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Cinematography: Everything You Need To Know
(sin-uh-muh-tahg'-ruh-fee) Cinematography is the technique and art of
making motion pictures, which are a sequence of photographs of a single
subject that are taken over time and then projected in the same sequence to
create an illusion of motion. Each image of a moving object is slightly
different from the preceding one.
Projector
A motion-picture projector projects the sequence of picture frames,
contained on a ribbon of film, in their proper order. A claw engages
perforations in the film and pulls the film down into the film gate,
placing each new frame in exactly the same position as the preceding one.
When the frame is in position, it is projected onto the screen by
illuminating it with a beam of light. The period of time between the
projection of each still image when no image is projected is normally not
noticed by the viewer.
Two perceptual phenomena--persistence of vision and the critical flicker
frequency--cause a continuous image. Persistence of a vision is the
ability of the viewer to retain or in some way remember the impression of
an image after it has been withdrawn from view. The critical flicker
frequency is the minimum rate of interruption of the projected light beam
that will not cause the motion picture to appear to flicker. A frequency
above about 48 interruptions a second will eliminate flicker.
Camera
Like a still camera (see CAMERA), a movie camera shoots each picture
individually. The movie camera, however, must also move the film precisely
and control the shutter, keeping the amount of light reaching the film
nearly constant from frame to frame. The shutter of a movie camera is
essentially a circular plate rotated by an electric motor. An opening in
the plate exposes the film frame only after the film has been positioned
and has come to rest. The plate itself continues to rotate smoothly.
Photographic materials must be manufactured with great precision. The
perforations, or holes in the film, must be precisely positioned. The
pitch--the distance from one hole to another--must be maintained by correct
film storage. By the late 1920s, a sound-on-film system of synchronous
SOUND RECORDING was developed and gained widespread popularity. In this
process, the sound is recorded separately on a machine synchronized with
the picture camera. Unlike the picture portion of the film, the sound
portion is recorded and played back continuously rather than in
intermittent motion. Although editing still makes use of perforated film
for flexibility, a more modern technique uses conventional magnetic tape
for original recording and synchronizes the recording to the picture
electronically (see TAPE RECORDER).
If the number of photographs projected per unit time (frame rate) differs
from the number produced per unit time by the camera, an apparent speeding
up or slowing down of the normal rate is created. Changes in the frame
rates are used occasionally for comic effect or motion analysis.
Cinematography becomes an art when the filmmaker attempts to make moving
images that relate directly to human perception, provide visual
significance and information, and provoke emotional response.
History of Film Technology
Several parlor toys of the early 1800s used visual illusions similar to
those of the motion picture. These include the thaumatrope (1825); the
phenakistiscope (1832); the stroboscope (1832); and the zoetrope (1834).
The photographic movie, however, was first used as a means of investigation
rather than of theatrical illusion. Leland Stanford, then governor of
California, hired photographer Eadweard MUYBRIDGE to prove that at some
time in a horse's gallop all four legs are simultaneously off the ground.
Muybridge did so by using several cameras to produce a series of
photographs with very short time intervals between them. Such a multiple
photographic record was used in the kinetoscope, which displayed a
photographic moving image and was commercially successful for a time.
The kinetoscope was invented either by Thomas Alva EDISON or by his
assistant William K. L. Dickson, both of whom had experimented originally
with moving pictures as a supplement to the phonograph record. They later
turned to George EASTMAN, who provided a flexible celluloid film base to
store the large number of images necessary to create motion pictures.
The mechanical means of cinematography were gradually perfected. It was
discovered that it was better to display the sequence of images
intermittently rather than continuously. This technique allowed a greater
presentation time and more light for the projection of each frame. Another
improvement was the loop above and below the film gate in both the camera
and the projector, which prevented the film from tearing.
By the late 1920s, synchronized sound was being introduced in movies. These
sound films soon replaced silent films in popularity. To prevent the
microphones from picking up camera noise, a portable housing was designed
that muffled noises and allowed the camera to be moved about. In recent
years, equipment, lighting, and film have all been improved, but the
processes involved remain essentially the same. RICHARD FLOBERG
Bibliography
Bibliography: Fielding, Raymond, ed., A Technological History of Motion
Pictures and Television (1967); Happe, I. Bernard, Basic Motion Picture
Technology, 2d ed. (1975); Malkiewicz, J. Kris, and Rogers, Robert E.,
Cinematography (1973); Wheeler, Leslie J., Principles of Cinematography,
4th ed. (1973).
film: --------------------------------
film, history of --------------------------------
The history of film has been dominated by the discovery and testing of the
paradoxes inherent in the medium itself. Film uses machines to record
images of life; it combines still photographs to give the illusion of
continuous motion; it seems to present life itself, but it also offers
impossible unrealities approached only in dreams.^The motion picture was
developed in the 1890s from the union of still PHOTOGRAPHY, which records
physical reality, with the persistence-of-vision toy, which made drawn
figures appear to move. Four major film traditions have developed since
then: fictional narrative film, which tells stories about people with whom
an audience can identify because their world looks familiar; nonfictional
documentary film, which focuses on the real world either to instruct or to
reveal some sort of truth about it; animated film, which makes drawn or
sculpted figures look as if they are moving and speaking; and experimental
film, which exploits film's ability to create a purely abstract,
nonrealistic world unlike any previously seen.^Film is considered the
youngest art form and has inherited much from the older and more
traditional arts. Like the novel, it can tell stories; like the drama, it
can portray conflict between live characters; like painting, it composes in
space with light, color, shade, shape, and texture; like music, it moves in
time according to principles of rhythm and tone; like dance, it presents
the movement of figures in space and is often underscored by music; and
like photography, it presents a two-dimensional rendering of what appears
to be three-dimensional reality, using perspective, depth, and
shading.^Film, however, is one of the few arts that is both spatial and
temporal, intentionally manipulating both space and time. This synthesis
has given rise to two conflicting theories about film and its historical
development. Some theorists, such as S. M. EISENSTEIN and Rudolf Arnheim,
have argued that film must take the path of the other modern arts and
concentrate not on telling stories or representing reality but on
investigating time and space in a pure and consciously abstract way. Others,
such as Andre Bazin and Siegfried KRACAUER, maintain that film must fully
and carefully develop its connection with nature so that it can portray
human events as excitingly and revealingly as possible.^Because of his fame,
his success at publicizing his activities, and his habit of patenting
machines before actually inventing them, Thomas EDISON received most of the
credit for having invented the motion picture; as early as 1887, he
patented a motion picture camera, but this could not produce images. In
reality, many inventors contributed to the development of moving pictures.
Perhaps the first important contribution was the series of motion
photographs made by Eadweard MUYBRIDGE between 1872 and 1877. Hired by the
governor of California, Leland Stanford, to capture on film the movement of
a racehorse, Muybridge tied a series of wires across the track and
connected each one to the shutter of a still camera. The running horse
tripped the wires and exposed a series of still photographs, which
Muybridge then mounted on a stroboscopic disk and projected with a magic
lantern to reproduce an image of the horse in motion. Muybridge shot
hundreds of such studies and went on to lecture in Europe, where his work
intrigued the French scientist E. J. MAREY. Marey devised a means of
shooting motion photographs with what he called a photographic gun.^Edison
became interested in the possibilities of motion photography after hearing
Muybridge lecture in West Orange, N.J. Edison's motion picture experiments,
under the direction of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, began in 1888 with
an attempt to record the photographs on wax cylinders similar to those used
to make the original phonograph recordings. Dickson made a major
breakthrough when he decided to use George EASTMAN's celluloid film instead.
Celluloid was tough but supple and could be manufactured in long rolls,
making it an excellent medium for motion photography, which required great
lengths of film. Between 1891 and 1895, Dickson shot many 15-second films
using the Edison camera, or Kinetograph, but Edison decided against
projecting the films for audiences--in part because the visual results were
inadequate and in part because he felt that motion pictures would have
little public appeal. Instead, Edison marketed an electrically driven
peep-hole viewing machine (the Kinetoscope) that displayed the marvels
recorded to one viewer at a time.^Edison thought so little of the
Kinetoscope that he failed to extend his patent rights to England and
Europe, an oversight that allowed two Frenchmen, Louis and Auguste LUMIERE,
to manufacture a more portable camera and a functional projector, the
Cinematographe, based on Edison's machine. The movie era might be said to
have begun officially on Dec. 28, 1895, when the Lumieres presented a
program of brief motion pictures to a paying audience in the basement of a
Paris cafe. English and German inventors also copied and improved upon the
Edison machines, as did many other experimenters in the United States. By
the end of the 19th century vast numbers of people in both Europe and
America had been exposed to some form of motion pictures.^The earliest
films presented 15- to 60-second glimpses of real scenes recorded outdoors
(workmen, trains, fire engines, boats, parades, soldiers) or of staged
theatrical performances shot indoors. These two early tendencies--to
record life as it is and to dramatize life for artistic effect--can be
viewed as the two dominant paths of film history.^Georges MELIES was the
most important of the early theatrical filmmakers. A magician by trade,
Melies, in such films as A Trip to the Moon (1902), showed how the cinema
could perform the most amazing magic tricks of all: simply by stopping the
camera, adding something to the scene or removing something from it, and
then starting the camera again, he made things seem to appear and disappear.
Early English and French filmmakers such as Cecil Hepworth, James
Williamson, and Ferdinand Zecca also discovered how rhythmic movement (the
chase) and rhythmic editing could make cinema's treatment of time and space
more exciting.
American Film in the Silent Era (1903-1928)
A most interesting primitive American film was The Great Train Robbery
(1903), directed by Edwin S. PORTER of the Edison Company. This early
western used much freer editing and camera work than usual to tell its
story, which included bandits, a holdup, a chase by a posse, and a final
shoot-out. When other companies (Vitagraph, the American Mutoscope and
Biograph Company, Lubin, and Kalem among them) began producing films that
rivaled those of the Edison Company, Edison sued them for infringement of
his patent rights. This so-called patents war lasted 10 years (1898-1908),
ending only when nine leading film companies merged to form the Motion
Picture Patents Company.^One reason for the settlement was the enormous
profits to be derived from what had begun merely as a cheap novelty. Before
1905 motion pictures were usually shown in vaudeville houses as one act on
the bill. After 1905 a growing number of small, storefront theaters called
nickelodeons, accommodating less than 200 patrons, began to show motion
pictures exclusively. By 1908 an estimated 10 million Americans were
paying their nickels and dimes to see such films. Young speculators such
as William Fox and Marcus Loew saw their theaters, which initially cost but
$1,600 each, grow into enterprises worth $150,000 each within 5 years.
Called the drama of the people, the early motion pictures attracted
primarily working-class and immigrant audiences who found the nickelodeon a
pleasant family diversion; they might not have been able to read the words
in novels and newspapers, but they understood the silent language of
pictures.^The popularity of the moving pictures led to the first attacks
against it by crusading moralists, police, and politicians. Local
censorship boards were established to eliminate objectionable material from
films. In 1909 the infant U.S. film industry waged a counterattack by
creating the first of many self-censorship boards, the National Board of
Censorship (after 1916 called the National Board of Review), whose purpose
was to set moral standards for films and thereby save them from costly
mutilation.^A nickelodeon program consisted of about six 10-minute films,
usually including an adventure, a comedy, an informational film, a chase
film, and a melodrama. The most accomplished maker of these films was
Biograph's D. W. GRIFFITH, who almost singlehandedly transformed both the
art and the business of the motion picture. Griffith made over 400 short
films between 1908 and 1913, in this period discovering or developing
almost every major technique by which film manipulates time and space: the
use of alternating close-ups, medium shots, and distant panoramas; the
subtle control of rhythmic editing; the effective use of traveling shots,
atmospheric lighting, narrative commentary, poetic detail, and visual
symbolism; and the advantages of understated acting, at which his acting
company excelled. The culmination of Griffith's work was The Birth of a
Nation (1915), a mammoth, 3-hour epic of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Its historical detail, suspense, and passionate conviction were to outdate
the 10-minute film altogether.^The decade between 1908 and 1918 was one of
the most important in the history of American film. The full-length
feature film replaced the program of short films; World War I destroyed or
restricted the film industries of Europe, promoting greater technical
innovation, growth, and commercial stability in America; the FILM INDUSTRY
was consolidated with the founding of the first major studios in Hollywood,
Calif. (Fox, Paramount, and Universal); and the great American silent
comedies were born. Mack SENNETT became the driving force behind the
Keystone Company soon after joining it in 1912; Hal Roach founded his
comedy company in 1914; and Charlie CHAPLIN probably had the best-known
face in the world in 1916.^During this period the first movie stars rose to
fame, replacing the anonymous players of the short films. In 1918,
America's two favorite stars, Charlie Chaplin and Mary PICKFORD, both
signed contracts for over $1 million. Other familiar stars of the decade
included comedians Fatty ARBUCKLE and John Bunny, cowboys William S. HART
and Bronco Billy Anderson, matinee idols Rudolph VALENTINO and John Gilbert,
and the alluring females Theda BARA and Clara BOW. Along with the stars
came the first movie fan magazines; Photoplay published its inaugural issue
in 1912. That same year also saw the first of the FILM SERIALS, The Perils
of Pauline, starring Pearl White.^The next decade in American film history,
1918 to 1928, was a period of stabilization rather than expansion. Films
were made within studio complexes, which were, in essence, factories
designed to produce films in the same way that Henry Ford's factories
produced automobiles. Film companies became monopolies in that they not
only made films but distributed them to theaters and owned the theaters in
which they were shown as well. This vertical integration formed the
commercial foundation of the film industry for the next 30 years. Two new
producing companies founded during the decade were Warner Brothers (1923),
which would become powerful with its early conversion to synchronized sound,
and Metro-Goldwyn (1924; later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), the producing arm of
Loew's, under the direction of Louis B. MAYER and Irving THALBERG.^Attacks
against immorality in films intensified during this decade, spurred by the
sensual implications and sexual practices of the movie stars both on and
off the screen. In 1921, after several nationally publicized sex and drug
scandals, the industry headed off the threat of federal CENSORSHIP by
creating the office of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America (now the Motion Picture Association of America), under the
direction of Will HAYS. Hays, who had been postmaster general of the
United States and Warren G. Harding's campaign manager, began a series of
public relations campaigns to underscore the importance of motion pictures
to American life. He also circulated several lists of practices that were
henceforth forbidden on and off the screen.^Hollywood films of the 1920s
became more polished, subtle, and skillful, and especially imaginative in
handling the absence of sound. It was the great age of comedy. Chaplin
retained a hold on his world-following with full-length features such as
The Kid (1920) and The Gold Rush (1925); Harold LLOYD climbed his way to
success--and got the girl--no matter how great the obstacles as Grandma's
Boy (1922) or The Freshman (1925); Buster KEATON remained deadpan through a
succession of wildly bizarre sight gags in Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator
(both 1924); Harry Langdon was ever the innocent elf cast adrift in a mean,
tough world; and director Ernst LUBITSCH, fresh from Germany, brought his
"touch" to understated comedies of manners, sex, and marriage. The decade
saw the United States's first great war film (The Big Parade, 1925), its
first great westerns (The Covered Wagon, 1923; The Iron Horse, 1924), and
its first great biblical epics (The Ten Commandments, 1923, and King of
Kings, 1927, both made by Cecil B. DE MILLE). Other films of this era
included Erich Von STROHEIM's sexual studies, Lon CHANEY's grotesque
costume melodramas, and the first great documentary feature, Robert J.
FLAHERTY's Nanook of the North (1922).
European Film in the 1920s
In the same decade, the European film industries recovered from the war to
produce one of the richest artistic periods in film history. The German
cinema, stimulated by EXPRESSIONISM in painting and the theater and by the
design theories of the BAUHAUS, created bizarrely expressionistic settings
for such fantasies as Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919),
F. W. MURNAU's Nosferatu (1922), and Fritz LANG's Metropolis (1927). The
Germans also brought their sense of decor, atmospheric lighting, and
penchant for a frequently moving camera to such realistic political and
psychological studies as Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), G. W. PABST's
The Joyless Street (1925), and E. A. Dupont's Variety (1925).^Innovation
also came from the completely different approach taken by filmmakers in the
USSR, where movies were intended not only to entertain but also to instruct
the masses in the social and political goals of their new government. The
Soviet cinema used MONTAGE, or complicated editing techniques that relied
on visual metaphor, to create excitement and richness of texture and,
ultimately, to affect ideological attitudes. The most influential Soviet
theorist and filmmaker was Sergei M. Eisenstein, whose Potemkin (1925) had
a worldwide impact; other innovative Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s
included V. I. PUDOVKIN, Lev Kuleshov, Abram Room, and Alexander
DOVZHENKO.^The Swedish cinema of the 1920s relied heavily on the striking
visual qualities of the northern landscape. Mauritz Stiller and Victor
Sjostrom mixed this natural imagery of mountains, sea, and ice with
psychological drama and tales of supernatural quests. French cinema, by
contrast, brought the methods and assumptions of modern painting to film.
Under the influence of SURREALISM and dadaism, filmmakers working in France
began to experiment with the possibility of rendering abstract perceptions
or dreams in a visual medium. Marcel DUCHAMP, Rene CLAIR, Fernand LEGER,
Jean RENOIR--and Luis BUNUEL and Salvador DALI in Un Chien andalou (1928)--
all made antirealist, antirational, noncommercial films that helped
establish the avant-garde tradition in filmmaking. Several of these
filmmakers would later make significant contributions to the narrative
tradition in the sound era.
The Arrival of Sound
The era of the talking film began in late 1927 with the enormous success of
Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer. The first totally sound film, Lights of
New York, followed in 1928. Although experimentation with synchronizing
sound and picture was as old as the cinema itself (Dickson, for example,
made a rough synchronization of the two for Edison in 1894), the
feasibility of sound film was widely publicized only after Warner Brothers
purchased the Vitaphone from Western Electric in 1926. The original
Vitaphone system synchronized the picture with a separate phonographic disk,
rather than using the more accurate method of recording (based on the
principle of the OSCILLOSCOPE) a sound track on the film itself. Warners
originally used the Vitaphone to make short musical films featuring both
classical and popular performers and to record musical sound tracks for
otherwise silent films (Don Juan, 1926). For The Jazz Singer, Warners
added four synchronized musical sequences to the silent film. When Al
JOLSON sang and then delivered several lines of dialogue, audiences were
electrified. The silent film was dead within a year.^The conversion to
synchronized sound caused serious problems for the film industry. Sound
recording was difficult; cameras had to shoot from inside glass booths;
studios had to build special soundproof stages; theaters required expensive
new equipment; writers had to be hired who had an ear for dialogue; and
actors had to be found whose voices could deliver it. Many of the earliest
talkies were ugly and static, the visual images serving merely as an
accompaniment to endless dialogue, sound effects, and musical numbers.
Serious film critics mourned the passing of the motion picture, which no
longer seemed to contain either motion or picture.^The most effective early
sound films were those that played most adventurously with the union of
picture and sound track. Walt DISNEY in his cartoons combined surprising
sights with inventive sounds, carefully orchestrating the animated motion
and musical rhythm. Ernst Lubitsch also played very cleverly with sound,
contrasting the action depicted visually with the information on the sound
track in dazzlingly funny or revealing ways. By 1930 the U.S. film
industry had conquered both the technical and the artistic problems
involved in using sight and sound harmoniously, and the European industry
was quick to follow.
Hollywood's Golden Era
The 1930s was the golden era of the Hollywood studio film. It was the
decade of the great movie stars--Greta GARBO, Marlene DIETRICH, Jean HARLOW,
Mae WEST, Katharine HEPBURN, Bette DAVIS, Cary GRANT, Gary COOPER, Clark
GABLE, James STEWART--and some of America's greatest directors thrived on
the pressures and excitement of studio production. Josef von STERNBERG
became legendary for his use of exotic decor and sexual symbolism; Howard
HAWKS made driving adventures and fast-paced comedies; Frank CAPRA blended
politics and morality in a series of comedy-dramas; and John FORD mythified
the American West.^American studio pictures seemed to come in cycles, many
of the liveliest being those that could not have been made before
synchronized sound. The gangster film introduced Americans to the tough
doings and tougher talk of big-city thugs, as played by James CAGNEY, Paul
MUNI, and Edward G. ROBINSON. Musicals included the witty operettas of
Ernst Lubitsch, with Maurice CHEVALIER and Jeanette MACDONALD; the
backstage musicals, with their kaleidoscopically dazzling dance numbers, of
Busby BERKELEY; and the smooth, more natural song-and-dance comedies
starring Fred ASTAIRE and Ginger ROGERS. Synchronized sound also produced
SCREWBALL COMEDY, which explored the dizzy doings of fast-moving, fast-
thinking, and, above all, fast-talking men and women.^The issue of artistic
freedom versus censorship raised by the movies came to the fore again with
the advent of talking pictures. Spurred by the depression that hit the
industry in 1933 and by the threat of an economic boycott by the newly
formed Catholic Legion of Decency, the motion picture industry adopted an
official Production Code in 1934. Written in 1930 by Daniel Lord, S.J.,
and Martin Quigley, a Catholic layman who was publisher of The Motion
Picture Herald, the code explicitly prohibited certain acts, themes, words,
and implications. Will Hays appointed Joseph I. Breen, the Catholic
layman most instrumental in founding the Legion of Decency, head of the
Production Code Administration, and this awarded the industry's seal of
approval to films that met the code's moral standards. The result was the
curtailment of explicit violence and sexual innuendo, and also of much of
the flavor that had characterized films earlier in the decade.
Europe During the 1930s
The 1930s abroad did not produce films as consistently rich as those of the
previous decade. With the coming of sound, the British film industry was
reduced to satellite status. The most stylish British productions were the
historical dramas of Sir Alexander KORDA and the mystery-adventures of
Alfred HITCHCOCK. The major Korda stars, as well as Hitchcock himself,
left Britain for Hollywood before the decade ended. More innovative were
the government-funded documentaries and experimental films made by the
General Post Office Film Unit under the direction of John Grierson.^Soviet
filmmakers had problems with the early sound-film machines and with the
application of montage theory (a totally visual conception) to sound
filming. They were further plagued by restrictive Stalinist policies,
policies that sometimes kept such ambitious film artists as Pudovkin and
Eisenstein from making films altogether. The style of the German cinema was
perfectly suited to sound filming, and German films of the period 1928-32
show some of the most creative uses of the medium in the early years of
sound. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, however, almost all the
creative film talent left Germany. An exception was Leni RIEFENSTAHL,
whose theatrical documentary Triumph of the Will (1934) represents a highly
effective example of the German propaganda films made during the
decade.^French cinema, the most exciting alternative to Hollywood in the
1930s, produced many of France's most classic films. The decade found
director Jean Renoir--in Grand Illusion (1937) and Rules of the Game
(1939)--at the height of his powers; Rene Clair mastered both the musical
fantasy and the sociopolitical satire (A Nous la liberte, 1931); Marcel
PAGNOL brought to the screen his trilogy of Marseilles life, Fanny; the
young Jean VIGO, in only two films, brilliantly expressed youthful
rebellion and mature love; and director Marcel CARNE teamed with poet
Jacques Prevert to produce haunting existential romances of lost love and
inevitable death in Quai des brumes (1938) and Le Jour se leve (1939).
Hollywood: World War II, Postwar Decline
During World War II, films were required to lift the spirits of Americans
both at home and overseas. Many of the most accomplished Hollywood
directors and producers went to work for the War Department. Frank Capra
produced the "Why We Fight" series (1942-45); Walt Disney, fresh from his
Snow White (1937) and Fantasia (1940) successes, made animated
informational films; and Garson KANIN, John HUSTON, and William WYLER all
made documentaries about important battles. Among the new American
directors to make remarkable narrative films at home were three former
screenwriters, Preston STURGES, Billy WILDER, and John Huston. Orson
WELLES, the boy genius of theater and radio fame, also came to Hollywood to
shoot Citizen Kane (1941), the strange story of a newspaper magnate whose
American dream turns into a loveless nightmare.^Between 1946 and 1953 the
movie industry was attacked from many sides. As a result, the Hollywood
studio system totally collapsed. First, the U.S. House of
Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities investigated alleged
Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry in two separate sets
of hearings. In 1948, The HOLLYWOOD TEN, 10 screenwriters and directors
who refused to answer the questions of the committee, went to jail for
contempt of Congress. Then, from 1951 to 1954, in mass hearings, Hollywood
celebrities were forced either to name their associates as fellow
Communists or to refuse to answer all questions on the grounds of the 5th
Amendment, protecting themselves against self-incrimination. These
hearings led the industry to blacklist many of its most talented workers
and also weakened its image in the eyes of America and the world.^In 1948
the United States Supreme Court, ruling in United States v. Paramount that
the vertical integration of the movie industry was monopolistic, required
the movie studios to divest themselves of the theaters that showed their
pictures and thereafter to cease all unfair or discriminatory distribution
practices. At the same time, movie attendance started a steady decline;
the film industry's gross revenues fell every year from 1947 to 1963. The
most obvious cause was the rise of TELEVISION, as more and more Americans
each year stayed home to watch the entertainment they could get most
comfortably and inexpensively. In addition, European quotas against
American films bit into Hollywood's foreign revenues.^While major American
movies lost money, foreign art films were attracting an enthusiastic and
increasingly large audience, and these foreign films created social as well
as commercial difficulties for the industry. In 1951, The Miracle, a 40-
minute film by Roberto ROSSELLINI, was attacked by the New York Catholic
Diocese as sacrilegious and was banned by New York City's commissioner of
licenses. The 1952 Supreme Court ruling in the Miracle case officially
granted motion pictures the right to free speech as guaranteed in the
Constitution, reversing a 1915 ruling by the Court that movies were not
equivalent to speech. Although the ruling permitted more freedom of
expression in films, it also provoked public boycotts and repeated legal
tests of the definition of obscenity.^Hollywood attempted to counter the
effects of television with a series of technological gimmicks in the early
1950s: 3-D, Cinerama, and Cinemascope. The industry converted almost
exclusively to color filming during the decade, aided by the cheapness and
flexibility of the new Eastman color monopack, which came to challenge the
monopoly of Technicolor. The content of postwar films also began to change
as Hollywood searched for a new audience and a new style. There were more
socially conscious films--such as Fred ZINNEMANN's The Men (1950) and Elia
KAZAN's On The Waterfront (1954); more adaptations of popular novels and
plays; more independent (as opposed to studio) production; and a greater
concentration on FILM NOIR--grim detective stories in brutal urban settings.
Older genres such as the Western still flourished, and MGM brought the
musical to what many consider its pinnacle in a series of films produced by
Arthur Freed and directed by Vincente MINNELLI, Gene KELLY, and Stanley
Donen.
The Film in Europe and Australia From 1950
The stimulus for defining a new film content and style came to the United
States from abroad, where many previously dormant film industries sprang to
life in the postwar years to produce an impressive array of films for the
international market. The European film renaissance can be said to have
started in Italy with such masters of NEOREALISM as Roberto Rossellini, in
Open City (1945), Vittorio DE SICA, in The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Umberto
D (1952), and Luchino VISCONTI, in La Terra Trema (1948). Federico FELLINI
broke with the tradition to make films of a more poetic and personal nature
such as I Vitelloni (1953) and La Strada (1954) and then shifted to a more
sensational style in the 1960s with La Dolce Vita (1960) and the
intellectual 8 1/2 (1963). Visconti in the 1960s and '70s would also adopt
a more flamboyant approach and subject matter in lush treatments of
corruption and decadence such as The Damned (1970). A new departure--both
artistic and thematic--was evidenced by Michelangelo ANTONIONI in his
subtle psychosocial trilogy of films that began with L'Aventura (1960). The
vitality of a second generation of Italian filmmakers was impressively
demonstrated by Lina WERTMULLER in The Seduction of Mimi (1974) and Seven
Beauties (1976) and by Bernardo BERTOLUCCI, who in films like Before the
Revolution (1964), The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and
1900 (1977) fused radical social and political ideology with a stunning
aestheticism.^With the coming of NEW WAVE films in the late 1950s, the
French cinema reasserted the artistic primacy it had enjoyed in the prewar
period. Applying a personal style to radically different forms of film
narrative, New Wave directors included Claude CHABROL (The Cousins, 1959),
Francois TRUFFAUT (The 400 Blows, 1959; Jules and Jim, 1961), Alain RESNAIS
(Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959), and Jean-Luc GODARD, who, following the
success of his offbeat Breathless (1960), became progressively more
committed to a Marxist interpretation of society, as seen in Two or Three
Things I Know About Her (1966), Weekend (1967), and La Chinoise (1967).
Eric ROHMER, mining a more traditional vein, produced sophisticated "moral
tales" in My Night at Maud's (1968) and Claire's Knee (1970); while Louis
MALLE audaciously explored such charged subjects as incest and
collaborationism in Murmur of the Heart (1971) and Lacombe Lucien (1974).
The Spaniard Luis Bunuel, working in Mexico, Spain, and France--and defying
all categorization--continued to break new ground with ironic examinations
of the role of religion (Nazarin, 1958; Viridiana, 1961; The Milky Way,
1969) and absurdist satires on middle-class foibles (The Discreet Charm of
the Bourgeoisie, 1972).^From Sweden Ingmar BERGMAN emerged in the 1950s as
the master of introspective, often death-obsessed studies of complex human
relationships. Although capable of comedy, as in Smiles of a Summer Night
(1955), Bergman was at his most impressive in more despairing,
existentialist dramas such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries
(1957), Persona (1966), and Cries and Whispers (1972), in all of these
aided by a first-rate acting ensemble and brilliant cinematography.^British
film, largely reduced to a spate of Alec GUINNESS comedies by the early
1950s, was revitalized over the next decade by the ability of directors
working in England to produce compelling cinematic translations of the
"angry young man" novelists and playwrights, of Harold PINTER's
existentialist dramas, and of the traditional great British novels. Britain
regained a healthy share of the market with films such as Jack Clayton's
Room at the Top (1958); Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger (1959), The
Entertainer (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), and Tom Jones (1963); Karel
Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan (1966); Lindsay
ANDERSON's This Sporting Life (1963); Joseph LOSEY's The Servant (1963) and
Accident (1967); Ken RUSSELL's Women in Love (1969); and John Schlesinger'S
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971). The popularity of the James Bond spy series,
which began in 1962, gave the industry an added boost.^The internationalism
both of the film market and of film distribution after 1960 was underscored
by the emergence even in smaller countries of successful film industries
and widely recognized directorial talent: Andrzej WAJDA and Roman POLANSKI
in Poland; Jan KADAR, Milos FORMAN, Ivan PASSER, and Jiri Menzel in
Czechoslovakia; and, more recently, Wim WENDERS, Werner HERZOG, and Rainer
Werner FASSBINDER in West Germany. The death (1982) of Fassbinder ended an
extraordinary and prolific career, but his absence has yet to be felt--
particularly in the United States, where many of his earlier films are
being shown for the first time.^Australia is a relatively new entrant into
the contemporary world film market. Buoyed by government subsidies,
Australian directors have produced a group of major films within the past
decade: Peter WEIR's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave (1977),
Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career (1979) and Star Struck (1982), Fred
Schepisi's The Devil's Playground and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978),
and Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant (1980). Beresford, Weir, and Schepisi
have since directed films with U.S. backing; Beresford's Tender Mercies
(1983) is about that most American phenomenon, the country-western singer.
Postwar Film in Asia
Thriving film industries have existed in both Japan and India since the
silent era. It was only after World War II, however, that non-Western
cinematic traditions became visible and influential internationally. The
Japanese director Akira KUROSAWA opened a door to the West with his widely
acclaimed Rashomon (1950), an investigation into the elusive nature of
truth. His samurai dramas, such as The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of
Blood (1957), an adaptation of Macbeth, Yojimbo (1961), and Kagemusha
(1980), were ironic adventure tales that far transcended the usual Japanese
sword movies, a genre akin to U.S. westerns. Kenzi MIZOGUCHI is known for
his stately period films Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1955).
Yoshiro Ozu's poetic studies of modern domestic relations (Tokyo Story,
1953; An Autumn Afternoon, (1962) introduced Western audiences to a
personal sensitivity that was both intensely national and universal.
Younger directors, whose careers date from the postwar burgeoning of the
Japanese film, include Teinosuke Kinugasa (Gate of Hell, 1953), Hiroshi
Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes, 1964, from a script by the novelist ABE
KOBO), Masahiro Shinoda (Under the Cherry Blossoms, 1975), Nagisa Oshima
(The Ceremony, 1971) and Musaki Kobayashi, best known for his nine-hour
trilogy on the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, The Human Condition (1959-
-61), and Harakiri (1962), a deglamorization of the samurai tradition.^The
film industry in India, which ranks among the largest in the world, has
produced very little for international consumption. Its most famous
director, Satyajit RAY, vividly brings to life the problems of an India in
transition, in particular in the trilogy comprising Pather Panchali (1955),
Aparajito (1956), and The World of Apu (1958). Bengali is the language
used in almost all Ray's films. In 1977, however, he produced The Chess
Players, with sound tracks in both Hindi and English.
American Film Today
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, the American film industry accommodated
itself to the competition of this world market; to a film audience that had
shrunk from 80 million to 20 million weekly; to the tastes of a primarily
young and educated audience; and to the new social and sexual values
sweeping the United States and much of the rest of the industrialized world.
The Hollywood studios that have survived in name (Paramount, Warners,
Universal, MGM, Fox) are today primarily offices for film distribution.
Many are subsidiaries of such huge conglomerates as the Coca Cola Company
or Gulf and Western. Increasingly, major films are being shot in places
other than Hollywood (New York City, for example, is recovering its early
status as a filmmaking center), and Hollywood now produces far more
television movies, series, and commercials than it does motion
pictures.^American movies of the past 20 years have moved more strongly
into social criticism (Doctor Strangelove, 1963; The Graduate, 1967; The
Godfather, 1971; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975; The Deer Hunter,
1978; Norma Rae, 1979; Apocalypse Now, 1979; Missing, 1982); or they have
offered an escape from social reality into the realm of fantasy, aided by
the often beautiful, sometimes awesome effects produced by new film
technologies (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968; Jaws, 1975; Star Wars and Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977; Altered States, 1979; E. T., 1982); or
they have returned to earnest or comic investigations of the dilemmas of
everyday life (a troubled family, in Ordinary People, 1980; divorce life
and male parenting, in Kramer v. Kramer, 1979; women in a male world, in
Nine to Five, 1979, and Tootsie, 1982). The most successful directors of
the past 15 years--Stanley KUBRICK, Robert ALTMAN, Francis Ford COPPOLA,
Woody ALLEN, George LUCAS, and Steven SPIELBERG--are those who have played
most imaginatively with the tools of film communication itself. The stars
of recent years (with the exceptions of Paul NEWMAN and Robert REDFORD)
have, for their part, been more offbeat and less glamorous than their
predecessors of the studio era--Robert DE NIRO, Jane Fonda (see FONDA
FAMILY), Dustin HOFFMAN, Jack NICHOLSON, Al PACINO, and Meryl STREEP.^The
last two decades have seen the virtual extinction of animated film, which
is too expensive to make well, and the rebirth of U.S. documentary film in
the insightful work of Fred WISEMAN, the Maysles brothers, Richard Leacock
and Donn Pennebaker, and, in Europe, of Marcel OPHULS. Even richer is the
experimental, or underground, movement of the 1960s and 1970s, in which
filmmakers such as Stan BRAKHAGE, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Hollis
Frampton, Michael Snow, and Robert Breer have worked as personally and
abstractly with issues of visual and psychological perception as have
modern painters and poets. The new vitality of these two opposite
traditions--the one devoted to revealing external reality, the other to
revealing the life of the mind--underscores the persistence of the
dichotomy inherent in the film medium. In the future, film will probably
continue to explore these opposing potentialities. Narrative films in
particular will probably continue trends that began with the French New
Wave, experimenting with more elliptical ways of telling film stories and
either borrowing or rediscovering many of the images, themes, and devices
of the experimental film itself. GERALD MAST
Bibliography
Bibliography:GENERAL HISTORIES AND CRITICISM: Arnheim, Rudolf, Film as Art
(1957; repr. 1971); Bazin, Andre, What is Cinema?, 2 vols., trans. by
Hugh Gray (1967, 1971); Cook, David A., A History of Narrative Film, 1889-
1979 (1981); Cowie, Peter, ed., Concise History of the Cinema, 2 vols.
(1970); Eisenstein, Sergei M., Film Form (1949; repr. 1969); Halliwell,
Leslie, Filmgoer's Companion, 6th ed. (1977); Jowett, Garth, Film: The
Democratic Art (1976); Kael, Pauline, Reeling (1976), and 5,000 Nights at
the Movies: A Guide from A to Z (1982); Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of
Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960); Mast, Gerald, A Short
History of the Movies, 2d ed. (1976); Mast, Gerald, and Cohen, Marshall,
Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (1974); Monaco, James, How
to Read a Film (1977); Peary, Danny, Cult Movies (1981); Robinson, David,
The History of World Cinema (1973).^ NATIONAL FILM HISTORIES: AMERICAN:
Higham, Charles, The Art of American Film, 1900-1971 (1973); Monaco, James,
American Film Now: The People, the Power, the Movies (1979); Sarris,
Andrew, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968 (1968);
Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America (1975).^AUSTRALIAN: Stratton, David, The
Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival (1981).^BRITISH: Armes, Roy, A
History of British Cinema (1978); Low, Rachael, The History of British Film,
4 vols. (1973); Manvell, Roger, New Cinema in Britain (1969).^FRENCH:
Armes, Roy, The French Cinema Since 1946, 2 vols., rev. ed. (1970); Harvey,
Sylvia, May '68 and Film Culture (rev. ed., 1980); Monaco, James, The New
Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette (1976); Sadoul, Georges,
French Film (1953; repr. 1972).^GERMAN: Barlow, John D., German
Expressionist Film (1982); Hull, David S., Film of the Third Reich: A Study
of the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (1969); Manvell, Roger, and Fraenkel,
Heinrich, The German Cinema (1971); Sandford, John The New German Cinema
(1980); Wollenberg, H. H., Fifty Years of German Film (1948; repr.
1972).^ITALIAN: Jarratt, Vernon, Italian Cinema (1951; repr. 1972);
Leprohon, Pierre, The Italian Cinema (1972); Rondi, Gian, Italian Cinema
Today (1965); Witcombe, Roger, The New Italian Cinema (1982).^JAPANESE:
Mellen, Joan, The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema (1976);
Richie, Donald, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965), and The Japanese Movie:
An Illustrated History (1966); Sato, Tadao, Currents in Japanese Cinema
(1982).^RUSSIAN: Cohen, Louis H., The Cultural-Political Traditions and
Development of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1972 (1974); Dickenson, Thorold, and
De La Roche, Catherine, Soviet Cinema (1948; repr. 1972); Leyda, Jay,
Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (1960; repr. 1973); Taylor,
Richard, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (1979).^SWEDISH:
Cowie, Peter, Swedish Cinema (1966); Donner, Jorn, The Personal Vision of
Ingmar Bergman (1964); Hardy, Forsyth, The Scandinavian Film (1952; repr.
1972).
Porter, Cole -------------------------------- Cole Porter, b. Peru, Ind.,
June 9, 1892, d. Oct. 15, 1964, was an American lyricist and composer of
popular songs for stage and screen. A graduate of Yale College, he
attended Harvard School of Arts and Sciences for 2 years and later studied
under the French composer Vincent d'Indy. Both his lyrics and music have a
witty sophistication, technical virtuosity, and exquisite sense of style
that have rarely been paralleled in popular music. He contributed
brilliant scores to numerous Broadway musicals, such as Anything Goes
(1934) and Kiss Me, Kate (1948), and to motion pictures. His best songs
have become classics; these include "Begin the Beguine," "Night and Day,"
and "I Love Paris." DAVID EWEN
Bibliography: Eells, George, The Life that Late He Led: A Biography of Cole
Porter (1967); Kimball, Robert, ed., Cole (1971); Schwartz, Charles, Cole
Porter (1977).
Griffith, D. W. -------------------------------- David Lewelyn Wark
Griffith, b. La Grange, Ky., Jan. 23, 1875, d. July 23, 1948, is
recognized as the greatest single film director and most consistently
innovative artist of the early American film industry. His influence on
the development of cinema was worldwide.
After gaining experience with a Louisville stock company, he was employed
as an actor and writer by the Biograph Film Company of New York in 1907.
The following year he was offered a director-producer contract and, for the
next five years, oversaw the production of more than 400 one- and two-reel
films. As his ideas grew bolder, however, he felt increasingly frustrated
by the limitations imposed by his employers. Griffith left Biograph in
1913 to join Reliance-Majestic as head of production, and in 1914, he began
his most famous film, based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon. This
Civil War Reconstruction epic, known as The Birth of a Nation (1915),
became a landmark in American filmmaking, both for its artistic merits and
for its unprecedented use of such innovative techniques as flashbacks,
fade-outs, and close-ups. The film was harshly condemned, however, for its
racial bias and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan; several subsequent
lynchings were blamed on the film. In response to this criticism, Griffith
made what many consider his finest film, Intolerance (1916), in which the
evils of intolerance were depicted in four parallel stories--a framework
that required a scope of vision and production never before approached.
Although Griffith made numerous other films up to 1931, none ranked with
his first two classics. Among the best of these later efforts were Hearts
of the World (1918); Broken Blossoms (1919), released by his own newly
formed corporation, United Artists; Way Down East (1920); Orphans of the
Storm (1922); America (1924); Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924); and Abraham
Lincoln (1930). Of the many actors trained by Griffith and associated with
his name, Mary PICKFORD, Dorothy and Lillian GISH, and Lionel Barrymore
(see BARRYMORE family) are the most famous. In 1935, Griffith was honored
by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special award.
Bibliography: Barry, Iris, D. W. Griffith, American Film Master (1940);
Brown, Karl, Adventures with D. W. Griffith (1976); Geduld, Harry M., ed.,
Focus on D. W. Griffith (1971); Gish, Lillian, Lillian Gish: The Movies,
Mr. Griffith and Me (1969); Henderson, Robert M., D. W. Griffith: His
Life and Work (1972) and D. W. Griffith: The Years at Biograph (1970);
O'Dell, Paul, Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood (1970); Wagenknecht,
Edward C., The Films of D. W. Griffith (1975).
film industry --------------------------------
The first four decades of the film age (roughly 1908-48) saw the increasing
concentration of control in the hands of a few giant Hollywood concerns.
Since the late 1940s, however, that trend has been reversed; the monolithic
studio system has given way to independent production and diversification
at all levels of the industry.^Although in the silent era small,
independent producers were common, by the 1930s, in the so-called golden
age of Hollywood, the overwhelming majority of films were produced,
distributed, and exhibited by one of the large California studios. Led by
M-G-M, Paramount, RKO, 20th-Century-Fox, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and
Universal, the industry enjoyed the benefits of total vertical integration:
because the studios owned their own theater chains, they could require
theater managers to charge fixed minimum admission rates, to purchase
groups of pictures rather than single releases ("block booking"), and to
accept films without first previewing them ("blind buying"). For more than
two decades the major studios completely controlled their contracted stars,
managed vast indoor and outdoor studio sets, and in general profited from
what amounted to a virtual monopoly of the industry.^Shortly after World
War II, three factors contributed to the loss of the majors' hegemony.
First, a number of federal court decisions forced the studios to end
discriminatory distribution practices, including block booking, blind
selling, and the setting of fixed admission prices; in 1948 the Supreme
Court ordered divestiture of their theater chains. Second, the House
Committee on Un-American Activities investigated the industry, which
responded by blacklisting several prominent screenwriters and directors--an
action that called into question the industry's reliability as a promoter
of unfettered creative talent. Third, television began to deprive
Hollywood of large segments of its audience, and the industry reacted
timidly and late to the possibilities for diversification presented by the
new medium.^The effects of these developments were immediate and long
lasting. Weekly attendance figures fell from 80 million in 1946 to just
over 12 million by 1972. Box-ofice revenues in the same period dropped
from $1.75 billion to $1.4 billion--and this despite constant inflation and
admission prices that were often 10 times the prewar average. The movie
colony experienced unprecedented unemployment. The number of films made
yearly declined from an average of 445 in the 1940s to under 150 in the
1970s, as the industry sought solvency in "blockbusters" rather than in the
solid but unspectacular products that had brought it a mass audience before
the age of television. Between 1948 and 1956 the number of U.S. theaters
fell from 20,000 to 10,000, and although 4,000 new drive-in theaters
somewhat offset this attrition, by the mid-1970s less than half of the
American spectator's amusement dollar was being spent on movies; in the
1940s the yearly average had been over 80 cents.^By the late 1960s the
major studios had entered a grave economic slump, for many of their "big
picture" gambles fell through. In 1970, 20th-Century-Fox lost $36 million,
and United Artists, which as the industry leader had more to lose, ended up
more than $50 million in the red. In response to this devastation of its
profits, the industry underwent a profound reorganization. Following the
1951 lead of United Artists, the majors backed away from production (since
its cost had contributed heavily to their decline) and restructured
themselves as loan guarantors and distributors. At the same time, most of
them became subsidiaries of conglomerates such as Gulf and Western, Kinney
National Service, and Transamerica and began to look to television sales
and recording contracts for the revenues that previously had come from the
theater audience alone.^In setting up these new contractual relationships
the independent producer played a central role. Such a figure, who by now
has replaced the old studio mogul as the industry's driving force, brings
together the various properties associated with a film (including actors, a
director, and book rights) to create a "package" often financed
independently but distributed by a film company in exchange for a share of
the rental receipts. Working with the conglomerates and accepting the
reality of a permanently reduced market, these private promoters have
partially succeeded in revitalizing the industry.^The rise of independent
production has been accompanied by diversification of subject matter, with
close attention to the interests of specialized audiences. This trend,
which began in the 1950s as an attempt to capture the "art house" audience
and the youth market, is evident today in the success of martial-arts,
rock-music, pornographic, documentary, and black-culture films.
Simultaneously, production has moved away from the Hollywood sets and
toward location filming. For many producers, New York City has become the
New filmmakers' mecca, while shooting in foreign countries, where cheap
labor is often plentiful, has given the modern film a new international
texture; foreign markets have also become increasingly important. Both
geographically and financially, therefore, the film industry has begun to
recapture some of the variety and independence that were common in the days
before studio control. THADDEUS F. TULEJA
Bibliography: Balio, Tino, ed., The American Film Industry (1976);
Brownlow, Kevin, Hollywood: The Pioneers (1980); David, Saul, The
Industry: Life in the Hollywood Fast Lane (1981); Phillips, Gene D., The
Movie Makers: Artists in an Industry (1973); Stanley, Robert H., The
Celluloid Empire (1978).
Table: TEN TOP-GROSSING FILMS --------------------------------
TEN TOP-GROSSING FILMS (as of Jan. 1, 1984) ------------------------------
--------------------------- Film Year Gross
Earnings* --------------------------------------------------------- 1. E.T.
The ExtraTerrestrial 1982 $209,567,000 2. Star Wars
1977 193,500,000 3. Return of the Jedi 1983 165,500,000 4.
The Empire Strikes Back 1980 141,600,000 5. Jaws
1975 133,435,000 6. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 115,598,000
7. Grease 1978 96,300,000 8. Tootsie
1982 94,571,613 9. The Exorcist 1973
89,000,000 10. The Godfather 1972 86,275,000 ------------
--------------------------------------------- SOURCE: Variety (1984).
*Distributors' percentage has been subtracted.
Sennett, Mack -------------------------------- (sen'-et) A pioneer of
slapstick film comedy, Mack Sennett, b. Michael Sinnott, Richmond, Quebec,
Jan. 17, 1880, d. Nov. 5, 1960, was an uneducated Irish-Canadian who
drifted into films as D. W. Griffith's apprentice. In 1912 he started
his own comedy studio, called Keystone, where he developed the Keystone
Kops and discovered such major talents as Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra.
With the advent of sound films, comedy shorts became less popular, and in
the 1930s Sennett, who failed to change with the times, lost his entire
fortune. Sennett is, however, still remembered as Hollywood's "King of
Comedy" and received a special Academy Award in 1937 for his contribution
to cinema comedy. LEONARD MALTIN
Bibliography: Fowler, Gene, Father Goose (1934; repr. 1974); Lahue, Kalton
C., and Brewer, Terry, Kops and Custards: The Legend of Keystone Films
(1968); Sennett, Mack, King of Comedy (1954; repr. 1975).
Chaplin, Charlie -------------------------------- Charles Spencer Chaplin,
b. Apr. 16, 1889, d. Dec. 25, 1977, cinema's most celebrated comedian-
director, achieved international fame with his portrayals of the
mustachioed Little Tramp. As the director, producer, writer, and
interpreter of his many movies, he made a major contribution to
establishing film comedy as a true art form. Reared in poverty in London's
slums, Chaplin, like his parents, became a music hall performer, appearing
as a clown in Fred Karno's Mumming Birds company from 1906. While touring
the United States in 1913, Mack SENNETT persuaded him to join his Keystone
studio; Chaplin's first slapstick, Making a Living (1914), followed. In
Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), he originated the gentleman tramp routine-
-twirling cane, bowler, tight jacket, and baggy pants--that became his
trademark in dozens of two-reelers. He also learned to direct his own short
films.
During the next four years, Chaplin consolidated his growing international
reputation by a prolific output of shorts for Essanay, Mutual, and First
National studios. At the same time, he refined his tramp character into a
poetic figure that combined comedy and pathos, yet retained his
meticulously timed acrobatic skills. His films grew in length and subtlety
with A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms (both 1918). After cofounding United
Artists in 1919, Chaplin began independent production of his best feature-
length films in the 1920s: A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925),
The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great
Dictator (1940), his first all-talking film, in which he abandoned the
tramp to parody Hitler. Among his later films, only the poignant Limelight
(1952) achieved popularity; the apparent cynicism of Monsieur Verdoux
(1947) and A King in New York (1957) alienated audiences, while his last
effort, A Countess from Hong Kong (1966), left little impression.
Although loved and appreciated throughout the world as the inimitable
Charlot or Charlie, Chaplin's personal life, including his four marriages,
a 1944 paternity suit, and his refusal to accept U.S. citizenship, gained
him adverse publicity in America. In 1953, accused of Communist sympathies,
he was denied reentry into the country. Thereafter, he settled in
Switzerland with his wife Oona O'Neill, surrounded by luxury and a family
of nine children. Initially embittered by his rejection in the United
States, he returned in triumph in 1972 to receive a special achievement
award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, followed in
1973 by an Academy Award for his score to Limelight. In 1975, at age 86,
he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Chaplin's My Autobiography appeared in
1964, and a filmed biography, The Gentleman Tramp, in 1978. ROGER MANVELL
Bibliography: Chaplin, Charles, My Life in Pictures (1975); Hu ff, Theodore,
Charlie Chaplin (1951; repr. 1972); Manvell, Roger, Chaplin (1973); McCabe,
John, Charlie Chaplin (1978); Tyler, Parker, Last of the Clowns (1947; repr.
1972).
Pickford, Mary -------------------------------- (pik'-furd) Mary Pickford,
stage name of Gladys Mary Smith, b. Toronto, Apr. 8, 1893, d. May 29,
1979, became one of the world's first film stars after beginning her cinema
career in 1909 under the tutelage of D. W. Griffith. Together with her
second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin, she founded United
Artists in 1919. Despite considerable business acumen, her career faltered
with the advent of talkies. Her best-known films include Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Pollyanna (1920), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921),
and Little Annie Rooney (1925). She received an Academy Award for Coquette
(1929) and a special Academy Award in 1976.
Bibliography: Pickford, Mary, Sunshine and Shadow (1955); Windeler, Robert,
Sweetheart (1974).
Hart, William S. -------------------------------- William S. Hart, b.
Newburgh, N.Y., Dec. 6, 1870, d. June 23, 1946, was a top box-office draw
in American silent films, especially in Westerns. His dour, commanding
presence had the same kind of appeal found years later in Clint Eastwood
and Charles Bronson. The Return of Draw Egan (1916), The Toll Gate (1920),
Travellin' On (1922), Wild Bill Hickok (1923), and Tumbleweeds (1925) were
among Hart's most popular films. LESLIE HALLIWELL
film serials -------------------------------- Film serials, the bulk of
which were produced in Hollywood between 1913 and the late 1940s, were
interrupted melodramas or mysteries ("cliffhangers") that typically
consisted of 12 to 15 episodes varying in length from 18 to 30 minutes. Up
to 1930, approximately 300 silent serials appeared--the first was The
Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), the most popular was Pathe's The Perils of
Pauline (1914), starring Pearl White. At least a part of their charm
derived from carefully timed dramatic sequences that substituted for a lack
of narrative depth. Among the best-known serials of the sound era, during
which Westerns, space stories, and other fantasy-oriented fare dominated,
were The Lone Ranger, Captain Video, Flash Gordon, Zorro, The Masked Marvel,
and The Green Hornet. BRUCE BERMAN
Bibliography: Barbour, Alan G., Cliffhanger (1977) and Serial Showcase
(1968); Lahue, Kalton C., Bound and Gagged (1968) and Continued Next Week
(1964); Stedman, Raymond W., The Serials, 2d ed. (1977).
Arbuckle, Fatty -------------------------------- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, b.
Mar. 24, 1887, d. June 29, 1933, was one of the movies' first comedy
stars. His boyish face, ample girth, and acrobatic skill made him a
natural comic in silent films. After achieving stardom at Mack Sennett's
studio, he went on to write, direct, and star in his own films. His on-
screen career was ruined by a 1921 scandal involving the death of a young
woman. Although cleared of manslaughter charges, Arbuckle was unable to
work again in films except as a writer-director in 1931-32, using the
pseudonym William Goodrich. LEONARD MALTIN
Bibliography: Maltin, Leonard, The Great Movie Comedians (1978); Yallop,
David, The Day the Laughter Stopped (1976).
Mayer, Louis B. -------------------------------- (may'-ur) Louis Burt Mayer,
b. Minsk, Russia, 1882 or 1885, d. Oct. 29, 1957, was a Hollywood film
mogul who for many years headed the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation, ruling
his studio like a patriarch in order to make "decent, wholesome pictures
for Americans." Initially a scrap-metal dealer, he made a fortune as a New
England movie-theater owner before forming the Louis B. Mayer Pictures
Corporation in 1918. Merging his company with Marcus Loew's Metro and the
Goldwyn Company to found MGM in 1924, he became vice-president of the new
company, acting as general manager of the Culver City studio until forced
to retire in 1951.
Bibliography: Crowther, Bosley, Hollywood Rajah (1960); Marx, Samuel,
Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (1975).
Muybridge, Eadweard -------------------------------- (my'-brij, ed'-wurd)
The Englishman Eadweard Muybridge, b. Edward James Muggeridge, Apr 9, 1830,
d. May 8, 1904, one of the great photographers of the American West, became
even better known for his pioneering photographic studies of motion.
Photographing throughout California in the 1860s and '70s, he made the
large, impressive landscapes of the Yosemite wilderness that won him
initial fame. In 1872, Leland Stanford, the former governor of the state,
bet a friend that once in every stride all four legs of a running horse
were simultaneously off the ground. He hired Muybridge to settle the bet,
and in 1877 Muybridge's pictures, which recorded the horse's motion in
sequential frames, proved Stanford right. (The work took 5 years because
it was interrupted while Muybridge was tried and acquitted for the murder
of his wife's lover.) In 1879, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope, a
machine that reconstructed motion from his photographs and a forerunner of
cinematography. After a European tour, during which his work was acclaimed
by artists and scientists alike, he continued (1884-86) his photographic
motion studies; Animal Locomotion (1887), containing 781 groups of
sequential frames, was the first of several such publications, which also
included The Human Figure in Motion (1901). PETER GALASSI
Bibliography: Muybridge, Eadweard, Descriptive Zoopraxography (1893) and
Animals in Motion (1899, repr. 1957); Hendricks, Gordon, Eadweard
Muybridge: The Father of the Motion Picture (1975); Mozley, A. V., Eadweard
Muybridge: The Stanford Years, 1872-1882 (1972).
Eakins, Thomas -------------------------------- (ay'-kinz) Although he
received little recognition in his lifetime, Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins, b.
July 25, 1844, d. June 25, 1916, has come to be regarded in the 20th
century as the greatest realist in the history of American art. He was
born in Philadelphia, where he received his early training and later spent
his adult life. From 1866 to 1869 he was a pupil of Jean Leon GEROME at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and in 1870 he visited Spain and was
strongly influenced by the works of Diego VELAZQUEZ and Jusepe de RIBERA.
He became an uncompromising realist, bringing to his work a close personal
involvement with his subjects and intense scientific interest in anatomy,
light, and perspective.
After his return to Philadelphia in 1870, Eakins painted outdoor scenes
that included views of sportsmen on rivers and bays near the city, such as
Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871; Metropolitan Museum, New York City).
In 1875 he painted a far more ambitious picture, now accepted as his
masterpiece, a large portrait of the eminent surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross, The
Gross Clinic (1875; Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia). Gross is
shown scalpel in hand, lecturing to his students about the operation he is
performing, the details of which, including an open incision, are clearly
depicted. The painting's bold realism appropriately reflects the clinical
objectivity of Dr. Gross's approach to medicine, but offended Eakins's
prudish audience.
Eakins taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1876 to 1886,
when he was forced to resign after a dispute caused by his insistence that
students of both sexes be allowed to draw from nude models. He continued
to teach privately, and one of his most accomplished students, Susan
Macdowell, became his wife in 1884. During the 1880s, Eakins conducted
photographic experiments at the University of Pennsylvania into the
movement of human bodies that anticipated the invention of the motion
picture and coincided with the pioneering work of Eadweard MUYBRIDGE. After
1880 most of his works were portraits, often of the scientists, physicians,
scholars, and students of Philadelphia who were his friends. He had little
commercial success and was largely ignored by the art world despite the
fact that he was an outstanding figure painter and the best portraitist in
America since Gilbert STUART, whose work was much narrower in scope. In
1902 he was belatedly elected to the National Academy of Design, by which
time his creative powers had begun to wane. After 1910 he was in ill
health and ceased to paint. His influence on the so-called ASHCAN SCHOOL
realists of the early 20th century was great, although full recognition of
his many achievements as an artist and teacher came only in the 1930s.
Among Eakins's finest paintings is William Rush Carving His Allegorical
Figure of the Schuylkill (1877; Philadelphia Museum of Art), a subject to
which he returned late in his career. (William RUSH was a Philadelphia
wood-carver of the Federal period whose use of a nude model aroused a
controversy of the kind that Eakins was often involved in.) The
psychological penetration of his portraits is evident in the mirthful
spirit of his Walt Whitman (1888; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) and
the introspective serenity of Miss Van Buren (c.1891; Phillips Collection,
Washington, D.C.).
Eakins also worked as a sculptor, and his contributions to the art of
photography are also notable, but his paintings were his supreme
achievement. Along with those of his contemporary Winslow HOMER, they
represent the culmination of the development of American art in the 19th
century. DAVID TATHAM
Bibliography: Goodrich, Lloyd, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work (1933; repr.
1970); Hendricks, Gordon, The Life and Works of Thomas Eakins (1974);
Schendler, Sylvan, Eakins (1967); Siegl, Theodor, The Thomas Eakins
Collection (1978).
Hays, Will -------------------------------- William Harrison Hays, b.
Sullivan, Ind., Nov. 5, 1879, d. Mar. 7, 1954, was for many years the
censor of the U.S. film industry. He served as chairman of the Republican
National Committee from 1918 to 1921 and was postmaster general under
President Warren G. Harding in 1921-22. From 1922 to 1945, Hays was
president of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors. In 1934 that
association implemented a system of self-censorship, the so-called
Production Code, that came to be known as the Hays Code.
Lloyd, Harold -------------------------------- (loyd) Harold Lloyd, b.
Burchard, Nebr., Apr. 20, 1893, d. Mar. 8, 1971, was one of the most
popular screen comedians of the 1920s, a living symbol of the shy but
optimistic all-American boy. This ingratiating character started evolving
in the short subjects Lloyd made during the second decade of the 20th
century, but crystallized only after he became a major star in such 1920s
silent feature films as Grandma's Boy (1922) and The Freshman (1925).
Lloyd's trademarks were a straw hat and horn-rimmed glasses, but he is
perhaps even better remembered for the "thrill comedy" of films like Safety
Last (1923), in which he scales the side of a building. Snippets from his
many early films appeared in two 1963 screen compilations: Harold Lloyd's
World of Comedy and Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life. His methodical,
unpretentious approach to comedy received wider attention after his
"rediscovery" in the 1970s. LEONARD MALTIN
Bibliography: Lloyd, Harold, An American Comedy (1928; repr. 1971); Maltin,
Leonard, The Great Movie Comedians (1978); Reilly, Adam, Harold Lloyd: The
King of Daredevil Comedy (1977); Schickel, Richard, Harold Lloyd: The Shape
of
Keaton, Buster -------------------------------- (keet'-uhn) Joseph Francis
"Buster" Keaton, b. Piqua, Kans., Oct. 4, 1895, d. Feb. 1, 1966, actor
and director, was one of the giants of silent film comedy. Raised in a
vaudeville family, Keaton entered the film industry in 1917 as a protege of
Fatty Arbuckle and quickly mastered film technique on both sides of the
camera. A superb acrobat from youth, Keaton developed both a keen
appreciation for movie sight gags and the perfectionist's desire to execute
them without flaw. In 1921, under the banner of his own company, he began
his solo starring career and refined his unique deadpan character--a loner
caught in the flurry of modern life who somehow manages to triumph over
even the most mind-boggling disasters. Such classic shorts as One Week
(1920), The High Sign (1921), The Boat (1921), Cops (1922), and The
Balloonatic (1923) led to feature films in which he expanded his highly
individual comic views: Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924),
Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926), and his cinematic tour de force,
Sherlock Jr. (1924). Bad business advice coupled with personal problems
sabotaged his career in the early 1930s. He continued to work in films and
television the rest of his life, but after his move to MGM in 1928, he
never again exercised the creative control he had enjoyed in the silent era.
His memoirs, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, appeared in 1960. LEONARD
MALTIN
Bibliography: Anobile, Richard J., ed., The Best of Buster (1976); Blesh,
Rudi, Keaton (1966); Dardis, Tom, Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down
(1979); Maltin, Leonard, The Great Movie Comedians (1978); Moews, Daniel,
Keaton: The Silent Features Close Up (1977); Wead, George, and Lellis,
George, eds., The Film Career of Buster Keaton (1977).
Lubitsch, Ernst -------------------------------- (loo'-bich, airnst) Ernst
Lubitsch, b. Berlin, Jan. 28, 1892, d. Nov. 30, 1947, was a German-
American film director known for his sophisticated comedies of manners. He
had already achieved success as an actor and director in Europe when Mary
Pickford brought him to Hollywood to direct her in Rosita (1923);
Lubitsch's subsequent silent films--The Marriage Circle (1924), Forbidden
Paradise (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926)-
-established his reputation as a master of urbane, sardonic humor.
The "Lubitsch touch" survived the transition to sound. In the 1930s,
beginning with The Love Parade (1930), he directed musicals, often using
the team of Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. The cynical wit that
was his trademark was especially evident in Trouble in Paradise (1932);
Ninotchka (1939), starring Greta Garbo; and To Be Or Not To Be (1942),
which satirized Nazism. He departed from his usual brand of humor in The
Shop around the Corner (1940), another comedy directed at the Nazi threat.
Bibliography: Poague, Leland A., The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch (1978);
Weinberg, Herman G., The Lubitsch Touch: A Critical Study (1968).
animation -------------------------------- Film animation applies
techniques of cinematography to the graphic and plastic arts in order to
give the illusion of life and movement to cartoons, drawings, paintings,
puppets, and three-dimensional objects. Beginning with crude and simple
methods, animation has become a highly sophisticated form of filmmaking,
involving the use of automation, computer, and even laser technology to
achieve its effects. Some animation techniques overlap with those used to
produce special effects in live-action cinematography. In watching such
films as 2001--A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977), a person often
finds it difficult to tell whether a certain result has been achieved
through animation or through special effects.
ANIMATION TECHNIQUES
Basic graphic animation is produced by a technique called stop-frame
cinematography. The camera records, frame by frame, a sequence or
succession of drawings or paintings that differ only fractionally from one
another. The illusion of progressive movement is created by projecting the
series of frames through a camera at the normal rate for sound film (24
frames a second). The same method is used in puppet or object animation;
the position of the figures or objects is changed very slightly prior to
each exposure. In graphic animation, the drawings may vary from the
simplest outlines, as in such traditional animated films as Felix the Cat,
to elaborately modeled and colored paintings, such as those produced in
Walt DISNEY's studios during the 1930s. The first animated cartoons were
produced before 1910 by pioneers such as Emile Cohl of France and Winsor
McCay of the United States, whose Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) has been
called the first animated feature film. In these early productions, a
simple drawing of a mobile figure was photographed against an equally
simple background, and a new drawing was required for each exposure. Relief
from the labor of drawing hundreds of pictures for each minute of action
came only when the figures could be made momentarily static. The evolution
of cel (for celluloid) animation after 1913 enabled animators to use a
single, more elaborate background for each shot or scene in the action. The
mobile figures in the foreground were inked in black silhouette on
transparent celluloid sheets and then superimposed in series on the
background. With the introduction of color filming early in the 1930s,
animators began to use opaque paints in place of black ink. Greater
efficiency was achieved when artists began to specialize in particular
figures or other mobile elements of cartoons. Such teams of animators
collectively created drawings for feature-length films, for example, Walt
Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Fantasia (1940). Most
animated films are recorded by an automated rostrum camera. The many
improvements made in this camera since the 1950s have contributed to the
increased technical capabilities of the medium. The adjustable camera is
suspended above the horizontal table on which the combination of cels, one
upon the other, have been superimposed on the background and locked or
pegged into position. The cels are then successively photographed to
produce a precision image offering a faultless illusion of movement. Such
cinematic effects as tracking, panning, and zooming may also be achieved.
HISTORY OF ANIMATION
Since the early, popular shorts involving such animals as Felix the Cat and
Mickey Mouse, the international history of animation has been characterized
by the almost constant introduction of ever more complex forms. Many
advances were made in Europe: Lotte Reiniger employed mobile silhouettes;
Oskar FISCHINGER and Len Lye experimented with abstract designs
choreographed to music; and George Pal of Holland created techniques of
puppet animation. Since World War II, animation was increasingly used in
instructional films and in television and cinema commercials. Advanced
forms of graphic design, both in black and white and in color, and new
methods of puppet and object animation have been developed. From the 1940s
until the early 1980s, Norman MCLAREN, one of the versatile of all
animators, experimented with three-dimensional animation and with other
innovations as drawing images directly on film.
Beginning in the 1960s, films showing abstract color designs in motion were
programmed by means of computers that calculate intricate movements with
amazing precision. Today, computer animation has achieved the ability to
create moving images and backgrounds of great complexity. The basic tool,
usually called a PAINTBOX, is an electronic surface on which the artist
draws figures and backgrounds and selects colors. Other devices manipulate
the figures and change the backgrounds. The work is reproduced on a TV
monitor and stored on a computer disk. Computerized animation is widely
used in television commercials, titles, and in making music videos (see
VIDEO, MUSIC), and provides many of the special effects in the films of
directors like George Lucas (see COMPUTER GRAPHICS, VIDEO ART).
Old-style cel animation continues to be the sole technique by which quality
animators, such as Disney Productions, create their characters. Backgrounds,
and the movement of objects within a scene, however, are often computer-
generated.
Television, with its insatiable need for new material, introduced a type of
semianimation in its cartoon programs for children. Compared with
traditional animation, on television the movement of characters is
primitive in its rendition, colors are limited, and detail is stripped down
to bare essentials. The cost of an animated minute on television is one-
tenth the cost of a Disney minute; $10,000 to $100,000 or more. Disney's
The Black Cauldron (1985) cost about $30 million and was nine years in the
making.
International animation film festivals, where the latest work is displayed,
are annual events in Europe. ROGER MANVELL
Bibliography
Bibliography: Feild, Robert Durant, The Art of Walt Disney (1942); Fox, D.,
and Waite, M., Computer Animation Primer (1984); Halas, John, ed., Computer
Animation (1974); Halas, John, and Manvell, Roger, Art in Movement: New
Directions in Animation (1970), Design in Motion (1962), and The Technique
of Film Animation, 3d ed. (1971); Rubin, S., Animation: The Art and the
Industry (1984); Stephenson, Ralph, Animation in the Cinema (1967); Thomas,
F., and Johnstone, O., Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (1981).
Edison, Thomas Alva -------------------------------- Thomas Alva Edison was
one of the most prolific inventors of the late 19th century. He is most
famous for his development of the first commercially practical incandescent
lamp (1879). Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, was the
development (1882) of the world's first central electric light-power
station. His early laboratories were forerunners of the modern industrial
research laboratory, where skilled researchers jointly solve technological
problems.^Edison was born in the village of Milan, Ohio, on Feb. 11, 1847,
and his family later moved to Port Huron, Mich. His formal schooling was
limited to three months, at the age of seven, but thereafter his mother
tutored him, and he was an avid reader. At age 12 he became a train-boy,
selling magazines and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. He spent all he
earned on books and apparatus for his chemical laboratory. An accident at
about this time eventually led to a loss of hearing.^A station agent taught
him telegraph code and procedures, and at age 15 Edison became manager of a
telegraph office. His first inventions were the transmitter and receiver
for the automatic telegraph. At 21, Edison produced his first major
invention, a stock ticker for printing stock-exchange quotations in
brokers' offices. With the $40,000 he was paid for improvements in tickers,
he established a manufacturing shop and a small laboratory in Newark, N.J.
Deciding to give up manufacturing, he moved the laboratory to Menlo Park,
N.J., where he directed groups of employees working on various projects.
The original Menlo Park facility is now at the Henry Ford Museum in
Dearborn, Mich.^In 1878, Edison began work on an electric lamp and sought a
material that could be electrically heated to incandescence in a vacuum.
At first he used platinum wire in glass bulbs at 10 volts. He connected
these bulbs in series to utilize a higher supply voltage; however, he
realized that independent lamp control would be necessary for home and
office use. He then developed a three-wire system with a supply of 220
volts. Each lamp operated at 110 volts, and the higher voltage required a
resistance greater than that of platinum. Edison conducted an extensive
search for a filament material to replace platinum until, on Oct. 21, 1879,
he demonstrated a lamp containing a carbonized cotton thread that glowed
for 40 hours.^Edison installed the first large central power station on
Pearl Street in New York City in 1882; its steam-driven generators of 900
horsepower provided enough power for 7,200 lamps. The success of this
station led to the construction of many other central stations. Edison
founded The Edison Electric Light Company (1878), which eventually merged
with other companies into the General Electric Company (1892), one of the
largest U.S. manufacturers. He consistently opposed, however, switching
the power stations from direct current to alternating current, a change
that would have increased transmission voltages considerably.^During his
experiments on the incandescent bulb, Edison noted a flow of electricity
from a hot filament across a vacuum to a metal wire. This phenomenon,
known as THERMIONIC EMISSION, or the Edison effect, was the foundation of
electronic inventions of the 20th century.^Edison also invented (1877) the
PHONOGRAPH, the invention he was most proud of; it used tinfoil and wax
cylinders to record the sound. His introduction of flexible celluloid film
and his invention of the movie projector aided the development of motion
pictures (see FILM, HISTORY OF). His other inventions include the alkaline
storage battery, a magnetic process to separate iron ore, and the carbon
microphone. After World War I he became interested in domestic sources of
rubber and investigated various plant species for rubber content. By the
time he died at West Orange, N.J., on Oct. 18, 1931, he had patented over
1,000 inventions. J. D. RYDER
Bibliography: Clark, Ronald W., Edison: The Man Who Made the Future
(1977); Josephson, Matthew, Edison: A Biography (1959; repr. 1963);
Silverberg, Robert, Light for the World (1967); Wachhorst, Wyn, Thomas Alva
Edison: an American Myth (1981).
Chaney, Lon -------------------------------- (chay'-nee) Lon Chaney, b.
Apr. 1, 1883, d. Aug. 26, 1930, Hollywood's "man of a thousand faces,"
was a leading character actor specializing in macabre roles. His ability to
mime, to change physical appearance, and skill with makeup served him well
in such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the
Opera (1925). LESLIE HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Andersen, Robert Gordon, Faces, Forms, Films: The Artistry
of Lon Chaney (1971).
Fischinger, Oskar -------------------------------- (fish'-ing-ur) The
German animator Oskar Fischinger, b. July 22, 1900, d. Jan. 31, 1967,
made films that used abstract forms to interpret music. Examples are the
numbered series Studien 1-12 (1925-36), An American March (1940), and
Motion Painting No. 1 (1947). Fischinger also created special effects for
Hollywood films and invented the lumigraph light-producing device (1951).
Minnelli, Vincente -------------------------------- The Hollywood director
whose name is most often associated with the most imaginative musicals of
the 1940s and 1950s is Vincente Minnelli, b. Chicago, Feb. 28, 1913.
Beginning with Cabin in the Sky in 1943, Minnelli set new standards for the
musical genre with such films as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Pirate
(1948) both starring his then wife Judy GARLAND, An American in Paris
(1951), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958), which won nine Academy
Awards. The visual dynamism and stylish decor of these films can also be
seen in such nonmusical Minnelli efforts as The Clock (1945), The Bad and
the Beautiful (1952), and Designing Woman (1957). His and Garland's
daughter is the performer Liza Minnelli (see MINNELLI, LIZA). His
autobiography, I Remember It Well, appeared in 1974. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Casper, Joseph, Vincente Minnelli and the Film Musical (197
7).
Kelly, Gene -------------------------------- A dancer, singer, and actor
whose cheerful manner and innovative dance sequences enlivened some of
Hollywood's most memorable musicals, Gene Kelly, b. Eugene Curran Kelly,
Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug. 23, 1912, turned choreography into a virile,
athletic American art. Synthesizing ballet with the tattoo of tap, the
rhythms of jazz, and a sense of fun and grace, he was at his best in The
Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in
the Rain (1952), and Brigadoon (1954). Kelly has also directed films,
including Hello Dolly (1969), and was a principal in the MGM reprises
That's Entertainment (1974), That's Entertainment Part Two (1976), and
That's Dancing (1985). He won the American Film Institute's Lifetime
Achievement award in 1985. ELEANOR M. GATES
Bibliography: Hirschhorn, Clive, Gene Kelly: A Biography (1975); Thomas,
Tony, Films of Gene Kelly (1974).
Vigo, Jean -------------------------------- Jean Vigo, b. Apr. 26, 1905,
d. Oct. 5, 1934, in spite of his tragically short life, proved himself
one of the great French filmmakers. The son of a celebrated anarchist who
was later murdered in prison, Vigo led a disordered childhood. A Propos de
Nice (About Nice, 1930) is a short, personal film essay mixing sharp
observation and adroit camera technique. His two major films, Zero de
conduite (Zero for Conduct, 1933) and L'Atalante (Atalanta, 1934), were
both commercial disasters, and at the time of his death at the age of 29,
Vigo remained almost unknown. His tiny output, however, now ranks as one
of the great achievements of French cinema. His work draws uniquely
sensitive pictures of private worlds (those of a group of schoolboys and a
newly married couple, respectively), combining a respect for reality with
virtually surrealist imagery. ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Sales Gomes, P. E., Jean Vigo (1972); Smith, John M., Jean
Vigo (1972).
Carne, Marcel -------------------------------- (kahr-nay') The French film
director Marcel Carne, b. Aug. 18, 1909, achieved fame in the 1930s when
he worked with the poet Jacques Prevert on such classics as Quai des brumes
(Misty Quay, 1938) and Le Jour se leve (Day Begins, 1939), both starring
Jean Gabin. Carne learned his craft as assistant to Rene Clair and Jacques
Feyder before making (1936) his feature debut. During the German
occupation of France, Carne and Prevert produced two theatrical spectacles,
Les Visiteurs du soir (Evening Visitors, 1942) and Children of Paradise
(1945). Although Carne continues to exhibit a fine technical command, his
recent films have been less impressive than his earlier work. ROY ARMES
Pagnol, Marcel -------------------------------- (pahn-yohl') A successful
French dramatist of the late 1920s, Marcel Pagnol, b. Feb. 28, 1895, d.
Apr. 18, 1974, turned to the cinema with the advent of sound and created
for himself a still more remarkable career as a writer-director. At first,
he merely adapted his own plays for others to direct; of the Marseille
trilogy, Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and Cesar (1936), only the third was
directed by Pagnol himself. In 1934, however, he set up his own studios
and, surrounded by a company of actors that included Raimu and Fernandel,
he began to adapt the Provencal stories of Jean Giono into the films that
constitute his major achievements: Joffroi (1934), Angele (1934), Regain
(1937), and The Baker's Wife (1938). His last two films, Manon des sources
(1952) and Lettres de mon moulin (1954), are also the work of a master
storyteller. ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Pagnol, Marcel, The Days Were Too Short (1960) and The Time
of Secrets, trans. by Rita Barisse (1962).
Korda, Sir Alexander -------------------------------- (kohr'-duh) Alexander
Korda, the professional name of Sandor Kellner, b. Sept. 16, 1893, d.
Jan. 23, 1956, was a major figure in British cinema for almost 25 years.
He began his producing and directing career in Hungary but left his native
land in 1919 to embark on an international career in Europe and Hollywood.
After establishing London Film Productions in Britain in 1932, Korda
achieved world recognition with The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).
Specializing in historical films and using international directors, he
turned out such successes as Rembrandt (1936), The Four Feathers (1939),
The Third Man (1949), and Richard III (1956). He was knighted in 1942.
ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Kulik, Karol, Alexander Korda: The Man Who Could Work
Miracles (1975).
Hitchcock, Alfred -------------------------------- (hich'-kahk) Probably no
contemporary film director was better known to the general public or more
admired by his colleagues and critics than Alfred Hitchcock. Born in London,
Aug. 13, 1899, he began his directorial career in the silent era with The
Lodger (1927). Hitchcock's work during the next decade--Blackmail (1929),
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935), and The
Lady Vanishes (1938)--established him worldwide as the preeminent director
of witty suspense thrillers. It also established his personal trademark:
the seemingly casual appearance in all his films of his own portly figure.
Hitchcock, who received a knighthood in 1980, died on Apr. 29 of that year.
His first film after moving to Hollywood in 1939 was the immensely
successful romantic thriller Rebecca (1940). Subsequently, Foreign
Correspondent (1940) successfully harked back to his British style.
Although Shadow of a Doubt (1943) won praise for its handling of an
American setting and Notorious (1946) was popular with critics and public
alike, many of Hitchcock's admirers were disappointed by other American
works, such as Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1943),
Spellbound (1945), and Rope (1948). The witty, ingenious Strangers on a
Train (1951), with its sensational merry-go-round sequence, and North by
Northwest (1959), which treated thriller conventions humorously, were both
praised as a return to form. The popularity of the intervening films
exceeded their critical esteem--Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window
(1954), To Catch a Thief (1953), and a remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1956). What critics missed in them, while acknowledging their technical
mastery, was the wit and sense of milieu that had distinguished Hitchcock's
British suspense thrillers.
Increasingly, however, after the appearance of Vertigo (1958), Psycho
(1960), and The Birds (1963), it was recognized that Hitchcock was going
beyond suspense to plumb greater depths of terror. Some critics have
emphasized the Catholic content of Hitchcock's work, others, the Freudian.
Whether or not such explications stand scrutiny, the critical ascendancy of
American-period Hitchcock now seems secure, and the director's technical
wizardry remains unassailable. Hitchcock also enjoyed success as the host
(1955-65) of the popular television suspense series "Alfred Hitchcock
Presents" and as the editor of such short-story collections as Stories To
Be Read with the Lights On (1973). WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Durgnat, Raymond, The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock
(1974); LaValley, Albert, ed., Focus on Hitchcock (1972); Spoto, Donald,
The Art of Alfred Hitchcock (1976); Taylor, John Russell, The Life and Work
of Alfred Hitchcock (1978); Truffaut, Francois, in collaboration with Helen
G. Scott, Hitchcock (1967); Wood, Robin, Hitchcock's Films (1965).
Disney, Walt -------------------------------- The creator of the cartoon
character Mickey Mouse and a film innovator who won a record 30 Academy
Awards, Walter Elias Disney, b. Chicago, Dec. 5, 1901, d. Dec. 15, 1966,
was also among the most successful American entrepreneurs. The
entertainment empire he founded includes two giant amusement parks
(Disneyland and Walt Disney World) as well as his film studios. The
licensing of reproduction rights to Mickey Mouse and other Disney
characters for use on clothing, books, and innumerable other objects makes
the Disney fantasies ever present in American life and that of much of the
rest of the world as well.^Disney's childhood was spent in Marceline, Mo.
(whose main street may have inspired the nostalgia-laden main streets of
the amusement parks), and in Kansas City, Mo., where he met Ub Iwerks, who
became a Disney collaborator. When their Kansas City animation studio
failed in 1923, Disney founded a new studio in Hollywood, and Iwerks became
chief artist and special-effects designer.^By 1928, Disney and Iwerks had
perfected the immortal Mickey Mouse, who made history the same year in
Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon with sound. (Mickey's squeaky voice
was supplied by Disney.) In succeeding Disney cartoons--including the
famous series Silly Symphonies--the characters moved to the rhythm of a
pre-recorded soundtrack, making possible a humorous and ingenious match of
motion to sound (see ANIMATION). By the mid-1930s all Disney cartoons were
made in color, and his stable of eccentric animal characters (Donald Duck,
Goofy, Pluto, and the rest) was almost complete, produced by a studio that
came to employ hundreds of artists.^The world's first feature-length
animated film, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), proved a
stunning financial success and was followed by a number of other full-
length animations, including Fantasia (1940), which combined classical
music with animated sequences, Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi
(1942). The Reluctant Dragon (1941) was the first of many Disney films to
use a sophisticated matte technique that allowed live and cartoon
characters to appear together.^In the 1950s, Disney turned to films with
live characters, such as Treasure Island (1950), 20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea (1954), and the musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964); to nature films
whose fine photography was marred for some critics by the sentimentality of
approach; and to films produced for television--the Davy Crockett series,
for example. TV's "Mickey Mouse Club" (1955-59, 1975-77) revived the old
cartoon figures for a new generation of children who would meet them again-
-more or less live--at Disneyland and Disney World.
Bibliography: Canemaker, John, Treasures of Disney Animation Art, ed. by
W. Rawls (1982); Finch, Christopher, The Art of Walt Disney (1973); Maltin,
Leonard, The Disney Films (1973); Schickel, Richard, The Disney Version
(1968); Thomas, Bob, Walt Disney (1976).
Riefenstahl, Leni -------------------------------- (ree'-fen-shtahl) Adolf
Hitler's favorite film director, Leni Riefenstahl, b. Berlin, Aug. 22,
1902, achieved an international reputation on the basis of two
extraordinary documentaries. Her first film, the mystical Blue Light
(1932), excited Hitler's imagination, and following her short documentary
of the Nazi party's 1933 Nuremberg rally, Victory of Faith (1934), he
commissioned her to give feature-length treatment to the same event in 1934.
The result, Triumph of the Will (1935), was an impressive spectacle of
Germany's adherence to Hitler and to National Socialist ideals, and a
masterpiece of romanticized propaganda. Equally famous, and far less
controversial, was her coverage of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the
four-hour epic Olympia (1938). Blacklisting by the Allies (1945-52) and
postwar ostracism ended Riefenstahl's career as a filmmaker. She was
subsequently acclaimed for The Last of the Nuba (1974), a superb volume of
photographs of Nuba tribal life in southern Sudan. ROGER MANVELL
Bibliography: Infield, Glenn B., Leni Riefenstahl (1976); Sarris, Andrew,
Interviews with Film Directors (1967).
Stroheim, Erich von -------------------------------- (shtroh'-hym) A
legendary figure in the Hollywood of the silent era, actor, director, and
scriptwriter Erich von Stroheim, b. Vienna, Sept. 22, 1885, d. May 12,
1957, is celebrated both for his ruinous extravagances as a filmmaker and
his screen portrayals of stiff-necked German officers. As a director he
demonstrated his brilliance as well as his limitations. His only
successfully completed films--Blind Husbands (1919), the Devil's Passkey
(1919), and Foolish Wives (1921), in two of which he played the lead--bear
the stamp of his wit, sophistication, lavish attention to detail, and
sometimes brutal realism. Thereafter, his career was marked by frustration
as his ambitious artistic schemes for such films as Merry-Go-Round (1922),
Greed (1923), and The Wedding March (1926) repeatedly ran afoul of whistle-
blowing producers at Universal, MGM, and Paramount, who cut and distorted
his work beyond recognition. His most famous failure, Queen Kelly (1928),
which was to star Gloria Swanson, effectively ended his directorial hopes.
Concentrating exclusively on acting after 1936, von Stroheim gave his most
distinguished performances in Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937) and in
Billy Wilder's inspired film a clef, Sunset Boulevard (1950), playing a
former director opposite Gloria Swanson's evocation of an aging, fantasy-
ridden silent-film star. ELEANOR M. GATES
Bibliography: Curtiss, Thomas Q., Von Stroheim (1971); Noble, Peter,
Hollywood Scapegoat (1950; repr. 1972).
Chaney, Lon -------------------------------- (chay'-nee) Lon Chaney, b.
Apr. 1, 1883, d. Aug. 26, 1930, Hollywood's "man of a thousand faces,"
was a leading character actor specializing in macabre roles. His ability to
mime, to change physical appearance, and skill with makeup served him well
in such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the
Opera (1925). LESLIE HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Andersen, Robert Gordon, Faces, Forms, Films: The Artistry of
Lon Chaney (1971).
Flaherty, Robert Joseph -------------------------------- (flay'-urt-ee)
Robert Joseph Flaherty, b. Iron Mountain, Mich., Feb. 16, 1884, d. July
23, 1951, was a filmmaker whose originality and poetic vision helped create
a romantic tradition in documentary films. Before making Nanook of the
North (1922), a depiction of Eskimo life and his first and most famous film,
Flaherty explored Canada as a mapmaker. His interest in native cultures
and the simple agrarian life is reflected in later films--Moana (1926),
Tabu (1931), Man of Aran (1934), and Louisiana Story (1948).
Bibliography: Flaherty, Frances H., The Odyssey of a Film-maker: Robert
Flaherty's Story (1960; repr. 1972); Griffith, Richard, The World of
Robert Flaherty (1953; repr. 1972).
EXPRESSION
expressionism -------------------------------- (literature, theater, and
film) Expressionism, a term applied to avant-garde German painting in 1911,
rapidly gained currency in literature, but does not describe a cohesive
literary movement. In poetry and drama, expressionism represented a
reaction to the sentimentality of late-19th-century romanticism.
Expressionist poets, writing in Germany and Austria between 1910 and 1924,
were influenced by Freudian theories of the subconscious, the
antirationalism of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the novels of Fyodor
Dostoyevsky to probe their own imaginations for subject matter. The poems
of Johannes BECHER, Gottfried BENN, Georg HEYM, Ernst TOLLER, Georg TRAKL,
and Franz WERFEL are characterized by chaotic, frenzied imagery and a
vehement tone that threatens to overwhelm their literary form.
Expressionism reveals latent energies beneath the surface of appearances
and evokes extreme states of mind. Certain qualities of expressionism are
also found in the prose of Franz KAFKA, but the movement was strongest in
the theater. The dramas of August STRINDBERG and Frank WEDEKIND provided a
strong impetus to later writers such as Georg Kaiser, Carl Sternheim, Fritz
von Unruh, Reinhard Sorge, and Walter Hasenclever, whose works are
characterized by terse dialogue, disturbing incident, and intensely
subjective emotion presented in a succession of scenes or "stations." After
1917 expressionist drama dominated the German theater for about 6 years--
during which time production styles also cultivated expressive
exaggerations and distortion--and left its mark on the silent cinema,
especially in the films of Fritz LANG and Robert Wiene. Expressionism left
an important legacy of technique to many later writers. The aims of the
expressionist movement were assimilated by DADA, and can also be discerned
in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1921) and The Hairy Ape (1922), and
in Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine (1923).
Bibliography: Furness, R. S., Expressionism (1973); Krispyn, Egbert, Style
and Society in German Literary Expressionism (1964); Willett, John,
Expressionism (1971).
Bauhaus -------------------------------- (bow'-hows) The Bauhaus (full name
staatliches Bauhaus, "state building house") was the most famous school of
architecture and design of the 20th century. Founded by Walter GROPIUS at
Weimar, Germany, in 1919, the Bauhaus was originally a combined school of
fine art and school of arts and crafts. In his opening manifesto, Gropius
issued a call for the unification of all the creative arts under the
leadership of architecture. He declared that a mastery of materials and
techniques was essential for all creative design. Students were to have
two teachers in every course, one an expert craftsman, the other a master
artist. The preliminary course, organized by Johannes Itten, introduced
students to rudiments of design, freed from historic associations: size,
shape, line, color, pattern, texture, rhythm, and density. This course has
become the foundation for design education in many countries. It was
followed in the curriculum by advanced work with form and materials,
including workshops in stone, wood, metal, pottery, glass, painting, and
textiles. Industrial design became a major focus at the Bauhaus, which
hoped to improve radically the quality of all manufactured goods.
Teachers appointed in the early years included Lyonel FEININGER, Gerhard
Marcks, Johannes Itten, and Adolf Meyer (1919); Georg Muche (1920); Paul
KLEE and Oskar SCHLEMMER (1921); Wassily KANDINSKY (1922); and Laszlo
MOHOLY-NAGY (1923). From the beginning, the striking newness of the
concepts developed at the Bauhaus and the liberal beliefs of many of the
people associated with it aroused strong opposition.
In 1925 political pressures forced the removal of the school from Weimar to
Dessau, where Gropius designed a new complex of buildings for it, including
classrooms, shops, offices, and dwellings for faculty and students. This
group of buildings in Dessau came to symbolize the Bauhaus to the rest of
the world. Although Gropius repeatedly insisted that it was never his
intention to codify a Bauhaus style or dogma, the need for a new
architectural image appropriate to a technological age caused the Bauhaus
to be adopted as a model for what came to be known as the INTERNATIONAL
STYLE, or, more generally, MODERN ARCHITECTURE.
Gropius left the Bauhaus for private practice in 1928 and was succeeded as
director by Hannes Meyer. Strong political pressures continued. In 1930
Ludwig MIES VAN DER ROHE took over as director, moved the school to Berlin
in 1932, and finally closed and disbanded it under pressure from the Nazis
in 1933. Among the former students who became important teachers at the
Bauhaus were Joseph ALBERS, Marcel BREUER, and Herbert Bayer. The Bauhaus
became influential around the world as a result of the continued active
teaching and designing by former faculty and students, including many
Americans. In the United States, Gropius became dean of the School of
Architecture at Harvard University, Mies van der Rohe became dean of
architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology, and Moholy-Nagy founded
the New Bauhaus in Chicago.
The work and principles of the Bauhaus have been further disseminated by
many publications and exhibitions that have circulated internationally. A
major Bauhaus Archive, founded at Darmstadt in 1961, was moved in the 1970s
to Berlin. Another Bauhaus Archive is kept at Harvard University. The
design philosophy of the Bauhaus continues pervasive to the present day.
RON WIEDENHOEFT
Bibliography: Franciscono, Marcel, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the
Bauhaus in Weimar (1971); Wingler, Hans, The Bauhaus (1969).
Eastman, George -------------------------------- George Eastman, b.
Waterville, N.Y., July 12, 1854, d. Mar. 14, 1932, founded (1892) the
Eastman Kodak Company. While working as a bank clerk, he became interested
in PHOTOGRAPHY. He refined the process for making photographic plates,
which he soon began to manufacture, and in 1884 he introduced flexible FILM.
He produced his Kodak box CAMERA in 1888, marketing it on a mass basis for
amateur photographers. Large investments in research led to further
innovations in cameras and equipment, including daylight-loading film and
pocket cameras. Eastman gave enormous sums to educational institutions,
and in his company introduced the first employee profit-sharing system in
the United States.
Bibliography: Coe, Brian, George Eastman (1976).
Lang, Fritz -------------------------------- A long and distinguished
career in Germany made Fritz Lang, b. Vienna, Dec. 5, 1890, d. Aug. 2,
1976, probably the most famous of the many European film directors who fled
Hitler for Hollywood during the 1930s. Lang's early studies of painting and
architecture clearly influenced the expressionist style and grand scale of
such films as Destiny (1921), the two-part Nibelung Saga (1924), and his
celebrated depiction of a futuristic slave society, Metropolis (1927).
During the same period Lang was also making smaller-scaled studies of
criminal society in Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and The Spy (1928),
which, with The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1932), strongly suggested his
anti-Nazi sentiments. Lang's interest in the criminal mind produced his
masterpiece--the chilling portrait of a child killer, M (1931), Lang's
first sound film, starring Peter Lorre. Lang left Germany for France in
1933.
Lang made a highly successful American debut with Fury (1936), an
indictment of mob violence, followed by a plea for social justice in You
Only Live Once (1937). These films gave way to a succession of melodramas,
most notably The Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944),
and Scarlet Street (1945), that painted a picture of society less in terms
of social issues than of a nameless, oppressive sense of dread. These
expressionist nightmares, along with M, constitute the height of Lang's
achievement. Thereafter, although he directed an offbeat Western in Rancho
Notorious (1952), a first-rate police thriller in The Big Heat (1953), and
a stylish costume drama in Moonfleet (1955), his films were of diminishing
interest. A distinctive stylist despite the multiplicity of genres in
which he worked, Lang was much admired by the French New Wave directors of
the 1960s. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Bogdanovich, Peter, Fritz Lang in America (1968); Eisner,
Lotte, Fritz Lang (1977); Jensen, Paul M., The Cinema of Fritz Lang (1969).
Murnau, F. W. -------------------------------- (moor'-now) Friedrich
Wilhelm Murnau, originally surnamed Plumpe, b. Dec. 28, 1888, directed
films during the German cinema's most experimental period and was perhaps
the greatest of all filmmakers of the 1920s. Fewer than half of his 22
films have been preserved, but what remains is proof that he excelled in
every genre he tried: the horror film, as in Nosferatu (1922); realistic
lowlife drama, as in The Last Laugh (1924); and classical adaptation, as in
Faust (1926). His command of lighting and composition, together with his
fluent moving camera style, are also apparent in his Hollywood films--
especially his masterpiece, Sunrise (1927), which transmutes melodrama into
the purest cinematic poetry. Murnau was killed in a car crash near
Monterey on Mar. 11, 1931, a week before the opening of his romantic South
Seas narrative, Tabu. ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Eisner, Lotte H., Murnau (1973).
Pabst, G. W. -------------------------------- (pahpst) A major contributor
to the German cinema during its experimental silent and early sound eras,
director George William Pabst, b. Bohemia, Aug. 27, 1885, d. May 30,
1967, is especially identified with the straightforward portrayal of human
degradation, as in two of his greatest films, Joyless Street (1925) and
Pandora's Box (1929). In these he combined realism and social commentary,
although he was equally adept at working in naturalistic and expressionist
genres. Equally well known are Pabst's first sound films, the pacifist
Westfront 1918 (1930) and Kameradschaft (1931)--whose appeal to
internationalist sentiment displeased the Nazis--and his version of Brecht
and Weill's Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1931). His Don Quixote
(1933), made in France, starred the renowned Russian singer Chaliapin in
his only film role. Following World War II, Pabst made The Trial (1947)
and Ten Days to Die (1955), an account of Hitler's end.
Kracauer, Siegfried -------------------------------- (krah'-kow-ur, zeek'-
freet) Siegfried Kracauer, b. Feb. 8, 1889, d. Nov. 26, 1966, was an
influential German-Jewish film historian and theoretician best known for
his championship of realism as the truest function of cinema. Cultural
affairs editor (1920-33) of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Kracauer left Germany
after the rise of Adolf Hitler, and during World War II he conducted
research into Nazi propaganda films for New York's Museum of Modern Art.
His From Caligari to Hitler (1947) was an exploration of the roots of
Nazism in the German cinema of the 1920s. Kracauer's most important work,
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960), argues--with
more intensity than consistency--for a cinema devoted to the presentation
of real-life people in real-life situations in a style from which all
theatrical or aesthetically formal elements would be excluded. ROGER
MANVELL
Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich -------------------------------- (ize'-en-
shtine, sir-gay' mee-ky'-loh-vich) Sergei Eisenstein, b. Jan. 23 (N.S.),
1898, d. Feb. 11, 1948, was a seminal figure in the history of FILM,
known for his stylistic innovations and theory of MONTAGE. His theoretical
and practical work are still intensely studied. Of a well-to-do family from
Riga, now in the USSR, Eisenstein studied engineering and architecture in
Petrograd, where he witnessed both the February and October revolutions of
1917. His service in the Red Army during Russia's Civil War led him to
design (1920) for a front-line mobile theater troupe. Following the war,
Eisenstein worked in Moscow's experimental theaters and studied under
Vsevolod Meyerhold. As a designer and director for the Proletcult Theatre,
Eisenstein and the experimental group he gathered around him staged
Aleksandr Ostrovsky's Even a Wise Man Stumbles (1923) as a circus,
incorporating into the production a short film interlude. This
foreshadowed Eisenstein's subsequent theater work, all of which contained
significant cinematic elements. Placed in charge of Proletcult's first
large film project, Towards the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, envisioned
as a series of seven historical films, Eisenstein began work on Strike
(1925); combining exaggerated theatrical elements with some of the most
realistic footage ever filmed by Eisenstein, this was recognized for its
artistic and political power. Eisenstein's next film, a treatment of the
June 1905 naval mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, received international
acclaim after it was shown in Berlin. The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
demonstrated abroad that the USSR could produce an original film
masterpiece and also demonstrated Eisenstein's use of montage, a
revolutionary film editing technique. October (1928), also known as Ten
Days That Shook the World, was similarly innovative, introducing sequences
that tested Eisenstein's theory of an "intellectual cinema," which aimed at
nothing less than the communication of abstract thought by visual means. A
propaganda film (The General Line) on behalf of the collectivization of
Soviet agriculture was released in 1929 under the title Old and New.
Between 1929 and 1932 Eisenstein studied foreign sound-film systems in
western Europe; signed a contract with Paramount Pictures (later canceled);
and, with the financial backing of Upton Sinclair, began filming an epic of
Mexican culture to be called Que Viva Mexico!, all footage of which was
seized by the Sinclairs after production was halted (1932).
Trouble also plagued Eisenstein's projects in the USSR, where, in the 1930s,
Stalin's socialist realism supplanted earlier Soviet experimentalism. The
historical drama Alexander Nevsky (1938) temporarily restored Eisenstein to
favor, besides showing what he could do in sound film (in collaboration
with composer Sergei Prokofiev). His last film, made in Kazakhstan during
World War II, was Ivan the Terrible (1944-46), of which only Part I was
seen in uncensored form. Eisenstein's thoughts on film theory and practice
can be found in translations of his The Film Sense (1942), Film Form (1949),
Notes of a Film Director (1959), and Film Essays (1968). JAY LEYDA
Bibliography: Barna, Yon, Eisenstein (1974); Moussinac, Leon, Sergei
Eisenstein (1970); Montagu, Ivor, With Eisenstein in Hollywood (1968);
Nizhniy, Vladimir, Lessons with Eisenstein (1962); Seton, Marie, Sergei M.
Eisenstein (1952).
surrealism -------------------------------- (film, literature, theater)
Surrealism, meaning above realism, is an antiaesthetic movement that grew
out of the nihilistic DADA movement of the years during and immediately
after World War I. Its range being that of human thought itself,
surrealism is limited in scope and application only by the human capacity
for self-expression, which surrealists aim to expand. Writing, painting,
film, sculpture, or any other art form assumes significance for the
surrealist when it expresses a surrealist state of mind.
Surrealism began as a revolt against the control exercised by rationality
over accepted modes of communication. The first surrealists attacked
inherited preconceptions about the nature and function of word poems. In
1919, Andre BRETON and Philippe Soupault produced the first specifically
surrealist text, Les Champs magnetiques (Magnetic Fields, 1921), by so-
called automatic writing, in which the surrealist banishes deliberate
intent, leaving the pen free to express on paper the uncensored images that
well up from the subconscious. Seeking to embrace all forms of creative
expression in their liberative effort to attain what Breton in his 1924
Manifeste du surrealisme (Manifesto of Surrealism) called "the true
functioning of thought," the surrealists set about attacking, on the
broadest possible front, conventions, prescribed rules, and consecrated
values--cultural as well as aesthetic. This explains, for instance, their
enthusiasm for the films of Luis BUNUEL, whose L'Age d'or (The Golden Age,
1930) surpassed in violent iconoclasm even his first movie, Un Chien
Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1928).
In its negative attitude toward literary and artistic tradition, and in its
opposition to the heritage of Western culture, surrealism superficially
resembled Dada, the movement with which some of its earliest members,
including Louis ARAGON, Roger VITRAC, Breton, Soupault, and its greatest
poet, Benjamin Peret, all had been affiliated. However, surrealism marked
a stage beyond the nihilism that had inevitably brought Dada to self-
destruction. Surrealism was truly international, and exponents of its
revolutionary principles shared an unshakable faith in the power of the
imagination to revitalize poetry and art, and to compensate for the
sociopolitical and religious forces that they found so oppressive and
stultifying in contemporary society. J. H. MATTHEWS
Bibliography: Alquie, Ferdinand, The Philosophy of Surrealism (1965);
Breton, Andre, What Is Surrealism? (1978); Gascoyne, David, A Short Survey
of Surrealism (1935); Matthews, J. H., An Introduction to Surrealism
(1965); Nadeau, Maurice, The History of Surrealism (1965); Read, Herbert,
ed., Surrealism (1936; repr. 1971).
Kazan, Elia -------------------------------- {kuh-zan', eel'-yuh}^An
American stage and film director, Elia Kazan (originally Kazanjoglous), b.
Istanbul, Turkey, Sept. 7, 1909, to Greek parents, became a director after
a brief career as an actor with New York's Group Theater in the 1930s. His
greatest success was directing plays by Arthur Miller and Tennessee
Williams, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947, film, 1951) and Death
of a Salesman (1949). He directed the Academy Award-winning films
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and On The Waterfront (1954), as well as East
of Eden (1955), A Face in the Crowd (1957), Splendor in the Grass (1961),
and The Last Tycoon (1976). His two autobiographical novels, America,
America (1962) and The Arrangement (1967), were turned into films in 1963
and 1968.
Bibliography: Koszarski, Richard, Hollywood Directors, 1941-1976 (1977).
Jolson, Al -------------------------------- (johl'-suhn) The singer Al
Jolson, b. Asa Yoelson in Lithuania, c.1886, d. Oct. 23, 1950,
immigrated with his family to Washington, D.C., around 1895. After a long
apprenticeship as a singer in burlesque, minstrel shows, and vaudeville, he
won (1911) his first important rol |
