Stars from the original Hollywood system
- Charlie Chaplin
- Errol Flynn
- Sidney Poitier
- Bette Davis
- Boris Karloff
- Orson Welles
- Bing Crosby
- Yul Brynner
- Howard Hawks
- Merle Oberon
His top ten most famous work can be seen below;
Orson Welles born on the 6th May 1916 in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood on the 10th October 1985. He was named the second best movie director of all time by Entertainment weekly. Although, Welles was an outsider
to the Hollywood studio system because he was an independent director; but this only allowed him to direct13 full-length films in his career.
His distinctive
directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, innovative
uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unusual camera angles, sound techniques
borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes.
War of the Worlds, Orson Welles,
And The Invasion from Mars
It happened the day before Halloween, on Oct. 30, 1938, when
millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured plays
directed by, but also sometimes starring, Orson Welles. The performance on this
evening was an adaptation of “The War of the Worlds”, which was based about a Martian invasion of
the earth. But when adapting the novel to be played on radio, Welles made it
sound like the broadcast was in fact a news cast, explaining that there was a
Martian invasion on earth, a technique that was intended to heighten the
dramatic effect.
As the radio broadcast progressed, the dance music playing was
interrupted a number of times by fake news bulletins reporting that a
"huge flaming object" had dropped on a farm in New
Jersey. As members of the radio audience sat on the edge of their seats, the actors
playing news announcers, officials and other roles one would expect to hear in
a news report, described the landing of an invasion force from Mars and the
destruction of the United States. The broadcast also contained a number of
explanations that it was all a radio play, but if members of the audience
missed a brief explanation at the beginning, the next one didn't arrive until
40 minutes into the program. This scared members of the US society because they
thought the radio broadcast was real and there was an actual invasion.
Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had long been a performer. When he was a teenager, Arbuckle traveled the West Coast on the vaudeville circuit. In 1913, at the age of 26, Arbuckle hit the big time when he signed with Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company and became one of the Keystone Kops.
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle had long been a performer. When he was a teenager, Arbuckle traveled the West Coast on the vaudeville circuit. In 1913, at the age of 26, Arbuckle hit the big time when he signed with Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company and became one of the Keystone Kops.
Arbuckle was heavy - he weighed somewhere between 250 and
300 pounds - and that was part of his comedy. He moved gracefully, threw pies,
and humorously tumbled.
In 1921, Arbuckle signed a three-year contract with
Paramount for $1 million - an unheard of amount at the time, even in Hollywood.
To celebrate just having finished three pictures at the same time and to
celebrate his new contract with Paramount, Arbuckle and a couple of friends
drove up from Los Angeles to San Francisco on Saturday, September 3, 1921 for
some Labor Day weekend revelry.
The Arbuckle Scandal
Maude Delmont, who frequently set-up famous people in order
to blackmail them, claims that Arbuckle herded 26 year-old Virginia Rappe into
his bedroom and said, "I've waited for this a long time." Delmont
says that a few minutes later party-goers could hear screams from Rappe coming
from the bedroom. Delmont claims she tried to open the door, even kick it in,
but couldn't get it open. When Arbuckle opened the door, supposedly Rappe was
found naked and bleeding behind him.
Silent Films
A silent film is a film with no recorded sound but more importantly, with no spoken word. In silent films for entertainment the
dialogue is illustrated through the use of muted gestures, mime and also title cards. Because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue
was only made available in the late 1920s. Films with synchronized dialogue were only made a reality with the perfection of the Audion
amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. After the release
of The Jazz Singer in 1927, talking in film became more and more of a standardized trait. Within a decade, the production of silent films discontinued - along with a lot of the silent actors careers; they did not have the voices needed for talking roles in films.
The first narrative film ever was released on October 14th
1888, it was called “Roundhay Garden Scene” and was only two seconds long. It
was produced by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, who is now considered the true
father of motion picture. Motion pictures then developed further into
full-length feature films by the 1920s, but still lacked sound. The 1920’s are referred
to as the era of silent cinema.
Music
The relevance of music creating a mood was already discovered and widely used - music was effectively used for the same purpose in both plays and dramas. In the very early days of movie making, music’s sole purpose was to entertain the audiences before the actual movie began, and then during the breaks. As time progressed, movies came to be accompanied with live music performances that paralleled with the scene on screen. Theatre organs were used to create special sound effects too; however these were very basic. Most of the movies used theatre music to manipulate and improvise on it. The first ever movie to have an original music score was D.W. Griffith's “The Birth of a Nation” released in 1915(composed by Joseph Carl Breil). As silent movies reached peaked success, the popularity and success of plays and dramas slowly declined.
Direction
Technology
Music
The relevance of music creating a mood was already discovered and widely used - music was effectively used for the same purpose in both plays and dramas. In the very early days of movie making, music’s sole purpose was to entertain the audiences before the actual movie began, and then during the breaks. As time progressed, movies came to be accompanied with live music performances that paralleled with the scene on screen. Theatre organs were used to create special sound effects too; however these were very basic. Most of the movies used theatre music to manipulate and improvise on it. The first ever movie to have an original music score was D.W. Griffith's “The Birth of a Nation” released in 1915(composed by Joseph Carl Breil). As silent movies reached peaked success, the popularity and success of plays and dramas slowly declined.
Direction
Movie directors of the silent era loved to experiment with
their films; everyone was new to the concept. While the majority of directors
insisted on their actors being theatrical, melodramatic and flamboyant, a rare
few allowed the actors to identify their own acting styles, and act naturally.
Many movie-makers considered this style as rather mellow and subtle. With
barely any sound and no dialog, direction was a struggle to illustrate, which
talented, daring directors took upon themselves and exceeded expectations.
Dialog
While technology at the time did not allow direct dialogue,
they did improvise with intertitles. Intertitles were text plates placed
between the visuals. They helped carry the story from one point in the plot to
another. Intertitles themselves had their own developments, from simple text
intertitles to elaborate and in depth ones, sometimes even carrying an
illustration of one or more of the movie characters. Intertitles evolved also,
like all other conventions of silent movies, to become a special feature of the
films.
Dialog
While technology at the time did not allow direct dialogue,
they did improvise with intertitles. Intertitles were text plates placed
between the visuals. They helped carry the story from one point in the plot to
another. Intertitles themselves had their own developments, from simple text
intertitles to elaborate and in depth ones, sometimes even carrying an
illustration of one or more of the movie characters. Intertitles evolved also,
like all other conventions of silent movies, to become a special feature of the
films.Technology
The technology which was used to make movies in the silent
era is completely different from what is used today. Showing a small boy flying
on a broomstick or a man dreaming would have seemed totally impossible and un-achievable
in the silent era and yet it was achieved brilliantly by G.A. Smith in the year
1898, using a technique called double exposure. Other techniques like stop
motion were also used to add to the entertainment value of the films produced. A
few techniques used today like film continuity, slow motion, animation, were
all developed in the silent era of cinema.
First Silent Film
Below is a clip from the first ever 'talkie,' it was produced in 1927 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It was the first movie ever to feature synchronized sound.
