The Classical Hollywood Studio System

The Classical Hollywood studio apartment SystemThe Hollywood studio apartment era can be traced back to the solution of hold up in enter. The first attribute take up with audio recording was The Jazz vocalist (1927), civiliseed by Alan Crosland based on a correspond by Samson Raphaelson. In the period of the silent cinema, the cinema itself was considered a technical marvel. But analogous all technologies, the inventors needed to find modes to plow their products, and seen as a large business potential, nickelodeons, through numerous theatres figureive America, laid d consume the basis of the Hollywood cinema.The golden age of Hollywood of course began with the introduction of sound in scoot and theatre, a fully grown investment for the studios. With the approach of the US Recession in the early thirty-something (in fact it was still felt until 1938) the studios looked for financial back-up by Banking Giants, the Wall path which led to the total control of the stud ios by bankers and businessmen.Between the 1920s and the late(a) 1940s Hollywood cinema was an oligopoly dominated by the Big cinque dominant, MGM, Warner Br another(prenominal)s, FOX and RKO which were vertically integrated and also the slim Tree world-wide, capital of South Carolina and United Artists. Throughout this period, Hollywood was in a mass mood of outturn, it was heavily capitalised, it used precision machinery, employing thousands of workers(over 33000 battalion) and it had a centralised management. The modes of employment endlessly changed since 1895. There was the cameraman system (1895-1906), in which the film was shot and distributed by cameramen, the Director System (1907-1909), the Director-unit (1909-1914), a Central Producer System (1914-1930), a Producer-Unit System (1930-1945), and Package-Unit System (1945-1955). As the banks and businessmen took over the studios, it was clear that the around important aspect to them was that the films produced nee ded to be created for economical purposes. The studios began to look wish well big factories with the division of labour on the studio lot with 33000 people in production and over 133000 people in the industry. They had a tier department, unit department, an assistant director department, art department, various workshops and wardrobe departments and many a(prenominal) more.Paramount Pictures, considered one of the defining studios of the classical era was founded by Adolph Zukor, as an investor, he saw that the films were being enjoyed by the working class people, primarily immigrants. By the 1920s the studio expanded to an industry colossus with theatrical performance chains of 2000 screens and two production studios. . During the Depression period Paramount went come bankruptcy but in the late 1930s under Barney Balaban, Paramount became one of the biggest and most important of the Big Five. They released over 60 films a year and with the rise of sound in cinema, numerous t ips were born Gary Cooper, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert, Dorothy Lamour, Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby and the Marx Brothers.Metro-Golden-Mayer was founded in 1924 and by 1940s it was considered the one to dominate the industry. Marcus Loew bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1916 and Goldwyn Pictures in 1917 and in 1924 he bought Mayer Pictures. The producer Luis B, Mayer was made vice-president and head of studio operations in California, along with Irving Thalberg and Harry Rapf. MGM was considered a producer studio, in that respect films were glamorous and they were considered gauge productions. The studio was a star vehicle with names like William Haines , posterior Gilbert, Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo, and Joan Crawford, but they also had names hired from other studios like Wallace Beery, Lon Chaney, William Powell and Buster Keaton. In the 1930s new stars were added Jean Harlow, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Nelson kink and Je anette MacDonald.Warner Bros. was the first studio to introduce sound. The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first talking film and began to expand by acquiring large studios in Burbank and some(prenominal) important stars. While MGM was making start stuttering lavishing dramas, and musicals, Paramount made films about decadence, Warners was combining contrasting genres the mobster movies, backstage musicals and romantic adventure films. The way to identify a Warner Bros. film from other studios way in the way of the production value and a unique visual style (simple caboodles and low-keyed lighting)Sets at Warners were customarily bare and workmanlikeThe scale of a film could be judged by its budget, and in 1932 the average production cost per feature at Warners was estimated at $200,000, lowest of the majors except for Columbia ($175,000) MGM by comparison, averaged $450,000 (Campbell, 1971, p. 2).With the introduction of color, the studio began to flourish. Thorough 1929-1931, Warn ers, were producing a staggering number of sinister films, the majority being musicals. After associating musicals with color, the studio began to abandon it, and instead move to a more social realistic storyline, the gangster films. Films like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931) G-Men (1935), Racket Busters (1938) etc.20th Century-Fox was created through the group meeting of Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures. The studios stars did not discriminate with the likes of MGM, Warner or Paramount, but FOX managed to produce some A-grade films like The Grapes of pettishness (1940) the most expensive adaptation of that clock- who won 2 Oscars, Thanks A Million (1935) with stars like Shirley Temple and Will Rogers.RKO was formed in the beginning of sound in film and the stars working for the studio were Cary Grant, musical group Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers In The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1934) and so on The most famous films at RKO were King Kong (1933) and Citizen Kane (1941). With every other Studio being associating with a genre, KRO didnt have any specific genre.The way to insure Hollywoods peculiarity as a mass entertainment industry the fantasy factory is through the couplet of standardisation/differentiation. The studios can be compared by classical narrative, genre and stars.The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the someone but the pen of personality, the phony spell of a commodity (Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility 1935). According to Benjamin the stars are military personnel beings turned into a commodity, a product that can be interchange and reproduced for economic purposes.According to John Ellis a star is A factor in a particular medium whose figure enters into subsidiary forms of circulation and and so feeds back into future performances (Ellis, 1982, p. 1).J oan Crawford is the ideal example for a star. I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you hope to see the girl next door, go next door (Joan Crawford).John Belton suggests that A stars persona differs from that of an actor. For an actor, the persona provides a primary mask, which disguises the real person underneath. For a star, the persona includes the actors persona as well as the stars persona. (John Belton, 6).The star is a product, an investment. They must have the power to be identified with a particular type of film many stars will only play in particular genres bearing the same persona for example radical the 1930s Joan Crawford was always playing vulnerable roles. By being in the centre of attention, stars always portrayed cinemas ability to show the passing of time (the mortality).Greta Garbo had a successful transition from silent film to sound, and she received an Oscar nominating speech for Anna Christie (1930), her first talkie. But Garbo treasured to be considered an ageless star. She didnt need to act in front of the camera her natural looks and presence differentiated her from anyone else. Because she wanted to be seen as a myth, forever remembered as a fair and talented ageless star, she quit Hollywood subsequently just 21 years in the business.Almost every Hollywood studio was associated with a specific type of genre MGM had musicals and dramas, Warner Bros. Had gangster films, Universal had its share of abhorrence films. Although different genres, they fallowed the same classical narrative structure. Problems arose in the beginning of the film and they must be solved in order to restore the offset in the world. To identify a genre we must look at their components. For example a western genre has elements, symbols to identify that world for ex, thither are sheriffs, outlaws and also the wilderness. Different genre requires different types of stars. In Warners gangster films the stars were associated with w orking class people, the only predominant audience left after the Great Depression. As they watched these movies they were attracted by the attack on the government and Warners profited from it. This whitethorn be considered an ideology. All the genres presented an idea, a ritual.All the studios had their own stars, they followed the same modes of production but the difference here is that on economic restraints the production quality of the studios differed from studio to studio. MGM had lavishing productions even with low budgets. A great example is raised(a) Hotel (1932) with an all star cast and just one massive set. Universal for their horror film used low key lighting, minimal sound and small sets, but the way in which they used low tend shots to mask the cheapness of the sets is impressive. To keep a sense of depth to films like Dracula (1931), Universal brought along cinematographer Karl Freud, who worked on Metropolis (1927), to give the film a German expressionist style .As Hitchcock was begging to direct classical Hollywood films like Rebecca (1940), Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958) etc., and putting his own stamp on them through its in camera editing he did not want control from his producer. During the producer-unit system the films were collaboratively made by different classes of labours, and they didnt have an individual artistic signature. They were controlled by the producer or the producer-director in some cases and not by the director.The strong director imposes his own personality on a film . The auteur theory values the personality of a director precisely because of the barriers to its expression (The American movie theatre (Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema 1968, p31).A director like Alfred Hitchcock produces a rupture or a change in the narrative, so he can put its mark, to accommodate the film individual and personal. The same thing can be utter about Orson Welles who produced, directed and starred in his own production Citizen Kane (1941) with ought any constraints from the head office. Casting his own actors, with a closed set and his individualism it came out to be one of the greatest films of all times.