Until the late 1920's, motion pictures had enjoyed a wide degree of popularity, but they still remained a secondary form of entertainment, as they lacked greater technological advancements; most notably, sound. As evident, many silent films were used to garner the crowd’s attention during popular vaudeville acts. All this changed in the late 1920’s, the era introduced us to something rather peculiar and extraordinary–sound. It was around this time that two major motion pictures were produced: The Jazz Singer and The Broadway Melody. Both films detail the struggles faced by the main characters who are trying to get their big break on Broadway. However, certain circumstances retain them from achieving their goal. Both films display a struggle …show more content…
As written by Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times, [Broadway Melody] “concerns the shattered illusions and hopes of two small-time dancing and singing girls.” The Mahoney sisters land in New York with dreams of making it big on Broadway after successfully working smaller circuits with their sister act. The two were assisted in their endeavors from their uncle/agent and the elder sister's fiancée, Eddie, who happens to be a successful songwriter. Eddie promises to get them into the show at the theater he works for, and after a disastrous audition, the producer reluctantly agrees to hire them. Both girls are delighted, but their big piece is quickly cut from the show in rehearsal. The younger, prettier sister lands a part as a beauty on a boat, while the older sister is left to sulk. Eddie, the older sister's fiancée begins to fall in love with the younger sister, Queenie. Having always been told what to do by her older sister Hank, Queenie begins distancing herself from both Eddie and her sister, and begins to date a rich gentleman with an unrighteous interest in her. While dating him, she begins to take on this arrogant façade while ignoring both her sister and Eddie. Hank, after realizing what Queenie has become begins to sulk in her room–distraught. While at a party, Queenie realizes that the man has wrongful intentions and doesn’t love her at all, realizing what a mistake she has made she decides to flee. With Eddie to the rescue, the two leave together and profess their love for one another—ending the
The cameras used to film “The Talkies” as they where known, had to be kept in enormous soundproof casing. This immediately hindered directors creativity and made movies such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) much more rigid. Because of the fascination with the lip-syncing that this new technology achieved less attention was played to other attributes that silent films used such as the comedic elements in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931.)
The silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
When Jonathan Larson and his friend were talking, Larson was given the idea to create a musical based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. La bohéme is an opera about people in 1800s Paris struggling to find success and suffering from tuberculosis. Each character in Rent is loosely based on characters in Puccini’s La bohème. After structural editings, numerous readings, and focus group previews, the musical Rent opened on February 13, 1996 at the New York Theatre Workshop with a six-week sold out run. Rent follows a year in the lives of Mark Cohen, a struggling Jewish filmmaker, Roger Davis, the hopeful struggling musician with HIV, Mimi Márquez, the club dancer and a drug addict who has HIV, Tom Collins, a gay anarchist and college professor who suffers from AIDS, Angel, a transvestite who suffers from AIDS, Maureen Johnson, a lesbian performance artist, and Joanne Jefferson, the Ivy League lesbian lawyer who is in a relationship with Maureen, in East Village, New York City from Christmas Eve 1989 to Christmas Eve 1990. The protagonists in this musical are the six friends Mark, Roger, Tom, Angel, Maureen, and Joanne and their antagonist is the struggle to survive the hardships of AIDS, HIV, an...
middle of paper ... ... It is no wonder why movies were and still are a popular form of entertainment, as well as why during the 1920’s and even during the depression, people continued to flock to the movies. Works Cited Carringer, Robert, L. Jazz Singer. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
Slapstick enables the beleaguered audience to stay here on earth and have the best good time; with a perfect sense of completeness, the clown’s martyrdom becomes the good time the audience is having. The significance of the silent era in film history cannot be overstated. During the first decades of the twentieth century, a truly commercial popular art emerged bound closely to the image of a modern America. Movie making luminaries such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton lead the way of comic cinema with their unforgettable films. Regardless of the development of synchronized sound, the era drew to a close, but the modes of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption inaugurated during the silent film era persisted, creating the film industry, as we know it
Chicago is an American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same name by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes she reported on. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal." Fred Ebb explains: “So I made it [Chicago] a vaudeville based on the idea that the characters were performers. Every musical moment in the show was loosely modeled on someone else: Roxie was Helen Morgan, Velma was Texas Guinan, Billy Flynn was Ted Lewis, Mama Morton was Sophie Tucker,” (Kander, Ebb, and Lawrence 127). Velma indeed is a reincarnation of Texas Guinan who “acted as hostess…for the entertainment…she was also a born press agent, constantly inventing stories and promoting herself,” (Slide 218). Roxie’s “Funny Honey” Amos is eerily reminiscent of Helen Morgan’s “Bill” from Kern and Hammerstein’s 1927 classic Showboat. Amos, too, in his “Mr. Cellophane” number, imitates Ziegfeld Follies star Bert Williams’ iconic hit “Nobody” “right down to Williams’ famous costume of oversized clothes and white gloves,” (Miller).
On Saturday, October 21, I watched the movie adaption of the musical, Rent. This musical takes place in New York City in the late 1980s to early 1990s, and involves a dysfunctional Bohemian friend group and their struggles. The friend group features eight characters: Mark Cohen, a Jewish filmmaker, Roger Davis, a HIV-positive songwriter and musician, Mimi Marquez, an HIV-positive erotic dancer, Maureen Johnson, a bisexual performer, Joanne Jefferson, a lesbian lawyer, Tom Collins, a gay part-time philosophy professor at NYU and anarchist who suffers with AIDS, Angel Dumott Schunard, a drag queen who also suffers with AIDS, and Benny Coffin III, a local landlord. Johnathan Larson acted as the musical’s original composer and playwright, and worked
The decade was largely dominated by silent films, but the creation of movies with sound followed afterwards. These innovations greatly improved the movies and made them more immersive and exciting for the viewer. Soon after the invention of sound in movies, the silent era movies...
During the 1920’s music was very important to the people and exacerbated racial tensions in the postwar period (citation). The music industry began to take off because new technology started making it easier to produce and share music around.
Watching a movie in the 1920s was a cheap and easy way to be transported into a world of glitz and glamour, a world of crime, or a world of magic and mystery. Some of these worlds included aspects of current events, like war, crime, and advances in technology; while others were completely fictional mysteries, romances, and comedies. Heartbreakers, heartthrobs, comedians and beautiful women dominated movie screens across the country in theaters, called Nickelodeons. Nickelodeons were very basic and small theaters which later transformed into opulent and monumental palaces. When sound was introduced into film by Warner Bros. Pictures, “talkies” took top rank over silent films. “Movies were an art form that had universal appeal. Their essence was entertainment; their success, financial and otherwise, was huge” (1920-30, 3/19/11). Films offered an escape from the troubles of everyday life in the 20s, and moviegoers across the country all shared a universal language: watching movies.
Forman, Murray. "'One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount': Musicians and Opportunity in Early Television, 1948-55." Popular Music 21.3 (2002): 249. ProQuest. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Film was not always as it is today due to the digital sounds and graphic picture enhancements of George Lucas's THX digital sound in the late 1970s to enhance the audience's perceptions. Sound was first discovered in 1928 and the first films before that were silent. There is a social need to heighten an audience's film going experience and it allows each person to color their own views of what they see and presents either directly or indirectly society's moral values.
thesis of how the musical brought our inner child out to realize our true struggles in life.
Both films explore the concept of dystopia in a media controlled society and the true power which hope possesses. Moreover, both texts highlight the way leaders use their positions to manipulate to their advantage. However, both texts exemplify the oppression the characters are confronted with and endorse the way certain individuals challenge unjust authority figures.
The introduction of sound to film started in the 1920’s. By the 1930’s a vast majority of films were now talkies. ‘If you put a sound consistent to visual image and specifically human voice you make a “talkie”’ (Braun 1985 pg. 97). In 1926 Warner Brothers introduced sound to film but, other competing studios such as FOX, didn’t find it necessary to incorporate sound to their motion pictures production, as they were making enough money through their silent movies. Warner Brothers decided to take what was considered a risky move by adding sound to their motion picture, a risk taken, as they weren’t as successful in the silent movie department. But this risk paid off with the hit release of ‘The Jazz Singer’ in 1927. Though sound in films was then acceptable and successful it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it became feasible to the public as sound was introduced to cinema by the invention of Cinerama by Fred Waller. The Cinerama used 35mm film strip and seven channels of audio.