|
|
|
 
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an image after it has been withdrawn from view.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 role in the Broadway show La Belle Paree.
Jolson's style was notable for its vigor and volume, its blatant
sentimentality, and for his use of blackface, a leftover theatrical
convention from the already moribund minstrel show. His work--especially
his film roles, beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927), the first major
sound picture--won him a large audience during his lifetime. Jolson was
awarded the Congressional Medal of Merit posthumously for his many overseas
tours of wartime army camps, the last at the beginning of the Korean War in
1950.
Bibliography: Friedland, Michael, Jolson (1972). Discography:Best of Al
Jolson: Steppin' Out and California, Here I Come (1911-29).
Duchamp, Marcel -------------------------------- (doo-shahm') Marcel
Duchamp, b. July 28, 1887, d. Oct. 2, 1968, was a French painter and
theorist, a major proponent of DADA, and one of the most influential
figures of avant-garde 20th-century art. After a brief early period in
which he was influenced chiefly by Paul CEZANNE and Fauve color (see
FAUVISM), Duchamp developed a type of symbolic painting, a dynamic version
of facet CUBISM (similar to FUTURISM), in which the image depicted
successive movements of a single body. It closely resembled the multiple
exposure photography documented in Eadward MUYBRIDGE's book The Horse in
Motion (1878).
In 1912, Duchamp painted his famous Nude Descending A Staircase, which
caused a scandal at the 1913 ARMORY SHOW in New York City. In the same
year he developed, with Francis PICABIA and Guillaume APOLLINAIRE, the
radical and ironic ideas that independently prefigured the official
founding of Dada in 1916 in Zurich. In Paris in 1914, Duchamp bought and
inscribed a bottle rack, thereby producing his first ready-made, a new art
form based on the principle that art does not depend on established rules
or on craftsmanship. Duchamp's ready-mades are ordinary objects that are
signed and titled, becoming aesthetic, rather than functional, objects
simply by this change in context. Dada aimed at departure from the physical
aspect of painting and emphases in ideas as the chief means of artistic
expression.
In 1915, Duchamp moved to New York City, where he was befriended by Louise
and Walter Arensberg and their circle of artists and poets, which
constituted New York Dada. That same year he began his major work, The
Large Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), a
construction of wire and painted foil fitted between plates of transparent
glass. In 1918 he completed his last major painting, Tu m', a huge oil and
graphite on canvas, a unique combination of real and painted objects and
illusionistic and flat space. Following his maxim never to repeat himself,
Duchamp "stopped" painting (1923) after 20 works and devoted himself
largely to the game of chess. Nevertheless, by 1944 he had secretly begun
sketches on a new project, and between 1946 and 1949 created his last work,
the Etant Donnes (Philadelphia Museum of Art). BARBARA CAVALIERE
Bibliography: Alexandrian, Sarane, Duchamp (1977); d'Harnoncourt, Anne, and
McShine, Kynaston, eds., Marcel Duchamp (1973); Duchamp, Marcel, From the
Green Box, trans. by George H. Hamilton (1957); Golding, John, Duchamp
(1973); Schwarz, Arturo, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, 2d ed.
(1970); Tomkins, Calvin, The World of Marcel Duchamp (1966).
Renoir, Jean -------------------------------- (ren-wahr') One of the
greatest and best-loved of all French filmmakers, Jean Renoir, b. Sept. 15,
1894, d. Feb. 13, 1979, the second son of the impressionist painter
Auguste Renoir, exercised a major influence on French cinema for almost 50
years. From his beginnings in the silent era, aspects of his mature film
style were apparent: a love of nature, rejection of class values, and a
mixture of joy and sorrow. Some of his earliest films were made with his
wife Catherine Hessling as star, among them an interpretation of Zola's
Nana (1926), and The Little Match Girl (1928).
During the 1930s Renoir was at the top of his form in two celebrations of
anarchy, La Chienne (The Bitch, 1931) and Boudu sauve des eaux (Boudu Saved
from Drowning, 1932). A new social concern appeared in Toni (1935), Le
Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), and especially La Vie est a nous (People of
France, 1936), made for the French Communist party during the heyday of the
Popular Front. Renoir's reputation, however, rests mainly on A Day in the
Country (1936, completed 1946), based on a bittersweet de Maupassant story;
a free adaptation of Gorki's The Lower Depths (1936); and the widely
acclaimed Grand Illusion (1937). Two very different masterpieces written
and directed by Renoir, the tightly structured The Human Beast (1938) and
the largely improvised Rules of the Game (1939)--which perfectly captured
the mood of France before its collapse in 1940--crowned this prolific
period.
Renoir spent the war years in Hollywood, but even the best of his films
made in the United States, such as The Southerner (1945) and The Diary of a
Chambermaid (1946), lack the excitement of his prewar work. He found a new
approach and a new philosophy in India, where he made his first color film,
The River (1950), before returning to Europe to make the colorful and
relaxed films of his maturity: The Golden Coach (1952), French Can Can
(1954), and Paris Does Strange Things (1956). Always an innovator, Renoir
used television techniques in the 1959 filming of Le Testament du Docteur
Cordelier and Picnic on the Grass, the latter strongly evocative of the
sun-filled landscapes beloved by his father. For his last film, The
Elusive Corporal (1962), set in World War II, he returned to themes earlier
explored in Grand Illusion and The Lower Depths. Renoir's considerable
influence on the French New Wave directors of the late 1950s can be seen
especially in the films of Francois Truffaut. ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Bazin, Andre, Jean Renoir, ed. by Francois Truffaut (1973);
Braudy, Leo, Jean Renoir--The World of His Films (1972); Durgnat, Raymond,
Jean Renoir (1974); Gilliatt, Penelope, Jean Renoir: Essays, Conversations,
and Reviews (1975); Renoir, Jean, My Life and My Films (1974).
Melies, Georges -------------------------------- {may-lee-es'}^A major
contributor to the development of world cinema in its formative years, the
Frenchman Georges Melies, b. Paris, Dec. 6, 1861, d. Jan. 21, 1938,
began his career as a conjurer. He was attracted to the cinema immediately
after seeing the first Lumiere showings in 1895 and soon developed his own
distinctive studio-based style. Melies was fascinated by the spectacle and
trickery possible in the cinema, and his hundreds of little films, mostly
dealing with fantastic subjects, are full of dancing girls and acrobatic
devils, awe-inspiring disasters and miraculous transformations. For 10
years after 1896, Melies's Star Film company was a dominant force in the
film industry, producing such inventive and amusing short subjects as A
Trip to the Moon (1902) and New York-Paris by Automobile (1908). His
production methods and conception of film action as a sequence of tableaux,
however, gradually became outdated. He ceased production in 1912 and was
reduced to poverty. ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Hammond, Paul, Marvellous Melies (1974).
neorealism -------------------------------- Neorealism as an Italian
literary movement can be said to have begun in 1929 with Alberto MORAVIA's
Time of Indifference (Eng. trans., 1932), a novel that unflinchingly
addressed highly sensitive moral, social, and political issues during the
early repressive years of Mussolini's dictatorship. The movement developed
slowly, however, until the overthrow of the fascist regime in 1943.
Neorealist novels of the next 12 years by such disparate writers as Vasco
PRATOLINI, Domenico Rea, and Italo CALVINO focused on the plight of
working-class people and thus represented a break with the elitist
tradition that had characterized Italian literature for centuries.
Neorealism, both as a style and as a political outlook, became even better
known internationally through the 1940s and postwar films of Italian
directors Luchino VISCONTI (Ossessione, 1942; La Terra Trema, 1948),
Roberto ROSSELLINI (Open City, 1945; Paisan, 1947), and Vittorio DE SICA
(Shoeshine, 1946; The Bicycle Thief, 1948; Umberto D., 1952). SERGIO
PACIFICI
De Sica, Vittorio -------------------------------- (day see'-kah) The
Italian film director and actor Vittorio De Sica, b. July 7, 1901, d. Nov.
13, 1974, achieved international recognition after World War II for his
important contributions to Italian neorealistic cinema as well as for his
numerous, mostly comic, starring roles. Trained in the 1920s for the stage,
De Sica won success as a film actor in the 1930s and directed his first
film, Rose Scarlette, in 1940. The Children Are Watching Us (1942) marked
the beginning of his long collaboration with the screenwriter and theorist
of neorealism Cesare Zavattini. Fame came with Shoeshine (1946), a harsh
social commentary on war-ravaged Italy that exemplified the neorealist
style. This was followed by Bicycle Thieves (1948), the story of an
unemployed man's search for work; the fantasy Miracle in Milan (1951); and
Umberto D (1952), a haunting portrayal of a poor and hopeless old man.
During the 1950s, De Sica appeared in more than 50 films, playing his most
memorable role as the scoundrel-turned-hero of General della Rovere (1959).
In the 1960s he concentrated on commercial successes, two of which--Two
Women (1960) and Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963)--won Academy Awards.
With The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971), about the plight of Jews in
Fascist Italy, De Sica returned to the social commentary, but not the style,
of his earlier films. His last picture was A Brief Vacation (1973). GAUTAM
DASGUPTA
Losey, Joseph -------------------------------- {loh'-zee}^Although forced
to abandon his career in the United States when blacklisted in the 1950s,
Joseph Losey, b. La Crosse, Wis., Jan. 14, 1909, d. June 22, 1984, went
on to become an important director in the British film industry. After
extensive stage experience, Losey made his first feature film, The Boy with
Green Hair, in 1948. This was followed by several taut melodramas--The
Lawless (1950), The Prowler (1951), M (1951; a remake of Fritz Lang's
classic), and The Big Night (1951)--that some still consider his best work.
In 1952, during a period in which he was forced to work pseudonymously, he
moved to London. There Losey gained international recognition with The
Servant (1963), a film that marked the beginning of a fruitful
collaboration with playwright Harold PINTER, later resumed in Accident
(1967) and The Go-Between (1971). The charged atmospherics of these films
also characterized such subsequent Losey efforts without Pinter as The
Romantic Englishwoman (1975) and Mr. Klein (1977). WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Hirsch, Joseph, Joseph Losey (1980); Leahy, James, The Cinema
of Joseph Losey (1967); Losey, Joseph, Losey on Losey, ed. by Tom Milne
(1968).
Visconti, Luchino -------------------------------- An aristocrat by birth
and a Marxist by inclination, Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, b. Nov.
2, 1906, d. Mar. 17, 1976, is known both for his contributions to
NEOREALISM and his frank aestheticism. After working with Renoir, he
directed his first film, Ossessione (1942), an antecedent, and arguably one
of the masterpieces, of neorealist cinema. In the film self-destructive
sexual passions are played out against a landscape of extraordinary beauty.
Visconti used documentary techniques in his next film, La Terra Trema (The
Earth Trembles, 1948), to describe the lives of peasants in a Sicilian
fishing village. One of his favorite themes was the tension between family
solidarity and the destructive power of family relationships, best
expressed in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Damned (1969).
Visconti's first film in color, Senso (1953), brilliantly portraying
political and sexual conflicts during the Austro-Italian war of 1866,
displayed the lavish attention to detail and love for period
reconstructions that would become his hallmarks in such literary
adaptations as The Leopard (1963), The Stranger (1967), Death in Venice
(1971), and The Innocent (1978). GAUTAM DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, Luchino Visconti (1973); Stirling,
Monica, Screen of Time: A Study of Luchino Visconti (1979).
Fellini, Federico -------------------------------- {fel-lee'-nee, fay-day-
ree'-koh}^Federico Fellini, Italy's most famous filmmaker, b. Jan. 20,
1920, has worked with equal enthusiasm and undiminished energy as an
exponent of neorealism, as the creator of symbolic fantasies, and as a
popularizer of the flamboyant and grotesque. His personal signature is
nowhere more evident than in the cinematic classics La Strada and La Dolce
Vita.^After starting in Rome as a cartoonist and sketch writer, Fellini
turned in 1939 to script writing, collaborating with Roberto Rossellini on
such neorealist films as Open City (1945) and The Miracle (1948)--in which
he also acted--before emerging as a director on his own. The White Skeikh
(1952), his first solo effort, showed his inventiveness as a comic director,
and I Vitelloni (1953), an evocation of the Rimini of his youth,
demonstrated his insight into the provincial bourgeoisie. La Strada (1954),
starring his wife Giulietta Masina, secured his position as a major
director and won a 1956 Academy Award as the best foreign film. With its
comedy and pathos, stunning visual effects, and haunting musical score, it
prodded the viewer into an awareness of the quixotic nature of life that
remains for Fellini a central truth. This mood was continued in Nights of
Cabiria (1956).^In later films Fellini began to explore more fully the
relationship between reality and dream. La Dolce Vita (1960), a sensational
indictment of the indolence and decadence of modern Rome, was followed by
the more openly symbolic 81/2 (1963), in which Fellini used Pirandellian
techniques to comment on his creative problems as an artist, and Juliet of
the Spirits (1965). Critics were less happy with the exaggerations and
thematic repetitiveness of Satyricon (1969), Roma (1972), and Casanova
(1976). All Fellini's strengths--and few of his excesses--coalesced in
Amarcord (1974), a brilliantly nostalgic portrait of his boyhood in Rimini
during the early years of the fascist era. This and his television film,
The Clowns (1970), reveal the essentially autobiographical wellsprings of
Fellini's art. City of Women (1981) returned to his dream theme. His
later films include And the Ship Sails On (1984) and Ginger and Fred (1986),
which reunited Fellini and Masina on the screen.
Bibliography: Bonadella, Peter, ed., Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism
(1978); Fellini, Federico, Fellini on Fellini, trans. by Isabel Quigley
(1976); Murray, Edward, Fellini the Artist (1976); Rosenthal, Stuart, The
Cinema of Federico Fellini (1976).
Antonioni, Michelangelo -------------------------------- {ahn-toh-nee-oh'-
nee, mee-kel-ahn'-jel-oh}^Michelangelo Antonioni, b. Sept. 29, 1912, is an
Italian director best known for a trilogy of films begun in 1959 that
created a sense of despair through the juxtaposition of haunting visual
imagery, elliptical, mysterious plots, and the portrayal of neurotic, empty
lives. He began his career in the cinema as a film critic and scriptwriter
and, after working with Roberto Rossellini and Marcel Carne, made his debut
as a director in 1943 with the documentary Gente del Po (The People of the
Po Valley). Cronaca di un Amore (Chronicle of a Love, 1950), his first
feature, represented a break with the neorealist tradition. Two later
films, Le Amiche (The Friends, 1955) and Il Grido (The Cry, 1957), were
slow-paced and deliberately obscure in narrative structure. Antonioni's
distinctive style reached its highest expression in the trilogy L'Avventura
(The Adventure, 1959), La Notte (Night, 1960), and L'Eclisse (The Eclipse,
1962). In these films, and in the machine-dominated Deserto Rosso (Red
Desert, 1964), his first color film, mystery and eroticism merge in
landscapes of compelling beauty. Antonioni's subsequent English-language
films, Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Passenger (1975),
and Identification Of A Woman (1982) had less success with the critics
despite their stylistic interest.
Bibliography: Cameron, Ian, and Wood, Robin, Antonioni (1969); Sarris,
Andrew, ed., Interviews with Film Directors (1968).
Wertmuller, Lina -------------------------------- {wairt'-muhl-ur}^A highly
original and controversial Italian filmmaker, Lina Wertmuller, b. c.1926,
specializes in melodramatic tragicomedies characterized by an idiosyncratic
blend of wit, irony, socialist dialectics, and sheer grotesquerie. She has
taken on such themes as economic exploitation and the inability of the
striving worker to rise above it in The Seduction of Mimi (1972), an
anarchist's abortive attempt to assassinate Mussolini in Love and Anarchy
(1973), the subordination of natural love to class interests in Swept Away
(1975), and the insanities to which chauvinism--male or national--can lead
in Seven Beauties (1976). In 1977 she directed her first English language
film, The End of the World in Our Usual Bed in A Night Full of Rain. Her
other films include Blood Feud (1978), A Joke of Destiny (1983), and Sotto
Sotto (1985). She directed an off-Broadway play entitled Love and Magic in
Mama's Kitchen (1983) and wrote the novel The Head of Alvise (1982).
Wertmuller has demonstrated rare ingenuity in mixing the tragic with the
farcical but is more successful in communicating her love for human nature
than any political message. ELEANOR M. GATES
Bibliography: Ferlita, Ernest, and May, John R., Parables of Lina
Wertmuller (1977).
Guinness, Sir Alec -------------------------------- (gin'-es) Alec Guinness,
b. Apr. 2, 1914, is an English stage and screen actor known particularly
for his character roles and comic impersonations. He was a respected member
of the Old Vic when roles in film adaptations of two Dickens novels--
Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946) and Fagin in Oliver Twist
(1948)--brought him a larger public. He became better known through
bravura performances in such British film comedies as Kind Hearts and
Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit
(1951), and The Ladykillers (1955).
Guinness received an Oscar for his performance in The Bridge on the River
Kwai (1957) and was knighted in 1959. Guinness subsequently gave
distinguished dramatic performances in Tunes of Glory (1960), Lawrence of
Arabia (1962), and Star Wars (1977).
Since 1980, Guinness has made several television appearances that further
attest to his versatility as a character actor, including his highly
acclaimed performances as George Smiley in the television miniseries
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" (1980) and its sequel, "Smiley's People"
(1981)--both based on John LECARRE novels.
Bibliography: Tynan, Kenneth, Alec Guinness: An Illustrated Study of His
Work for Stage and Screen, 3d ed. (1961).
Kurosawa, Akira -------------------------------- {koo-roh'-sah-wah, ah-
kee'-rah}^The best-known Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa, b. Mar.
23, 1910, first achieved international recognition with Rashomon (1950)--a
brilliant study of a crime of violence told from four different points of
view--which won the 1951 Venice grand prize. His reputation within Japan,
however, was based on a series of chambara (sword-fight) epics set in
feudal times, such as Sugata Sanshiro (1943), The Seven Samurai (1954), and
Yojimbo (1961). Kurosawa has also dealt sensitively with contemporary
themes in Ikiru (1952), about a lonely old man dying of cancer; High and
Low (1963), a taut crime drama set in modern Yokohama; and Red Beard (1965),
an indictment of social injustice. Known for his use of multiple cameras,
extended takes, and tight editing, Kurosawa has made screen adaptations of
Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (1951), Gorky's The Lower Depths (1957), and
Shakespeare's Macbeth (Throne of Blood, 1957). Dersu Uzala (1976), which
won an Academy Award, was made in the USSR. With Kagemusha (1980), he
returned to Japan and to the medieval drama he has exploited so
successfully in the past. His samurai adaptation of King Lear, Ran (1985),
was both a critical and popular success. Kurosawa's reminiscenses
(Something Like an Autobiography, trans. by Audie E. Bock) were published
in 1982.
Bibliography: Mellen, Joan, Voices from the Japanese Cinema (1975); Richie,
Donald, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965). Sato, Tadao, Currents in
Japanese Cinema (1982).
Pinter, Harold -------------------------------- {pin'-tur}^Harold Pinter, b.
Oct. 10, 1930, one of England's leading contemporary playwrights, studied
acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his theatrical career
as an actor. He wrote his first play, The Room, in 1957, but first
established himself as a highly original talent in 1960 with The Caretaker,
a characteristic Pinteresque drama in its evocation of terror amid farcical
"business" and sometimes fanciful dialogue. Typically, Pinter's
solipsistic characters seek security, self-identification, and verification
of truth but find communication virtually impossible. Instead, there are
pathetic games, cliches, long silences, and sinister threats, all presented
in suspenseful yet comic plots. Akin to the theater of the absurd,
Pinter's plays have more accurately been called "comedies of menace."^In
Pinter's first full-length play, The Birthday Party (1958), for instance,
two gangsters interrogate and terrorize a nervous young pianist. The
Caretaker (1960) centers on an old derelict who intrudes on two mysterious
brothers and is ultimately thrown out by them. Pinter's reputation as an
allusive and controversial dramatist grew significantly with The Homecoming
(1965), in which a married couple visits the lower-class father and
brothers of the husband, now a philosophy professor in the United States,
and the wife finally remains in England to serve the family as a prostitute.
Two later plays, Old Times (1971) and No Man's Land (1975), deal,
respectively, with a middle-aged couple, their mysterious visitor (who once
knew the wife), and the power of memory to wound; and the curious
relationship between two elderly men of letters, one a success, the other a
failure.^A less typical, lyrical Pinter double bill consists of the
solitary reminiscences of a sentimental wife and her bluff but
unimaginative mate (Landscape, 1968) and of a woman and two men with whom
she once kept company (Silence, 1969). More characteristic of Pinter are
the one-act plays The Dumb Waiter (1960), The Lover (1963), Tea Party
(1965), and The Basement (1967).^Pinter has written screenplays for his own
The Caretaker (1962) and The Birthday Party (1969) as well as for three
films directed by Joseph Losey: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and
The Go-Between (1971). The controversial screenplay for the movie The
French Lieutenant's Woman (1981; John Fowles's novel) was also by Pinter.
He also adapted Russell Hoban's novel Turtle Diary (1985) for the screen.
Since 1967 Pinter has also directed such plays as Simon Gray's Butley
(1971; film, 1973) and Otherwise Engaged (1975). His most recent plays are
Betrayal (1979; film, 1983, from Pinter's screenplay), and Family Voices
(1981). In 1985 he directed Lauren Bacall in a London production of
Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. MYRON MATLAW
Bibliography: Dukore, Bernard F., Where Laughter Stops: Pinter's
Tragicomedy (1976); Esslin, Martin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold
Pinter (1970); Gale, Steven H., Butter's Going Up: A Critical Analysis of
Harold Pinter's Work (1977); Hayman, Ronald, Harold Pinter (1973);
Hinchliffe, Arnold, Harold Pinter (1975).
Mizoguchi, Kenji -------------------------------- (mee'-zoh-goo-chee, ken'-
jee) The Japanese film director Kenji Mizoguchi, b. May 16, 1898, d. Aug.
24, 1956, is best known for his jidai-geki, or "period dramas," with their
portrayal of the horrors of war, the lives of courtesans, and male-female
relationships. His films (about 80) are wrought with a beauty and clarity
unparalleled in Japanese cinema. Early productions dealt with the
sufferings of women; his later efforts, such as Saikaku Ichidai Onna (The
Life of Oharu, 1952), Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), and Chikamatsu Monogatari
(1954), reflect his meditative style, which is characterized by long takes,
a virtually immobile camera, few close-ups, and slow dissolves. GAUTAM
DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Anderson, Joseph L., and Richie, Donald, The Jap anese Film
(1959).
Ray, Satyajit -------------------------------- {ry, suht'-yuh-jit}^Satyajit
Ray, b. May 2, 1922, is India's foremost film director. A versatile
craftsman who has worked in several film genres, Ray is known best outside
India for his moving depictions of Indian family life. His acknowledged
masterpiece, the neorealist trilogy made up of Pather Panchali (1955),
Aparajito (1956), and The World of Apu (1959), lyrically chronicles the
day-to-day activities of a rural Bengali family and the coming of age of
the boy Apu. Two other outstanding Ray films, Jalsaghar (The Music Room,
1958) and Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963), deal with the changing nature of
contemporary Indian life, whereas Charulata (1964) is a graceful adaptation
of Rabindranath Tagore's classic portrait of the Indian middle classes in
the Victorian era. In later films such as Aranyer din Ratri (Days and
Nights in the Forest, 1970), Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1970), and
Seemabadha (Company Ltd., 1971), Ray has focused on political and social
themes without losing his humanistic perspective. He composed the music
for many of his films, including the Ghare baire (Home of the World, 1984),
based on Tagore's novel about the Bengal in the early 20th century. GAUTAM
DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Seton, Marie, Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray (1971).
Bergman, Ingrid -------------------------------- Ingrid Bergman, b. Aug.
29, 1915, d. Aug. 29, 1982, was a popular stage and film actress in her
native Sweden before going to Hollywood, where she made an English-language
version of her Swedish hit Intermezzo (1939). Bergman was probably best
known for her roles in Casablanca (1942); For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943);
Gaslight (1944), for which she received her first Academy Award; The Bells
of St. Mary's (1945); and two Alfred HITCHCOCK films, Spellbound (1945)
and Notorious (1946). She returned to Europe after the scandalous
publicity surrounding her affair with Italian director Roberto ROSSELLINI
(whom she later married and divorced) during the filming of Stromboli
(1950). But she returned to Hollywood and triumphed in Anastasia (1956),
for which she received another Oscar. She received a third for her role in
Murder on the Orient Express (1974). She also starred in Ingmar Bergman's
Autumn Sonata (1978). Her last role was in the television film A Woman
Called Golda (1981).
Bibliography: Bergman, Ingrid, and Burgess, Allan, Ingrid Bergman: My Story
(1980); Quirk, Lawrence J., The Films of Ingrid Bergman (1970; repr. 1975).
Bergman, Ingmar -------------------------------- Ingmar Ernst Bergman, b.
July 14, 1918, is a major Swedish filmmaker who for over 20 years has
sustained a reputation as an artist of international stature. The son of a
Lutheran pastor, Bergman attended Stockholm University and began his
directing career in the theater, where he continues to work as extensively
as he does in films. He wrote the screenplay for the director Alf
Sjoberg's internationally acclaimed Torment in 1944, and the next year he
directed his first film, Crisis.^Although Bergman's Illicit Interlude
(1950) was moderately successful and the lighthearted Smiles of a Summer
Night (1955) even more so, it was only after The Seventh Seal (1957), which
made an extraordinarily powerful impression with its despairing philosophy
and stark medieval imagery, that a widespread interest developed in such
earlier Bergman films as The Naked Night (1953) and A Lesson in Love (1956).
With The Seventh Seal, Bergman definitively established the theme that was
to characterize virtually all his subsequent work--the individual's quasi-
religious search for faith in a context of anguished doubt. This is
central to such varied films as Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician
(1958), The Virgin Spring (1960), and his "chamber" trilogy: Through a
Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963).^By the
mid-1960s Bergman had assembled a group of actors into a now familiar stock
company, among them Max VON SYDOW, Liv ULLMANN, Harriet Andersson, Bibi
Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, and Ingrid Thulin. In 1966 he undertook a
greater formal experimentation with Persona, an intriguing psychological
study of two women that is considered by many one of his most important
works. This was followed by a less successful Gothic exercise, Hour of the
Wolf (1968); an antiwar allegory, Shame (1968); and a more realistic film,
The Passion of Anna (1969). In the searing Cries and Whispers (1972),
Bergman again used Gothic and dreamlike elements, this time in an intense
exploration of the relationship among three sisters, but that film was
followed by the naturalistic simplicity of Scenes from a Marriage (1974), a
great popular success. Critics were less pleased with some of Bergman's
later work, finding the subject matter of Face to Face (1975) overly
familiar and rating his English-language The Serpent's Egg (1977) an
overall failure. Autumn Sonata (1978) and From the Life of the Marionettes
(1980) were critical successes, however, although the latter failed at the
box office. Fanny and Alexander (1983), a rich and fantastic portrait of
childhood in a theatrical family, was regarded as one of his finest films
and won an Academy Award for best foreign language film of 1983.
Subsequently, Bergman directed After the Rehearsal (1984), his meditation
on a life in the theater. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Bergman, Ingmar, Bergman on Bergman (1973); Cowie, Peter,
Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography (1982); Marker, Lise-Lone and
Frederick J., Ingmar Bergman; Four Decades in the Theater (1982); Mosley,
Philip, Ingmar Bergman: The Cinema as Mistress (1981); Petrie, Vlada, ed.,
Film and Dreams: An Approach to Bergman (1981); Simon, John, Ingmar Bergman
Directs (1972); Wood, Robin, Ingmar Bergman (1969).
New Wave -------------------------------- The term New Wave (in French,
Nouvelle Vague) is used to identify the movement and style of a group of
French film directors, including Claude CHABROL, Jean Luc GODARD, Alain
RESNAIS, and Francois TRUFFAUT, who made their first feature films between
1958 and 1961. Most wrote for the film journal CAHIERS DU CINEMA and
helped develop the auteur (director-oriented) theory of film criticism.
Rejecting traditional French film directing, they advocated instead the
more personal and autobiographical approach used in such films as
Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959). They also emulated American genre films,
such as the detective movie, and favored low-budget location shooting over
studio filming. Visually, they quoted from one another and employed mobile
camera techniques and rapid jump cuts, such as those found in Godard's
Breathless (1959).
Bibliography: Graham, Peter J., comp., The New Wave: Critical Landmarks
(1968).
Resnais, Alain 0re-nay'0 -------------------------------- Known for his
innovative literary approach to film, Alain Resnais, b. June 3, 1922,
became one of the leading directors of French NEW WAVE cinema when it
emerged in the late 1950s. Before his feature debut Resnais had spent 11
years making brilliant documentary films on subjects ranging from the
painter Van Gogh (1948) and Picasso's Guernica (1950) to the manufacture of
polystyrene (1958) and the French National Library (1956). His most
celebrated documentary, however, remains Night and Fog (1955), an
unforgettable look at the Nazi extermination camp system.
All Resnais's full-length films are marked by a profound social concern and
precise visual style. Each has been made in collaboration with a writer
who is also a novelist or playwright of note, and each is characterized
both by a totally novel structure and by a fascination with the exploration
of time and memory, illusion and reality. Resnais's impact is shown by the
way in which all of his early collaborators--Marguerite Duras on Hiroshima
Mon Amour (1959), Alain Robbe-Grillet on Last Year at Marienbad (1961),
Jean Cayrol on Muriel (1963), and Jorge Semprun on La Guerre est finie
(1966)--have gone on to direct their own feature films. After a long break
from filmmaking in the early 1970s, Resnais returned with two cool but
exquisitely shot films, Stavisky (1974) and Providence (1977). Mon Oncle
d'Amerique (1981), made in collaboration with screenwriter Jean Gruault,
was critically and commercially his most successful film since La Guerre
est Finie. Resnais again teamed with Gruault for La Vie Est un Roman
(1983; trans. as Life Is a Bed of Roses). ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Armes, Roy, The Cinema of Alain Resnais (1968); Monaco, James,
Alain Resnais (1978); Ward, John, Alain Resnais or the Theme of Time (1968).
Chabrol, Claude -------------------------------- {shah-brawl'}^Claude
Chabrol, b. June 24, 1930, is one of the original film directors of French
NEW WAVE cinema. He is best known for his thriller films made in homage to
Alfred Hitchcock, about whom he coauthored Hitchcock (1957). Chabrol has
also been a critic for the influential film journal Cahiers du Cinema, and
his first picture, Le Beau Serge (1958), is generally credited with
establishing the New Wave style. Other works of this skilled and prolific
filmmaker include Les Cousins (1958), Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidele
(1968), Le Boucher (1969), Juste avant la nuit (1971), Ophelia (1973),
Folies Bourgeoise (1977), Blood Relatives (1979), and Le Sang des Autres
(1983).
Bibliography: Wood, Robin, and Walker, Michael, Claude Chabrol (1970).
Bertolucci, Bernardo -------------------------------- (bair-toh-loo'-chee)
The Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci, b. Mar. 16, 1940, is
internationally known for such films as The Conformist (1970), a searing
portrait of fascism, and the controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972). He
was greatly influenced by his mentor, Pier Paolo PASOLINI. The later
influence of Jean-Luc GODARD is seen in Partner (1968) and that of Alain
RESNAIS in The Spider's Strategy (1970). Bertolucci's remarkable use of
setting and his precise camera movements, radical political viewpoint, and
stringent emotionalism have culminated in such other films as his 6-hour-
long epic 1900 (1975). In Luna (1979), however, critics saw his camera
moves as overdeliberate, contrasting with the visually restrained moves of
Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1982). GAUTAM DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Gelmis, Joseph, The Film Director as Superstar (1970).
Godard, Jean Luc -------------------------------- {goh-dahr', zhawn luek}
^One of the most influential film directors of the 1960s, Jean Luc Godard,
b. Paris, Dec. 3, 1930, of Swiss parents, is best known for his
innovative NEW WAVE films and for his increasingly radical approaches to
politics and art. His experimental use of the hand-held camera, jump cuts,
and flash-shots; his disregard for cinematic continuity; and his recourse
to question-and-answer sessions within films to illustrate philosophical
dialectics did much to revolutionize cinema.^A lively and controversial
contributor to the important journal Cahiers du Cinema from 1952 on, Godard
made several shorts before directing his first feature, Breathless (1959).
In Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier, 1960), on the Algerian War, and
other films, Godard combined documentary with fictional footage in an
attempt to arrive at a truth beyond art or reality.^Godard's early films
dealt with the nature and contradictions of modern society. Of particular
interest to him was the place of women in society. Une Femme est une femme
(A Woman is a Woman, 1961), a film on male-female relationships with a
happy ending, was followed by the more biting and ironic My Life to Live
(1962), on prostitution, Une Femme mariee (A Married Woman, 1964),
Masculin-Feminin (1966), and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966).
Their themes rested on the notion of woman as object, but his approach
brought into question the entire commodity-advertising nexus of today's
consumer society--as did his more blatant attacks on materialism,
Alphaville (1965) and Weekend (1968).^In the late 1960s and early 1970s,
Godard's work became increasingly experimental and noncommercial. In such
films as Made in USA (1966), La Chinoise (1967), Sympathy for the Devil
(1968), starring the Rolling Stones, and the autobiographical Tout va bien
(Everything's Fine, 1972), Godard subordinated considerations of plot and
pared down his visual imagery to a few static tableaux and became
increasingly devoted to Marxist polemics. Later, however, Godard returned
to commercial filmmaking with his Every Man for Himself (1981), Passion
(1983), First Name Carmen (1984) and Detective (1985). His treatment of
religious themes in Hail Mary (1985) generated much controversy. GAUTAM
DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Barr, Charles, et al., The Films of Jean-Luc Godard (1970);
Brown, Royal S., ed., Focus on Godard (1972); Collet, Jean, Jean-Luc Godard,
trans. by Ciba Vaughan, rev. ed. (1970); Kawin, Bruce F., Mindscreen:
Bergman, Godard, and the Language of First-Person Film (1978); Kriedl, John
Francis, Jean-Luc Godard (1980).
Malle, Louis -------------------------------- (mahl) Louis Malle, b. Oct.
30, 1932, is a French film director known for his eclecticism,
unconventional themes, and willingness to experiment. After serving as an
assistant to Jacques Cousteau and Robert Bresson, Malle in 1957 directed
his first film, Frantic (French title: L'Ascenseur pour l'echafaud), which
introduced actress Jeanne Moreau and photographer Henri Decae to the
cinema-going public. With such later films as The Lovers (1958) and Zazie
in the Metro (1960), Malle came to be recognized as a director with an
acute eye for detail and characterization. The Fire Within (1963), a
penetrating study of an alcoholic, was followed by a musical-comedy romp
set in revolutionary Mexico, Viva Maria (1965), starring the surprising duo
of Moreau and Brigitte Bardot. Malle's refusal to indulge in psychology
and his love of extremes in human nature have prompted him to tackle--
successfully and with humor--an incestuous relationship between mother and
son in Murmur of the Heart (1971) and--with somewhat mixed results--child
prostitution in Pretty Baby (1978). Considered his finest film, the
controversial Lacombe, Lucien (1974) sympathetically portrays the life of a
teenaged French collaborator with the German army of occupation.
Malle has continued to demonstrate his versatility with such films as the
anti-heroic black comedy Atlantic City (1981; screenplay by John GUARE),
about has-beens who have lived their lives in a resort town and hopefuls
who arrive because of the casino boom. My Dinner with Andre (1982)
consisted of two men philosophizing over dinner about spirituality and the
artist's role in society. Crackers (1983) depicted a bumbling group of
down-and-out thieves in San Francisco. In 1982, Malle directed an off-
Broadway production of Guare's play Lydie Breeze. Malle has also made
several highly regarded films on India. GAUTAM DASGUPTA
Davis, Bette -------------------------------- Bette Davis is the stage name
of Ruth Elizabeth Davis, b. Apr. 5, 1908, for many years one of
Hollywood's most popular actresses. Known for her striking, determined
looks, distinctive voice, and outspoken press comments, Davis won the
Academy Award as best actress in Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938).
Particularly acclaimed among Davis's many performances are her roles in
Dark Victory (1939), Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Little Foxes (1941),
Watch on the Rhine (1943), All About Eve (1950), and Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane? (1962), in which she played an insane, aging child star. In
recent years she has primarily appeared in television films such as Little
Gloria . . . Happy at Last and A Piano for Mrs. Cimino (both 1982), and
the pilot of the series Hotel (1983). Davis received the Life Achievement
Award of the American Film Institute in 1976. LESLIE HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Hyman, B. D., My Mother's Keeper (1985); Ringgold, Gene,
Films of Bette Davis (1970); Stine, Whitney, Mother Goddam (1974); Vermilye,
Jerry, Bette Davis (1973)
Grant, Cary -------------------------------- Cary Grant is the professional
name of English-born Alexander Archibald Leach, b. Jan. 18, 1904, who won
world fame in dozens of Hollywood movies as the quintessentially debonair,
self-confident sophisticate. Appearing in films from 1932 on, he played
roles particularly suited to his talents in The Awful Truth (1937) and My
Favorite Wife (1940) opposite Irene Dunne, in The Philadelphia Story (1940)
with Katharine Hepburn, and in such Alfred Hitchcock thrillers as Suspicion
(1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest
(1959). Grant retired in 1970.
Bibliography: Deschner, Donald, The Films of Cary Grant (1973); Govoni,
Albert, Cary Grant (1971).
Cooper, Gary -------------------------------- Gary Cooper, b. Helena,
Mont., May 7, 1901, d. May 13, 1961, was the stage name of Frank James
Cooper, one of the most famous of Hollywood's film stars. Known especially
for his portrayals of strong, silent heroes, he won Academy awards for two
such characterizations: Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952). Cooper
played variations on this role in films such as The Virginians (1929), A
Farewell to Arms (1933), The Plainsman (1937), Beau Geste (1939), For Whom
the Bell Tolls (1943), and The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955). His
lighter comic and romantic films include Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and
Love in the Afternoon (1957). LESLIE HALLIWELL
Gable, Clark -------------------------------- Such was the brash charm of
American film actor Clark Gable, b. Feb. 1, 1901, d. Nov. 16, 1960,
that for 30 years he was the undisputed king of Hollywood. As a fast-
talking he-man, he was noted for the force of his personality more than for
acting talent. Gable appeared in such classic films as Red Dust (1932); It
Happened One Night, for which he won the Academy Award (1934); Mutiny On
The Bounty (1935); San Francisco (1936); and, most notably, as Rhett Butler
in Gone With The Wind (1939). His postwar films were popular but far less
memorable. He died during the filming of The Misfits (1961). LESLIE
HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Tornabene, Lyn, Long Live the King (1977).
Sternberg, Josef von -------------------------------- The films of
Austrian-American director Josef von Sternberg, pseudonym of Jonas Stern, b.
Vienna, May 29, 1894, d. Dec. 22, 1969, are perhaps the supreme example
of the narrative film's pursuit of visual beauty at the expense of dramatic
values. Sternberg had his first popular success with Underworld (1927),
which was followed by The Docks of New York (1928) and Thunderbolt (1929).
Sternberg then went to Germany to direct The Blue Angel (1930), a
sensational success that inaugurated the director's long association with
his "discovery," Marlene DIETRICH. Their early films together--Morocco
(1930), Dishonoured (1931), and Shanghai Express (1932)--displayed the
visual dynamism that distinguished Sternberg's previous work, but this
gradually gave way in The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman
(1935) to increasingly static and purely decorative glorifications of
Dietrich's mystique. Following the increasingly unpopular Dietrich cycle,
Sternberg worked rarely, and, of his later films, only The Shanghai Gesture
(1941) and Anatahan (1953) are notable. His autobiography, Fun in a Chinese
Laundry, appeared in 1965. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Baxter, John, The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg (1971);
Sarris, Andrew, The Films of Josef von Sternberg (1966); Weinberg, Herman,
Josef von Sternberg (1967).
Hawks, Howard -------------------------------- In a career that stretched
back to silent movies, the film director Howard Hawks, b. Goshen, Ind.,
May 30, 1896, d. Dec. 26, 1977, contributed notably to virtually every
movie genre: the gangster film in Scarface (1932), screwball comedy in
Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), the war film in The
Dawn Patrol (1930) and Air Force (1943), action-adventure in To Have and
Have Not (1944), the private-eye film in The Big Sleep (1946), the Western
in Red River (1948), and the musical in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).
Whether Hawks's films live up to the largest claims of his admirers, few
other directors have better exemplified the virtues of the Hollywood
professional. Although his films typically concentrate on a group bound by
professionalism in some common endeavor, their enduring pleasure results
less from their subjects or themes than from a resolute unpretentiousness
and brisk, direct style. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: McBride, Joseph, ed., Focus on Howard Hawks (1972); Willis,
Donald, The Films of Howard Hawks (1975); Wood, Robin, Howard Hawks (1968).
Capra, Frank -------------------------------- The American film director
Frank Capra, b. May 18, 1897, virtually created a genre with his popular
1930s film comedies. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) was the prototype for
Capra's most characteristic films, in which an idealistic innocent is
pitted against the forces of corruption in an apparently hopeless but
ultimately victorious battle. Capra won Academy Awards for best direction
with It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds (1936), and You Can't Take It
With You (1938). With an ever-increasing stylistic virtuosity, he went on
to make Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and
It's A Wonderful Life (1946). His Lost Horizon (1937) and Arsenic and Old
Lace (1942) also proved popular. He was in charge of the U.S.
government's war documentary series Why We Fight (1942-45). His
autobiography, The Name Above the Title, appeared in 1971. In 1982 he was
given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.^
WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Glatzer, Richard, and Raeburn, John, eds., Frank Capra: The
Man and His Films (1975); Poague, Leland A., The Cinema of Frank Capra
(1975); Willis, Donald C., The Films of Frank Capra (1974).
Ford, John -------------------------------- (playwright) John Ford, b. Apr.
17, 1586, d. c.1630, was an English playwright, generally considered the
best of the late Stuart dramatists (1625-40). After writing several
nondramatic pieces, Ford collaborated with Thomas Dekker on The Witch of
Edmonton (1621). Among the seven intense, pessimistic tragedies he wrote
on his own are: The Lovers's Melancholy (1628), The Broken Heart (1633),
'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633), and Perkin Warbeck (1634). Influenced by
Robert Burton and contemporary Neoplatonism, Ford's drama deals with a
variety of love relationships. Although sometimes prurient, the plays in
general are carefully balanced in their presentation of questionable moral
stances. W. L. GODSHALK
Bibliography: Anderson, Donald K., Jr., John Ford (1972); Leech, Clifford,
John Ford and the Drama of His Time (1957); Stavig, Mark, John Ford and the
Traditional Moral Order (1968).
Ford, John -------------------------------- (film director) John Ford was
the name adopted by Sean Aloysius O'Feeny, b. Feb. 1, 1895, d. Aug. 31,
1973, an American film director whose works are noted for their sustained
creativity, breadth of vision, and pictorial beauty. Ford began directing
Westerns in 1917, but his first great success was not until The Iron Horse
(1924), followed by another, Three Bad Men (1926). Thirteen more years
passed, however, before Ford, whose name became associated with the Western
film, would make another, Stagecoach (1939), still regarded as a classic of
the genre. In the intervening years he directed such varied works as Judge
Priest (1934), The Informer (1935), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), and
The Hurricane (1937).
Stagecoach was followed by an outpouring of major works--Young Mr. Lincoln
(1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Long
Voyage Home (1940), and How Green Was My Valley (1941). These films
celebrated community life and were imbued with an elegiacal sense of the
past. The war years resulted in the first American war documentary, The
Battle of Midway (1942), and another of Ford's enduring works, They Were
Expendable (1945). After the war, Ford returned to the Western with the
lyrical My Darling Clementine (1946); a loose trilogy of cavalry life--Fort
Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950); and
an innovative blending of song and story in Wagonmaster (1950).
During the six years before Ford's next Western, he directed The Quiet Man
(1952)--a touching and humorous story of an Irish-American's return to his
homeland--and several other films. Returning to the Western with The
Searchers (1956), Ford revealed a new ambiguity in his vision of the
American past. Increasingly, in such later works as The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance (1962) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964), the exaltation of the
civilizing of the West that was seen in his earlier films was darkened by a
regret over the loss of freedom brought by civilization. During his career,
Ford established and repeatedly used a stock company of actors, including
Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne, and Ward Bond. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Bogdanovich, Peter, John Ford (1968); McBride, Joseph, and
Wilmington, Michael, John Ford (1975); Place, J. A., The Western Films of
John Ford (1974) and The Non-Western Films of John Ford (1979); Sarris,
Andrew, The John Ford Movie Mystery (1975); Sinclair, Andrew, John Ford
(1979).
Cagney, James -------------------------------- A fast-talking Irish-
American film actor who danced brilliantly and frequently on screen, James
Cagney, b. July 17, 1899, d. March 30, 1986, achieved fame in Hollywood
as a cocky gangster in Public Enemy (1931) and became stereotyped for
several years thereafter. His best roles, which reflect his punchy,
cheerful personality, were in Footlight Parade (1933), Lady Killer (1933),
G-Men (1935), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Boy Meets Girl (1938),
Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), White Heat
(1949), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Man of a Thousand Faces (as Lon Chaney,
1957), and One Two Three (1961). He won an Academy Award for his
performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). At the age of
82, Cagney emerged from 20 years of retirement to make an acclaimed
appearance in the film Ragtime (1981), and the television film Terrible Joe
Moran (1984). LESLIE HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Bergman, Andrew, James Cagney (1973); Cagney, James, Cagney
by Cagney (1976); McGilligan, Patrick, Cagney (1975).
Muni, Paul -------------------------------- {myoo'-nee}^Paul Muni, b. Muni
Weisenfreund in Lemberg, Austria (now Lvov, USSR), Sept. 22, 1985, d. Aug.
25, 1967, was a character actor who became a top Hollywood star in the
1930s. He went to the United States with his family in 1907. As a young
man, Muni gained experience touring with the Yiddish Art Theatre company;
he first brought his conscientious approach and animated acting style to
the screen in 1928. His powerful performances in films include Scarface
(1932), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Story of Louis
Pasteur (1936; Academy Award), The Good Earth (1937), The Life of Emile
Zola (1937), Juarez (1941), and The Last Angry Man (1959).
Robinson, Edward G. -------------------------------- Edward G. Robinson,
stage name of Emanuel Goldenberg, b. Romania, Dec. 12, 1893, d. Jan. 26,
1973, became one of the major figures of Hollywood films of the 1930s.
Short and dynamic, with a distinctive voice, he specialized in gangster
parts but later proved equally adept at comedy or in benevolent character
roles. His most important films include Little Caesar (1930), A Slight
Case of Murder (1938), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), Double Indemnity
and The Woman in the Window (both 1944), and Key Largo (1948). LESLIE
HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Robinson, Edward G., and Spigelgass, Leonard, All My
Yesterdays (1975).
Chevalier, Maurice -------------------------------- (shuh-vahl'-ee-ay)
Maurice Chevalier, b. Sept. 12, 1888, d. Jan. 1, 1972, was a debonair
French singer, actor, and dancer who for more than 50 years was a popular
international cabaret artist. He had two Hollywood careers: as a romantic
lead in such films as The Love Parade (1930), Love Me Tonight (1932), and
Folies Bergere (1935), and as an elderly character actor in Gigi (1958),
Fanny (1961), and In Search of the Castaways (1962). LESLIE HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Ringgold, Gene, and Bodeen, DeWitt, Chevalier: The Films
and Career of Maurice Chevalier (1973; 2d ed., 1975).
Berkeley, Busby -------------------------------- {burk'-lee} Busby Berkeley
was the pseudonym of William Berkeley Enos, b. Los Angeles, Nov. 29, 1895,
d. Mar. 14, 1976, a choreographer known for the grandiose spectacles he
created in the Hollywood musical extravaganzas of the 1930s. From success
on the Broadway stage, Berkeley took his dance-directing techniques to
movies. The Berkeley trademark--kaleidoscopic patterns of massed dancers
filmed from above--is most strikingly displayed in the Eddie Cantor vehicle
Whoopee (1930) and in 42nd Street (1933), the Gold Diggers series (1933,
1935, 1937, 1938), Roman Scandals (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), and
Babes in Arms (1939). His lead dancer was Ruby KEELER. WILLIAM S.
PECHTER
Bibliography: Martin, Dave, and Pike, Bob, The Genius of Busby Berkeley
(1973); Terry, Jim, and Thomas, Tony, The Busby Berkeley Book (1973).
Astaire, Fred -------------------------------- Fred Astaire is the stage
name of Frederick Austerlitz, b. Omaha, Nebr., May 10, 1899, who brought
new distinction to musical comedy with his elegant and witty song and dance
routines. First teamed with his sister Adele on the stage, Astaire turned
to Hollywood on her retirement from show business, making his initial
screen appearance in Dancing Lady (1933). His greatest success came when
he was paired with Ginger ROGERS in a series of romantic comedies featuring
their dance numbers. Flying Down to Rio (1933) was followed by The Gay
Divorcee (1934), Roberta and Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet and Swing
Time (1936), Shall We Dance? (1937), and The Story of Vernon and Irene
Castle (1939). In 1949 they were reunited in The Barkleys of Broadway.
With other partners, Astaire starred in such musicals as Daddy Longlegs
(1955) and Funny Face (1957). He also appeared in dramatic roles. A
perfectionist who often choreographed his own dances, he received a special
Academy Award in 1949 for "raising the standards of all musicals." LESLIE
HALLIWELL
Bibliography: Astaire, Fred, Steps in Time (1959); Croce, Arlene, The Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (1972; repr. 1978); Freedland, Michael,
Fred Astaire: An Illustrated Biography (1977); Green, Stanley, and
Goldblatt, Burt, Starring Fred Astaire (1S973).
Rogers, Ginger -------------------------------- Singer, actress, and dancer
Ginger Rogers, b. Virginia McMath, Independence, Mo., July 16, 1911, is
best known for the movie musicals she made with Fred ASTAIRE. After
playing vaudeville as a teenager, she made her debut on Broadway in 1929
and entered feature films in 1930.
The famous Rogers and Astaire dance team first starred in Flying Down to
Rio (1933) and developed their now classic routines in The Gay Divorcee
(1934), Top Hat (1935), and Swing Time (1936). Rogers, who also appeared
in dramatic roles, won an Academy Award for Kitty Foyle (1940). She made
numerous films during the next two decades and returned to the musical
comedy stage in Hello, Dolly (1965) and Mame (1969).
Bibliography: Croce, Arlene, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (1978).
Huston, John -------------------------------- {hue'-stuhn}^The son of actor
Walter Huston, film director, writer, and actor John Huston, b. Nevada,
Mo., Aug. 5, 1906, made his dazzlingly auspicious directorial debut with
The Maltese Falcon (1941). For years, Huston's reputation as one of the
most strongly individualistic of American directors was sustained through
such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle
(1950), The African Queen (1951), and Beat the Devil (1954). Thereafter, he
succumbed to pretentiousness and slipped into a decline. Signs of his old
form could occasionally be seen in such films as The Misfits (1961), Fat
City (1972), and Wise Blood (1979). Huston directed the film version of the
musical Annie (1982), and Prizzi's Honor (1985). As an actor, Huston was
notable in The Cardinal (1963), Chinatown (1974), Winter Kills (1979), and
Under the Volcano (1984). WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Huston, John, An Open Book (1980); Kaminsky, Stuart M., John
Huston: Maker of Magic (1978).
Wyler, William -------------------------------- A three-time winner of the
Academy Award for best director during the 1940s and '50s, William Wyler, b.
Alsace, July 1, 1902, d. July 27, 1981, was generally regarded as the
foremost craftsman among Hollywood directors. Wyler's long association with
producer Samuel Goldwyn resulted in a number of films based on literary
texts, including Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights
(1939), and The Little Foxes (1941). Mrs. Miniver (1942) won Wyler his
first Academy Award, a success capped by that of the award-winning The Best
Years of Our Lives (1946), whose depiction of returning war veterans was
praised for having brought a new maturity to American films. Subsequent
Wyler films of note include The Heiress (1949), Detective Story (1951),
Roman Holiday (1953), Ben-Hur (1959), for which he received a third Academy
Award, and Funny Girl (1968). In recent years, however, Wyler had been
criticized for the anonymity of his style. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Madsen, Axel, William Wyler (1973).
Sturges, Preston -------------------------------- (stur'-jis) For a time in
the 1940s, Preston Sturges, pseudonym of Edmund P. Biden, b. Chicago, Aug.
29, 1898, d. Aug. 6, 1959, held a position of creative preeminence in
Hollywood as a writer-director who was acclaimed by critics and public
alike. Sturges directed his first film, The Great McGinty, in 1940, and
followed it with a string of successes that included The Lady Eve (1941),
Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and Hail
the Conquering Hero (1944), breakneck farces that shrewdly satirized
American life. But Sturges's touch seemed to falter with the semiserious
The Great Moment (1944), and the only time he returned to form afterwards,
in the black comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948), the public failed to respond.
WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Ursini, James, The Fabulous Life and Times of Preston Sturges
(1973).
Wilder, Billy -------------------------------- {wyl'-dur}^Whether comedies
or melodramas, the films of American writer-director Billy Wilder, b.
Vienna, June 22, 1906, have been distinguished by their cynicism and
sophistication. Wilder established his talent for farce with the first
Hollywood film he directed, The Major and the Minor (1942), and his mastery
of film noir with the corrosive thriller Double Indemnity (1944).
Subsequent films in the acidulous Wilder mode include the Academy Award-
winning The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Ace in the
Hole (1951). Wilder's later work includes such popular comedies as Some
Like It Hot (1959) The Apartment (1960), Irma La Douce (1963), The Fortune
Cookie (1966), The Front Page (1974), and Buddy Buddy (1981). In 1986 he
received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. WILLIAM
S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Madsen, Axel, Billy Wilder (1969).
Welles, Orson -------------------------------- Although the American actor-
director Orson Welles, b. Kenosha, Wis., May 6, 1915, d. Oct. 10, 1985,
worked on the stage and i n films for nearly 50 years, his fame rests
principally on two projects he completed before he was 30 years of age.
The first, his 1938 radio adaptation for the Mercury Theatre of H.G.
Wells's T he War of the Worlds, created a panic among listeners who
believed it was a report of an actual Martian invasion. The second was his
first and greatest film, the extraordinary Citizen Kane (1941). A
character study loosely modeled on the life of publisher William Randolph
HEARST, it embroiled Welles in legal battles, won Acade my Awards for him
and cowriter Herman Mankiewicz, and established h is reputation as
Hollywood's boy wonder.
Beginning as an actor with Dublin's Gate Theatre (1931), Welles soon turned
to writing and directing, producing a notable all-black version of Macbeth
in 1936 before founding the Mercury Theatre w ith John Houseman in 1937.
After the double triumph of War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, he directed
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), and a new
Macbeth (1948) before moving to Europe, where many of his subsequent films,
beginning with Mr. Arkadin (1955), were made. Touch of Evil (1 958) is a
shadowy American FILM NOIR. The Trial (1962) is a bleak adaptation of
Kafka. Chimes at Midnight (1966), a study of Falstaff, and the unfinished
Don Quixote (1957-66) reflect Welle s's fascination with extravagant,
outsize characters, many of whom he himself played to perfection.
Welles starred in many of his own films, but his screen credits also
include distinguished performances in Jane Eyre (1944), The Thir d Man
(1949), Moby Dick (1956), A Man for All Seasons (1966), and Catch-22 (1970).
His career, marked by grandiose projects and inimitable posturing, was
honored in 1975 by the American Film Institute, which presented him its
Life Achievement Award. THAD DEUS TULEJA
Bibliography: Bazin, Andre, Orson Welles: A Critical View, tra ns. by
Jonathan Rosenbaum (1978); Brady, Frank, Citizen Welles: A Biography of
Orson Welles (1987); Cowie, Peter, The Cinema of O rson Welles (1978);
Gottesman, Ronald, ed., Focus on Orson Welles (1976); Higham, Charles, The
Films of Orson Welles (1970); Leaming, Barbara, Welles: A Biography (1985).
Hollywood Ten, The -------------------------------- The Hollywood Ten were
a group of producers, writers, and directors called before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities (see UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES, HOUSE
COMMITTEE ON) in October 1947 as "unfriendly" witnesses during the
investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood. Alvah Bessie, Lester
Cole, John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, Jr., Herbert
Biberman, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Albert Maltz, and Edward Dmytryk
refused to state whether or not they were Communists. All served prison
sentences and were blacklisted in the film industry.
Bibliography: Goodman, Walter, The Committee: Extraordinary Career of the
House Committee on Un-American Activities (1968); Hellman, Lillian,
Scoundrel Time (1976); Kahn, Gordon, Hollywood on Trial: The Story of the
Ten Who Were Indicted (1948; repr. 1972).
Polanski, Roman -------------------------------- {poh-lan'-skee}^The Polish
film director and actor Roman Polanski, b. Paris, Aug. 18, 1933, was
brought up in Krakow by foster parents after the internment of his parents
in a Nazi concentration camp. After World War II he became a student
(1954-59) at the Polish State Film School at Lodz. His first feature film,
Knife in the Water (1962), a subtle treatment of sexual tension, presaged
more explicit treatments of sexuality in Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac
(1966). With Rosemary's Baby (1968), Polanski established himself as a
master of macabre horror. After the 1969 murder of his wife, the actress
Sharon Tate, by the Charles Manson gang, he moved to France to become a
French citizen, but returned to the United States to make Chinatown (1974).
In 1977 he was indicted in Los Angeles for a sexual offense but has since
lived in France, where he made Tess (1979). In 1981 he directed and played
the title role in his own Warsaw production of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus.
His autobiography Roman was published in 1984.
Bibliography: Butler, Ivan, The Cinema of Roman Polanski (1970).
Wajda, Andrzej -------------------------------- {vy'-dah, an'-jay} The
distinguished Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, b. Mar. 6, 1927, rose to
fame with a trilogy--A Generation (1954), Kanal (1956), and Ashes and
Diamonds (1958)--that vividly reflected the experience of an entire
generation in postwar Poland. Although Wajda evinced versatility in later
films, his most powerful work is historical-political. Man of Marble
(1977) and Man of Iron (1981) use historical contexts to inveigh against
such contemporary oppressions as the secret police, the Communist party,
and factory bosses. Danton (1983) views the French Revolution through the
personalities of its leaders. A Love in Germany (1984) explores the
madness of sexual passion within the context of the political madness of
Nazi Germany.
Bibliography: Michatek, B., The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda (1973); Paul, D.
ed., Politics, Art, and Commitment in East European Cinema (1984).
Forman, Milos -------------------------------- The Czech-born film director
Milos Forman, b. Feb. 18, 1932, is noted for his powers of observation
and his subtle, ironic humor. He won the 1975 Academy Award as best
director for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, adapted from the 1962 novel
by Ken Kesey. He won the 1984 Academy Award for Amadeus. Even though both
of Forman's parents died in German concentration camps, his work shows a
remarkable optimism. Forman's other films include the Czech-made Peter and
Pavla (1964) and Loves of a Blonde (1965) and the American-made Taking Off
(1971), Hair (1979), and Ragtime (1981). ROY ARMES
Bibliography: Whittemore, Don, et. al., Passport to Hollywood (1976).
Herzog, Werner -------------------------------- (hair'-tsohk) Werner Herzog
is the professional name of Werner H. Stipetic, b. 1942, a German
filmmaker known for his eye for remote, exotic scenery and his attraction
for extremes of character: the mad Amazon explorer Aguirre (Aguirre, the
Wrath of God, 1973); the mute isolate Kasper Hauser (The Mystery of Kasper
Hauser, 1975); dwarfs and midgets (Even Dwarfs Started Small, 1970); or men
in the grip of obsession (Fitzcarraldo, 1982). Herzog writes the
screenplays for all of his films. His large output includes a number of
documentaries, the most admired of which have been Land of Silence and
Darkness (1971), about the life of a blind, deaf woman; and La Soufriere
(1977), a portrait of an abandoned region near a smoldering volcano in
Guadaloupe.
Bibliography: Eder, Richard, "New Visionary in German Films," New York
Times Magazine, July 10, 1977.
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner -------------------------------- {fahs'-bin-dur,
ry'-nur vair'-nur}^Rainer Werner Fassbinder, b. May 31, 1946, d. June 10,
1982, was one of Germany's greatest and most prolific film directors as
well as a stage and screen actor and scriptwriter. He joined the Munich
Action Theater in 1967 and began making films two years later, using a
permanent ensemble of experienced actors. Fassbinder's work reflects the
influence of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx, and of Freudian psychology; his
choice of material was influenced by the American filmmaker Douglas Sirk.
His subject matter ranges from the failure of friends to communicate, as
portrayed in Katzelmacher (1969), to the dullness of daily existence,
depicted in Warum lauft Herr R. Amok? (Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, 1969)
and Die bittren Tranen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von
Kant, 1972). Particularly admired are the bittersweet Der Handler der vier
Jahreszeiten (Merchant of the Four Seasons, 1971), the stylish Effi Breist,
and Ali: Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1974), a study
in adversity. Fassbinder's Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975), released in
English as Fox and his Friends, created a new wave of interest in his films
in both the United States and Europe. In 1978, Fassbinder released his
first English language film, Despair, starring Dirk Bogarde. His most
commercially successful films were The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979),
Veronika Voss (1982), Querelle (released 1983), and the 15 hour Berlin
Alexanderplatz (released 1983) which portrays life in Berlin between the
World Wars. GAUTAM DASGUPTA
Weir, Peter -------------------------------- the work of the Australian
film director Peter Lindsay Weir, b. June 21, 1944, is part of a new wave
of Australian filmmaking. Couched in a style that is easily associated
with American filmmaking--well-crafted plots, convincing characters, and
naturalistic dialogue--Weir's films have gained international recognition.
Weir, who was the director of Film Australia from 1969 to 1973, sees
himself primarily as a storyteller. He has directed such imaginative and
highly provocative films as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Last Wave
(1977), and The Plumber (1978). With the successes of these earlier films,
Weir has directed larger budgeted productions, including Gallipoli (1980)
and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), which was filmed mostly outside
of Australia. Witness (1985), set among the Pennsylvania Amish, was filmed
on location.
Kubrick, Stanley -------------------------------- {koob'-rik}^Stanley
Kubrick, b. New York City, July 26, 1928, is an American film writer,
director, and producer with a virtually legendary status as an
idiosyncratic master. While working as a photojournalist for Life magazine,
Kubrick made an inconspicuous entrance into filmmaking with Fear and Desire
(1953) and Killer's Kiss (1955). After his crime thriller The Killing
(1956), critics began to take notice of his taut, brilliant style and
bleakly cynical outlook. Paths of Glory (1957) solidified his reputation
as a filmmaker interested in depicting the individual at the mercy of a
hostile world. In Spartacus (1960), Kubrick met the challenge of bringing
a costume spectacle to the screen. Lolita (1962), based on the novel by
Vladimir Nabokov, received mixed reviews. But Dr. Strangelove, or How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), was enthusiastically
hailed for its black-comedy vision of atomic-age apocalypse. His 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), both made in England
where Kubrick has worked since 1961, engendered intense critical
controversy, but the former has now become widely accepted as a landmark in
modern cinema. Although Barry Lyndon (1975) failed to attract as large an
audience as the previous two films, the Kubrick legend of obsessive
perfectionism and reclusive genius remains undiminished. In 1980 he
directed the film version of Stephen King's The Shining. WILLIAM S.
PECHTER
Bibliography: Kagan, Norman, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick (1972); Nelson,
Thomas Allan, Kubrick: Inside A Film Artists Maze (1982); Phillips, Gene,
Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey (1975); Walker, Alexander, Stanley Kubrick
Directs, rev. ed. (1972).
Altman, Robert B. -------------------------------- Robert B. Altman, b.
Kansas City, Mo., Feb. 20, 1925, won widespread recognition as the trend-
setting directorial stylist in American films of the 1970s. He did
extensive work in television and directed four little-known features before
making M*A*S*H (1970), the film that first brought him critical and popular
acclaim. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), and
California Split (1974) drew increasing attention for their textural
richness, multilayered soundtracks, and improvisatory flow. Prominent too
was Altman's debunking of the myths of various film genres, from the
Western to the private eye. With Nashville (1975) Altman had his second
commercial success. Critics saw less quality in such films as Buffalo Bill
and the Indians (1976), 3 Women (1977), and Quintet (1979) but praised
Thieves Like Us (1974) and Health (1980). Altman's recent films have been
adaptations of plays: Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
(1982), which he had directed on Broadway; and Streamers (1983), David
Rabe's drama. WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Kass, Judith, Robert Altman: American Innovator (1978).
Coppola, Francis Ford -------------------------------- {koh'-puh-luh}
^Francis Ford Coppola, b. Detroit, Apr. 7, 1939, directed the highly
successful film The Godfather (1972). He had previously directed Dementia
13 (1962), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Finian's Rainbow (1968), and The
Rain People (1969), a sensitive study of a runaway wife, which some
consider his best film. Coppola departed from the florid style of The
Godfather, for the spareness of The Conversation (1974), then enlarged on
his earlier hit with a sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974). For five
years Coppola worked amid controversy and speculation on Apocalypse Now
(1979), a realistically violent depiction of the Vietnam War. Another
Coppola film generating controversy was the romantic comedy One From the
Heart (1982). The $26-million film was a financial and artistic failure.
In 1983, Coppola received mixed critical reactions to the Outsiders and
Rumble Fish, both based on stories by S. E. Hinton. The Cotton Club
(1984), was a lavish production set in New York City in the 1920s. WILLIAM
S. PECHTER
Allen, Woody -------------------------------- Woody Allen is the stage name
of Allen Stewart Konigsberg, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Dec. 1, 1935. He is
considered America's best living film comedian and one of its finest film
directors. Alle n's highly personal work focuses on the fears and
insecurities experienced in contemporary society. His persona is that of a
bespectacled neurotic analyzing the recurrent themes of life, de ath, love,
religion and psychology. While a teenager, Allen worked a s a gag writer
for a public relations agency. He dropped out of col lege in 1953 and
became a principal writer for celebrities such as Si d Caesar and Garry
Moore. His switch to stand-up comedy in the ea rly 1960s led to celebrity
status from television appearances and th ree popular record releases.
Allen made his screen debut as an actor-screenwriter in What's N ew,
Pussycat? (1965). His first film project as director-writer-st ar was
Take the Money and Run (1969). His other movies include Ban anas (1971),
Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Annie Hall (1977) , which received
four Academy Awards in 1978, Interiors (1978), Manhattan (1979), Stardust
Memories (1980), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Zelig (1983),
Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Pur ple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and
Her Sisters (1986) and Radio Da ys (1987). Allen's comic and satirical
writings have been collecte d in three anthologies, Getting Even (1971),
Without Feathers (1975), and Side Effects (1980). He has also written
several Broadway plays , the successful Don't Drink the Water (1966; film,
1969) and Pla y It Again, Sam (1969; film, 1972), and the unsuccessful The
Floatin g Lightbulb (1981). FRANK MANCHEL
Bibliography: Allen, Woody, Four Films of Woody Allen (1982); Hirsh,
Foster, Love, Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life: Woody Allen's Comedy
(1981); Jacobs, Diane, But We Need the Eggs: Th e Magic of Woody Allen
(1982).
Lucas, George -------------------------------- The American film director,
screenwriter, and producer George Lucas, b. Modesto, Calif., May 14, 1944,
is best known for his trilogy of space fantasy films Star Wars (1977), The
Empire Strikes Back (1981), and Return of the Jedi (1983). Following the
adventures of such characters as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo,
Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader, as well as the anthropomorphic robots R2-
D2 and C-3PO, the trilogy spawned a multibillion dollar industry of Star
Wars-related products, including video games, dolls, toys, books, and
clothing.^After attending Modesto Junior College, Lucas studied film at the
University of Southern California, where a film he made won first prize in
the Third National Student Film Festival (1965). Lucas reworked that film,
a science-fiction fantasy that portrayed a grim, dehumanized world, as his
first feature, THX-1138 (1971). Lucas enjoyed his first major success with
American Graffiti (1973), a nostalgic look at American adolescence in the
early 1960s, which he both directed and coauthored. As executive producer
and coauthor of the original story, Lucas teamed with director Steven
SPIELBERG to make Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and its sequel, Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
Spielberg, Steven -------------------------------- Steven Spielberg, b.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 18, 1947, the director of E.T.: The Extra-
Terrestrial (see E.T.)--the most successful box-office attraction in
Hollywood history--has had a streak of movie blockbusters, establishing him
as one of the most popular American film directors. As a student at Long
Beach State College, Spielberg made a 16-mm short, Amblin' (1969), that won
awards at the Venice and Atlanta film festivals. After working in
television for several years, he made his first feature film, The Sugarland
Express (1974). The movie was a limited success, but the following year
Spielberg made Jaws (1975), which set box-office records. It was followed
by Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a science-fiction fantasy,
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), an outlandish adventure tale, and Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
In 1985 he directed the film version of Alice Walker's The Color Purple,
and produced (as well as directed) episodes of the television series
"Amazing Stories".
Newman, Paul -------------------------------- Paul Newman, b. Shaker
Heights, Ohio, Jan. 26, 1925, is an actor whose charm and wit made him one
of the most popular film personalities of the 1960s and '70s. After
training at the Yale School of Drama, he achieved success on the stage in
Picnic (1953) and screen stardom in The Long Hot Summer (1958). His most
notable screen roles have been in The Hustler (1961), Sweet Bird of Youth
(1962), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), Absence of Malice (1981), and The Verdict
(1982). Newman has directed several films including The Effect of Gamma
Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), The Shadow Box, and Harry and Son
(1984) which he also wrote and produced. He is married to actress Joanne
Woodward. After his son Scott died (1978) from a drug overdose, he
established (1980) the Scott Newman Foundation, which produces such
educational films as Doin' What the Crowd Does (1982). He is also active
in the antinuclear movement and child welfare.
Bibliography: Godfrey, Lionel, Paul Newman, Superstar (1979).
Redford, Robert -------------------------------- One of Hollywood's most
popular leading men, Charles Robert Redford, Jr., b. Santa Monica, Calif.,
Aug. 18, 1937, had his first success on Broadway in Neil Simon's Barefoot
in the Park (1963; film, 1967).^Redford's reputation soared with such
movies as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973),
in which he portrayed roguish but lovable crooks. His other films include
Jeremiah Johnson and The Candidate (both 1972), The Way We Were (1973), The
Great Gatsby (1974), All the President's Men (1976), The Electric Horseman
(1979), The Natural (1984), and Out of Africa (1985). He made his debut as
a director in 1980 with the film Ordinary People, which won three Academy
Awards, one of which went to Redford as best director. Redford is also
active in environmentalist causes.
De Niro, Robert -------------------------------- Robert De Niro, b. New
York City, Aug. 17, 1943, is an American film actor known especially for
his roles in the films of director Martin SCORSESE. These include Mean
Streets (1973); Taxi Driver (1976); the musical New York, New York (1977);
Raging Bull (1980), for which De Niro won an Academy Award; and the King of
Comedy (1982). He played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II
(1974) and won an Academy Award for his performance. Among his other
important films are Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), The Deer Hunter (1978),
True Confessions (1981), Falling In Love and Once Upon A Time In America
(both 1984), and Brazil (1985).
Scorcese, Martin -------------------------------- {skawr-say'-zee}^The
director Martin Scorcese, b. Queens, N.Y., Nov. 17, 1942, has won wide
critical acclaim both for his controversial films portraying violent themes
and for his films focusing on lighter, entertaining subjects. Scorcese, who
grew up in Manhattan's Lower East Side, studied and later taught filmmaking
at New York University. He wrote and directed his first feature film,
Who's That Knocking at My Door?, in 1968. He worked on Street Scenes,
Woodstock, and other counterculture films before turning out a second
feature, a low-budget thriller called Boxcar Bertha (1972). His next film,
however, Mean Streets (1973), a grim story of mob involvement in Little
Italy, won critical acclaim. It also brought him studio support for Alice
Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1975) and Taxi Driver (1976). Scorcese next
directed a frothy musical, New York, New York (1977), and a rock
documentary, The Last Waltz (1978), in which he appeared. After Raging
Bull (1980), in which Robert DENIRO--with whom Scorsese has worked closely-
-portrayed prizefighter Jake LaMotta, Scorcese turned to satire with The
King of Comedy (1983) starring DeNiro and Jerry Lewis. In 1985 he directed
After Hours, a black comedy that takes place in New York City.
Hoffman, Dustin -------------------------------- The American actor Dustin
Hoffman, b. Los Angeles, Aug. 8, 1937, one of the most versatile film
stars of his generation, was a modestly successful Broadway and television
actor until his appearance in Mike Nichols's film The Graduate (1967).
Since then he has created an extraordinary range of characterizations,
including a derelict in Midnight Cowboy (1969), a convict in Papillon
(1973), the comedian Lenny Bruce in Lenny (1974), and the journalist Carl
Bernstein in All the President's Men (1976). He won a 1980 Academy Award
for best actor for his performance in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), and an
Academy Award nomination for his spirited and sensitive rendition of an
unemployed actor who assumes the identity of a woman in order to land a
role (Tootsie, 1982). In 1984 he returned to the stage as Willy Loman in
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (television play, 1985).
Nicholson, Jack -------------------------------- Jack Nicholson, b.
Neptune, N.J., Apr. 22, 1937, is an actor, director, and producer whose
raffish, cynical wit made him a popular offbeat hero in numerous films.
After gaining recognition for his performance as an alcoholic civil
liberties lawyer in Easy Rider (1969), he starred in such films as Five
Easy Pieces (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Last Detail (1974),
Chinatown (1974), The Passenger (1975), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(1976), which won him an Academy Award for best actor, The Shining (1980),
and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). His portrayal of Eugene O'Neill
in Reds (1981) was highly acclaimed, and for his rendition of an aging,
alcoholic astronaut in the 1983 film Terms of Endearment he won an Academy
Award for best supporting actor. His performance as a Mafia "hit man" in
Prizzi's Honor (1985) also won praise.
Bibliography: Braithwaite, Bruce, The Films of Jack Nicholson, ed. by David
Castell (1978).
Pacino, Al -------------------------------- {puh-chee'-noh}^Alfred Pacino,
b. New York City, Apr. 25, 1940, in a relatively short time established
himself solidly as an actor on both stage and screen. His role in The
Indian Wants the Bronx earned him a 1968 Obie Award, and his Broadway debut
in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969) brought him a Tony Award. Highly
regarded for his 1972 film portrayal of the young Michael Corleone in The
Godfather, Pacino followed with successful film performances in Serpico
(1973), The Godfather, Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Bobby
Deerfield (1977), And Justice for All (1979), Cruising (1980), Author!
Author! (1982), Scarface (1983), and Revolution (1986). In 1981, and again
in 1983, Pacino won high acclaim for his performance in the off-Broadway
revival of American Buffalo.
Streep, Meryl -------------------------------- The American actress Mary
Louise "Meryl" Streep, b. Summit, N.J., June 22, 1949, is a versatile
performer who has won acclaim in stage, film, and television productions.
Streep earned a master of fine arts at Yale University, where she appeared
at the Yale Repertory Theatre, and since 1975 has appeared in New York
Shakespeare Festival productions. Other stage roles include a highly
acclaimed performance on Broadway in the Tennessee Williams play 27 Wagons
Full of Cotton (1976). Among her television credits is the miniseries
"Holocaust" (1978), for which she won an Emmy Award. Streep made her film
debut in Julia (1977) and appeared next in the award-winning movie The Deer
Hunter (1978), Manhattan (1979), The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), The
French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), and Still of the Night (1982). She has
won two Academy Awards, one as best supporting actress for her performance
in Kramer vs. Kramer (1980) and another as best actress for her portrayal
of the tragic heroine in Sophie's Choice (1982), based on the William
Styron novel. Streep played the title role in Silkwood (1983), which was
based on the true story of Karen Silkwood whose attempted expose' of the
dangers of a plutonium plant was ended by her mysterious death. In 1984
she co-starred with Robert De Niro in Falling In Love, followed by two
films in 1985; Plenty and Out of Africa, a film based on the memoirs of
Danish writer Karen Blixen, who assumed the pen name Isak Dinesen.
Wiseman, Fred -------------------------------- A former lawyer and
professor, Frederick Wiseman, b. Boston, Jan. 1, 1930, makes
controversial documentary films about public, tax-supported institutions,
through which he reveals the more general attitudes of U.S. society.
Wiseman's free-form, nonnarrative method involves filming hours of footage
in which no one is told how to act and subsequently creating a structure
through extensive editing. Wiseman made his first film, Titicut Follies
(1967), at a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane; his later
films include High School (1968), Law and Order (1969)--which portrays the
police--Hospital (1970), and Welfare (1975).
Bibliography: Atkins, Thomas R., ed., Frederick Wiseman (1976); Levin, G.
Roy, Documentary Explorations (1971).
Ophuls, Marcel -------------------------------- (oh'-fuls) Marcel Ophuls, b.
Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 1, 1927, is a French film director known for his
lengthy, probing documentaries. The son of director Max Ophuls, he grew up
in Germany, France, and Hollywood, where in the 1950s he learned filmmaking
from his father and John Huston. After making a comic feature, Banana Peel,
in 1963, he turned his attention to documentary, achieving critical success
with The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), a moving 4 1/2-hour-long examination
of French attitudes during the Nazi occupation; the movie was originally
banned by the de Gaulle government from French television because of its
controversial content. In the United States it received a special award
from the National Society of Film Critics. A Sense of Loss focused on the
war in Northern Ireland, and in 1976, Ophuls presented The Memory of
Justice, an investigation of ideals of justice in the context of the
Nuremberg war crimes trials and the war in Vietnam.
Bibliography: Wood, M., "Decent Man, Indecent Subject," New York Times
Magazine, October 17, 1976.
Brakhage, Stan -------------------------------- (brak'-ij) Stan Brakhage, b.
Jan. 14, 1933, is an American experimental filmmaker whose lyric films
have contributed radically to the nonnarrative form. In such essays as
"Metaphors on Vision" published in Film Culture (1963), he explained his
concern with the drama of subconscious seeing. Brakhage's usually silent
films use multiple superimpositions, rapid montage, and fragmentary editing.
Other works include Anticipation of the Night (1958), Mothlight (1963), and
his major work, Dog Star Man (1961-65). LESLIE CLARK
SE LUMIER
Lumiere, Louis and Auguste -------------------------------- (loo-mee-air')
Louis Jean Lumiere, b. Oct. 5, 1864, d. June 6, 1948, and Auguste Marie
Lumiere, b. Oct. 19, 1862, d. Apr. 10, 1954, were French inventors of an
early motion-picture projector and pioneer filmmakers. The two brothers
took over management of their father's photographic supply factory in Lyons
in 1893. There Louis developed (1895) the Cinematographe, a single machine
that functioned both as camera and projector. Its unique feature was a
system of claws that moved the film mechanically but held each frame long
enough for viewers to perceive the image. The Cinematographe was first
demonstrated before a paying audience in Paris on Dec. 28, 1895, with the
showing of 10 of the brothers' films, including Workers Leaving a Factory
and a comic sequence, The Sprinkler Sprinkled. The public exhibition marked
the beginning of cinema history. In the next few years the Lumieres
continued to produce short, 2-minute films that were records of everyday
life; they also made documentaries, newsreels, and a historical film, The
Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1897).
Bibliography: Quigley, Martin, Jr., Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin
of Motion Pictures (1969).
Rossellini, Roberto -------------------------------- (rohs-sel-lee'-nee)
One of the principal founders of Italian neorealism, film director Roberto
Rossellini, b. May 8, 1906, d. June 3, 1977, first achieved prominence with
Open City (1945), filmed during and after the German evacuation of Rome and
portraying Italian resistance groups and Gestapo reprisals. The film had an
unprecedented immediacy, owing in large part to Rossellini's use of
authentic settings and of the physical presences of such fine performers as
Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizzi. Rossellini's success continued with the
anecdotal Paisan (1946), the stark Germany Year Zero (1947), and the
controversial The Miracle (1948). After Stromboli (1949), which carried his
reliance on realistic settings to excess, Rossellini made only one film of
note during the next decade--Saint Francis (1950). He returned to his
former brilliance with General della Rovere (1959). Since 1962, Rossellini
worked exclusively in theater and television. GAUTAM DASGUPTA
Bibliography: Guarner, Jose L., Roberto Rossellini, trans. by Elisabeth
Cameron (1970).
pornography -------------------------------- Pornography, or obscenity
(which is the legal term), is any material, pictures, films, printed matter,
or devices dealing with sexual poses or acts considered indecent by the
public. Traditionally, the distribution and sale of pornography has been
illegal in most countries. Only in Denmark have all restrictions on
pornography been withdrawn (since 1969). Although Massachusetts had
antiobscenity laws in colonial times, federal antipornography legislation
in the United States was not passed until 1842. Sending such matter through
the mails became illegal in 1865. Late in the century enforcement of the
laws was vigorous, due largely to the efforts of Anthony COMSTOCK and the
Committee for the Suppression of Vice. In Great Britain the first
antipornography legislation, the Obscene Publications Act, was passed in
1857. Defining pornography has from the beginning proved to be a complex
legal problem because public attitudes change; materials considered
pornographic in Victorian society may not be considered remarkable today.
Thus the enforcement of the antipornography laws has involved suppression
of several works of literature currently regarded as masterpieces,
including the novels Ulysses, by James Joyce, and Lady Chatterley's Lover,
by D. H. Lawrence. Several obscenity cases have been brought before the
U.S. Supreme Court. In ROTH V. UNITED STATES (1957), the Court affirmed
for the first time the traditional position that pornography was "not
within the area of constitutionally protected speech." The Court attempted,
however, to establish legal guidelines for defining obscenity. A three-part
definition of obscenity evolved with reference to Roth: matter that appeals
to prurient interests, offends current standards, and has no redeeming
social value. In 1973 (in MILLER V. CALIFORNIA and four companion cases)
the Court reversed earlier decisions; it ruled that the matter could be
left to the discretion of individual states where "contemporary community
standards" were to be applied in judging whether or not material is
pornographic. In 1982 the Supreme Court upheld a New York statute
prohibiting the production and sale of materials depicting children in
sexually explicit situations. Child pornography was thus added to the
category of "speech" that is not protected by the First Amendment.
Bibliography: Clor, Harry M., Obscenity and Public Morality (1969);
Donnerstein, Edward, Linz, Daniel, and Penrod, Steven, The Question of
Pornography (1987); Eysenck, Hans J., and Nias, D. K. B., Sex, Violence
and the Media (1978); Griffin, Susan, Pornography and Silence (1981);
Lewis, Felix, F., Literature, Obscenity and the Law (1976); Rembar,
Charles, The End of Obscenity (1968); Sobel, Lester A., ed., Pornography,
Obscenity, and the Law (1978).
Comstock, Anthony -------------------------------- Anthony Comstock, b. Mar.
7, 1844, d. Sept. 21, 1915, was an American morals crusader against obscene
literature. In 1873 he founded the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice and also secured stricter U.S. postal laws against obscene materials.
The playwright George Bernard Shaw coined the word comstockery to describe
opposition to realism in art and literature.
film noir -------------------------------- (film nwar) Film noir, a term
meaning "dark cinema," was first used by French critics to describe a genre
of American suspense film of the 1940s and '50s whose urban, often
nighttime settings and fatalistic themes suggested an unstable world full
of danger and moral corruption. The oblique lighting and off-balance
compositions typical of the visual style of such films reflected the
ambience of disillusionment and bitter realism. Famous examples of film
noir include The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), and The
Big Heat (1953).
Bibliography: Silver, Alain, and Wald, Elizabeth, eds., Film Noir: An
Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1978).
Pudovkin, Vsevolod I. -------------------------------- (poo-dawf'-kin,
fsev'-uh-luht) Excited by D. W. Griffith's Intolerance when it was shown in
Moscow in 1919, Soviet filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin, b. Feb. 28 (N.S.), 1893,
d. June 30, 1953, abandoned a career in chemistry for the cinema. In 1922
he joined the experimental film workshop of Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970). The
first films Pudovkin directed were Chess Fever (1925), a short, witty
comedy; Mechanics of the Brain (1925-26), an instructional film on Pavlov's
experiments; and Mother (1926), a worldwide success that dealt with the
1905 revolution. His best-known works were the admirably photographed and
edited The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm over Asia (1928).
Pudovkin's transition to sound was not a happy one, Soviet sound equipment
in the early 1930s not being sophisticated enough for the experiments he
had planned. Although his later films on historical subjects were popular,
Pudovkin's fame abroad rests largely on his silent films and on his manual,
Film Technique and Film Acting (1929; Eng. trans., 1933). JAY LEYDA
Bibliography: Leyda, Jay, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film
(1973).
Dovzhenko, Alexander -------------------------------- (dohv-zhen'-koh)
Alexander Dovzhenko, b. Sept. 11 (N.S.), 1894, d. Nov. 25, 1956, was an
important early Soviet filmmaker. The son of peasants, he worked as a
school teacher, diplomat, and political cartoonist before turning to
filmmaking in 1926. The first notable film he directed was the political
allegory Zvenigora (1928). Thereafter, his work was strictly censored. His
principal films include Arsenal (1929), dealing with the Civil War in the
Ukraine; Earth (1930), on the national struggle over collectivization; and
the lyrical Shchors (1939). During World War II, Dovzhenko produced such
distinguished documentaries as Liberation (1940) and Ukraine in Flames
(1945).
Bibliography: Carynnyk, Marco, ed. and trans., Alexander Dovzhenko: The
Poet as Filmmaker (1973).
Zinnemann, Fred -------------------------------- (zin'-uh-muhn) Best known
for his Western High Noon (1952) and the Academy Award-winning From Here to
Eternity (1953), film director Fred Zinnemann, b. Vienna, Apr. 29, 1907,
built his post-World War II reputation on careful craftsmanship and the
humanist concerns exhibited in such "social-problem" films as The Search
(1948), The Men (1950), and Teresa (1951). He also proved himself a
sensitive adapter of literary texts in The Member of the Wedding (1952),
and The Nun's Story (1959). A Man for All Seasons (1966) earned him a
second Oscar, and Julia (1977), another Oscar nomination. The talent for
thrillers Zinnemann displayed in Act of Violence (1948) was, however,
largely absent in The Day of the Jackal (1973). WILLIAM S. PECHTER
Bibliography: Kozarski, R., Hollywood Directors, 1941-1976 (1977).
ADDITIONAL FEATURED ESSAYS
Maya Angelou
, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, histor
Maya Angelou
, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, histor
Maya Angelou
, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis,
was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, histor
Maya Angelou 2
Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a
The Shawshank Redemption
For my film analysis, I chose the movie . Frank
Darabont directed Shawshank and wrote the screenplay based on the novel
|
|
|
|
