DOCSLIB.ORG

Factfile: Gce As Level Moving Image Arts American Expressionism and Orson Welles

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Factfile: Gce As Level Moving Image Arts American Expressionism and Orson Welles FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES American Expressionism and Orson Welles Learning outcomes Students should be able to: • understand the term American Expressionism; and • explain the unique collaboration between the director and the cinematographer in Film Noir and American Expressionism. Course content An evolving expressionist style of Hollywood film- However, the filmmaker who might be said to making during the studio era can be seen both in define the termAmerican Expressionism is Orson Film Noir and in classics of the Horror genre such as Welles, the visionary director who employed Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and The Bride of expressionist style throughout his career, from his Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935), Curse of the Cat ground-breaking film debut Citizen Kane (1941) to People (Gunther von Fritsch, 1944) and The Night his last Hollywood movie, the noir classic Touch of of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, Robert Mitchum Evil (1958). (uncredited), 1955). 1 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES Case Study: Citizen Kane (1941) With Citizen Kane, the 26 year-old Orson Welles, a telescope) a short distance in front of his wide- made the most spectacular entrance into cinema angle lens. As Robert L. Carringer explains, “the history. Welles starred in, directed and co-wrote result is a forerunner of the extreme wide-angle the original screenplay, which explores the life fish-eye lens that came into general use in the story of an enigmatic American tycoon, Charles 1960’s.” (Carringer, 1996) Foster Kane, and follows the quest to discover the meaning of his dying word, “Rosebud.” Greg Toland’s previous film, The Long Voyage Home (1940) with director John Ford, features deep focus Citizen Kane’s reputation as the greatest compositions and many atmospheric scenes with achievement of the American cinema rests on the an expressionist lighting design. Welles encouraged many innovations in cinematic technique that Toland to push these formalist techniques even radically depart from the Classical Hollywood Style. further on Citizen Kane. These include: • expressionist lighting; Chiaroscuro lighting creates a dark and brooding • radical camera angles; atmosphere in key scenes such as the Death • flashbacks; of Kane, the Projection Room and the Thatcher • startling visual transitions; Library. Expressionist lighting techniques generate • elaborate tracking shots; an air of mystery and suspense turning the quest • long takes; for the meaning of Rosebud into a journey through • compositions in depth the psychological darkness and despair that haunt • baroque set design; and Charles Foster Kane. • overlapping sound. Throughout the film,extreme high and low angle The inventive use of lighting and shadow in compositions, expressive camera movements Citizen Kane has led some film historians to view and spatial distortion through the use of a it as the first “film noir” or, at least, the direct wide-angle lens are used to dramatise many predecessor of the Film Noir movement. Director, pivotal moments in Kane’s life when his ambition Orson Welles, and cinematographer, Greg Toland, overreaches itself and he is left isolated and alone. both share the main title card in the film’s credits – which is a tribute to one of American cinema’s As film scholar Marilyn Fabe explains, Welles most singular collaborations between director and employs low angles to project extreme psychological cinematographer. states; “While shooting from a low-angle perspective can make a character seem dominant and confident, In his book, The Making of Citizen Kane, film Welles’ camera plays an interesting variation on historian Robert L. Carringer describes the dynamic this technique by shooting Kane from a low angle working relationship between director and when he is most defeated. In the scene where cinematographer, “From the first days of shooting, Gettys threatens to expose Kane’s adulterous affair they approached the film together in a spirit of and Kane shouts at Gettys: “I’m no cheap, crooked revolutionary fervour…Those involved say there politician…I’m going to send you to Sing Sing,” the was a running game between the two with Welles low angle camera makes him seem demented and coming up with one far-fetched idea after another grandiose, rather than powerful and dominant. The and challenging Toland to produce it and Toland use of a wide-angle lens in this shot in combination delivering and then challenging Welles to ask for with the low angle and slight tilt of the camera something he could not produce.” makes the planes in the image above Kane seem jagged and off-kilter, again exteriorising Kane’s Through relentless experimentation, together they mental state.” (Fabe, 2004) came with up many ingenious visual devices and optical effects such as the distorted image of the The non-linear investigative narrative structure nurse who enters Kane’s room in the mysterious of Citizen Kane is one of the film’s most radical opening scene. Welles wanted a surreal effect for departures from conventional Hollywood the scene and Toland achieved exactly this by storytelling. The use of multiple flashbacks, within placing a diminishing glass (which creates the an overlapping structure of six different narrators perspective of looking through the wrong end of recalling key events in the life of Charles Foster 2 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES Kane, enables Welles to portray the many different the medium ground, and his mother with Thatcher in facets of Kane’s character and explore the inner the foreground. Through such in-depth composition, contradictions and complexity of human behaviour the director maintains a continuity of time and associated more with literature than with cinema. space that marked a high point of cinematic realism in the Hollywood of the 1940’s. Citizen Kane continually moves forward and backward in time through a series of imaginative Extreme sound realism was a characteristic of transitions that use sound and image to signal the director’s work in radio. In Citizen Kane, Welles temporal leaps. Years race by in the Breakfast Table set out to achieve a similar realism creating a montage where Kane’s disintegrating relationship naturalistic soundtrack of overlapping dialogue, with his first wife is visualised through seven exaggerated sound effects and extreme voice dizzying flash forwards in time. effects that can be best seen in the scenes in the Thatcher Library where sound resonates through Most remarkable of all is the pioneering use of the the empty space and high ceilings and in the great techniques of deep focus cinematography and the hall in Xanadu which Welles transforms into a giant long take in Citizen Kane. In the snowbound scene echo-chamber. where Thatcher meets with Kane’s parents, Welles uses the long take with deep focus cinematography Sound is also inventively used for scene transitions to execute a brilliantly expressive reverse tracking in mid-sentence (a device used frequently in radio) camera movement which keeps three planes of the such as when Leland begins to talk to a crowd in shot constantly in focus – the young Kane in the the street and Kane completes the sentence in an background seen through the window; his father in electioneering speech at a large rally. Case Study: Touch of Evil (1951) Most film historians identify Touch of Evil as the The motif of the labyrinth appears most famously end of the classic Film Noir period. In this story of in the hall of mirrors in Citizen Kane and in The a rogue cop betrayed by his closest friend, Orson Lady from Shanghai and in the fruitless search Welles gives full vent to his expressionist aesthetic to unveil the mystery of Rosebud which only the employing radical camera angles, disorientating audience resolves. However, the motif is present in camera movements, deep-focus compositions, all of Welles’s major works. Terry Comito comments, distorting wide-angle lenses, off-centre framing “What Touch of Evil is most immediately about is and chiaroscuro lighting to create a Noir landscape the confrontation with the labyrinth or vortex that of violence and menace. The breathtaking three opens before us once we transgress the boundaries minute long take that opens the film is the most of a world in which we are pleased to suppose famous tracking shot in cinema history, parodied in ourselves to be at home…The habitual use of deep Robert Altman’s The Player (1992). space, and the violent motion Welles sets plunging through it, means that any place a character may Orson Welles compared the visual design of his for a moment inhabit is only the edge of a depth films and his use of extreme spatial depth and that opens dizzily behind him.” (Comito, 1995) distorted perspective to a whirling labyrinth. 3 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES Case Study: The Lady from Shanghai (1948) The vertigo that Orson Welles can induce through centre, tracking camera movements that convey a expressionist stylisation and his manipulation of real sense of depth. Turned on its axis, the camera deep space is best exemplified by the funhouse see-saws from low to high angles, creating a sequence from the climax of The Lady from dizzying feeling as if the floors are moving and the Shanghai (1948), one of the seminal American walls are closing in. The mood of entrapment and film noirs. In the film, Welles, director and star of mounting claustrophobia is captured in a number the film, draws upon many classic expressionist of radically stylised, unbalanced compositions. techniques to portray a man trapped in a bizarre, nightmare landscape. The sequence also features Low-key lighting is used throughout the sequence many noir conventions including the first-person to trap the character in a frightening world of narration of a male character trapped in a web of shadows and to create a strong sense of depth.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Crazy Narrative in Film. Analysing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Film
    Case study – media image CRAZY NARRATIVE IN FILM. ANALYSING ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU’S FILM NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE Antoaneta MIHOC1 1. M.A., independent researcher, Germany. Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract Regarding films, many critics have expressed their dissatisfaction with narrative and its Non-linear film narrative breaks the mainstream linearity. While the linear film narrative limits conventions of narrative structure and deceives the audience’s expectations. Alejandro González Iñárritu is the viewer’s participation in the film as the one of the directors that have adopted the fragmentary narrative gives no control to the public, the narration for his films, as a means of experimentation, postmodernist one breaks the mainstream con- creating a narrative puzzle that has to be reassembled by the spectators. His films could be included in the category ventions of narrative structure and destroys the of what has been called ‘hyperlink cinema.’ In hyperlink audience’s expectations in order to create a work cinema the action resides in separate stories, but a in which a less-recognizable internal logic forms connection or influence between those disparate stories is the film’s means of expression. gradually revealed to the audience. This paper will analyse the non-linear narrative technique used by the In the Story of the Lost Reflection, Paul Coates Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu in his states that, trilogy: Amores perros1 , 21 Grams2 and Babel3 . Film emerges from the Trojan horse of Keywords: Non-linear Film Narrative, Hyperlink Cinema, Postmodernism. melodrama and reveals its true identity as the art form of a post-individual society.
    [Show full text]
  • The Only Defense Is Excess: Translating and Surpassing Hollywood’S Conventions to Establish a Relevant Mexican Cinema”*
    ANAGRAMAS - UNIVERSIDAD DE MEDELLIN “The Only Defense is Excess: Translating and Surpassing Hollywood’s Conventions to Establish a Relevant Mexican Cinema”* Paula Barreiro Posada** Recibido: 27 de enero de 2011 Aprobado: 4 de marzo de 2011 Abstract Mexico is one of the countries which has adapted American cinematographic genres with success and productivity. This country has seen in Hollywood an effective structure for approaching the audience. With the purpose of approaching national and international audiences, Meximo has not only adopted some of Hollywood cinematographic genres, but it has also combined them with Mexican genres such as “Cabaretera” in order to reflect its social context and national identity. The Melodrama and the Film Noir were two of the Hollywood genres which exercised a stronger influence on the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Influence of these genres is specifically evident in style and narrative of the film Aventurera (1949). This film shows the links between Hollywood and Mexican cinema, displaying how some Hollywood conventions were translated and reformed in order to create its own Mexican Cinema. Most countries intending to create their own cinema have to face Hollywood influence. This industry has always been seen as a leading industry in technology, innovation, and economic capacity, and as the Nemesis of local cinema. This case study on Aventurera shows that Mexican cinema reached progress until exceeding conventions of cinematographic genres taken from Hollywood, creating stories which went beyond the local interest. Key words: cinematographic genres, melodrama, film noir, Mexican cinema, cabaretera. * La presente investigación fue desarrollada como tesis de grado para la maestría en Media Arts que completé en el 2010 en la Universidad de Arizona, Estados Unidos.
    [Show full text]
  • Extreme Leadership Leaders, Teams and Situations Outside the Norm
    JOBNAME: Giannantonio PAGE: 3 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Wed Oct 30 14:53:29 2013 Extreme Leadership Leaders, Teams and Situations Outside the Norm Edited by Cristina M. Giannantonio Amy E. Hurley-Hanson Associate Professors of Management, George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University, USA NEW HORIZONS IN LEADERSHIP STUDIES Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK + Northampton, MA, USA Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Giannantonio-New_Horizons_in_Leadership_Studies / Division: prelims /Pg. Position: 1 / Date: 30/10 JOBNAME: Giannantonio PAGE: 4 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Wed Oct 30 14:53:29 2013 © Cristina M. Giannantonio andAmy E. Hurley-Hanson 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2013946802 This book is available electronically in the ElgarOnline.com Business Subject Collection, E-ISBN 978 1 78100 212 4 ISBN 978 1 78100 211 7 (cased) Typeset by Columns Design XML Ltd, Reading Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International Ltd, Padstow Columns Design XML Ltd / Job: Giannantonio-New_Horizons_in_Leadership_Studies / Division: prelims /Pg. Position: 2 / Date: 30/10 JOBNAME: Giannantonio PAGE: 1 SESS: 5 OUTPUT: Wed Oct 30 14:57:46 2013 14. Extreme leadership as creative leadership: reflections on Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather Charalampos Mainemelis and Olga Epitropaki INTRODUCTION How do extreme leadership situations arise? According to one view, they are triggered by environmental factors that have nothing or little to do with the leader.
    [Show full text]
  • Orson Welles's Deconstruction of Traditional Historiographies In
    “How this World is Given to Lying!”: Orson Welles’s Deconstruction of Traditional Historiographies in Chimes at Midnight Jeffrey Yeager, West Virginia University ew Shakespearean films were so underappreciated at their release as Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight.1 Compared F to Laurence Olivier’s morale boosting 1944 version of Henry V, Orson Welles’s adaptation has never reached a wide audience, partly because of its long history of being in copyright limbo.2 Since the film’s debut, a critical tendency has been to read it as a lament for “Merrie England.” In an interview, Welles claimed: “It is more than Falstaff who is dying. It’s the old England, dying and betrayed” (qtd. in Hoffman 88). Keith Baxter, the actor who plays Prince Hal, expressed the sentiment that Hal was the principal character: Welles “always saw it as a triangle basically, a love story of a Prince lost between two father figures. Who is the boy going to choose?” (qtd. in Lyons 268). Samuel Crowl later modified these differing assessments by adding his own interpretation of Falstaff as the central character: “it is Falstaff’s winter which dominates the texture of the film, not Hal’s summer of self-realization” (“The Long Good-bye” 373). Michael Anderegg concurs with the assessment of Falstaff as the central figure when he historicizes the film by noting the film’s “conflict between rhetoric and history” on the one hand and “the immediacy of a prelinguistic, prelapsarian, timeless physical world, on the other” (126). By placing the focus on Falstaff and cutting a great deal of text, Welles, Anderegg argues, deconstructs Shakespeare’s world by moving “away from history and toward satire” (127).
    [Show full text]
  • Martin Scorsese and American Film Genre by Marc Raymond, B.A
    Martin Scorsese and American Film Genre by Marc Raymond, B.A. English, Dalhousie University A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fultillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Film Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario March 20,2000 O 2000, Marc Raymond National Ubrary BibIiot~uenationak du Cana a uisitiis and Acquisitions et "IBib iogmphk Senrices services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sel1 reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thése sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copy~@t in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts kom it Ni la thèse N des extraits substantiels may be printed or ohenvise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract This study examines the films of American director Martin Scorsese in their generic context. Although most of Scorsese's feature-length films are referred to, three are focused on individually in each of the three main chapters following the Introduction: Mean Streets (1 973), nie King of Cornedy (1983), and GoodFellas (1990). This structure allows for the discussion of three different periods in the Amencan cinema.
    [Show full text]
  • The Inventory of the Richard Roud Collection #1117
    The Inventory of the Richard Roud Collection #1117 Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center ROOD, RICHARD #1117 September 1989 - June 1997 Biography: Richard Roud ( 1929-1989), as director of both the New York and London Film Festivals, was responsible for both discovering and introducing to a wider audience many of the important directors of the latter half th of the 20 - century (many of whom he knew personally) including Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Bresson, Luis Buiiuel, R.W. Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Terry Malick, Ermanno Ohni, Jacques Rivette and Martin Scorsese. He was an author of books on Jean-Marie Straub, Jean-Luc Godard, Max Ophuls, and Henri Langlois, as well as the editor of CINEMA: A CRITICAL DICTIONARY. In addition, Mr. Roud wrote extensive criticism on film, the theater and other visual arts for The Manchester Guardian and Sight and Sound and was an occasional contributor to many other publications. At his death he was working on an authorized biography of Fran9ois Truffaut and a book on New Wave film. Richard Roud was a Fulbright recipient and a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor. Scope and contents: The Roud Collection (9 Paige boxes, 2 Manuscript boxes and 3 Packages) consists primarily of book research, articles by RR and printed matter related to the New York Film Festival and prominent directors. Material on Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Henri Langlois is particularly extensive. Though considerably smaller, the Correspondence file contains personal letters from many important directors (see List ofNotable Correspondents). The Photographs file contains an eclectic group of movie stills.
    [Show full text]
  • Film Essay for "Mccabe & Mrs. Miller"
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller By Chelsea Wessels In a 1971 interview, Robert Altman describes the story of “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” as “the most ordinary common western that’s ever been told. It’s eve- ry event, every character, every west- ern you’ve ever seen.”1 And yet, the resulting film is no ordinary western: from its Pacific Northwest setting to characters like “Pudgy” McCabe (played by Warren Beatty), the gun- fighter and gambler turned business- man who isn’t particularly skilled at any of his occupations. In “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” Altman’s impressionistic style revises western events and char- acters in such a way that the film re- flects on history, industry, and genre from an entirely new perspective. Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) and saloon owner McCabe (Warren Beatty) swap ideas for striking it rich. Courtesy Library of Congress Collection. The opening of the film sets the tone for this revision: Leonard Cohen sings mournfully as the when a mining company offers to buy him out and camera tracks across a wooded landscape to a lone Mrs. Miller is ultimately a captive to his choices, una- rider, hunched against the misty rain. As the unidenti- ble (and perhaps unwilling) to save McCabe from his fied rider arrives at the settlement of Presbyterian own insecurities and herself from her opium addic- Church (not much more than a few shacks and an tion. The nuances of these characters, and the per- unfinished church), the trees practically suffocate the formances by Beatty and Julie Christie, build greater frame and close off the landscape.
    [Show full text]
  • The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema to Access Digital Resources Including: Blog Posts Videos Online Appendices
    Robert Phillip Kolker The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/8 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Robert Kolker is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Maryland and Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His works include A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg Altman; Bernardo Bertolucci; Wim Wenders (with Peter Beicken); Film, Form and Culture; Media Studies: An Introduction; editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: A Casebook; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies. http://www.virginia.edu/mediastudies/people/adjunct.html Robert Phillip Kolker THE ALTERING EYE Contemporary International Cinema Revised edition with a new preface and an updated bibliography Cambridge 2009 Published by 40 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL, United Kingdom http://www.openbookpublishers.com First edition published in 1983 by Oxford University Press. © 2009 Robert Phillip Kolker Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Cre- ative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author
    [Show full text]
  • Roger Ebert's
    The College of Media at Illinois presents Roger19thAnnual Ebert’s Film Festival2017 April 19-23, 2017 The Virginia Theatre Chaz Ebert: Co-Founder and Producer 203 W. Park, Champaign, IL Nate Kohn: Festival Director 2017 Roger Ebert’s Film Festival The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The College of Media at Illinois Presents... Roger Ebert’s Film Festival 2017 April 19–23, 2017 Chaz Ebert, Co-Founder, Producer, and Host Nate Kohn, Festival Director Casey Ludwig, Assistant Director More information about the festival can be found at www.ebertfest.com Mission Founded by the late Roger Ebert, University of Illinois Journalism graduate and a Pulitzer Prize- winning film critic, Roger Ebert’s Film Festival takes place in Urbana-Champaign each April for a week, hosted by Chaz Ebert. The festival presents 12 films representing a cross-section of important cinematic works overlooked by audiences, critics and distributors. The films are screened in the 1,500-seat Virginia Theatre, a restored movie palace built in the 1920s. A portion of the festival’s income goes toward on-going renovations at the theatre. The festival brings together the films’ producers, writers, actors and directors to help showcase their work. A film- maker or scholar introduces each film, and each screening is followed by a substantive on-stage Q&A discussion among filmmakers, critics and the audience. In addition to the screenings, the festival hosts a number of academic panel discussions featuring filmmaker guests, scholars and students. The mission of Roger Ebert’s Film Festival is to praise films, genres and formats that have been overlooked.
    [Show full text]
  • American Defense Films to Be Presented by M0ma
    42204 - 12 THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART t wEST 53RD STREET, NEW YORK TELEPHONE: CIRCLE 5-8900 F0R IMMEDIATE RELEASE AMERICAN DEFENSE FILMS TO BE PRESENTED BY MUSEUM OF MODERN ART FILM LIBRARY A cross section of recent American documentary films on the defense theme will be presented In Program 106: AMERICAN DEFENSE FILMS at the Museum of Modern Art beginning Sunday, February 8, This is the last program in the Film Library's Cycle of 300 Films and will con­ tinue through February 14, after which the entire Cycle will be re­ peated starting February 15. In one of the defense films to be shown, Safeguarding Military Information, several leading Hollywood players appear anonymously. If the spectator watches closely he will see Ginger Rogers as the girl whose boy friend in the Army carelessly gives her information which results in the torpedoing of a transport. Walter Huston also appears as one of the nameless actors in the same film. Some of the films to be shown have been produced by govern­ ment agencies and others have been made by commercial producers. It will be noted that a considerable variety of styles and techniques have been used for imparting information to the general public or for instructing the armed forces. The films to be presented at 2 and 4 P.M. Sunday, February 8, and thereafter at 4 P.M. each day through February 14, are: 1941 BOMBER, produced by the Office for Emergency Management Film Unit, commentary written by Carl Sandburg. The story of the building of a bomber—a story of American planning, skill, ingenuity, workmanship and production.
    [Show full text]
  • Laurence Olivier in Hamlet (1949)
    1 Laurence Olivier in Hamlet (1949) In the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Samuel Goldwyn, MGM, and David Selznick were wooing him, Laurence Olivier chose not to become a movie star “like dear Cary.” After playing Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939), Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Maxim Dewinter in Rebecca (1940), he appeared in Hollywood pictures sparingly and tried to avoid a fixed persona. He nevertheless became the symbol of what midcentury America thought of as a distinguished actor, and was the most successful English theatrical type in the movies. He wasn’t romantically flamboyant (Orson Welles was closer to that), he wasn’t a naturalist like the students of the Method, he wasn’t a Brechtian, and he wasn’t the sort of movie actor who plays variations on a single character. He belonged instead to a school of disciplined, tastefully romantic verisimilitude, and within that school was a master. He was also the best-known Shakespearian in films. Olivier often said that his favorite movie role was the working-class comedian Archie Rice in The Entertainer (1960), but his performances in the Shakespeare films that he directed are more representative of his skills and more significant in film history. Based on canonical texts with a long performance history, they foreground his stylistic choices 2 and make his influences relatively easy to identify. His version of Hamlet (1949), for example, seems to derive pretty equally from the English romantics, Sigmund Freud, and William Wyler. These sources are not so eclectic as they might appear. Romantic-realist ideas of narrative shaped nearly all feature films of the period; Wyler had been the director of Wuthering Heights and at one point was scheduled to direct Olivier’s production of Henry V; and Olivier’s conceptions of character and performance are similar to the ones that shaped Hollywood in the 1940s, when Freud was in vogue.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of Boogie Nights and Magnolia Andrew C
    Rhode Island College Digital Commons @ RIC Honors Projects Overview Honors Projects 2009 "New" Hollywood Narratives: an Analysis of Boogie Nights and Magnolia Andrew C. Cate Rhode Island College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/honors_projects Part of the American Film Studies Commons, and the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Cate, Andrew C., ""New" Hollywood Narratives: an Analysis of Boogie Nights and Magnolia" (2009). Honors Projects Overview. 23. https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/honors_projects/23 This Honors is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors Projects at Digital Commons @ RIC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects Overview by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RIC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “NEW” HOLLYWOOD NARRATIVES: AN ANALYSIS OF BOOGIE NIGHTS AND MAGNOLIA By Andrew C. Cate An Honors Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in The Department of Film Studies The School of Arts and Sciences Rhode Island College 2009 Cate 1 “New” Hollywood Narratives: An Analysis of Boogie Nights and Magnolia Introduction To discuss Paul Thomas Anderson the filmmaker is to consider the current age of Hollywood filmmaking and the idea of the “new” Hollywood narrative. As writer- director of such acclaimed films as Magnolia (1999) and There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson was praised for appearing to have “arrived at his mastery virtually overnight” with his first major release, the 1997 ensemble film Boogie Nights (Gleiberman). Anderson has long been compared to veteran filmmaker Robert Altman, whose take on the typical Hollywood narrative format has clearly influenced Anderson’s films.
    [Show full text]