Test 2

Question 1

A classic example of early, Great Depression era (1929 -1939) musical films was of “WHAT” featuring the imaginative choreography, moving sets and fluid camera work of dance director “BLANK”. It’s “rags to riches” story line featured a poor chorus girl who gets her big break when the star breaks her ankle.

Answer 1

42nd Street directed Busby Berkeley

Question 2

The Hollywood films of the 20’s and 30’s were, in some cases, explicitly and excessively sexual, violent and morally corrosive, at least according to the views of a large part of their audience. In self-defense, to head off outside censorship, what did MPPDA establish? Writers, directors and actors like Mae West, whose sexually suggestive dialogue created a stir, were the cause of the tightening code of the early 30’s. Nevertheless, for both commercial and artistic reasons, every boundary continued to be pushed, including by Clark Gable’s famous last line in 1939’s “Gone with the Wind,” “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The anarchic comedies of the Marx Brothers, which showed a world of social hypocrisy spinning out of control, also challenged the rules of the Production Code.

Answer 2

It established the ineffectual Hayes Office in 1922 first, and then later the more demanding “Production Code” in 1934.

Question 3

By what year did the Hollywood Studios achieved their highest level of profitability, producing large numbers of beautifully made, influential and profitable films?

Answer 3

1946

Question 4

What was the name for the Early 1940’s?

Answer 4

The War Years

Question 5

During the 30s and 40s, the “genre system” of producing “product lines” of films with similar themes and stars had become a standardized business….

Answer 5

Gangster films, westerns, romantic comedies, historical epics, war films, romantic tragedies, musical comedies, etc. were produced and marketed in ways similar to the ways other large consumer products companies, like auto makers, produced and marketed their wares through product differentiation and niche marketing.

Question 6

A Pictures and B Pictures were known as

Answer 6

Programmers that were shown on “double bills” in which one A picture and one B picture were shown together along with a newsreel and cartoons for the price of a single admission.

Question 7

Small companies like “Minors” (UA) to “Poverty Row” (Columbia Pictures and Republic Pictures) that survived the Great Depression, produced…

Answer 7

both A Pictures and B Pictures

Question 8

Who Revolutionized the animated films and when?

Answer 8

Walt Disney in the late 20s

Question 9

The 1928 Mickey Mouse short “Steamboat Willy”

Answer 9

was the first animated “talkie”

Question 10

Mickey became as famous as which star?

Answer 10

Charlie Chaplin

Question 11

Who became one of the most important Hollywood directors by creating optimistic, “sugar coated” films that featured the triumph of the “little guy” and that also advanced romantic comedy themes. In films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” he portrayed the victory of middle class values and ordinary people over exploitive business men and politicians. During World War II, he produced the moral boosting propaganda “documentary” series “Why We Fight.”

Answer 11

Frank Capra

Question 12

This term means “dark film” and was coined by French critics to describe not only the lighting and camera work of films like “The Maltese Falcon” and “Double Indemnity” but to also describe their message of cynical stoicism.

Answer 12

Film Noir

Question 13

Another great director of the period, whose brilliant career stretched from the 20’s to the 60’s, made many films that looked like “film noir” but had a very different social message. His pictures, even those like “The Grapes of Wrath” which dealt with the Great Depression’s “Dust Bowl” and “The Informer” that dealt with poverty and injustice in Ireland, employed a lighting, camera work and production design “look” that was similar to film noir’s but they were in fact far more romantic and hopeful in their message. Ford’s films have been described as showing “social realism” as opposed to “film noir’s” moral pessimism.

Answer 13

John Ford

Question 14

His films showed a less comforting side of life

Answer 14

John Houston

Question 15

Which film noir made Humphrey Bogart a movie star in 1941?

Answer 15

“The Maltese Falcon,” in which the hero, Sam Spade, sends the dangerous woman he loves, Bridget O’Shaunessy, to prison for murder because he could never trust her not to kill him as well.

Question 16

What was Huston’s wartime film for the Army, which was so upsetting in its revelation of the horrors of war that it was never released until long after the war was over.

Answer 16

The Battle of San Pietro

Question 17

Which film is credited by some as the first “film noir”

Answer 17

“The Maltese Falcon”

Question 18

a more fully realized example of the genre was this directed film in which both the male and female leads die for their crimes.

Answer 18

“Double Indemnity” by Billy Wilder in 1944

Question 19

This film made Humphrey Bogart a romantic leading man. In the film, many of the leading and supporting characters are fleeing the Nazis and trying to escape Casablanca, to get to Lisbon and then on to America.

Answer 19

Casablanca (1942)

Question 20

Who made inspirational films about heroic characters fighting against the Nazis such as the movie “Casablanca”

Answer 20

Michael Curtiz

Question 21

This is a great film of the year 1941, the last year before the US officially entered World War II. It was co-written, produced and directed by a twenty five year old “wunderkind” named Orson Welles. Regarded by many critics as the best single film ever made, it was Welles’ first and best film in a career that declined rapidly from this high water mark.

Answer 21

Citizen Kane

Question 22

The film opens with the dying Charles Foster Kane speaking his last word “Rosebud” as he drops and breaks a glass, snow-scene filled paper weight that shatters on the floor. The rest of the film is composed of a series of “shattered” narrative lines through which we follow a reporter as he tries to find the meaning of Kane’s last word. Interwoven throughout the film, we meet the important characters in Kane’s life, including his best friend, Jed Lelend, and his second wife, Susan Alexander, whom he meets on a street corner and then tries to turn into an opera star. Kane’s first marriage is dispensed with through a masterful example of “montage editing” that shows the stages in the decline of their relationship through a series of six rapid “swish cut” scenes around their breakfast table.

Answer 22

Citizen Kane

Question 23

Explain how WWII effected USA and Europe.

Answer 23

The European environment from 1929 to1939 involved many similar but even more severe economic and political conditions following World War I and the start of the Great Depression. Europe also entered the whirlpool of World War II in 1939, two years before the US. During World War II (1939 to1945) the various European national film industries were devastated to one extent or another. In contrast, the US film industry prospered to unprecedented heights during the war years. In general, European films of the 30’s and also during the war years of the 40’s tended to either be challenging and dark explorations of the human condition or patriotic, nationalistic and, finally, propagandistic works.

Question 24

During the 20s and Early 30s

Answer 24

The German film industry produced talented film makers and historically important films

Question 25

Made both the groundbreaking science fiction film “Metropolis” and also a film version of the mythological German legend “Siegfried.” Although he continued to prosper during the early 30’s with films such as “M,” he, like so many other European film makers, writers, actors and technicians, many of them with partial or entirely Jewish ancestry, fled Germany and Europe for Hollywood once the National Socialist Party (Nazi) gained control of Germany in the mid 30’s.

Answer 25

Fritz Lang

Question 26

An important German actress and film maker who did NOT flee the Nazi regime, Hitler’s favorite actress and director.

Answer 26

Leni Riefenstahl

Question 27

She had become famous during the late 20’s and early 30’s by starring in a number “Mountain Films.” She went on to direct both the sports documentary “Olympiad” and also the political propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” under Nazi sponsorship during the 30’s.

Answer 27

Leni Riefenstahl

Question 28

In England during the 30’s, , immigrants from Hungary, started the Denham Studio which was the closest thing to a Hollywood style studio in Great Britain at the time. They later moved to Hollywood where they enjoyed continued success.

Answer 28

The Korda brothers

Question 29

Another great export from England to Hollywood during the late 30’s was the very successful director…

Answer 29

Alfred Hitchcock

Question 30

In France…

Answer 30

several important styles of film making emerged during the 20’ and 30’s. However, once WWII started, the French film industry went into decline from which it only emerged in the 1950’s

Question 31

A pioneer member of the “French New Wave” of personal film making, made the landmark film “The Blood of the Poet” in 1930.

Answer 31

Jean Cocteau

Question 32

scandalized French authorities and the public with their surrealistic films “Un Chien Andalou” and “L’Age D’Or.”

Answer 32

film makers Salvador Dali and Louis Buñuel

Question 33

Another great film maker working in France during the 30’s, was a son of the famous Impressionist painter. His films “Grand Illusion” and “Rules of the Game” portrayed human frailty and venality in a sympathetic light.

Answer 33

Jean Renoir

Question 34

In Italy…

Answer 34

The film industry had been suffering under the heavy hand of Mussolini’s Fascist government since the 20’s, and the 30’s were no better. However, after World War II, during which much of Italy was devastated, a fresh and powerful style of film making emerged called “Italian Neo-Realism.”

Question 35

Employing the very meager financial and technical resources available after the war, film makers like Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and the young Federico Fellini revolutionized the Italian film industry with hard edged stories about the plight of ordinary Italians struggling to survive the harsh post war conditions. This movement spread throughout Europe and became known as “Postwar Neo Realism.” Many of these films made their way to the US during the 50’s and the 60’s where an increased interest in European films blossomed for a few decades and had a profound influence on US film makers and critics.

Answer 35

Italian Neo-Realism

Question 36

The Post War period in the US…

Answer 36

Starting in 1945, was at first characterized by heroic and comedic celebrations of victory. However, important films that explored the difficulties of returning soldiers such a William Wyler’s “The Best Years of our Lives” soon emerged. In addition, “film noir” found a new audience in a population whose experience of the war and its aftermath had challenged their faith in human nature. Unfortunately, World War II’s end was closely followed by the beginning of the “Cold War” between the Russian (then “Soviet”) Empire and its communist allies around the world, importantly including “Red China” and North Korea. Soon the US was in a hot war in Korea and was fighting a cold war in Europe and on many other fronts. This international conflict with coordinated communist nations, made more dangerous by the existence of nuclear weapons, fueled a renewed anti-communism in the US. By the early 50’s, the loyalty of many Hollywood writers, actors, directors and producers was being publically questioned and the Hollywood studios developed a “black list” of people who were no longer allowed to work in Hollywood. This period is known as the “Red Scare” and one of its effects was to constrain the kinds of stories told in Hollywood films.

Question 37

The 50’s brought a lot of profound changes to the Hollywood business model…

Answer 37

The most important of them were the rise of television and the1948 “Paramount Consent Decree” which forced the US Major studios to sell off their motion picture theater chains. These and other social changes brought on a steady decline in the Hollywood studio system and its revenues throughout the 50’s and one that continued into the 60’s leading to a near-death experience for the Majors by 1970.

Question 38

The 50’s also…

Answer 38

Produced an explosion of creative innovation and a profound questioning of inherited social values and injustices. Beginning in the European influenced New York theatre world of the 30’s and 40’s, a more naturalistic form of acting emerged in the 50’s. This style of acting, generally known as “the Method” is epitomized by the performances of Marlon Brando in films like “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “On the Waterfront.” Their director, Elia Kazan, and others in his generation, emphasized story and character over genre and star power in their films.

Question 39

They continued to challenge the rules of the “Production Code” until it finally collapsed in the 60’s.

Answer 39

Kazan and other directors, including Otto Preminger

Question 40

On a technical level, Hollywood in the 50’s…

Answer 40

Tried to compete with television by introducing different, bigger and better theater experiences including innovations like various “wide screen” formats, “drive-in” movies and “3-D” movies.