Hollywood’s Golden Age1927-1947

Key Features

• From silent to sound production• Consolidation of the studio system• Establishing an official regulatory organization

(MPAA)• A rating system

• Changes in the look/technique of movies• … and movies and America

From Silent to Sound

• The Jazz Singer (1927) • “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” (clip)• (but…)

• Sound conversion complete by 1930• box office up 50%• proving again: $ by giving the public what it

wants• Silent film stars…

The Studio System

• Vertical integration (top-down)• Major studios - could maximize profits by controlling

each stage of a film's life• Production, distribution, and exhibition (owning the

first-run theaters)• "The Big Five" worked to achieve vertical integration

through the late 1940s• owned vast real estate to build elaborate sets• set the exact terms of films' release dates and patterns• operated the best movie palaces in the nation• actors and actresses

• “The Big Five” • Warner Bros.• Paramount• 20th Century Fox• Loew's (MGM)• RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum)

• "The Little Three“• Universal, Columbia and United Artists

• Controlled which/when films were seen• A-level films used stars and lavish productions,

and could only be seen initially in studio-owned, first-run theaters• When studios released these films to theaters

they didn't own, they forced those owners to buy A-pictures in combination with a number of B-pictures • B-movies: no stars, bargain-basement genre

pictures, and shorts

The Rating System

• 1922, producers formed a regulatory agency• at first just for public-relations entity• the “Hays Office”

• 1930, adopted the Motion Picture Production Code• guidelines on acceptable and unacceptable subject

matter• art can influence, for the worse, the morality of those

that consume• 1934, became mandatory• (1968 replaced in by the MPAA rating system)• This Film Is Not Yet Rated

The Look of the Hollywood Movie• period of stylistic conformity, not innovation

• giving people what they wanted• movies stressed the values of the time

• Pre-WWII: heroism, family, citizenship, etc. with some comic relief

• Citizen Kane (1941) change it all• Orson Welles’s film revolutionized the medium• film success: a complex plot told by 7 narrators

(not all reliable)• historical success: 7 months before Pearl

Harbor – antifascist message w/abuse of 1st amendment rights• cinematic success: new techniques and

influenced the structure and pace of nearly all movies that came after

America Defined by Its Movies

• Movies became inextricably linked to American society and culture• From this point on – movies defined America

and America defined itself through its movies

Casablanca (1942)