Classical Hollywood Cinema

The Arrival of Sound Film

• Early, failed experiments
  • Thomas Edison/W. K-L. Dickson's kinetophone (circa 1895)—an attempt to combine the kinetoscope with the gramophone:
    
    Source: Wikipedia.
• Léon Gaumont's Chronomégaphone--presented to the public in 1902:
  
  Sources: Galerie d'affiches, Une archéologie du cinéma sonore, by Giusy Pisano
• Pathé sync-sound experiment, from its 1905 catalog:
  
  Source: Une archéologie du cinéma sonore, by Giusy Pisano
• The Sound/Talkie Hybrid
  • The Jazz Singer (1927)
    
• Early sound booths (circa 1927)
  

Consolidation of Studio System

Major Studios: The Big Five

1. 1912: Paramount (as "Famous Players Film Company")
2. 1918: Warner Bros. (year they opened a studio)
3. 1924: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
4. 1928: RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Radio Pictures
5. 1935: 20th Century Fox (merger of 20th Century and Fox)

Minor Studios: The Little Three

• 1912: Universal
• 1919: United Artists
• 1924: Columbia

2019 Media Landscape, According to Recode

Classical Narrative Structure

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

The Production Code (aka, the Hays Code; 1934)

• Industry (Not Federal) Censorship
  • The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's (MPPDA) "Don’ts and Be Carefuls" of 1927, a forerunner of the Production Code (1930) and the Production Code Administration (1934)
  • Tarzan and His Mate (1934): censored material
    

The Development of the Star System

• More Florence Lawrence images
  

Classical Visual Style

• Mise-en-scene
  • Three-point Lighting (diagram)
    • Key
    • Fill
    • Back
      
      The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
• Cinematography
  • The development of color film
    • Hand-colored
      • E.g., Georges Méliès films
        
    • Kinemacolor, introduced in 1906
      • E.g., Sarah Bernhardt
        
    • Technicolor
      • Two-color Technicolor
        • First feature: Toll of the Sea (1922)
          
        • Also, The Black Pirate (1926)
          
      • Three-color Technicolor
        • First animated short: Flowers and Trees (1932)
        • First live-action short: La Cucaracha (1934)
        • First feature: Becky Sharp (1935)
          
          Source: UCLA restoration (see before/after video)
        • Various three-color Technicolor samples:
          
          
          

The Continuity Editing System

• The 180 Degree Rule
  Axis of action and shot-counter shot (aka, shot-reverse shot)
  
  Source: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, 9th ed. (NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010), 237.
  • Wonderfalls (shot-counter shot; "creative geography")
  • Northern Exposure (shot-counter shot)
  • The 180 Degree Rule
    • "180 Degree Rule," by Peter John Ross
      
      
      
    • Breaking the rule: Page of Madness (View video)
      
• Match Cuts
  • Match on Action
    • Don Masahara's Big Adventure
  • Eye-Line Match
    • To Have and Have Not (objective)
    • Wonderfalls (subjective; also, "creative geography")
• Jump Cuts
  • Breathless
• Point-of-View Shot (a.k.a., subjective shot)
  • Lady in the Lake
• Montage Sequence
  • Nothing Sacred
• Typical Sequence
  • Out of Sight (see Film Art tutorial CD-ROM)
  • Rio Bravo