The Heyday of the Silents, Sound Cinema & Avant-Garde

Jaakko Seppälä

http://www.helsinki.fi/taitu/tet/Jaakko/WorldFilmHistory1.html

The Heyday of the Silents

• In the 20s Wall Street became interested in Hollywood• Hollywood studios were making more money than

ever before (80 million tickets a week in USA in 1928)• The silent cinema reached a peak of splendour• The big budget film with eye catching production

values appeared in the twenties• The boundaries between illusionistic, theatrical and

real were blurring• Realist illusion as the dominant aesthetic

Two Main Modes

• In the silent years most studio era genres emerged• The films of the silent period can be categorised

under two main modes, the comic and the melodramatic (Nowell-Smith)

• A broadly melodramatic approach to both character and plot prevailed in the twenties in action films and in those purporting to be more psychological in intent

• Comedy came in two types: the slapstick tradition and the society comedy

Lillian Gish (1993-1993)

Harold Lloyd (1893-1971)

The Classical Style in the 20s

• The classical Hollywood style emerged in the 1910s• In the 1920s the style was polished• The Three-point-lighting (artificial studio lighting)• The Soft focus cinematography (created with filters)• In the late twenties the panchromatic film stock

replaced the orthochromatic film stock• The star system (the star as a commodity)• To what extent Hollywood movies influenced the style

of European cinemas?

The Three-Point-Lighting System

The MPPDA

• The early 1920s saw a series of Hollywood scandals• “Hollywood films promote decadence” -arguments• There was an increasing pressure for a national film

censorship law• In 1922 studios formed a trade organisation The

Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America• Will Hays (the head of MPPDA) guided studios to

produce inoffensive entertainment• Self censorship instead of national censorship

Will Harrison Hays (1879-1954)

”Film America” and ”Film Europe”

• Hollywood dominated the world film market• Buying European filmmaking talents ensured that no

national cinema could not compete with Hollywood• Hollywood (with 15000 American film theatres) was

too great for any one country to compete with• In 1924 European film industries began to cooperate

and to distribute each other’s films• Continental films instead of national films• Synchronised sound, depression and new political

attitudes ended the pan European movement

The Introduction of Sound

• Thomas Edison attempted to synchronise the sound and the image already in the 1890s

• Hollywood was doing good business in the 1920s• Why invest in the new uncertain technology?• Small studios Warner Bros. and Fox Film saw the sound

film as an opportunity to make good money• Two competing sound systems: The Vitaphone (sound-

on-disc) and The Movietone (sound-on-film)• “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” • The Jazz Singer premiered 6 October 1927

Sound-On-Disc

Sound-On-Film

The End of the Silent Era

• Audiences chose inferior sound films over high quality silent films (initially the sound was an attraction)

• Silent films were mocked and ridiculed• Many stars lost their careers because of their accents

and others came to be seen as relics of the bygone era• Some made a successful transition to sound• The early sound technology was inflexible and film

aesthetics took several steps back• Slapstick comedy died, musicals emerged, scriptwriters

assumed a new importance

Anémic Cinéma (Duchamp, 1926)

Avant-garde

• Avant-garde is an aesthetically and politically motivated attack on traditional art and its values

• This is truly an independent cinema • Remains marginal to the commercial cinema• First avant-garde films were made in the 1910s but this

cinema really began to flourish in the 1920s• Avant-gardes of the 1920s: abstract animation, dada-

related cinema, surrealism, cinéma pur, lyrical documentaries and experimental narrative