The classic hollywood

The Classic Hollywood 

Article by : Siavash Rad / submitted to university

Which lastedfrom the end of the silent era in Americancinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, movies were effectively issued bythe Hollywood studios. Some stage in the so called Golden Age of Hollywood. Thestart of the Golden Age was arguably when The Jazz Singerwas released in 1927 and increased box-officeprofits for films as sound was introduced to feature films. Most Hollywoodpictures adhered closely to a genre -Western, clowningcomedy,musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture) - and the samecreative teams often worked on films made by the same studio.
After The JazzSinger was released in 1927, Warner Brothers gained hugesuccess and was able to acquire their own string of movie theaters, afterpurchasing Stanley Theaters and First National Productions in 1928; MGM hadalso owned a string of theaters since forming in 1924, known as Loews Theaters, and the Fox film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre strings aswell. Also, RKO, anothercompany that owned theaters, had formed in 1928 from a merger betweenKeith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America.
RKO formed inresponse to the monopoly Western Electric's ERPI had over sound in films aswell, and began to use sound in films through their own method known as Photophone.Paramount, who already acquired Balaban and Katz in1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO, and buy a number oftheaters in the late 1920s as well, before making their final purchase in 1929,through acquiring all the individual theaters belonging to the Cooperative BoxOffice, located in Detroit, and dominate the Detroit theaters. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always workedon MGM films, Alfred Newmanworked atTwentieth Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille's films werealmost all made at Paramount, director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth-CenturyFox, etc.
Movie makingwas still a business, however, and motion picture companies made money byoperating under the studio system. The majorstudios kept thousands of people on salary - actors, producers, directors,writers, stunt men, craftsperson, and technicians. the code was never enforceduntil 1934, after the new Catholic Church organization The Legion of Decency- appalled by Mae West's verysuccessful sexual appearances in She Done Him Wrong andI'm No Angel - threatened aboycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect And they owned hundredsof theaters in cities and towns across America, theaters that showed theirfilms and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPDDA President Will Hays also foundedthe Hays (Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines andwent into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930.
Throughout the1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM under enemy control the industryand had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating theHollywood star system altogether. MGM stars included at various times"King of Hollywood" Clark Gable,Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Gary Cooper, Mary Pickford, Marilyn Monroe,Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly, Gene Kelly, Gloria Stuart, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, John Barrymore, Audrey Hepburn, Buster Keaton and Judy Garland. Another greatachievement of American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation.In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its time.
One reason thiswas likely is that, with so many movies being made, not every one had to be abig hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good scriptand relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles and often regardas the greatest film of all time, fits that description. In other cases,strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks,Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra battled thestudios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The highest point of thestudio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of suchclassics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka, and Midnight. In the middle of the other films from theGolden Age period that are now considered to be classics:Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, King Kong, Citizen Kane, "Some Like It Hot, All About Eve, Duck Soup, Bringing Up Baby, North by Northwest, Dinner at Eight,Rebel Without a Cause, Double Indemnity, Mutiny on the Bounty, City Lights, Red River,Rear Window, Singin' in the Rain, My Man Godfrey, Top Hat, Roman Holiday, and Sabrina.
He style ofClassical Hollywood cinema, as elaborate by David Bordwell, has beenheavily subjective by the ideas of the Renaissance and its renaissanceof mankind as the focal point.
As a result,classical narration progress always through psychological motivation, i.e. bythe will of a human character and its struggle with obstacles towards a definedgoal. The aspects of space and time are subordinated to the narrative elementwhich is usually composed of two lines of action: A romance entwined with amore generic one such as business or, in the case of Alfred Hitchcock films, solvinga crime.
Moment in timein classical Hollywood is nonstop, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory workings ofthe medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is theflashback.
The same, the actionof space in classic Hollywood strives to overcome or secrete the two-dimensionalityof film and is strongly centered upon the human body. The bulk of shots in aclassical film focus on gestures or facial expressions. Andre Bazin once compareclassical film to a photographed play in that the events seem to existobjectively and that cameras only give us the best view of the total play.
This action of breathingspace consists of four main aspect: centering, balancing, formality. Persons orobjects of meaning are mostly in the center part of the picture frame and never outof focus. Balancing refers to the visual composition. Characters are evenly thinthroughout the frame. The action is subtly addressed towards the viewer and set, lighting andcostumes are designed to separate foreground from the background.
The charactersin Classical Hollywood Cinema naturally are the underlying agent. They alsohave plainly definable character. They are active and goal leaning.

Production inHollywood cinema

The form ofproduction came to be known as the Hollywood studio system and the star system, which consistent the way movies wereproduced. All film workers (actors, directors, etc.) were employees of a exactingfilm studio. This resultedin a certain uniformity to film style: directors were encouraged to think ofthemselves as workers rather than artists, and henceauteurs did not flourish. Some directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles.
Hale the limitationsare formless, the Classical era is generally held to begin in 1927 with therelease of The Jazz Singer. Hollywood classicism slowly declined with thecollapse of the studio system, the advent of television, the growing status of asterismamong directors, and the increasing influence of foreign films and independent filmmaking.
The 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which outlawed the practice of block booking and the aforesaidownership and operation of theater chains by the major film studios (as it wasbelieved to constitute anti-competitive and monopolistic trade practices) wasseen as a major blow to the studio system. This was because it firstly clearedthe way for a growing number of dependent producers (some of them the actorsthemselves) and studios to produce their film product free of major studiointerference, and secondly because it destroyed the original business modelutilized by the studios who struggled to adapt.
"At thetime of the Court decision, everyone said the quality, consistency, and availabilityof movies would go up and prices would fall. Quite the opposite happened. By1955, the number of produced films had fallen by 25 percent. More than 4,200theaters (or 23 percent of the total) had close up their doors. More than halfof those remaining were unable to earn a income. They could not afford to rentand show the best and most costly films, the ones most likely to fight withtelevision."

Siavash Rad