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Hollywood Cinema

Hollywood Cinema . Taking Movies Seriously. The Wizard of Oz as Hollywood Journey . Familiar people and scenes transformed Journey into another world Colorful Dangerous Exciting But a recognizably American world Safe return home. The Wizard of Oz (1939) as Cultural Product.

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Hollywood Cinema

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  1. Hollywood Cinema Taking Movies Seriously

  2. The Wizard of Oz as Hollywood Journey • Familiar people and scenes transformed • Journey into another world • Colorful • Dangerous • Exciting • But a recognizably American world • Safe return home

  3. The Wizard of Oz (1939) as Cultural Product • Time: between depression and WWII • Cultural Currents in Movie: • Bleakness of everyday world (Kansas) • Desire to escape to “world without trouble” • Dangers loom in both Oz and Kansas • Miss Gulch/Witch • Tornado/apple trees and poppy field • Safety lies in coming home and staying there

  4. Gone with the Wind (1939) • Subject very different • Striking parallels in structure and theme • Lush technicolor world contrasts with monochrome scenes of war • Journey of a heroine to gain what she wants in a postwar world without trouble • Expresses doubts about moving from the connection and support of a rural world into the impersonality and efficiency of an industrialized one

  5. Scarlett and Dorothy • Scarlett • Gains wealth and security • Abandons the moral code of her mother and “Mammy” (the rural world) • Punished by losing what she finally wants • Dorothy • Becomes a hero in Oz, but abandons the new life to go home, giving up her independence • Rewarded by the approval of friends and parents

  6. Hollywood and Representation • Hollywood “is not America at all, but it is all America.” (Ross Wills) • Hollywood is “America in flight from itself.” (Carey McWilliams) • Hollywood movies “have been able, in an extremely competent way, to show American society just as it wanted to see itself.” (Andre Bazin)

  7. Hollywood Presents: Hollywood • Sullivan’s Travels (1941) • Who’s right: Sully or his producers? • Stardust Memories (1980) • What do even Martians know about movies? • The Player (1992) • Movies Are Art, Now More Than Ever?

  8. To understand a particular movie, analyze its • Economics • Technique • Ideology • History • Production • Box office • Critical response

  9. Early Observers of Hollywood • Hortense Powdermaker (1946) • Sees belief in formula as parallel to belief in magic in primitive cultures • “There seems to be a continuous conflict between making a movie they can respect and the ‘business’ demands of the front office. It is assumed that a movie that has the respect of the artist cannot make money.”

  10. Early Observers of Hollywood • Powdermaker’s insights are echoed by many later critics: • Steven Bach (1986): “The art vs. business conflict has remained stubbornly resistant to resolution and remains the dominating central issue of American motion picture to the present day.” • Rick Altman (1992): Hollywood movies are constructed backwards to come up with a beginning that guarantees a happy ending.

  11. Affirming the Culture • How do happy endings “affirm and maintain” the culture of which they are a part? • How important is a Utopian vision of the world to Hollywood films? • Why is this ideal world, recognizably akin to the real one, so crucial to a movie’s success?

  12. The Player (1992) • What elements are necessary to market a film successfully? • “Suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings. Mainly happy endings.” --Griffin Mill, The Player

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