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Birth of Cinema: 1890s
• Edison and the Kinetoscope
• Biograph and filmmaking in…New Jersey?
• Edwin Porter
• Lumiere Brothers popularize public screenings
• French film industry most successful pre-World War I
Where are films seen?
• Vaudeville
• Store-front theaters: Nickelodeon
• Carnival sideshow
Movies considered working class entertainment.
Early Cinema and the 1900s to 1920s
• Industry moves to Hollywood
• Dominates movie production after World War I
• “Silent” cinema?
• “movie palaces” and “an evening’s entertainment”
D.W. Griffith and The Birth of a Nation
• Industrial, artistic, cultural significance
• Cinema as ideology
Ideology: those ideas, images, stories, and other systems through which we make sense of the world and our relation to it
Genre films: categories of movies with reliable formulas for telling stories
Silent era oriented toward action and lavish sets:
• Westerns, war movies, horror, romances, physical comedies, costume dramas, documentaries, action, melodramas
Star system: discovered certain actors/actresses could attract viewers no matter film
Sound Film and Studio System
Early sound: • Jazz Singer (1927)• Restrictions
• New genres include: screwball comedies, musicals, character studies, crime dramas
How the studio system workseverything done (until late 1940s) "in-house"
Vertical integration: when companies with same owner handle different aspects of the film business
Three Keys Stages1. Production2. Distribution3. Exhibition
5 Major Studios by 19301. Paramount2. MGM3. Warner Bros.4. Fox5. RKO
An evening's entertainment now includes: NewsreelsCartoonsB movieFeature
Movie attendance peaks in 194690 million Americans go to movies every week
U.S. vs. Paramount (1948): Divestiture agreementBreaks up studio hold on film production, distribution, exhibition
Film adjusts to the Changing Culture
TV and Movies: Enemies and partners
•Movies on TV
•New technologies for film
Studios start producing TV shows
• Disneyland and “Disneyland”
• Westerns
Why?
• $$$
• Fin/Syn: networks can’t own content
More film industry responses:
Exhibition: theaters move out of city centers
Independent production: partnerships between producers and studios
Late 60s and 1970s, Hollywood attempts to reconnect
More independent production
Younger directors
Ratings
• Hays Office/Production Code was earlier response
• Motion Picture Association of America
• May encourage more explicit content
The New Hollywood
More corporate mergers
Business reasserts control
Blockbusters: Jaws, Star Wars
• Broad appeal
• Foreign appeal
• Cross promotion
• Merchandising
• Evolution or Devolution?
Current structure:• Studios partner with independent producers• Agree to distribute
Tent-pole strategy: Blockbusters paired with smaller niche films for particular audiences
Blockbusters can assure solvency for a while, but often flop.
Distribution and Exhibition today:
• More screens, less movies.
Windows: different “arenas” for exhibition
How will digital technologies shape the future of the movie industry?
• Production
• Distribution
• Exhibition
• Straight to DVD?
Film Criticism: Ways of Thinking About Movies
How do you talk about film without focusing on “what happens”?
• Or “thumbs up or down”?
Auteur theory: director as unifying artistic voice
similarities across films
Genre: films with formulasSet rules, expectations Both for filmmakers and audiences
Genre theory Identify genres, subgenres (scifi, comedy) Examine how change
Symptomatic Culture
• film as “symptom” • how film text connected to cultural context• looking to “subtext”
Structuralism• language organizes and constructs our access to reality• film and genres as language systems
Saussure: way we make sense of the world is dependent on the language we speak and, therefore, the culture we inhabit.
Langue: language system (rules and conventions which organize it)
Parole: utterance (individual use of language)
Task of structuralism is to make explicit the rules and conventions (langue) which govern production of meaning (parole).