Technological Innovation and Aesthetic Response I like to compare this revolution [in cinematography] offast lenses plus pushed developmnent to painting.... Impressionism also came out of a technological discovery, which was the tube of oil paint, as...

Selling Stars The conversion to sound and the ordeal of the Depression left the star system firmly in the grip of the producers. As Alexander Walker put it, "the star system in the 1930s gradually took on the reality, if not the appearance, of a star...

Toward a History of Screen Practice Starting points always present problems for the historian, perhaps because they imply a "before" as well as an "after." For the film historian, "the invention of cinema" is customarily viewed as the creation of a new...

Avant- Garde Cinema of the Seventies ROBIN BLAETZ The writing of any history of the avant-garde in the arts is an undertaking fraught with difficulties due to the esoteric nature of much experimental work. When the art under consideration is the...

Motion Picture Exhibition in 1970s America DOUGLAS GOMERY 1 On the surface, the exhibition side of the movie industry seemed stable during the 1970s. While the major Hollywood studios struggled to redefine themselves within the TV age, the movie show...

The Transition to Story Films: 1903 1904 The American film industry was entering a new phase of rapid expansion by mid-to-late 1903, and a key factor in this revival was the popularity of story films. If such subjects had yet to become the dominant...

Full-Length Programs:Fights, Passion Plays, and Travel In the post-novelty period, exhibitors played a key creative role in the motion picture field. Their claims to authorship were indeed often merited as they expanded and explored the wide-ranging...

The Well-Tempered Sound Track, 1930-1931 Forget art. CARL LAEMMLE, JR., 1931 In 1930 regular customers began attending movies less frequently and spending less money. The motion picture industry cut back on production budgets, furloughed workers, and...

Introduction: The Uncertainty of Sound The serious problem of injecting sound into the now silent drama is in the offing. What producers will do in this regard, of course, is an unknown factor MAURICE KANN, Film Daily, 2 APRIL 1928 Silent and Sound...

Orders of Magnitude II: Costs, Agents, Stars When you don't get participation, your front money naturally accelerates .... The best participation is if you can get gross from every boxoffice dollar The next best is gross after break-even, which means...

Sound and Music The Historical Primacy of Dialogue Sound The coming of synchronous sound to the motion pictures in 1927 with THE JAZZ SINGER introduced a new aesthetic based on the relationship of the visual picture to the soundtrack. Many critics have...

Outside the Mainstream Sound opened new possibilities for bringing previously unheard voices and languages to Hollywood. The precursor was definitely radio, which was broadcasting regional songs (for example, mountain and western music on shows like...

General Flimco and the Pushcart Peddlers The unsteadiness of the pictures sent out by an American independent manufacturer who makes a specialty of depicting Western scenes in the wild woods of New Jersey prompted us to ask him what camera he was...

Introduction: A Decade of Change If, as Joan Didion has written, the deal is the true art form of Hollywood, the masters of this art are the tax shelter specialists. MARIE BRENNER, JOURNALIST, 1977 The American film industry changed more between 1969...

Three Seasons: The Films of 1928-1931 If a revolution is a sudden event which throws over the past regime and substitutes a new oppositional rule, then the conversion to sound was certainly no revolution. The talkies were not instantaneous, although...

The History of film spans over a hundred years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st. Motion pictures developed gradually from a carnival novelty to one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment,...