CIN105Y1 Study Guide - Final Guide: Studio System
CLASSICAL “An Excessively Obvious Cinema”
“the Hollywood cinema sees itself as bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual
innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern”
“Hollywood film purports to be ‘realistic’ in both an Aristotelian sense (truth to the
probable) and a naturalistic one (truth to historical fact); that the Hollywood film strives
to conceal its artifice through techniques of continuity and ‘invisible’ storytelling; that the
film should be comprehensible and unambiguous; and that it possesses a fundamental
emotional appeal that transcends class and nation”
“reiterated tirelessly for at least 70 years, such precepts suggest that Hollywood
practitioners recognized themselves as creating a distinct approach to film form and
technique that we can justly label ‘classical’”
films such as Chaplin’s “Pay Day” have been labelled representative of ‘cinematic
classicism’ or the future, because it “owes nothing to tricks, where nothing is left to
chance, where the smallest detail takes its place of importance in the overall
psychological scheme of the film”
“André Bazin declared that “Hollywood filmmaking has acquired ‘all the characteristics
of classical art’” (in 1939)
Hollywood claims to “rely on notions of decorum, proportion, tradition, formal harmony,
respect for tradition, self-effacing craftsmanship, and cool control of the perceiver’s
response”
They believed that the studio system best produced this, individual filmmakers could not
do it as successfully
“classicism” has distinct aesthetic qualities such as “elegance, unity, rule-governed
craftsmanship” and historical functions such as “Hollywood’s role as the world’s
mainstream film style”
there used to be very few deviations from this norm (“Hollywood stile has functioned
historically as a set of norms”, all interrelated—although not all will be used in each film)
there are alternatives and limitations to the style, “functional equivalents”
somewhat “standardized film style”
“The Formulation of the Classical Narrative”
CAUSE AND EFFECT BASED
During the primitive period (1894-1908), “films tended to present narratives…camera
fixed for the most part at long-shot distance, actors simply performed with large
gestures…” (the screen was distracting from a wide range of movements, etc.)
Moving forward, in the classical model… “editing, camera distance, inter-titles, and
acting function more specifically to narrate casual information as clearly as possible”,
“cinematic technique…began to be considered a way to convey narrative through careful
manipulation of audience attention”
Narrative was given or told
1910’s = 5 stages: cause/beginning development crisis climax/effect
denouement/sequence (unified chain of causes and effects which led to eventual
resolution)
there were some films with dual lines of action
1915 = begin involving a romance plot (conventional embrace at the end)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The hollywood cinema sees itself as bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern . Andr bazin declared that hollywood filmmaking has acquired all the characteristics of classical art" (in 1939) Hollywood claims to rely on notions of decorum, proportion, tradition, formal harmony, respect for tradition, self-effacing craftsmanship, and cool control of the perceiver"s response . They believed that the studio system best produced this, individual filmmakers could not do it as successfully. During the primitive period (1894-1908), films tended to present narratives camera fixed for the most part at long-shot distance, actors simply performed with large gestures (the screen was distracting from a wide range of movements, etc. ) Moving forward, in the classical model editing, camera distance, inter-titles, and acting function more specifically to narrate casual information as clearly as possible ,
