3FF3 Textbook Notes
Hollywood in the 20’s (p. 196):
Adolf Zukor, William Fox, and Carl Laemmle=became vertically integrated monopolies,
controlling their own theatre chains and distributors
Middle class audiences increasing
“New morality” in Hollywood
Industry giants of the early 20’s: “The Big Three” were Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky
Corporation, which had acquired Paramount as its distribution and exhibition wing in
1916, Loew’s Inc., the national theatre chain owned by Marcus Loew which moved into
production with the acquisition of Metro Pictures in 1920, & First National founded in
1917 by 26 of the nations largest exhibitors to combat the practice of block
booking(invented by Zukor) by financing its own productions
United Artists: formed in 1919 by Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W
Griffith in order to produce and distribute their own films and was a major force in the
industry until the advent of sound
Hollywoods second string in the 20s: “The Little 5”: Fox Film Corporation, Producers
Distributing Corporation (ODC), Film Booking Office (FBO), Carl Laemmle’s Universal
Pictures and Warner Bros.
1914-1918- Thomas Ince built the first modern Hollywood studio = Inceville/He tried to
make his films move
Mack Sennett: another founder of silent screen comedy/Keystone Film
Company/produced thousands of one and two-reel films between 1913-1935/created
new genre-the slapstick comedy-the single most vital American mode of the 20s/Purely
visual humour of a violent but fantastically harmless nature/logic of narrative/Depended
on rapid fire editing and the “last minute rescue” as learned from Griffith, and Sennetts
own accurate sense of space/genius of timing movement/unlike Ince, he produced
simple story ideas to detailed shooting scripts, and he always left room in his films for
madcap improvisation/Chaplin and Harry Langdon were in Keystone/sennetts
conception of comedy was wed to the silent screen/visual humor loses its comedy with
sound/when sound came out, his genre vanished/Keystone went bankrupt
Charlie Chaplin: Sennetts most important protégé/developed the character of the “little
tramp” which made him world famous and became a universal cinematic symbol for our
common humanity
Buster Keaton: Solving complicated problems of mise-en-scene/was an equal to
Chaplin/1919, Schenck formed Buster Keaton Productions to produce two-reel comedy
shorts starring Keaton and Chaplin/19 shorts released between 1920-1923 through
Metro and First National, with Charlie’s Mutual films, the highpoint of American slapstick comedy/Unlike Sennett, Keaton had dramatic logic of his narratives and the
use of gags which progress in a geometrical pattern grounded in character and plot/first
feature was the 7 reel The Saphead/did not put his name on the credits/a classic Keaton
device-trajectory gag-in which the perfect timing of acting, directing, and editing
propels the Keaton character through an extended series of dramatically connected
sight gags ending in the denouncement of a sequence or of an entire film (The Three
Ages) which this film also uses long takes, sequence shots, and location
shooting/Sherlock Jr (1924) is perhaps his most extradinary feature length work
(directed and edited by Keaton)/It mixed documaentary footage of real events with
footage of dramatically staged events/played small parts in talkies/Keaton had a
stronger sense of narrative structure and mise-en-scene than Chaplin/had a “great
stone face” that expressed what he couldn’t with his body/best understood how
dreamlike and surrell is the process of film itself
Harold Lloyd: developed his character into an archetype of Anerican “normalcy” and
niceness/wore glasses/specialized in the “comedy of thrills”=placed himself in real
psyscial danger for laughs/Safety Last (movie with guy climbing building)/He neither
had the intellectual deoth of Keaton nor the emotional depth of Chaplin
Laurel & Hardy films: had some kind of structural logic whereby a single misbegotten
incident would be progressively multipled toward some catastrophic infinity
Harry Langdon: developed the haunting character of the middle aged innocent whose
pathetic naivete was somewhat remincent of Chaplin with his dignity
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: became Sennetts principle star after Chaplin departure for
Essanay/comic appeal rested on his fatness and childishness/murdered a starlet/
Will Hays: MPPDA
Cecil B. Demille: most representative of the “new morality”/early films expressed
“Rembrandt” or “Lasky” lighting and vivid mise-en-scene
Ernst Lubitsch: Kostumfilm/pioneered the functional use of décor to avoid titles and
became a master of sexual innuendo/all of Hollywood spoke of the “Lubitsch touch”-
the use of symbolic detail, such as a meaningful glance or gesture, or the closing of a
bedroom door, to suggests exual activity which could not have been depicted with
impunity upon the screen/brought a touch of Continental elegance and irony to
Hollywood in the 20s which was widely imitated by other directors
DEFINITIONS:
Aerial shot: a shot from above, usually made from a plane, helicopter, or crane (crane
shot) Anamorphic lens: a lens that squeezes a wide image to fir the dimensions of a standard
35mm film frame
Audion: Lee De Forest’s vacuum tube, which first permitted amplification of audio
signals for large audiences
Biopic: A biographical film, especially the kind produced by Warner Bros in the 30s and
40s
Block Booking: The practice whereby distributors forced exhibitors to rent a production
company’s films in large groups or, “blocks” tied to several desirable titles in advance of
production. Initiated by Adolph Zukor in 1916, block booking became fundamental to
the studio system monopoly and was ruled illegal by the U.S Supreme Court in 1948
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