2. Sound
• 1889: Thomas Edison
kinetograph and
phonograph
• 1903-1908: Oskar Messter
– recorded musical scores
• 1920s: features were
accompanied by cue sheets
suggesting appropriate
musical selections
• Studio producers resisted
the changeover to sound
3. Sound
• Sound was for the music rather than
speaking
– Don Juan (1926)
• first feature film with a Vitaphone
soundtrack
• recorded orchestral score
– Jazz Singer (1927) – musical
sequences and ad-lib dialogue
• But mostly intertitles for dialogue
– Lights of New York (1928) – 100
percent all talkie (audible photoplay)
• Microphones were strategically placed
on sets
• Dialogue affected the distribution and
exhibition of English-language films in
non-English speaking countries.
4. Sound
• Technologies
– sound on disk – relied
on the phonograph
– sound on film – sound
waves to optical waves
• Big 5 agreement
– Adopt uniform sound
system when
conversion became
necessary
– “Wait and see” into
1929
• Fox Movietone - Led to
the triumph of sound on
film
– Warner's abandoned
recorded discs in 1930
Sydney presentation of The Jazz
Singer
Isolation booth
Vitaphone
Optical sound
5. Sound
• Total conversion to sound would
eventually cost the U.S. movie
industry more than $500 million.
• Hollywood and Wall Street
– It dramatically increased the costs of
film production and exhibition and
made the U.S. movie industry
dependent upon major financial
interests in New York.
• Warner Bros. took loans from Goldman Sachs
• Morgan and Rockefeller groups controlled
Western Electric and RCA
6. Sound
• Sound allowed Hollywood
to survive the great
Depression
– Sound brought greater
demand for motion pictures
with tremendous profits.
• Warner Bros. saw its profits
increase from $2 million to
over $14 million, and it
quickly began acquiring
theaters.
• Profits increased by several
millions of dollars at
Paramount, Fox, and Loew's.
7. End of the 1920s - Studios solidified power
• Majors
– Warner Bros.
– Loew's/MGM;
– Paramount;
– Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO),
which was affiliated with the
Radio Corporation of
American (RCA)
– Twentieth Century-Fox.
• Minors
– Universal
– Columbia
– United Artists
8. End of the 1920s - Studios solidified power
• MGM (Metro,
Goldwyn Mayer):
Prestige studio
• Warner Bros.:
Known for gangster
films.
• Universal: Westerns,
Inexpensive “B”
horror films
• Paramount:
Romantic Comedies
9. Censorship
• Long tradition of reformers back to
Nickelodeon
• Mutual vs. Ohio
– The free speech protection did
not extend to motion pictures.
• After World War I
– Increasingly sophisticated and
risqué
– In addition to Europeans, the New
morality of the 1920s Jazz era
• Materialism
• Cynicism
• Sexual license
– Hollywood Babylon
• Tabloid press
• Mansions, orgies, divorce
10. Censorship
• Scandals
– 1921 Fatty Arbuckle –
charged with rape and
murder of Virginia Rappe
• Champagne bottle –
manslaughter, acquitted
– 1922 William Desmond
Taylor, chief director of
famous players Lasky
• Found murdered in his
Beverly Hills apartment
– 1923 Wallace Reid
• died of drug overdose
11. Censorship
• In the aftermath of the Taylor case –
public outrage against depravity in
Hollywood
– Good Housekeeping, ministers and priests,
women’s clubs and reform groups
– boycotts
– 1922 - 36 states and the federal
government considering censorship laws
• Published revelations of scandal in
Hollywood
– most prominent was the booklet, The Sins
of Hollywood: An Expose of Movie Vice,
published in May 1922.
– booklet was published anonymously
(subsequently revealed as Ed Roberts, the
former editor of PHOTOPLAY)
– thinly camouflaged retellings of the real
misdeeds of Hollywood's denizens
12. Censorship
• Hollywood producers reacted - a
self regulatory trade organization
– 1922 - MPPDA (Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of
America)
– At first public relations and
lobbying organization
• stave off government threatened
censorship
• mollify pressure groups
• managed news and deflect scandal
• discourage close scrutiny of the
industry
• in general “white washing”
• In the 1930s - censorship
organization, the code
13. Censorship
• Will Hays, Postmaster General of
Harding and R-politician
assigned to act of "Czar" and
censor of the industry
– Don Juan (1926) premiere,
Will Hayes contributed an
on-screen introduction,
talking in synchronized
sound, telling everyone in
the audience "Welcome to a
new era of motion picture."
• Not only new era of
sound…
• New era of censorship
and propriety in film
14. Censorship
• "The Don'ts and Be Carefuls"
(1927)
– Collier's magazine: "Don't
forget to stop before you've
gone too far" and "If you
can't be good be careful"
• Put into strict effect as
MPPDA Hollywood
Production Code –on July 1,
1934
– Purity code: submit
summaries of screenplays
• Strict with Sex and Profanity
– Lenient with violence
– sin could be flaunted for six
reels so long as virtue
triumphs in the seventh –
Cecile B. DeMille
15. Scarface (1932)
• The Depression Era Gangster:
Object of Attraction and Public
Menace
– Scarface should be seen
together with contemporary
gangster films like Melvyn
LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930)
and William Wellman's Public
Enemy (1931).
– In 1931 25 gangster films
were produced;
• in 1932, there were 40 (which
was 1/10 of the major studios'
entire production).
• Gangster films became an
object of concern for censors
16. Scarface (1932)
• Sociocultural Discourses
– Gangsterism: Al Capone and public
concern about media coverage of acts of
violence.
– Prohibition: the Volstead Act of 1920
ushered in the era that would last until
1933. Because the American thirst for
alcohol did not subside, there was a rise
in criminal activity.
– Great Depression: 24 October 1929,
"Black Thursday." The New York Stock
Market crashes. 10-year long depression
– Immigration: Immigration Acts of 1920s
aimed at restricting immigration "to
preserve the ideal of American
homogeneity"
17. Scarface (1932)
• Ideological Structure
– A man and/or a woman and/or a group in opposition to
society.
• The conflict is societal and typically takes place within modern urban
settings.
• The gangster, though, does not play by the rules. He violates the codes
that civilized society maintains.
• The structure of the gangster film centers on the opposition between
those who exist inside and those who exist outside the law.
– The gangster film lets us get outside our normal lives and
probe errant fantasies, to imagine what it would be like to
live on the outside and beyond the law.
• display and indulgence of violence, greed, and sexual avarice
• both enthralls and repels us.
• "We gain the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the
gangster's sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster
himself" (Robert Warshow).
• Political dimensions
– The genre exposes two fundamental and oppositional
American ideologies:
• America as a land of opportunity
• America as a classless, democratic society
– One wants success, but for a democratic society that is a
challenge and a problem.
• pursuit of self versus welfare of all
• Ethnic and class barriers to mobility
– meteoric rises and brutal outcomes
• Like businessmen, they compete in the marketplace and they
make deals and take risks and push limits and seek to become
ever bigger and stronger and more powerful.
