BYN 106/4 Brief History of Hollywood March 15, 2021

1. The first great American movie was The Birth of a Nation, directed by CW Griffith in 1915. Griffith was the first
American director to understand ‘the language of film’. He invented the two-hour feature film filled with action and
drama that remains the characteristic Hollywood product today. Charlie Chaplin called him ‘the teacher of us all’.

2. The heirs of Griffith are US epics such as Ben Hur (1925 – silent – and 1959). The 1959 film was three-and-a-half
hours long and included the famous chariot race. Ironically, Ben Hur, a man who deplored violence, was played by
Charlton Heston, now head of the American Rifle Association.

3. Charlie Chaplin was cinema’s first comic genius and ‘The Tramp’ was his unique achievement. From the same tradition
came Buster Keaton. Some say (including Orson Welles) that The General (1926) was the best comedy ever.

4. Hollywood invented ‘genre cinema’, which meant: ‘give the audience what it expects’. Favourite U.S. genres included
the Western, which depends on the myth of ‘the frontier’. John Ford made 140 films, mostly westerns, including
Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). His characteristic scenery: Monument Valley.

5. Alfred Hitchcock (British) is considered to have been the master of suspense – still the most important element in
thrillers and horror movies. But there is nothing formulaic or predictable in Hitchcock. Psycho (1960) is considered the
first modern horror movie – suspense, schizophrenia and sadism with a hint of black comedy.

6. Another favourite genre has been the gangster film, often depicting the Depression years in Chicago. Modern versions
of cops and robbers cinema have increasingly relied on extreme violence, raising the issue of a deliberate indulgence and
enjoyment of violence, or sadism. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) is considered the archetypal ‘postmodern’ film.

7. The violence of Clockwork Orange (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick led to ‘copycat’ crimes, causing the director to
withdraw the film from cinemas. Time Out magazine described the film as sexless, inhuman and superficial. Natural Born
Killers (Oliver Stone,1994) appeared to glamorize brutal murders, but Stone argued that it was a parody of the media
obsession with celebrity and violence.

8. Oliver Stone and Stanley Kubrick are important figures in the cinematic staging of history. Students today learn more
of the Vietnam War from the screen (Platoon; Full Metal Jacket) than from books and teachers, and the mixture of fact and
fiction in Stone’s film on the Kennedy assassination (JFK, 1991) created confusion about which is which.

9. Steven Spielberg is arguably today’s most admired US director, maker of memorable children’s films (ET), Science
Fiction (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), adventure movies (Indiana Jones), horror films (Jaws), war films (Saving Private
Ryan) and serious historical studies (Schindler’s List). Also much admired: Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York,
Goodfellas, The Departed), master of the modern gangster film.

10. Hollywood has been dominated by ‘the studio system’ in which a few very large companies (MGM, Warner,
Paramount, United Artists, Fox etc.) controlled production and distribution. The studio system has depended on big
budgets, great stars and genre movies, but the US also has a lively and creative history of independent movies, with low
budgets, unknown actors, an absence of genre conventions and experimental mise-en-scene. A collection of such films is
shown annually at the Sundance Film Festival.