Topics in Film Studies FINAL Flashcards
Name 7 things the “New Women” of the 1920s saw change in society.
- FREEDOM - Enjoyed a new sense of freedom, mainly due to the 19th Amendment, and the subsequent right to divorce
- END OF IT ALL - Many enlightened people considered it to be the beginning of the breakdown in traditional family values
- SEXUAL LIBERATION - Resulting in real changes in sexual behavior, women began to gain freer access to contracep*ves (e.g. diaphragms, condoms, spermicides, and so forth).
- FASHION - Thanks to the influence
of such designers as Coco Chanel and Jean Patou, women began to wear open-necked shirts, sleeveless and knee-length
dresses, tailored suits, flesh-colored silk stockings, and the newly invented brassiere. - COSMETICS & HAIR - On account of the cosmetic industry-
rivals Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, more women began to apply lipstick and makeup (something previously
associated with bohemians and prostitutes). As long hair signified having to tend it, comb it, and tie it up in a severe bun, many women began to bob their hair in a more “loose and liberating” style. - UNSAVORY BEHAVIOR - In addition, women began to drive cars, smoke cigarettes, drink prohibited liquor, engage in sports and jazz-age dance
styles, and attend colleges and universities like never before. - CAREERS - Given the confluence of these factors, coupled with the power of the movies to shape and spread the image of the New Woman, a range of career opportunities opened up, offering for many women a means to financial independence and an outlet for creative expression.
Granted American women the right to vote.
19th Amendment
A document that embodies the fundamental laws and principles by which the United States is governed.
Constitution
Name 3 facts about the Academy Awards
- Founded in 1927
- First held on May 16, 1929
- First Best Actress winner was Janet Gaynor
When did Adolf Hitler come into power?
1933
French filmmaker who was the first women director in the motion-picture industry. Her firlm, La Fee au Choux (1896), is one of the earliest narrative fiction films ever made.
Alice Guy Blache
Name 2 facts about the American Civil War
- 1861 - 1865
- Women saw an expanded definition of “proper” female behavior, procuring supplies for troops, and working as untrained nurses.
THREE of the Scenario writers, a legion of women who collectively wrote half of the films copyrighted between 1911 and 1925.
Anita Loos
Elinor Glyn
Frances Marion
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 6 and 9, 1945
2 facts about the Attack on Pearl Harbor
- December 7, 1941
2. Convinced Americans to join the war
FOUR early feminist icons of the 1930s. Portrayals of strong, independent women implication in morally vexing situations ranging from premarital sex to unwed motherhood to illegal abortions.
Betty Boop
Barbara Stanwyck
Jean Harlow
Mae West
________________ had once been awarded to legendary figures after decades of accomplishments. Now, by the alchemy of a camera, centuries have been shortened into days and nights.
Concept of Fame
The first anti-Nazi movie made in Hollywood, ______________ was made under enormously tight security as a
result of death threats. Jewish studio heads fearlessly made it against the government’s desire to not criticize the Nazis. While the film was banned in Germany, Japan, and 18 Latin American countries, it proved to a hit in
America and prompted other studios to hurry the production of
more anti-Hitler films.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
In 1926, Warner Bros. debuts _____________, the first Vitaphone film (developed by Bell Laboratories) and the first publically-shown “talkie” with synchronized sound effects and music (but no dialogue).
It was the first mainstream film that replaced the traditional use of a live orchestra, organ, or piano for the soundtrack.
Don Juan
During The Great Depression, people chose to stay home more for free radio. However, they still needed escape. One way exhibitors got people back into theaters was through _________ __________, a two-films-for-the-price-of-one deal.
Double features
Early Feminism (when did it start and what were 5 common issues for women)
Really began with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention
- Excluded from Politics
- No Serious Job Opportunities
- Very Little Education
- No Rights (Civil rights, Voting Rights, Community Property Rights, or Employment Rights)
- Lesser Roles and Lesser Pay than Men
Early problems with sound
- Expensive
- Restricted by technical demands of microphones
- Theaters had to rewire for sound
- Camera movement limited due to loud noise of camera
- Many actors could not transition to sound pictures
Feminism
the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes
Everyone lived in deadly fear of incurring the displeasure of these two gossip columnists. They had the power to make or break deals, and ruin careers and marriages. Nothing about the lives of the stars - their politics, friends, family, health, or love affairs - was sacred.
Hedda Hopper
Louella Parsons
A method of creating, promoting, and exploiting Hollywood film stars for economic profit
Hollywood Star System
Industrial Revolution (when did it take place and name 4 facts)
1760-1914
- For some women, it provided independent wages, mobility, and a better standard of living
- However, for the vast majority, factor work resulted in a life of hardship
- Women mostly found jobs in domestic service and textile factories
- Home life suffered as women were faced with the double burden of factory work followed by domestic chores and child care
- MGM Production Head
- Married Norma Shearer
- Died young, and Hollywood shut down for a day to observe his funeral
Irving Thalberg
One of the prominent ‘New Talent’ plucked from Broadway during the advent of sound
James Cagney
German cinema fell under the authority of ___________ ____________ and his Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels
Working for _____________, Scottish inventor _____________ designed and built a camera ( the _____________) and viewer for watching the films that the camera recorded ( the _____________). He also built the _____________ - a rotating studio where early films were photographed that used the sun as the light source.
Thomas Edison W.K.L. Dickson Kinetograph Kinetoscope Black Maria
Director of Triumph of the Will (1935), which documented the 1934 Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg. Then directed Olympia (1938), a ‘record’ of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
Leni Riefenstahl
Early female film star sisters
Lillian and Dorothy Gish
__________________________ of silent films was a specialized craft that developed, and disappeared, within a decade and a half. Unlike the scoring of sound pictures, its creative center was the theater. House conductor-arrangers needed to have their orchestras ready to accompany a new film every time the program changed, which generally meant at least once a week.
Live musical accompaniment
One of the most well-known directors was __________ ___________, who produced and directed dozens of films and had her own production company.
Lois Weber
Considered to be the first modern-style celebrity. His image fascinated the public, and his self-awareness and personal promotion are seen as the beginning to what would become the modern rock star.
Lord Byron
Early female film star who was a repeated collaborator of Charlie Chaplin
Mabel Normand
Male gaze
is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure
Microphones
Made “talkies” possible with synchronized sound.
Misogyny
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
National Legion of Decency
founded in 1933 as an organization dedicated to identifying and combating objectionable content in motion pictures from the point of view of the American Catholic Church.
Nazi Germany
1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party controlled the country through a dictatorship and was transformed into a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government.
Nazi-era cinema
the use of film for propaganda had been planned by the National Socialist German Workers Party as early as 1930, when the party first established a film department. UFA motion picture studio played a huge role during this period of cinema.
Open marriage
relationship in which both partners agree that each may have sexual relations with others.
Pen Names
female writers adopted male pseudonyms, for a number of reasons: to publish without prejudice in male-dominated circles; to experiment with the freedom of anonymity; or to encourage male readership.
Pickfair
was an 18-acre estate in the city of Beverly Hills, California originally designed by architect Horatio Cogswell as a country home. The property was sold to actor Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford in 1918.
Pre-Code cinema
refers to the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in pictures in 1929 and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines.
Propaganda
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Sarah Bernhardt
was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Seneca Falls Convention
was the first women’s rights convention. It advertised itself as “a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman”. 1848
Sexism
prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
Social problem films
Hollywood did produce and market a number of topical films in the 1930s and by the 1940s, the term “social problem” or “message” film was conventional in its usage among the film industry. Poverty, women’s rights, addiction, inhumanity, and horrors of war.
Sound-on-disc
is a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or play back sound in sync with a motion picture. Used mechanical interlock with the movie projector.
Sound-on-film
is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture.
Stereophonic sound
achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions
Stereotypes (Vamp, Flapper, etc.)
a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. (Femme fatale; a rebellious fashionable woman from the 20s)
Suffragette movement
was a member of militant women’s organisations in the early 20th century who, under the banner “Votes for Women”, fought for the right to vote in public elections, known as women’s suffrage.
The Birth of a Nation
is an incredibly racist American silent epic drama film directed and co- produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish.
The De Havilland Decision
ultimately contributed to the downfall of the studio system by limiting studio-actor contracts to seven years
The Don’ts and Be Carefuls
A code that enumerated a number of key points that related directly to the motion picture production code
The End of the Production Code
In keeping with the changes in society, sexual content that would have previously been banned by the Code was being retained. The movie industry was faced with very serious competitive threats. The MPAA began working on a rating system.
The Great Depression
was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. Started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s.
The Hollywood Canteen
a club offering food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas. Even though the majority of visitors were U.S servicemen, the canteen was open to servicemen of allied countries as well as women in all branches of service.
The Jazz Singer
1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronized recorded music score but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences.
The Marx Brothers
were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949.
The Production Code/Hays Code
was the set of industry moral guidelines that was applied to most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968.
Theater vs. film
Biggest difference is the relationship between the performer and the audience. Film has a documentation character that theater does not have, since theater always needs people on stage to be executed while you can have films without people.
Theaters wired for sound
Fox Movie Tone versus Warner Brothers Vitaphone, it was costing studios millions of dollars and many years to rewire theaters across the country and then by time they finished the Great Depression hit and this set back most of the studios in Hollywood
Theda Bara
was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the most popular actresses of the silent era, and one of cinema’s earliest sex symbols. Cleopatra (1917)
Triumph of the Will
Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s controversial masterwork is an artful work of propaganda showcasing German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. Edited from over 60 hours’ worth of raw footage shot over the course of the rally’s four days.
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women ____ ____
Voting Rights
was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany’s defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
Weimar era/Weimar culture
was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.
World War I
also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world’s countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis.
World War II
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants women the right to vote in the year _________ .
1920
The first woman director in the motion-picture industry was _________________ .
Alice Guy Blache
Described as old, bulky, and even gargoyle-like, _________________ defied all odds and became the biggest and most unlikely box-office star when America needed less glamour and more laughter.
Marie Dressler
