What the rest of the world was doing during the chapter before.
Although europe, asia and the middle east did see the mediums financially incentives and successes similar to the americas, it was primarily viewed as an art form for personal expression. A film movement called film d’art, based around plainly displaying theatrical plays was quite popular. followers of the movement soon realized that the movement couldn’t evolve being canned stage plays - even some of the french serials of the time had more artistic merit. Most of the major film companies had to cut back during WWI
*Some of the first french newsreels came out at this time. As well as the rise of Max Linder, who was a french Charlie Chaplin so to speak
A noteworthy director of the time was Abel Gance. He started directing shorts in 1912 along with some commercial and critically successful films and in 1927 released the epic biopic Napoléon. Napoléon was very innovative for many reasons most infamously with the original version of the film being made for three screens put next to each other, making a panoramic experience - something theaters would later explore in the 1950s and 60s. The film has been reedited and rescored numerous times throughout history, the most well known being Kevin Brownlow’s version in 1979 which is about five hours long. Gance was also known for using color tints and exaggerated camera angles to give himself distinct and energetic visuals
A group of experimental filmmakers were starting to expand the boundaries of narrative cinema - Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Marcel L’Herbier, and Marie Epstein. Dulac made interesting set of serials called Âmes de fous (1918), who combined mainstream structural elements like the cliffhanger with surrealist and impressionist techniques, although she is known for employing a wide variety techniques and styles to make her films as well asf themes of transgressive female desires. A lot of the experimental films out of this collective were feminist in nature.
Rene Clair was a french director who passionately believed in making art with images and sound. He helped popularize sound in french cinema with his goofy musicals and his film À Nous la liberté (1931). His films featured synchronized images and music into a magical montage of visuals and sound that trademarked his style. A particularly intriguing film of his is Paris qui dort (1925), a film about even in paris miraculously being asleep for a long time, without the exception of a few people.
No film was more scandalous at its time then Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien andalou (1929), produced by Salvador Dali. The narrative of the film was a pain attempting things to impress a women but the content was a essentially a montage of shocking imagery. The film caused riots when it was first screened and Bunuel’s next film L’Âge d’or (1930) was self described as “a desperate and passionate call to murder.”
Other surrealist directors include \
A stand out film in silent french cinema - occasionally called one of the greatest films of all time - is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). The film is mostly carried by the acting of the lead, Renée Falconetti, and the camera work of Rudolph Maté. The film follows joan on her final days before being sentenced to burning at the stake.
Jean Renoir - son of the prolific impressionist painter Auguste Renoir - is often considered one of the best directors out of France. he is known for covering a wide array of genres while keep his idiosyncrasies. most of hist career was spent trying to bounce back from his previous films until taking a commercial directing job - most of his films starred his wife until they separated in 1930. Renoir was adamite on recording sound on location and using a moving camera keeping time with the actors.
In Italy, the game was still about epic historical dramas.
Elvira Notari is an interesting and unknown for her time director. During the apex of giant spectacles, she made little, crude films about the life of the lower-to-middle class. The rediscovery of her work puts in to questions some of cinema’s norms at the time and makes her the inventor of NeoRealist cinema. she was infamous for her work being hand colored frame-by-frame, resulting in her films being feeling incredibly visceral.
WW1 brought swift changes to the world of italian cinema. Propaganda films during it and ending with “Diva” Cinema, a new genre; a trend of films about a man being lured to his downfall by a seductive women. Diva and spectacle dominated the scene to such a degree where it was become repetitious and a parody of itself.
England wanted to emulate the success of America’s assemble system, which they did through suffered greatly in the originality department. English silent films were plagued with slow serials of romance, parody and melodrama. It wasn’t until Alfred hitchcock came with the 1920s where england started to get a cinematic identity. He had been working in Paramount since 1919, but never got to direct his own film until 1925. His films took immediate German influence with a dark tone to the camera angles and lighting. In the 1930s he become an established figure and was highly successful and influential to american film makers - he would later go on to be considered one of the greatest directors of all time.
Both Norway and Denmark were too preoccupied with WW1 to make any significant impact on film. Sweden, however, had a decent scene around it, spearheaded by director Victor Sjöström. He directed films in Sweden and in America after moving to hollywood, but found the studio system and “americanization” of his films displeasing and moved back to sweden where he worked as an actor and advisor for sweden biggest film company.
Russian cinema was going through a rapid evolution as people were looking for entertainment during the Bolshevik Revolution. Many of the most popular film makers would flee the country after nicolai’s fall. Lenin saw the potential in film pressed their production as a tool to spread the revolution to the masses. In 1918, there are a regime called “agit-prop” which were trains fall of performers and cinematographers. One of those guys were Dziga Vertov, who famously took the Kino-Pravda newsreels to their most extreme conclusion, most notably with Kino-Apparatom ( or “The Man with a Movie Camera”, 1929) - now considered one of the greatest films of all time. The film used every trick in the book - which was a lot a the time; Russia was far ahead stylistically - to convey an impressionist view of Soviet success.
Note: most of these techniques were made by Lev Kuleshov
Sergei Eisenstein was a previous child who was quickly radicalized in the revolution and was directing theatrical agit-pop productions. He gained initial success with his piece Gas Masks - which was staged and performed in a gas factory, but quickly moved to film, where he would study under Lev Kuleshov. He would then develop his own theories of montage which he would utilize in Stachka (1925), a film about factory worker’s job action, and Bronenosets Potyomkin (1925), recount of sailors mutiny against the czar.
His work was beloved aboard, even if it was propaganda, but hated among his peers. puzzled by the situation he travels across europe, praised by critics but watched by local authorities - this was especially the case when he was hired at Paramount in America. After being fired from Paramount a year later, and embarking on multiple unsuccessful projects, he went back to the soviet union and was lambasted by the press.
He made the much more conventional attractive film Alexander Nevsky (1938) which was a smash success. He experimented slightly with his next trilogy of films but ultimately never finished all of them due to poor reputation.
When Stalin become supreme ruled in 1927 he stopped the experimentation and focused on Social realism for propaganda. Soviet films would not rise to the international success that they did with Eisenstein until 1970s.
Wartime german films were rarely exported and saw little influence, until Paul Wegener created the sensation known as Gothic horror fantasy, specifically with his film Der Golem (1920). These influences lead to Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) with its strange, angular sets and camera angels enchanting and disturbing audiences. Meanwhile, most of the germans production companies merged into Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) and embarked on creating some of Germany’s best films of the era - including Caligari.
Friz lang was by far the most important director the time. his most impressive film, Metropolis (1927), was a sci fi epic with lavish sites and strong political undertones that will inspire almost every major sci-fi film after it. His first sound film, also one of his most celebrated, is M (1931), about a child serial killer.
He also made a the film Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933), which included the titular Dr and his henchman saying lines from Mein Kampf. the film was promptly banned and he fled the country to avoid the backlash and took a directing job at MGM in America.
Other Noteworthy German Directors:
Note: Nosferatu was blatantly based on the novel dracula and was actually lose a court case against the wife of the author, resulting in most copies of the film to be destroyed - but luckily some survived
Sound came late to japan because they had performers who provided narration to the silent films. They were called Benshi, and they saw sound would take there job and at times used violence to press this case - the first sound film didn’t come until 1931. Japan still made silent films into 1936 - an acclaimed example being Yasujiro Ozu’s Otona no miru ehon—Umarete wa mita keredo in 1932. Ozu is one of japans most celebrated directors, and similar to Hitchcock, would be making masterpieces up until the 1960s. He is known for his “serene yet distent” style that was very simple and meditative.
The speed of Japan’s film production in the silent era rivaled the United States. This was likely due to the country’s cultural isolation - which would abruptly end with WW2. The main output was gendaigeki, dramas regarding family and social life, jidai-geki, violent action films emulating life in feudal Japan, and shomin-geki, the struggles of the blue collar worker. Japan also loved the work from hollywood when they would come over.
People have used sound with films before Lee de Forest, but they never used electronic amplification like he did to make the process more accessible. he made over a thousand recordings with this invention but it remained a novelty; studios were afraid to change the status quo and shake up the whole industry, until the Warner Bros did with The Jazz Singer in 1927. Studios either used Forest’s sound-on-film or Vitaphone’s sound-on-disc, until they agreed that there should be standard and voted on all using sound-on-disc. Theaters didn’t adjust to till 1931. by that point, over ninety million americans were watching the movies weekly, as it was a cheap way to escape the horrors of the great depression.
The Studio system turned out films weekly, categorized into “A” or “B” movies depending on the talent and budget behind - sometimes there were “C” movies with tiny budgets. Each studio had a cast of talent under contract that they could use on any project. The films would then be screened in a theaters owned by the studio to guarantee an audience. Because each studio had a different rooster, each studio was excelled and did well in different things. Wanner did Gangster films and melodrama’s, Universal did horror films and Paramount did comedies along with pushing the envelop of morality (which will be discussed later) Colombia was put on the map after getting Clark Gable on load from MGM and making It Happened One Night (1934), sweeping awards. MGM was consider to be the studio with the most star power, Twentieth Century Fox came in with Lloyd’s of London (1936) while RKO Radio Pictures’ King Kong (1933) was printing money. Performers were typically contracted for seven years and groomed to become stars, though not everyone got their big break.
Originally microphones were big and bulky, often leading to actors staying stationary for entire shots, leading to less interesting films. Back then, most films were dubbed over from a mixing booth, often with the score playing live with the actor in hopes to record all audio at once. Later the camera becoming more sound proof and microphones were put on boom arms to improve on set audio performance.
Some companies started experimenting with Technicolor and giant camera that was really three cameras of each color space recording at once then combined into a full color movie camera. It was made by *Herbert T. Kalmus and companies were required to sign a contract to use it and have Kalmus’s wife supervisor the picture.
A stand out director at the time was John Ford, specializing in westerns through working well in many genres. He is also famous for starting the career of John Wayne, and creating now classic films The Searchers (1956), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Stagecoach (1939). He used stationary cameras playing out the whole scene, known as the “information booth” style of filming. He shot most of his westerns in Monument Valley, Utah, avoided by other directors out of respect for him.
Howard Hanks - nicknamed the Gray Fox - was another prolific director who worked across genres. He made brutal gangster films like Scarface (1932), Thrilling mysteries like The Big Sleep (1946) and absurdist comedies like Twentieth Century (1934). His western epic Red River (1948) even impressed John Ford and pioneered the female heroine protagonist.
Hitchcock had accepted a deal from producer David O. Selznick to work on the film Rebecca (1940) in Hollywood, and since that film became a smash success, he continued a brief career in America. He preferred American studios to british ones and was one of the first directors to have his name appear above the title on promotional posters. He quickly become known for his nail bitting thrillers, particularly with Rope (1948) and its exclusively use of long tracking shots to let the narrative play out in real time.
Frit Lang also found a career in America after fleeing nazi Germany. It took him some time to adjust to America’s studio system but then later made some of the greatest detective noir films at Twentieth Century Fox. His films were dark and uneasy with downbeat plots and morally ambiguous protagonists.
Note: Chaplin continued making silent films until The Great Dictator in 1940.
Ernst Lubitsch was another German director working in america though he moved long before the Nazi came to power. He made very commercially successful, light-heated romance comedies. His films had distinct playfulness about them with clever ways of suggesting sex while avoiding censorship. His films often sneakily or directly poked fun at nazi’s and other social issues. Max Ophuls was a german director on the opposite side of Lubitsch’s coin. His romance’s were incredibly luxurious and enchanting to an almost overwhelmingly degree.
Orson Welles had already quite the name for himself in radio with his famous adaptation of War of the Worlds. He was signed to RKO Pictures in 1939 and locked himself in screening rooms for months to learn the medium. After many years of directing he shook the cinema world with Citizen Kane (1941), now one of the most famous films of all time. The film was loosely based off the life of William Randolph Hearst, who sued RKO to take down the film, but RKO never buckled. he was based around studios trying to recapture the success as kane but never doing so.
Studio managed the careers of every member of the production - directors rarely start as directors, they usually start as editors and become directors.
Dorothy Arzner was one of the only female directors to not be swallowed and become obsolete by the studio system, despite a lot of motion pictures early innovators being women. Her first noteworthy film in this regard was The Wild Party (1929), which prominently showed lesbian characters. it was also Paramount’s first film in color and arguably the first film with a “boom” mic. Many of her films explored displayed strong female leads or feminist issues. After having a spit with Colombia Pictures, she left the studio system and worked on some of the first television commercials and developed the first university film class.
Women made up most of the film audience and studios attempted to take advantage of that with “women’s pictures.” These films ranged in genre through unified in topics of the changing role of women, choosing between love, career and home and women in the workplace. despite the genre not being liked by (almost always male) critics, they were incredibly successful, especially once the male population was fighting in WW2. These films give women role models that lived their lives by their own merits and not what society dictated.
Walt Disney made the cartoon short an established and respected part of cinema culture, later expanding to full-lengths with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). His first films were animated by Ub Iwerks - a now forgotten name - who with disney made the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; he was later lost in a copyright case and they made Mickey Mouse in his place. Their first sound short Steamboat Willie (1928) was extremely successful and motivated Disney to make a division of his company just to merchandising Mickey, a practice the company still dose today. Iwerks left the company to pursue a solo career but later rejoined once realizing it would’nt be as successful - through the process made him lose his share of the company and costed him a fortune. Disney continued to experiment with animation and creating now iconic characters. In 1940, he released Fantasia, an interesting film for many reasons. One is that the film was a commercial flop, but today it considered one of greatest animated films of all time. It is essentially a montage of classical music set to gorgeous animated sequences. During the war years, work conditions started to get messier, every film was a box office hit and the company started branching off to television, theme parks and live action films that paint the disney we know today.
Warner Brothers wanted to take advantage of their large library of music and created Leon Schlesinger’s “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” unit. These were typically cartoons contracted by ex-disney artists that would characterize some music. This changed when they decided to make it a full unit and hired animators that would become know as some of the most talented directors in the medium, Isadore “Friz” Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. They created a rooster of unique characters that could endlessly bounce off each other. Their films were special as they focused on an adult audience, strong attention to nuance and artistic merit, while having humour simple enough for any age to enjoy it. Tex Avery was by far the wildest and would have a successful solo career at MGM after leaving Warner.
The Fleischer Brothers are another animated entity to note. There films were wild and surreal, soundtracked by cool jazz. Their known today as the creators of Felix the Cat, Betty Boop and bringing Popeye onto screen.
The Great depression and start of WW2 had greatly changed American culture. The Motion Picture Production Code was put in place back in the 1920s, but it was never greatly enforced until it was protested that there children were being corrupted by the media. The code was revised and forced upon the studios on 1 July 1934. It included:
Most of the out roar seemed to be targeted towards the sexually charged actress Mae West, whose films were a shadow of their former selves after the code was put in action. during this time child actress Shirley Temple was on the rise, as well as the absurdist group Marx Brothers. The most famous film from this era was Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939), adapted from the famous novel of the same name. it was a massive product01ion that had to be split into two screenings but was a massive hit
Note: Like Russia, America had its far share of propagandist films during the World wars - most of which come to haunt their creators. This era, however, did give us Casablanca (1942), one of the most beloved films in cinema
Alice Guy (french women ) she has only recently gotten attention as being as inventive as griffith vert few films are known today (especially since they used to use nitrate film, which made better image through was chemically unstable - bursts into flames)
the perception of an image/scene is affecting by the juxtaposition of the image/scene directly before or after
face then food then back to face is perceived as hungry
some people think montage is getting a person to a place in a jump. but its more nuance… The shot quickly switches a man coming up to the man with a knife, then cutting to the man with blade splatter on him falling down…We have a close up then cut to what he sees, then cut back to him smiling. what he sees can completely change what the audience perceives him as.
1930s saw a massive improvement in sound. the studios switched to optical sound. this was during the great depression, and the switch helped save warner bros.
Mise on scene (placing on stage) is the stage design and arrangement of actors
Italian neo-realism (1943-1945)
focused on post-war working class culture. used existing locations like public streets and no studios. often used non-professional actors. Very influential filmakers
Censorship
major motion pictures hired Will hayes, to head the motion picture producers and distributers of america (MPPDA, often referred to as the Hay’s office). The started in the late 1920s thought was never really enforced in 1934, by Joseph Breen in response to protest they were getting from paranoid parents
the studios how made film also owned the theaters, and wouldn’t make a film if they couldn’t show it.
Meanwhile, in Canada
board of censorship was sent in up in 1911, even newsreels have to be supervised with vague guidelines. sexuality was strict but violence was lax. moved to videotapes in 1975, which made pron rampant, as it could be made and sold quicker then the board would notice. in 1985, they changer their name to the film review board (to remove the connotation of censorship). they later ceased operation in 2019.
Leni Riefennsthal
a female germany director (tarantino called the greatest director of all time). she was hit up by hitler to make some docs. she made used 45 cameras and over 200 hours of footage. she was also a photojournalist who covered the invasion of poland and was imprisoned for 4 years because of it.
Early comedy:
Slapstick style fo humour often employing exaggerated actions and absurd plot sequences. easy form of early entertainment with visual action and physical comedy
Charles Chaplin
little tramp character extradonary international success. Moved from slapstick to more expressive forms, while using ’the little tramp’ characte.
founded united artits studios with other actors and directors and took own his own business affairs. Often the producer, writer, directory and star of his films (sometime he even wrote the music.).
Marx Brothers: Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo, they were born into a vaudvelle family and toured musical theatre at and earler age.
Duck soup (1933) by Leo Carey is a satire of war, politics and social institutions. satire is an art form in which human or individual “Every film about war ends up being pro war”
look out for montage, continuity editing and descriptions of mise en place and who they are significant
films mentioned:
The Jazz Singer (1927) by Alan Crosland - the first film with sound. it used the vitaphone, a discs played in unison with the projector (strapped to it)
The Lights of film (1928) the first completely sound synchronized film. sound made films way more difficult and expensive to make
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) by Robert Wiene - early example of surreal and very influential mise en scene (david lynch, tim burton)
Dogvile (2003) by Lars von Trier
fat girl (Catherine Breillat)
The Triumph of the Will (1933) by Leni Riefennsthal. often considered to be the greatest documentary ever made. communized by hitler.
The Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin
Horse Feathers (1932) by marx brothers (satiated the college system)