The Hitchcock years of Our Lives

I would like to begin my blog by talking about the presentation my peers gave this past Wednesday. I thoroughly enjoyed the way they went about examining “The Best Years of Our Lives.” I was gravitated towards the presentation when they showed us the authentic original trailer that was advertised to the viewing public in 1946. This trailer did seem generic right off the bat, and I did wonder myself if it had fully encompassed the film, they had watched. I felt very enlightened with the group’s summary. Even though it was just slightly out of place, it gave us the information we needed to connect the dots the group had laid out for us with their focus on the three main leads.

I thought it was very important to go in depth with each character to provide a better grasp of the film itself, and the characters within it. This group gave very necessary information to help paint the picture inside each of our heads and went above and beyond with their descriptions of the characters.

The way they analyzed the economic aspect of this film was very helpful and outlined the much bigger picture behind this film and almost every other one like it.

I enjoyed the viewpoints each group member had to offer, and most importantly their personal feelings towards the film after viewing it.

One of the aspects of this weeks’ classes that I most enjoyed was our time spent on censorship, and the MPPA. I find it fascinating that many of these initial guidelines are still in place today.

The “39 Steps” by Alfred Hitchcock was a tale of espionage, romance, trust, and wittiness. My favorite scene of the entire film was the unsuspected placement of the Male lead inside a building where a meeting was taking place. The crowd seems unimpressed with the current speaker, and it then become time for the next speaker. I did not under any circumstances think that they would place the man on the podium, having mistaken him for their keynote speaker. However, I did find the scene dazzling, and over the top funny. The man begins speaking and suddenly has the whole room swayed with him, and they find joy and agreement with every line he delivers. It is at this moment where I found my favorite character of this film, and beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of my favorite Hitchcock scenes.

The dialog takes on a very witty persona throughout the film, and it this that draws me further into the life of the screen. The man and the woman play beautifully across from one another, and I thought their acting was superb.

The crucial scene in the movie which I kept waiting for was the moment the woman found out the man she had been unwillingly handcuffed to was innocent. This turning point of the story for me is not rivaled by many others, and is the one scene that I had been anticipating form the moment they met on the train.

The Grand Roar of Cinema

This week was interesting in terms of the topics we covered. I find appropriate to first talk about where the cinema industry was in the 1930’s.

              “The Big Five” consisted of Warner Brothers, Paramount, RKO, MGM, and Fox. The most prestigious film maker of these companies was Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Famous for their implementation of a lion’s roar at the start of their every picture, MGM had a cast of stars unlike any other production, and it made them very hard to compete with.

              All these studios at the time were vertically integrated. This means that they controlled every aspect of their films from production to distribution to finally exhibition. Although this was not illegal, it made “The Big Five” even more powerful, and profitable. Each studio was so massive that they were almost their own towns, with hospitals and even their own police forces.

              One of the craziest things I learned this week was in “The Lions Roar” documentary about MGM. The aspect that caught my eye was the production of Ben Hur. The filming of Ben Hur began in Italy, but the filming got so out of hand, and so much money was lost so they decided to move the film back to the U.S. This set a precedent for not only MGM but many other major studios to cease location filming and just fake it on set.

              Universal Pictures also surprised me with some of the things they were doing. For instance, they were making foreign language versions simultaneously with their English productions. The best example of this was Universal’s filming of “Dracula”. Many critics claim that the Spanish version of “Dracula” was technologically better, but the English version’s acting was superior. The English would be filmed during the day, and then the Spanish version was filmed at night.

              Our big screening this week was “The Grand Hotel” produced in 1932 by Vicki Baum. Once again, the credits in this film caught my eye. The stoic portraits of each character paired with their name and character name to me seemed innovative and creative. The entire cast of this film were the epitome of movie stars, and they were all well respected by not only the studios but worshiped by the public. Furthermore, all these stars came from silent films, where they first dominated the silver screen.

              The into to this film was exactly that, we were introduced to each main character by way of eavesdropping on the phone calls each hotel made. I thought this scene hooked the audiences and conjured up a certain intrigue to look forward to getting to know each person as the film progressed.

              It is clear to me that the Baron was a very important part of this play. From the very moment we met him, his mind was on money, and it was money in the end that killed him. He found love in the most peculiar of ways which struck me in a very weird way. If I ever came upon someone hiding in my room proclaiming that they love me, I am not so sure that it would go as well as it did in the film. However, in the Grand Hotel “its always the same. People come, people go, but nothing ever happens.”

1920’s Cinema

This past week, we moved forward in our studies of cinema history which led to various discussions about World War 1 and how the changing politics in Europe set off movements within the arts. In the 1920’s, the dominant form of art in Germany was cinema. Many artists around this time were adopting surrealism while creating cinema and many other forms of art. A huge event that was the catalyst for intriguing films and even films that foreshadowed fascism was the Weimar era. The Weimar era came as a result of Kaiser Wilhelm the 2^nd abdicating the throne, and eventually the republic creating a president.

France was another country in Europe that is credited with having great cinema in the 1920’s. The film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a French silent surrealist short film directed by Luis Buñuel. The film was released in 1929 with a limited showing at Studio des Ursulines in Paris and ended up being exhibited for a little over eight months. Professor Schlegel showed us most of this film, but he instructed us to not try to make any sense of what at least I was seeing for the first time. The film opens when a razor blade cuts through the eye of a dead cow which was insinuated to be the young women’s eye. This scene being presented at the very beginning of the film was very powerful to watch. I have never been knowingly exposed to surrealism in such a form as Un Chien Andalou. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go home and finish the rest of it. I found the cinema most un-nerving at first, but once my mind settled in, I almost became addicted to outlandishness that I was watching on my screen. It was as if I was wondering “what would they do next.”

 The Man with a Movie Camera came out of the Soviet Union on January 8^th, 1929. This film exhibited many cutting-edge editing techniques such as parallel cutting, and montage editing.  This film is even now very interesting to watch and observe the state of shooting and editing cinema in this era.

My favorite part of this week was the screening of The Bride of Frankenstein. This was always a film that I have wanted to watch, and in am glad that I not only got to watch it but analyze it as well. Once again, I was drawn to the opening credits of this film. However, contrary to Sunrise the credits in The Bride of Frankenstein were very exciting. The notable moment in the credits was the crescendo of the score into a loud CRACK when James Whale’s name came on the screen. Throughout the entirety of this film, I found the score to be absolutely fitting in every scene and played a huge role in keeping audiences engaged; not that the film needed any help in that aspect. My favorite scene of the entire film was when the monster found the cabin in the woods with the blind man playing the violin. The time that these two characters shared together was not only comedic in the instance of the man teaching the monster about drinking and smoking, but I also think it has a hidden meaning. The meaning that I drew out of this scene was to not judge a book by its cover. The man not being able to see gives the monster a chance to prove to someone that he extends farther than his harsh exterior. I believe that the monster does have a good heart but has been prodded and literally hunted rightfully so for some of the things he has done. If a blind man can give shelter to something that has killed and is widely hated, maybe we can hold our judgments of people off until they have had a chance to represent themselves as they want to be viewed.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

          

The film Sunrise is the only film of its kind that I have seen in its entirety. Having said that, I regret that I have not watched more of this early cinema. There were so many things about the film that not only impressed me but intrigued me as well.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the cast list shown at the beginning of the film. I have never seen a cast list that simply named characters as “The man, the wife, the obtrusive gentleman, or the obliging gentleman.” This seems quite insignificant, but it really does put a clear perspective right off the bat of how far the cinema industry has come, and where it was in 1927.

The first bit of irony comes when it seems that the last straw had been pulled, and the man and his wife had ended up in the city. It is here however, that their love becomes rekindled over the course of the film. This is quite ironic because it was a woman from a city that intruded upon their marriage and unraveled the twines of love and happiness. But a city no less, that made the man realize what he wants most in life, and who he truly loves; his wife.

The second ironic thread in this film occurs as almost a temporary punishment. The man was supposed to kill his wife by drowning her, as he was instructed to do by the woman from the city. He chooses not to, and eventually falls back into his wife’s arms, only to have her ripped from him on the very waters that he was supposed to end her life.

The inevitable story book ending “Happily Ever After” came about, and only made me love this film more. It is amazing how well emotions and thoughts can be portrayed for 95 minutes without dialogue, and I have to say once more that I regret not stumbling upon this film before this class.

              Professor Schlegel showed us a couple of the Lumiere Brother’s shorts, and the notable foreground, mid-ground and backgrounds were astonishing. Once the viewing public saw these films, they became mesmerized. Out of this interest spurred the making of many early films that led to Sunrise.

              One of the most notable films that sparked a massive demand for cinema was The Great Train Robbery. This film implemented a moving camera, and editing, much like Sunrise. However, the process shot train robbery, was produced several years before Sunrise, and is perhaps one of the reasons that the tale of two humans was produced. The profits from The Great Train Robbery were massive, and the eager businessmen behind the curtain were pouncing at the chance to become rich off cinema.

              This increasingly high demand for films brought about change in the film industry not just increased viewing, but also a need for restructuring, and the creating of the three-part structure in the film industry of the producer, the distributor, and the exhibitor. These parts were each designed to save money on the films themselves and allow for a much higher profit within the exhibition.

Citations:

Mayer, Carl. Sunrise. Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans, 4 Nov. 1927.

Gazetas, Aristides. An Introduction to World Cinema. McFarland, 2008.