birth of cinema: 1890s edison and the kinetoscope biograph and filmmaking in…new jersey?

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).