English 5950: American Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s

Spring 2016

Grady

Second Essay Assignment

The second essay of the semester is due on either 4/7 or 4/14. Topic is open and the length is the same as last time, about 2000 words (really—2000. Not 1600). Provisions for extensions are identical as well. You are encouraged to include screens shots when relevant, though your topic need not be biased towards the visual, as last time.

It might be a good idea to begin to incorporate some secondary sources beyond those found on the course syllabus this time, as preparation for the final essay; you can start with the reserve list in the library (technically, the books are under Grady/English 4950, a class from a previous semester), the film criticism and theory journals available online through the library webpage (and there are a lot of them!), and of course the bibliographies and footnotes in the semester’s reading so far (this is known as letting someone else do your spadework).

Below I’ve reproduced some paper topics from past courses for your perusal and adaptation.

· Did women characters in the films of 1939 particularly need to be disciplined? Consider the lessons learned by such characters as Ninotchka, Judith Traherne, Dorothy Gale, Scarlett O'Hara, and Bonnie Lee (we won’t get to her until 4/12). Is there a pattern to the education they receive in their stories? Do they end up in similar places at the end? Write an essay about the romantic and domestic plots or subplots of at least three films we've seen this term, and what those plots assume about the proper role for women.

o Is the need to discipline women a phenomenon associated with a crisis in masculinity in the 1930s—the kind of depression-generated paternal failure described by Levine and Rauchway?

· A more theoretically oriented approach to the previous topic would be to measure Laura Mulvey’s claims about women as objects of “the gaze” and men as “bearers of the look” against at least three of the films we’ve seen this term.

· Film critic William Paul writes of Ninotchka, "That the film finally sides with no ideology is not so much a mark of cynicism as a clearsighted understanding of the paradoxical nature of all beliefs" (Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy [Columbia University Press, 1983], p. 216). But of course there's another way to explain the film's generally evenhanded treatment of communism and capitalism that has to do with what Maltby calls Hollywood's "commercial aesthetic," the industry's tendency to produce films that subordinate complex ideological conflicts to much more simple romantic (or violent or spectacular) events that satisfy the demands of the medium rather than more abstract philosophical considerations. Write an essay about the way the “clash of cultures” is dealt with in Ninotchka (or in another studio-era film of your choice).

· The "watch still more movies" option: Stars, like genres, are in a sense "pre-sold" to their audiences, who know what to expect from a movie star because of the persona that star develops over a series of films. Do a bit of historical reconstruction and produce an account of the kind of persona certain stars would have been known for in 1939: at this point in the semester your candidates could be Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, and Bette Davis (and maybe Bogart?). See at least three of your star's movies before trying to characterize the persona: for Flynn, you could add Captain Blood (1935) The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) or The Sea Hawk (1940) to Dodge City; for Garbo, you could supplement Ninotchka with Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933) or Camille (1937); for Davis, add Jezebel (1938), Of Human Bondage(1934), or Dangerous (1935) to Dark Victory. (Note: this topic will recur later in the term, with different stars.)

· The “watch more movies” option, #2: compare Ninotchka (1939) to its 1957 cold-war era musical remake, Silk Stockings.

· Study two or three contemporary movie-oriented magazines--Entertainment Weekly, Empire, Total Film and the like--and compare their contents, tone, and general goal to the account of promotional material given in Balio and Maltby. What sorts of things do they reveal to us (or force us to pay attention to) about stars? How do they fit into the way movies are marketed today, in the post-post-studio era?

· Discuss the ways in which the Depression-era films The Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz represent and comment upon the lives of agricultural workers and families. (You might want to look back at Lawrence Levine’s essay, “American Culture and the Great Depression,” if you take up this topic.)

· Do endings matter? There are at least two ways to frame this question:

o endings are always predetermined in some way—they correspond to the expectations of a particular genre, or to the need for closure that the industrial organization of Hollywood filmmaking imposes on movies—so what’s interesting about movies is their middles, where possibilities are raised and rules are bent and experiments with character are conducted, before the inevitable happy/tragic conclusion is imposed.

o Hollywood movies are not experimental at all but fundamentally conservative, and the function of the predictable endings of genre films like westerns or melodramas is precisely to demonstrate that experimentation and rule-bending are dangerous things indeed.

· “More generally, Lincoln is a paradigm of the Fordian hero of any date: solitary, celibate, almost impotent in grief, yet of the people; independent of logic, he arrogates authority to intervene, even violently, even by cheating, in order to mediate intolerance and to impress his personal convictions whose thinking he faults…; he reunites a family and walks away at the end.” So writes critic Tag Gallagher of John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln. With this somewhat grandiose remark as your starting point, write an essay about “the Fordian heroes” that we’ve seen this term: Tom Joad, the Ringo Kid, Judge Priest.

· [an updated topic!] Film critic William Paul writes of Ninotchka, "That the film finally sides with no ideology is not so much a mark of cynicism as a clearsighted unserstanding of the paradoxical nature of all beliefs" (Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy [Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 216). But of course there's another way to explain the film's generally evenhanded treatment of communism and capitalism that has to do with what Maltby and Craven call Hollywood's "commercial aesthetic," the industry's tendency to produce films that subordinate complex ideological conflicts to much more simple romantic (or violent or spectacular) events that satisfy the demands of the medium rather than more abstract philosophical considerations. Since we watched Ninotchka, we’ve read and talked quite a bit more about the ways ideology is expressed in popular film. Choose a film from the second half of the course and discuss some of its ideological preoccupations, the way it confirms/challenges/ contains/critiques/resolves/ambiguates/ explores/avoids/dances around some contemporary (i.e., 1930s) American cultural concern. Two ways to get started on this topic:

o Choose a single idea (“Washington DC” or “the family” or “home”) and trace the way it is used in several different films, or

o Go back to Robin Wood’s essay, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” and describe the way some of the “hopeless contradictions” of American capitalist ideology play themselves out in a film.

· Discuss the ways in which female characters in some 1930s films (Clarissa Saunders, Bonnie Lee, Melanie Hamilton, Frenchy, Zee Cobb, Abbie Irving?) can function as surrogates for the film audience, learning to love or appreciate or defend or forgive the (mostly) male leads with whom they interact.

· Below are two passages—one from the 1969 article about film and ideology noted above and one from the studio-era Production Code. Write an essay about the assumptions they share about how films influence audiences, and how they can illuminate one another.

From “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,“ Comolli & Narboni (1969):

A few points, which we shall return to in greater detail later: every film is political, inasmuch as it is determined by the ideology which produces it (or within which it is produced, which stems from the same thing). The cinema is all the more thoroughly and completely determined because unlike other arts or ideological systems its very manufacture mobilizes powerful economic forces in a way that the production of literature (which becomes the commodity 'books'), does not - though once we reach the level of distribution, publicity and sale, the two are in rather the same position.

Clearly, the cinema 'reproduces ' reality: this is what a camera and film stock are for - so says the ideology. But the tools and techniques of film-making are a part of 'reality ' themselves, and furthermore 'reality ' is nothing but an expression of the prevailing ideology. Seen in this light, the classic theory of cinema that the camera is an impartial instrument which grasps, or rather is impregnated by the world in its 'concrete reality' is an eminently reactionary one. What the camera in fact registers is the vague, unformulated, untheorized, unthought-out world of the dominant ideology. Cinema is one of the languages through which the world communicates itself to itself. They constitute its ideology for they reproduce the world as it is experienced when filtered through the ideology. (As Althusser defines it, more precisely: 'Ideologies are perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects, which work fundamentally on men by a process they do not understand. What men express in their ideologies is not their true relation to their conditions of existence, but how they react to their conditions of existence; which presupposes a real relationship and an imaginary relationship.') So, when we set out to make a film, from the very first shot, we are encumbered by the necessity of reproducing things not as they really are but as they appear when refracted through the ideology. This includes every stage in the process of production: subjects, styles, forms, meanings, narrative traditions; all underline the general ideological discourse. The film is ideology presenting itself to itself, talking to itself, learning about itself. Once we realize that it is the nature of the system to turn the cinema in to an instrument of ideology, we can see that the film-maker's first task is to show up the cinema's so-called 'depiction of reality. If he can do so there is a chance that we will be able to disrupt or possibly even sever the connection between the cinema and its ideological function.

from The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, “General Principles”:

Art enters intimately into the lives of human beings.

Art can be morally good, lifting men to higher levels. This has been done thru good music, great painting, authentic fiction, poetry, drama.

Art can be morally evil in its effects. This is the case clearly enough with unclean art, indecent books, suggestive drama. The effect on the lives of men and women is obvious.

Note: It has often been argued that art in itself is unmoral, neither good nor bad. This is perhaps true of the thing which is music, painting, poetry, etc. But the thing is the product of some person’s mind, and that mind was either good or bad morally when it produced the thing. And the thing has its effect upon those who come into contact with it. In both these ways, as a product and the cause of definite effects, it has a deep moral significance and an unmistakable moral quality.

Hence: The motion pictures which are the most popular of modern arts for the masses, have their moral quality from the minds which produce them and from their effects on the moral lives and reactions of their audiences. This gives them a most important morality.

1) They reproduce the morality of the men who use the pictures as a medium for the expression of their ideas and ideals;

2) They affect the moral standards of those who thru the screen take in these ideas and ideals.

In the case of the motion pictures, this effect may be particularly emphasized because no art has so quick and so widespread an appeal to the masses. It has become in an incredibly short period, the art of the multitudes.

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F) Everything possible in a play is not possible in a film.

(a) Because of the larger audience of the film, and its consequently mixed character. Psychologically, the larger the audience, the lower the moral mass resistance to suggestion.

B) Because thru light, enlargement of character presentation, scenic emphasis, etc., the screen story is brought closer to the audience than the play.

C) The enthusiasm for and interest in the film actors and actresses, developed beyond anything of the sort in history, makes the audience largely sympathetic toward the characters they portray and the stories in which they figure. Hence they are more ready to confuse the actor and character, and they are most receptive of the emotions and ideals portrayed and presented by their favorite stars.

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In general: The mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straight-forward presentation of fact in the films makes for intimate contact on a larger audience and greater emotional appeal. Hence the larger moral responsibilities of the motion pictures.