Lecture from a Mass Media class at Montana Tech.

1. Movies
Mass Producing Entertainment
Resource Manual:
Ralph E. Hanson, Mass Communication: Living in a Media World

2. We will cover:
• The history of moving pictures
• Rise and fall of studio system | Blacklisting
• Style and Genre
• Classical Narratives
• Day for Night, La nuit américaine (Truffault, 1973)
• Or, Good Night, and Good Luck (Clooney, 2005)

3. Early Movie Technology
• 1878: Eadweard Muybridge, watch movie

4. Early Movie Technology
• 1894: Thomas Edison
opens first
kinetoscope parlor.
• See Annie Oakley.

5. Early Movie Technology
• Lumière brothers
invent portable movie
camera and projector.
• A Trip to the Moon.

6. Telling a Story With Film
• 1903: Edwin S. Porter directs The Great Train
Robbery
• Contains 12 separate scenes
• Is shot in a variety of locations
• Tells a realistic story
• Established basic film storytelling conventions

7. D.W. Griffith
• 1915: Birth of a Nation, the
first feature-length film
• established “classical
editing” -- editing for
dramatic intensity and
emotional emphasis rather
than purely physical reasons.
•

8. The Studio System
• Stars worked directly for studios
• Block bookings
• Vertical integration
• Development of talking pictures

9. Response to the Studio System
• 1919: United Artists
created by directors and
actors.
• Rebelled against the
controls placed on them
under the studio system.

10. The Blacklist
• 1947: HUAC holds
hearing on communist
influences in
Hollywood.
• Hollywood Ten resisted
testifying, were jailed
Hollywood 10: Herbert Biberman, Alvah
Bessie, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, and blacklisted.
Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson,
Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott,
and Dalton Trumbo.

11. The Blacklist
• By 1953, as many as 324
were blacklisted, including
many prominent
screenwriters.
• Blacklist continued until
1960 when Hollywood Ten
member Dalton Trumbo
hired to write Spartacus,
Exodus.

12. Senator Joseph McCarthy
• 1950. McCarthy was the most
visible public face of a period in
which Cold War tensions fueled
fears of widespread Communist
subversion.
• A prominent attack on
McCarthy's methods was an
episode of See It Now, hosted by
Edward R. Murrow, March 9,
1954.

13. Movies React To Television
• Movie audiences peak in 1956—80 million tickets
sold per week
• By 1953, ticket sales drop to 46 million per week
• First round of 3-D movies, larger format theaters
• Growing popularity of color
• Growth of multiplex theaters

14. Styles and Types (Modes) of Films
style
REALISM CLASSICISM FORMALISM
s
Types
Documentary FICTION Experimental
(modes
)
Good Night and Good Luck Avatar/ Gone With the Wind Fellini Films
Manufactured Landscapes Boogie
Doodle
NB. These are not airtight categories and often overlap.

15. What About the Classical”Style?
•Often handsomely mounted, story oriented, high
premium placed on the the entertainment value of
the story which conforms to popular genre.
•Characters often played by “stars” and roles are
often tailored to their personal charms. Audience is
encouraged to identify with their goals/values.

16. CLASSICAL NARRATIVES
• Derived from live theatre (Aristotelian Poetics and the
“well-made-play”) the classical narrative model is based
on a conflict between a protagonist, who initiates the action
and an antagonist who resists it
• Beginning, middle and end with cause and effect plot
escalation.
• Most films in this form begin with an implied dramatic
question -- we want to know if the protagonist will get what
they want in the face of opposition.

17. What About Genre?
• Definition: A recognizable type of movie, characterized by
certain pre-established conventions. Common genres are
Westerns, Drama (Romance, War, Action etc.), Thrillers,
Sci-Fi, Comedy, etc. A ready-made narrative form.
• Genre was developed by French directors François
Truffault, Jean-Luc Godard and their Cahiers du cinema
associates in the mid-50s. Simultaneously with their Auteur
Theory, they also developed the theory of film genre.
• Believed that the genius of American cinema was its
repository of ready-made forms saying “The tradition of
genres in a base of operations for creative freedom.”

18. La nuit américaine (Day for
Night). Truffault, 1973
A committed film director struggles to complete his
movie while coping with a myriad of crises, persona
and professional, among the cast and crew. (From
imdb.com)
Director:
François Truffaut
Writers:
François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard,
Stars:
Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud and François
Truffaut

19. Good Night, and Good
Luck. Clooney, 2005
Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow looks to bring
down Senator Joseph McCarthy. (From imdb.com)
Director:
George Clooney
Writers:
George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Stars:
David Strathairn, George Clooney and Patricia Clarkso