Today, most movie goers categorize ‘silent films’ into one genre and discard the stark differences that make Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, The Great Train Robbery, and Broken Blossoms vastly dissimilar. In my opinion, these films clearly illustrate the evolution from silent film projection on a cafe wall to the birth of the hollywood that we know today. The profound contrast is most apparent in their stories, their performances, and the emotional response each film invokes. Collectively these films provide viewers with a clear perspective on how early film progressed from silent stills into what we call today, The Classical hollywood “silent” film era. Arrival of a Train at La Ciota,the first projected and enlarged 35mm film short, inadvertently …show more content…
Arrival of a Train at La Ciota, produced by the Lumiere brothers, used actors that may of well of been ‘real people '. Today, we may even categorize this acting style of that of an ‘extra’. The Great Train Robbery employed individual artists to portray characters in the film. For the first time we see the beginning of the hollywood studio system including a featured star Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy ' Anderson. In sum, the Porter flick showcased thirteen dramatic actors that played multiple different roles. In addition, the actors did not receive acting credits portraying an insight into one major difference during this time. The precedence of film before actor. As we know, this precedence quickly reversed as the movie star is now the driving attraction and the change was noticeable as early as Griffith’s Broken Blossoms. Distinctive to the film, Griffith administers a acting style that is as essential if not more to the film as the storyline is. The film would not be the same without Lillian Gish, which is in direct contrast to the other two films where the actors could be easily interchangeable. Different from today’s films, Gish and Barthelmess acting style were similar to that of stage acting with enormous and purposeful expressions. Specifically, Battling Burrows played by Donald Crisp exercises a large, almost non sensical acting style which is undeniably a result
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Show MoreIn the silent-era of film insert titles were important in explaining the narrative to the primitive viewer not well-versed in film, especially in films where the audience were not familiar with the story unlike ‘Porters The Night before Christmas‘(Musser, 1990, pp258). Griffith used insert titles which ‘changed around 1905 into summaries of the action’ (Burch, 1990, pp221) As the film had a ‘self-sufficient narrative’ (Burch, 1990, pp221) that ran for over three hours, with poor camera quality to recognise characters. But they were ‘systematically anticipating t...
My initial idea for this paper was to focus on the technical aspects of the film—the hybrid of animation and live action. I first saw this technique used in The Three Caballeros (Ferguson & Young, 1944) and was going to research this film, but the amount of literature on t...
New and exciting technologies have always played a huge role in the culture of American people. When the motion picture came out it was no surprise that both consumers and producers were more than happy to get in on the action. Back in the 1920’s film was still pretty new and was only in black and white with no sound, but the films were always accompanied by orchestral pieces to help set the mood. The art of movie-making has come a long way since then with the addition of not only color and audio, but new techniques and new ideas. Both The Kid and Iron Jawed Angels are very popular films about the early 1900’s. Although they share some common thoughts, but because they were made in two completely different time periods their focuses are far off from one another and their ideas contrast for the most part.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
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.
Perhaps now I must consider an alternate approach to understanding this film. Maybe my difficulty in pinpointing The Silent Partner's positive attributes demonstrates to some extent my current narrow-mindedness on Hollywood-style pictures. I think it's only fair to treat this film as an article of film criticism in order to accurately look at it within the context of a national cinema. And so, let us begin by looking first at the particulars of the Canadian film industry around the time The Silent Partner was released. Maybe afterwards, we'll be able to understand the implications of what audiences saw on that illustrious Canadian screen I feel so emotionally bound to preserving.
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.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
The history of sound in movies is very peculiar. It is hard to say when the first movie was made because of arguments to determine which was made first. Films were created between the late 1870s and the 1890s. Drawing the line to determine the definition of a film can be difficult. To define a film as a set of moving pictures, then the first movie would be Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion in 1878. Yet, there are other ways to determine the first movie such as the first home movie, Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888; the first movie ever shot using an ongoing film strip, Monkeyshines No. 1 in 1889 or 1890; the first movie ever copyrighted, Fred Ott’s Sneeze in 1894; the first movie that was ever projected, Workers Leaving Lumiere Factory in 1895; or even the first movie projected to a public audience, Berlin Wintergarten Novelty Program in 1895 (Wright). D...
This essay will outline an introduction to the premature years of motion pictures and developments that helped shape cinema as we know it today. This paper will explore the roles of the early pioneers and the extent to which their contributions shaped cinema. In particular, it will look at how E.S Porter and D.W Griffith improved on the early years of cinema as result of influences from Louis and Auguste Lumiere and George Melies.
Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder in 1950 is based on how Norma Desmond, a huge Hollywood star, deals with her fall from fame. The film explores the fantasy world in which Norma is living in and the complex relationship between her and small time writer Joe Gillis, which leads to his death. Sunset Boulevard is seen as lifting the ‘face’ of the Hollywood Studio System to reveal the truth behind the organisation. During the time the film was released in the 1950s and 60s, audiences started to see the demise of Hollywood as cinema going began to decline and the fierce competition of television almost proved too much for the well established system. Throughout this essay I will discuss how Sunset Boulevard represents the Hollywood Studio System, as well as exploring post war literature giving reasons as to why the system began to crumble.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
Sound is important in film and how it is used to drive a narrative progression. I will analyse how and why in this essay. Covering the history of sound in films and the essential component it plays in the film industry.