point Lighting System
• This lighting system was developed
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first in the 1920s for use in dark
studios.
FEATURES OF 3-POINT LIGHTING:
o Main figures were outlined with a glow
of backlight (cast from top rear of the
set).
o The scene’s brightest light, or key
came from one side of the camera
while a dimmer, secondary light came
from the other side creating a fill light
that softened shadows and kept
backgrounds visible but inconspicuous.
ThreePoint
Lighting
System
Cinematography
• Prior to the 1920s, most films were shot with a
hard-edge, sharp-focus look - the classic
Hollywood narrative style.
• Eventually, filmmakers began to experiment and
even placed gauzy fabrics or filters in front of their
lenses to create softer
images.
•Special lenses were developed to keep the
foreground focused and the background fuzzy.
o This technique focused the viewer’s attention to the
main action while deemphasizing less important
elements.
• The result of using gentler photographic techniques
became known as the soft style of cinematography.
Film Stock
• Another major innovation of this era came with the gradual
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adoption of a new panchromatic type of film stock.
Prior to the mid-1910s, film stock had been only
orthochromatic, sensitive only to the purple, blue and green
portions of the visible spectrum.
o As a result, yellow and red hues did not register so objects of
these colours appeared nearly black in the finished film, ie. Lips
with red lipstick appeared black, blue skies with clouds washed
out to white.
• By contrast, panchromatic stock registered the all the colours
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of the visible spectrum, creating many shades of gray in the
finished print.
This meant that filmmakers could shoot a greater variety of
subjects and landscapes without having to worry about using
filters, special paint, makeup to make photographed content
visible.
Film Genres
•Both technical innovations and film types (or
genres) evolved during this era.
Popular film genres included:
Costume pictures or historical epics: The
Mark of Zorro (1920); The Ten Commandments
(1923)
Horror: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Westerns: The Covered Wagon (1923) and the
many films of John Ford (actor-turned-director
of westerns)
Comedies such as the films of Charlie Chaplin,
Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.
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Film Narrative Style
• Films were becoming more
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character-driven, especially with the
development of recurring, popular
characters created in the comedy
genre.
Charlie Chaplin created a recurring
character known as The Little Tramp
who was featured in many films from
1914-1936.
Harold Lloyd’s recurring character
was known as The Glasses
Character or Harold and appeared
features from 1917-1928.
Foreign Influence in Hollywood
•During this era, many European
filmmakers were attracted to
Hollywood as AND many Hollywood
firms sought foreign talent.
Important national cinemas
developed in France, German,
Sweden, the USSR and elsewhere in
Europe
Attracting the best European talent to
Hollywood would also ensure that no
country would become powerful
enough within the industry to
challenge Hollywood in world
markets.
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F.W. Murnau,
director of 1922’s
German
Expressionistic
Nosferatu was
among several
foreign directors
who came to
Hollywood in the
1920s.
Foreign Influences continued . . .
• As foreign filmmaking styles (i.e. Soviet Montage,
German Expressionistic and French Avant-Garde) and
directors influenced Hollywood, new trends emerged
including:
o The exotic documentary (documentary film featuring
different, exciting subjects or cultures)
o The diva film (developed in Italy from 1913-1919, a
melodrama that featured prominent leading ladies.
Through the character’s experiences, these films
successfully denounced social evils, questioned gender
roles and explored new models of behaviour among the
sexes).
o The compilation film (movie composed of footage from a
variety of media)
• These incorporated elements of the art cinema
movement as they strayed from mainstream, Hollywood
commercial cinema.
Summary
• The American film industry, its hub in Hollywood, continued to
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expand dramatically from 1919-1927.
Central to the industry’s growth was the vertical integration of
major filmmaking companies, allowing them to take control of
movies’ production, distribution and exhibition and dominate the
industry.
Technical developments to lighting and film stock resulted in
improvements to movies.
Although Hollywood dominated the film industry, styles and
trends from several international cinemas did begin to influence
Hollywood.
This caused the refinement of some film genres, ie. Horror, and
the creation of others, ie. Diva film.