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Hollywood Cinema

Hollywood Cinema started in the early 1900’s with the exchanging of films, previously to this filmmaker would make a film and then sell it to a distributor. The exchanging of films and being allowed to rent films is now what we know as the start of cinemas.  Filmmakers at this time started to realise that they had the right to produce and distribute their work – this by 1914 left the industry as an oligopoly and by the 1920’s after merges were made within the industry, we were left with ‘The Big 5’ who at the time were – Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros, Fox and MGM. These powerhouses of the industry dominated the industry for about 30 years (1920-1950) where as a collective they took about 70% of all the US film revenue. At the same time as ‘The Big 5’ were around, there were ‘The Little 3’ who were; Columbia, Universal and United Artists – these companies were less successful that the other 5 due to the fact they didn’t have their own film chains. Although after talks The Big 5 and The Little 3 combined and became ‘The Majors’ which overall took about 95% of the US film market.

 The Majors proceeded the dominate the market by developing ‘clearance’ which where and when the film can be shown. They also controlled the market by selling movies in ‘bundles’ meaning that to get the film they wanted, cinemas also had to buy other films they perhaps didn’t want but still couldn’t show them until they were told they could. To stop the Government from interfering with their field The Majors made ‘MPAA’ Motion Picture Association of America. The effect of Hollywood on the rest of the world was so severe that by the late 1920’s more than 80% of ALL cinemas were showing Hollywood Films and in retaliation to this France responded by passing a law stating that 75% of films shown in France had to be French made.

 Hollywood Cinema’s one of most famous features is that it brought along the ‘Star’ in which actors and actresses were signed to one company so they couldn’t choose which films they wanted to be on – The stars had long contracts and were forced to promote whatever the company wanted them to.

 The key turning point for Hollywood was in 1948 when the US Supreme Court ruled that The Majors control of the market was illegal and that they had to split production and distribution - although this took more than 20 years to do. Due to this act The Majors decided to focus purely on distribution – therefore less films were made but had a higher budget.

 In the 1960’s the industry went into crisis and companies started to focus on specific key times e.g. summer and winter – this thing is still present today with most companies releasing a ‘summer blockbuster’. Jaws (1975) is deemed the first blockbuster and the first ever summer blockbuster.

 To conclude Hollywood Cinema I think it brought about some of the most present still used to date, the ‘Star’ role, the less films but to a higher standard and length but most of all the blockbuster.

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British Horror

British Horror started around 1898 and began with short films using tricks and poor quality special effects, such as double exposure. One of the main pioneers of early horror was Todd Slaughter – a theatre actor who in his later life became a film producer, making films such as ‘Murder in the Barn’ (1935), ‘The Face at the Window’ (1939) and ‘Crimes at the Dark House’ (1940). These films due to Todd’s background as a theatre actor were theatrical performances and overstated.

The current film board at the time – the British Board Film Censor (BBFC) were much more interested in American films at the time rather than the British film industry, but due to the reaction to the British horror in 1932 they had to introduce the ‘H’ rating for films – The Horror rating, which meant it was for adults only. Even though this was in effect the reactions were still similar which by 1940 the BBFC banned all ‘H’ certificates in Britain until 1951 – which the ‘H’ rating got replaced with the ‘X’ rating. At around this time this is where British Horror had reached its peak. This sort of reaction to films was not seen again until the ‘Video Nasties’ in which refers to in total 72 films banned in the UK due to their violence in the 1980s and were criticised for being in part to blame of the James Bulger murder.

 Another pioneering company of British Horror was HAMMER Films – founded in 1934. To start out HAMMER didn’t produce horror films and due to the 1927 Cinematograph Act which stated that 25% of all films in the UK must be UK made – this led to HAMMER distributing ‘quota quickies’ which were low quality films produced purely so that American films could be imported – this also made our films take some of Hollywood’s influences. In 1955 HAMMER produced and distributed ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ in which they decided to do a revolutionary thing of introduce midnight screenings for the film. This being one of the first horror films HAMMER had done and the tremendous success that the film had they decided to abandon all other productions and make sequels to Quatermass: ‘X the Unknown’ (1956) and ‘Quatermass 2’ (1957).

 In 1957 ABC Studios – an American company, suggested that HAMMER should remake the Frankenstein series. In 1957 ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ was released as the first colour horror film and showed things that weren’t shown before such as close ups of severed limbs etc.  The film was so successful that it is one of the most successful Horror Brit films of all time and therefore secured funding from a few of ‘The Big Six’ like Universal and Columbia.

 HAMMER then decided to remake the Gothic Novel Dracula which brought attention to famous horror actors such as Christopher Lee and Peter Hutchings. Dracula also introduces ‘The Professional’ which is a character of power. However, after all the success that HAMMER had in the later 1960’s they started to have problems making good films and were quickly outmatched by American horror such as: ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968), ‘The Exorcist’ (1973) and ‘The Omen’ (1976).

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New Zealand Cinema

New Zealand Cinema started out around the early 1900’s – with its first feature film released being Hinemoa in 1914. Even with feature film releases New Zealand wasn’t really known for films until the release of Lord of the Rings (2001) – this event was a milestone for the industry because it put New Zealand ‘on the map’ in terms of filming, primarily due to the landscapes provided there. Lord of the Rings was so important to the New Zealand film industry as a driving force that the Government openly advertised it on things such as ‘Air New Zealand’ – in which they put the casts faces on the sides of their planes with the tag line ‘Airline to Middle-Earth’.  

However, previously to this New Zealand had the stereotype that literally nothing was there except for the landscapes, agriculture, outdoors, mountains etc. Which in terms of Lord of the Rings meant that they were on the map but were still subject to those stereotypes as all Lord of the Rings used New Zealand for was its landscapes – these stereotypes, before and after Lord of the Rings made the film makers of New Zealand try to get away from them which in turn led to them going down a darker theme of cinema, somewhat like German Expressionism during World War 1.

The stereotypes attached to New Zealand somewhat made the country a utopia because the New Zealand Government were releasing tourist videos showing off how beautiful the landscapes were however at the same time the New Zealand film makers were trying to counter those stereotypes by making darker, surreal films such as ‘Rain’ and ‘Vigil’ in which these films show that New Zealand is not a paradise, but instead a lonely and isolated place.

New Zealand has also had to deal with the Hollywood Influence due to them having to import films early in the industry due to the lack of development within New Zealand – as the Government didn’t fund the film industry around this time (1920’s) but instead funded documentary makers to show off the landscapes to bring in people to come and live and work. This lasted for many decades up until about the 1970’s in which the statistic at the time showed that New Zealand has made about 300 feature films (present time) and approximately 3% of them happened before 1977. New Zealand also took the landscape documentary to a higher level when Britain joined the EU in 1973 which led to Britain having to cut all its ‘bias’ trade deals with New Zealand – this in turn led to gradual disconnection from Britain and therefore they made more films about their cultures and landscapes.

Relating back to ‘Rain’ and ‘Vigil’ and how they went against the stereotypes of New Zealand, they tended to have a darker colour palette, and they both use nature as an enemy and potentially as a pathetic fallacy, e.g. in Vigil one of the main naturalistic encounters is the fog, which isolates the daughter and the father and could therefore say that the fog represents the feeling of isolation felt within the New Zealand community. The other example of ‘Rain’ shows in one of scenes that a child has been washed up from the sea, dead – once again showing the point that nature is an enemy.      

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German Expressionism

German Expressionism was extremely prominent within paintings, it was also prominent within architecture and literature – and in turn cinema. Cinema allowed expressionism to have greater effect due to the artists having the ability to show their inner feelings through narrative, characters and the mise-en-scéne within the film. Cinema as an art form also reached a larger audience than the previous three and therefore the individuals that saw the films could interpret the piece to their own lives.  German Expressionism was seen a lot more during the time of World War 1 – due to the ‘blockade’ happening during the war, Germany was excluded from the rest of the world and in terms of cinema it meant it couldn’t use other countries and events as a use of influence, therefore it had to rely on its own national affairs and events as an influence for their creative works – This led to a darker theme of art throughout these times and even had a lasting effect on the art for some time.

 A good example of this is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari released just after World War 1 in 1920 directed by Robert Wiene. This is a prime example of German Expressionism and the dark themes, it has a visually twisted feel to the film and they used the black and white to their advantage and the style of the film made the whole thing feel more like a moving painting rather than a piece of cinema – which links back to another form of expressionism. This can also link to the themes set out by the Gothic Novels such as Frankenstein (1818) being the most famous one – which have conventions such as: The landscape is an enemy and shows the idea of pathetic fallacy (making inanimate objects portray human feelings) – A good example of this is when the main character is having a troubled time it is usually raining, showing the characters emotions throughout the whole scene rather than just through the characters actions and expressions.

 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari featured Dr Caligari as one of its prominent characters – through expressionism could portray Dr Caligari as the German Government and that the other character Cesare is the common man. This can be taken further by saying that Cesare was treated like the population of Germany at the time of war – conditioned to kill. In the book ‘From Caligari To Hitler’ Siegfried Karcauer said that film was a premonition of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi’s.

 As mentioned previously – the art style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is probably its most defining feature it included twisted and distorted images which have ‘off’ scaling which gave the appearance of chaotic – which could be a relation to the events happening in Germany at the time (1920), at this time there was a political crisis between the government and right-wing extremists who used their power to oppose any system that the government tried to put in place. This can also link back another art style used in the film in which houses and buildings were twisted and leaning at sharp angles signifying that they could explode at any moment.

As a whole I think the purpose of expressionism was to provide peoples real feelings within a situation but also to show that creativity was a way of people to escape the darkness of reality.