Slowly she asked "Is anyone there?" as she walked down the dark deserted road. When she heard a loud sound she turned abruptly trying again "Hello?" Met with only silence she picked up here pace almost running down the dirt road. Her nerves had just began to calm when she heard "WRRRREEENNNNNRRRRRRR" as a chainsaw started behind her. Running she started looking behind her hoping that whoever it was, wouldn’t catch her. With her lack of concentration she tripped over her high heels and face plants into the dirt, giving the murderer a chance to catch up. Slowly he lowered the chainsaw and began cutting --CUT -- This is a common plot used in horror movies today. Movies have changed over the years. They were different five years ago, fifty years ago, and even a almost a century ago. Technologies have unthinkable things possible. They have allowed us to re-sink "the unsinkable ship." They have allowed us to see dinosaurs in all their brutal glory. We have seen imaginary creatures, only ever mentioned in stories brought to life. Movies have moved so far from the 1920's and 1930's. They have developed ideals, rules and even standards; but where did they begin? Did movies just fall out of the sky? Did they just come into being? No they began slowly, silently moving towards a new era, the era we today call "Pre-code Hollywood"
The idea of Hollywood, before it was Hollywood as we know it seems foreign. However, it did exist and was known as "Pre-code." Pre-code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920's and the enforcement of the Hays Code censorship guidelines, which went into effect on June 13, 1934 (Association of Motion Picture Producers 1934). Durin...
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...d by William Wyler. Performed by Audrey Hepburn. 1953.
Sabrina. Directed by Billy Wilder. Performed by Audrey Hepburn. 1954.
Lasky, Betty. The biggest Little Major of Them All. Santa Monica: Roundtable, 1989.
Miller, Frank. Censored Hollywood. Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994.
Nichols, John. ""Counbtering Censorship: Edgar Dale and the Film appreciation movement (critical essay)."." Cinema Jouranl. Fall 2006.
Rabinovitz, Laura. For the Love of Pleasure; Women, Movies and Culture in the Turn-of-the-Centry of Chicago. New Jersey: Rutgers university Press, 1998.
Reed, Elanine Walls. "'A very unusual Practise [sic]': miscegnation and the film industy in the Hays era." West Virginia Univesity Philological papers 50, 2003: 42-53.
Southerland, Harold P. ""'Love for Sale'- sex and the Second American Revolution"." Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, 2008: 49-77.
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
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...
Imagine it – all the rules you were raised to follow, all the beliefs and norms, everything conventional, shattered. Now imagine It – Clara Bow, the It Girl. The epitome of the avant-garde woman, the archetype of the flapper, was America’s new, young movie actress of the 1920’s. Modern women of the day took heed to Bow’s fresh style and, in turn, yielded danger to the conventional America. Yet Bow’s contagious and popular attitude came with its weaknesses - dealing with fame and the motion picture industry in the 1920’s. Despite this ultimate downfall, Clara’s flair reformed the youth and motion pictures of her time.
Keathley, Christian. "Trapped in the Affection Image" The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s. Ed. Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath, Noel King. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004. 293-308. Print.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Todd, Janet. Women and Film. Vol. 4. New York, NY: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1988.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Yockey, Matt. “Critical Journal of Film & Television”. Velvet Light Trap, Issue 61. 2008. 26-37. Web. 1st December 2012.
Film is an important part of American culture. Movies provide us with various kinds of entertainment due to a wide array of genres. A “slasher” film, as defined by Carol Clover (author of the horror film analysis Men, Women and Chainsaws) are “the immensely generative story of a psychokiller who slashes to death a string of mostly female victims, one by one until he is subdued or killed, usually by the one girl who has survived”. One of the most popular slasher films of the late 90’s was Wes Craven’s “Scream”. The film has all the trademarks of a slasher film; the knife-weilding masked psychopath, the stupid teenage victims being picked off one by one, and the plot twist ending. Not only are slasher films predictable, but they also contain the same gender roles most horror films have. The helpless and promiscuous female victims, the strong and brave males, and the dominant murderer are all present in the film. Though the typical gender roles seen in horror films are portrayed throughout the film, the end of the movie reverses these roles by having a female character triumph over evil.
Sklar, Robert. Movie-made America: A Social History of American Movies. New York: Random House, 1975. Print.
Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.
Gunning, Tom 2000, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde.” Film and theory: An anthology, Robert Stam & Toby Miller, Blackwell, pp 229-235.
From 1960-1980, Hollywood went through a critical period. There were many events going on political and socially such as the presidencies of JFK and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Civil Rights Act, the role of women and counterculture, the assassinations of MLK, Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X, the massacre at Kent State University amongst other social tensions and political movements. As a means to engage the younger generation, the Hollywood industry made countercultural films which brought forth in creating an American art cinema.
This essay explains the journey of Bollywood (Indian Film Industry) and how it has changed itself and its audience’s perspective on Hindi Cinema. Applying the key features from Dennis McQuail’s “Normative Theory”, the relationship between Bollywood and the audience, controlled by the censorship board will be explained; and how both, the Bollywood industry and Censor Board are responsible for bringing changes to each other in the terms of rules, regulations, audience’s attitudes and their demands, in every period of time. According to McQuail (2010), a normative theory is adopted to clear the confusion prevailing in the information industry, that has become self-centred in modern days; and also to examine if the information created is to serve own self or the government. There have been endless debates by the contrasting individual ideas on how the media should be controlled from displaying unethical contents, and normative theory helps in guiding the individuals (theorists, writers, society and general public) to produce suggestions and ideas that media should follow, for the benefit of society and media (McQuail, 2010). The Indian Film Industry was established in 1913 but began to be known in 1920 (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2010). Bollywood, since then, was and is still controlled by the censor board, however the censor board went through a few transformations, from being independently owned by police heads of every region, to Bombay Board of Film Censors, and finally to the Central Board of Film Censors in 1952 (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2010). Cinema rules were reedited in 1983 and the censor board was re-named to the Central board of Film Certification (Indian Ministr...
The Relationship Between Women and Film The research topic I investigated was ‘the representation of women in Japanese action/thriller films and, Hollywood action/thriller films focusing on the Asian genre, are different’. When starting my research, I wanted to prove that due to Eastern/Western ideological differences in society, cinema produced reflects the culture. For example, the target audience of a country influences how films are produced in order to appeal to the specific audience. Thus, I proposed that due to a divide in audience appeal for film based on varied cultures, despite the same genre (i.e. Asian genre) being used, representation of the women in the film will be different so as to target the audience and link with the society’s views, customs and values. I started off by looking at how women are represented in Japanese action/thriller films.