In the year 1878, Muybridge Eadweard exhibited the photography power to capture movement. In the 1894, the initial commercial motion image display in the world took place in New York City, by use of Kinetoscope of Thomas Edison. The United States of America was in the cutting edge of development of movie film in the decades that followed. Since the early periods of the 20th century, the film industry of the United States of America has predominately been located in and around Los Angeles, Hollywood and California. The Picture City was a well a designed location for a production center of movie picture in the 1920s, although because of the Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, the plan lost significance and the Picture City went back to its initial name of Hobe Sound. D. W. Griffith was vital to the film grammar development.
Orson Welles's Citizen Kane of the year 1941 is often referred in polls of the critic as the greatest movie ever. Screen actors of America such as Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne have turned out to be iconic names as an entrepreneur and producer Walt Disney was a head in both movie and animated film merchandising. The main Hollywood film studios are the main basis of the majority of commercially victorious movies worldwide, for instance Star Wars of the year 1977, Gone with the Wind of 1939, Avatar of 2009, and Titanic of 1997. At present, film studios in America together generate a number of hundred movies each year, rendering the United States of America the third most creative films producer all over the world, behind Nollywood and Bollywood.
The other recorded occurrence of photographs taking as well as reproducing movement was a sequence of photographs of a horse running by Muybridge that he took in California by use of a set of motionless cameras positioned in a row. Muybridge Eadweard's achievement made discoverers all over to try to make the same devices that would take such movement. In the United States of America, Edison Thomas was one of the first persons to produce this kind of device, the kinetoscope.
Throughout the 1930s, the United States was confronting its most deep and longest financial downtrend commonly referred to as the Great Depression. Therefore, spending cash on entertainment was not a privilege to a number of people. The United States placing the country back to work included entertainers and artists in its support programs. The entertainers, successively, offered inexpensive or free entertainments for people that permitted them to disremember their problems awhile.
During the earliest times of the film industry of America, New York served an important role. The Studios of Kaufman Astoria located in Queens, constructed in the silent era of the film, was utilized by the W.C. Fields together with Marx Brothers. Chelsea was as well often used. A winning actress in an Academy Award known as Mary Pickford produced a number of her early videos in this region. Other key film production centers also included Florida, Chicago, Texas, Cuba, as well as California.
The early 20th century wars of film patents resulted in the increase of film companies across the United States of America. The majority of them worked with equipment that did not belong to them rightfully, and, therefore, shooting in New York could be unsafe. It was near the headquarters of the Edison's Company, and to agents the company commenced to grab cameras. By the year 1912, a majority of major companies of the film had started facilities of production in Southern California close to or in Los Angeles due to the proximity of the location to Mexico, and the year-round weather that was conducive in the region.
The film history started in the late 1880s through the discovery of the initial movie camera. Pictures in motion were at first demonstrated as carnival freshness and grew to among the most crucial entertainment as well as communication tools, and mass media in the 20th century as well as into the 21st century. The majority of films prior to 1930 were still. Films with motion pictures have considerably had effects on the technology, arts, as well as politics .
The theatre of the movie was regarded as an inexpensive, simpler manner to offer entertainment to the people. Movies turned out to be the most well-liked visual form of art of the former Victorian era. It was more elementary due to the fact that before the cinema individuals would have to journey long distances to watch key cycloramas or pleasure ground, but this was changed by the advent of the cinema. All through the initial ten years of the existence of cinema, discoverers worked to ameliorate the machines for producing and showing motion picture.
In the year 1934, Will Hays who was in charge of the Producers of the Motion Picture and Association of Distributors, said that there was no means that led to more significantly to the national morale maintenance than the film in an era featured by riot, revolution, as well as political disorder in other nations. All through the period of Great Depression, Hollywood took part in a precious ideological as well as psychological function, offering comfort and anticipation to a discouraged country. In spite of the depths of the Great Depression, between 60 and 80 million people of America went to the movies every week, and, in the expression of despair and doubt, films aided in sustaining the national team spirit.
The movie industry at the time of depression considered itself to be shielded from depression, although Hollywood had no immunity from the effects of Depression than any other industry. As they financed buying of movie theaters as well as in conversion to sound, Hollywood had tripled the amount of debt that they had during the mid and late 1920s. The value of their debt was approximately $410 million. This read to the question on the viability of the industry. The attendance to watch movies and the revenue collected by the industry has significantly dropped by the year 1933. This caused the industry to trim the salaries, closing a third of the theatres as well as the production cost in order to survive.
Most people assume the reason behind most American people ran to movies during the depression was to escape the reality collectively termed escapism. At the movie, the American people would forget the trouble they were going through just for a couple of hours. The depression movies were viewed to be the modern kind of circuses and bread aimed at distracting the American from the problems that they had, damping radicalism in politics and reestablishing old values.
However, running to the movies by the Americans was more than just escapism. This was because most of the films that were created during this time had their grounds in the realities that were facing the society at the time. One of the most realistic film that focused on a social problem was “I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang." The types of films that were produced by Hollywood during the era of depression went through sharp changes many due to changes in public mood. In the early years of depression, there was a fundamental sense of despair reflected in the type of characters that the American people watched on the screen. These include the cynical journalists, sleazy haggard prostitutes, and shyster lawyers.
The pictures of the gangster and the comedies that were sexually suggestive produced in the 1930s were outrageously provoked and posed threats of boycotts. The threats were mainly from the Protestant and Catholic communities. In 1934, the association of Hollywood producers responded to the threat by coming up with a bureau, which was later referred to as Breen Office. The bureau was meant to review each and every script proposed by the major studios for shooting as well as screening the film before they were released. This ensured that the pictures did not go against the code that was set. The production code was drafted by the Father Daniel Lord and was initially adopted in 1930. However, the producers regarded the code as a device of public relation but not as censorship code2.
In 1933, Most Reverend Amleto was the newly apostolic delegate to the Catholic Church in the United States. The Reverend called on for the Catholics to start a vigorous and united campaign that was aimed at purifying the cinema. The cinema was seen as the cause of the deadly menace to the morals in the society. The call was responded to by many Catholics where most of them formed the Legion of Decency. The movement soon had over 9 million members and all of them promise to boycott all the films that were condemned by the Legion board.
The boycott threat reached the producers of the films in a more realistic manner, and they were forced to come up with and enforce a production code. The producers also placed Joseph Breen who was one of their employees to be in charge. The production code prohibited profanity, nudity, miscegenation, white slavery, lustful and excessive kissing. The code also prohibited Hollywood against glorifying adultery or crime. In order to enforce the code, the office under Breen was empowered to award or withhold the approval seal without which it was not possible for a movie to be played in the leading theater chains.
Through the production code, the office led by Breen in a dramatic way altered the characters that played the movies in the latter years of 1930s. This office had one positive effect which caused the Hollywood team to cast a bigger number of actresses playing the role of an independent career woman rather than mere sex objects. In a negative way, the code encouraged the makers of movies to run away from the harsh realities caused by Depression-era life. It also encouraged then to shun the political as well as moral issues that were still controversial at the time. The code also contributed to the stylization of technique in the process of the searching for subtle, witty and creative ways bring in sexuality and violence and at the same time avoiding censorship.
There was renewed optimism sense that was brought forth by the New Deal in conjunction with Breen Office censorship. This led to the production of new kinds of films especially in the last part of the Depression decade. The gangsters were gradually replaced by detectives, G-men, western heroes, as well as other defenders of law. The audiences enjoyed more of the comedies and dramas by Frank Capra where a little man was fighting against corruption. The complex word-play belonging to the Mae West and Marx Brothers continuously gave way to the new comic genre. Some of movies such as the My Man Godfrey, which presented the idealized view of the Americans as people who are sexy, likable, and gallant were considered to be a little harebrained.
The fantasy world that was expressed in the movies during the Depression era has been shown to have played a very crucial psychological and social function to the American people who lived through the era. At a time when the Americans were facing economic disaster, the movies helped people to keep the belief that there is a possibility of individual success alive. The movies portrayed a government that had the capability of offering protection to its citizens against external treats. The movies that were produced during this era portrayed a sustained vision on America as a society that had no classes. In a repeated manner, producers such as Hollywood have repeated these similar formulas such as a poor boy coming from the slums employs crime and uses it as perverted climbing stone to success. Others include where a back row chorus girl comes up to be the leader through luck and pluck and a G-man who fixes law and order. From such simple plots movies were produced that enhanced the faith of the in personal initiatives, government efficacy as well as in a common identity of the American, in a transcending social class.
There are many movies that are cherished today that were created during the Depression era. It was during this time that the pioneer animator, Walt Disney, engaged in the production of movies that the American people loved to see. One of the most popular animations was the Three Little Pigs which was originally done in 1933. The productions by Disney are still cherished by children and are the most famous and frequently viewed by both children and adults.
There were numerous comedies that created in the 1930s. These comedies provided a good laugh that reduced the mind of the hardships that were there and brought joy to the people during adversity. There were numerous movies that focused on how the American people were fighting the Great Depression effects. Most of these movies became very popular, and other movies that originated from other countries were embraced in the American theaters.
Bibliography
Belton, John. American cinema/American culture. . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Jacobs, Lewis. Rise of the American film. New York: The Harcourt Brace, 1930.
Merritt, Greg. Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001.
Parkinson, David. History of Film. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
Pederson, Charles E. Thomas Edison. Minneapolis: Abdo Publishing Company, 2007.
Thompson, Kristin. Film History: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill: Madison, Wisconsin, 2010.
