TCM PRIME TIME MOVIE DISCUSSION CORNER

[AllenLowe]

Garth - don't you think that the fact that audiences wanted to see these long single-shot scenes had a lot to do with their conditioning from theater and the resultant expectations of dialog and exposition? I do know there were exceptions (thinking Von Stroheim as well) but I think that the reason so much of that film dialog sounds stilted is that so many of the actors came directly from the theater and were very much stuck in an old-fashioned and very stylized rhythm - not to mention the screenwriters whose backgrounds may have been in that old-fashioned kind of American stage realism -

Edited March 6, 2005 by AllenLowe

[garthsj]

Garth - don't you think that the fact that audiences wanted to see these long single-shot scenes had a lot to do with their conditioning from theater and the resultant expectations of dialog and exposition? I do know there were exceptions (thinking Von Stroheim as well) but I think that the reason so much of that film dialog sounds stilted is that so many of the actors came directly from the theater and were very much stuck in an old-fashioned and very stylized rhythm - not to mention the screenwriters whose backgrounds may have been in that old-fashioned kind of American stage realism -

Allen .. instinctively one would think that your observation was a very logical conclusion. However, the fact is that less than 5% of the population went to the live theater at this time ... for the majority of the population the movies were their theater , their "democratic art" so to speak (although the film industry was never really democratic, and the irony of the title of my book escaped some critics). So, for the large bulk of the movie audience, their "conditioning" had been shaped by years of movie going, not their theatrical experiences. I do agree that the migration of stage actors, directors, and others from the theater did have an influence on the structure of early sound films, but the technological limitations, limited production costs (especially in comparison to today), and desire to feature the strength of stories and stars were the major factors.

Berigan is also right in pointing out that different studios had different styles that affected the appearance of their films. I remember very clearly being at an academic presentation early in my career where a poor young scholar attempted to present a paper about Warner's "dark style" ... when one old, vastly experienced film maker pointed that that Warner's were simply too cheap to fully light their sets, and this is what gave their early sound films that peculiar framing look ... I was glad that was not me!

[AllenLowe]

yes, I remember reading about their "expressionist" lighting and the technical limitations that led to such - sort of necessity as the mother of invention - interesting about the small numbers who went to the theater, and less than I would have thought. But let me ask you another question - when you say 5 percent, does that include those who may have attended or participated in amateur theatricals, school plays, non-Broadway, etc? I only have anectdotal evidence from now-deceased family members who talked about things like the old Yiddish theater; and I think you may be under-estimating the effects of the late 19th and early 20th century in which the theater was really a people's form. And that experience might still have fed their cinematic expectations 20 or 30 years later; even though they had attended films for years, they had attended films which had probably rarely challenged those expectations - just a thought and vague theory here (I did some graduate work at Astoria when they were reviving the old sound stage back in the early 1980s and was struck by how continually the stage fed the films) - my other questions would be whether many of those early directors were also from the theater -

Edited March 6, 2005 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

and just to add - if those scenes were strictly or primarily the result of technical limitations, what of those directors who had already exceeded those limitations? Would this not indicate that the early studios had the means but not the desire to exceed these?

[garthsj]

The subject of the continuity between theater and the emergence of the movies is a topic of much discussion among students of early film. The first thing to remember is that there were many different "forms" of live theater, arcing from the formal presentation of opera and dramatic presentations all the way over to the other end of burlesque, and everything in between such as operettas, revues, melodrama, and vaudeville. In my own research, as well as many others, a clear relationship can be established between the increasing realism found on the meodrama stage, and the content of early movies. In some later melodramas there were sections which had 20 minutes of visual action without any dialogue (a man climbing upward to rescue a baby from an eagle's nest ... later made into an early movie, starring D.W. Griffith!). In a production of "Ben Hur" in 1899, the theater critic Hilary Bell made a wonderfully prophetic statement when he wrote: "In the play we see merely several horses galloping on a moving platform. They make no headway, and the moving scenery behind them does not delude the spectators into the belief that they are racing ... The only way to secure the exact scene of action for this incident in a theater IS TO REPRESENT IT BY MR. EDISON'S INVENTION!" ( Ben Hur has had, of coure, three very successful film productions over the years).

Anyway ... I was referring to more formal theatrical productions, but let me quote a study in Boston in 1909 which showed even at that early age, that of entertainment seating, formal theater accounted for 13.5 percent, while movies and vaudeville with movies accounted for 85.4 percent. (Opera acounted for 1.1 percent). Movies had very quickly become THE major paid entertainment throught the western world. At a time when the average weekly wage was about $8-10, theater attendance was expensive, about 50 cents to $1.50, while movies ranged from 5 to 10 cents. Many social critics decried the high costs of the legitimate theater. Melodrama was considerably cheaper, ranging from 15 cents to $1.

Hmmmmmmm.. I should just scan in an entire chapter from my book, or from a highly recommended book I edited as part of a series on the History of Communication, Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television 1750-1990 (N.Y. Cambridge UP, 2000).

.. as I said earlier, this is a fascinating (to me anyway) subject ... with much work yet to be done!

Edited March 6, 2005 by garthsj

[garthsj]

and just to add - if those scenes were strictly or primarily the result of technical limitations, what of those directors who had already exceeded those limitations? Would this not indicate that the early studios had the means but not the desire to exceed these?

I would agree .... but in general the world just moved at a slower pace then ... and this shift in "rhythm of life" has been noted by many social and cultural critics ... Marshall McLuhan's concept of dominant media shaping the society and culture is accurate here. In the last thirty years the average length of a news story on television evening news has gone from nearly two minutes to less than twenty seconds today!

Edited March 6, 2005 by garthsj

[Shawn]

I don't know about anyone else here....but I MISS the art of deliberate pacing....the whole fucking MTV editing thing has gotten so out of control....it just kills it for me. Most action scenes are so fast you can't even tell what the hell is going on...and when it comes to dialogue sequences...they can't keep the friggin' camera still for more than5 seconds.

I miss the mood & rhythm of films like The Best Years Of Our Lives, They Drive By Night, The Killing, 2001, Five Easy Pieces, etc.

[AllenLowe]

this is why Citizen Kane was such a major development, I would say as a layman - its editing and pacing seems so radical - though it's not to be confused with the latter-day MTV style of obnoxious movements and closeups ad-nauseum. There's a difference between a use of the camera that gives a sense of real and life-like rhythm and one that just puts everything IN YOUR FACE - another thing that makes older American films so dead is the use of sound stages for nearly everything, and the rare use of outdoor location (and other real location) shooting. I remember seeing an early Renoir film (can't remember the name) and thinking how less-claustrophobic the film felt with its use of real streets and real countryside (even though the film itself was not that good) -

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek - TCM encore starting in seconds!

Mike

[AfricaBrass]

The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek - TCM encore starting in seconds!

Mike

Thank you for your post! I just finished watching the encore.

Next week: Lady From Shanghai with Welles and a blonde Rita Hayworth.

[ghost of miles]

Welcome to the WONDERFUL, WACKY world of Preston Sturges!  Here are the "must-see" films that Sturges wrote and/or directed:

The Great McGinty

The Palm Beach Story

Sullivan's Travels (inspiration for Oh Brother Where Art Thou)

The Lady Eve

Hail The Conquering Hero

Unfaithfully Yours

The Good Fairy

Also worth checking out, though not quite on the same level:

Remember The Night

Christmas In July

Easy Living

Diamond Jim

Enjoy!

Yiou know, I've heard the name "Preston Sturges" so much over the years, read so much about him, seen all kinds of tributes to him, etc., that I figured that I had seen at least some of his films at least once.

That list proves me wrong. Never seen (or heard) of any of them.

I feel so...so...IGNUNT!

(which is why I started this thread - I don't like being ignunt! )

Discovering this stuff oughta be BIG fun! I mean, any cat that has a newspaper headline that reads MUSSOLINI RESIGNS! "Enough Is Sufficient", says Dictator (or something very similar) in the wake of some American chick giving birth to sextuplets obviously lives on a planet that I'd like to hang out at for a while.

I've seen only SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS and THE PALM BEACH STORY, but they won't be hours wasted if you ever get to see them.

[BruceH]

UNbelieveable movie! Brilliant, audacious, and how the hell did it get made?

I'm REALLY glad you got to see that movie Jim, that's one of my all time favorite comedies. Talk about brilliant fucking dialogue!

"One of these days their gonna find your hair ribbon in an axe somewhere"

Welcome to the WONDERFUL, WACKY world of Preston Sturges! Here are the "must-see" films that Sturges wrote and/or directed:

The Great McGinty

The Palm Beach Story

Sullivan's Travels (inspiration for Oh Brother Where Art Thou)

The Lady Eve

Hail The Conquering Hero

Unfaithfully Yours

The Good Fairy

Also worth checking out, though not quite on the same level:

Remember The Night

Christmas In July

Easy Living

Diamond Jim

Enjoy!

Love Sturges. The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story are my favorites. I've always had a warm spot in my heart for Easy Living, too, though he only wrote that one, didn't direct. Great cast, for one thing.

[ralphie_boy]

Next week: Lady From Shanghai with Welles and a blonde Rita Hayworth.

That's a great little flick!

[Shawn]

Tonight is one of those nights that would be worth pulling an all-nighter for...BRILLIANT lineup on TCM this evening.

The Lady From Shanghai

The Big Sleep

Double Indemnity

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Out Of The Past

[ralphie_boy]

Tonight is one of those nights that would be worth pulling an all-nighter for...BRILLIANT lineup on TCM this evening.

The Lady From Shanghai

The Big Sleep

Double Indemnity

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Out Of The Past

I tried hard to stay awake to watch all of these. I missed Lady from Shanghai, but caught the encore yesterday. I fell asleep during The Big Sleep and didn't wake up until Postman started. I never did see Double Indemnity, but they air it enough that I'll catch it eventually. Postman is a great film! Plenty of plot twists and turns.

[joeface]

this is why Citizen Kane was such a major development, I would say as a layman - its editing and pacing seems so radical - though it's not to be confused with the latter-day MTV style of obnoxious movements and closeups ad-nauseum. There's a difference between a use of the camera that gives a sense of real and life-like rhythm and one that just puts everything IN YOUR FACE -

But it's not just the real and life-likeness, there was specifically unrealness to the camera that broke ground. The editing and pacing worked because we the viewers are being transported in ways that were new at the time, and probably rarely matched since. I'm sure the effect would have been most unreal to original audiences. If most film by that time was little more than staged theatrical productions, interior scenes with obligatory external "framing" shots, etc., and all that with photographic contraptions that just happened to capture these dramatic things (this is my impression though I could be wrong), Citizen Kane would surely have produced some kind of disembodied effect on the audience. A frequently shifting narrative stance combined with a freer and a more abstract camera eye not limited to the usual confines of the human eye (effectively transporting the audience everywhere from inner psyches of troubled souls to broader social vistas).

Another possible innovation (again I cannot confirm) is this was an early instance of self-referential film, i.e. a truth-bending story about a storyteller who bends truth, though that has nothing to do with the filming style itself.

[BruceH]

Tonight is one of those nights that would be worth pulling an all-nighter for...BRILLIANT lineup on TCM this evening.

The Lady From Shanghai

The Big Sleep

Double Indemnity

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Out Of The Past

         

I tried hard to stay awake to watch all of these. I missed Lady from Shanghai, but caught the encore yesterday. I fell asleep during The Big Sleep and didn't wake up until Postman started. I never did see Double Indemnity, but they air it enough that I'll catch it eventually. Postman is a great film! Plenty of plot twists and turns.

Great lineup, indeed! For my money, Out of the Past is the best of the bunch.

[chris olivarez]

Our local cable company does not provide TCM-GRRRR!!!!!!!GRRRRR!!!!!!!!

[BERIGAN]

Our local cable company does not provide TCM-GRRRR!!!!!!!GRRRRR!!!!!!!!

Do you still play 8 track tapes as well?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story - tomorrow on TCM at 8 PM EST.

Mike

[JSngry]

YOW!

We kinda got off the TCM trip what w/vacation and all, but another Sturges film will get us back on it quite quickly.

Thanks for the heads-up!

[ralphie_boy]

Our local cable company does not provide TCM-GRRRR!!!!!!!GRRRRR!!!!!!!!

Do you still play 8 track tapes as well?

You have to break their balls on a persistent basis. That's what I did and they finally caved in.

[BruceH]

You have to break their balls on a persistent basis.

Ain't that always the way?

[ralphie_boy]

You have to break their balls on a persistent basis.

Ain't that always the way?

Unfortunately!

[Adam]

I rather enjoyed the chunk that I saw of the silent BEN HUR last night.

Edited March 21, 2005 by Adam