Month: October 2014

This week’s reading is an introduction of a leading American playwright Samson Raphaelson, who wrote many scripts for Hollywood films like One Hour with You, the Merry Widow and Heaven can wait played in this week’s screening. Together, he and Ernst Lubitsch created an era of Classical Hollywood film.

The Author introduces Raphealson’s history as a playwright, and then focuses on his few representative works. I like the part of why he and Lubitsch could work together and make great successes in film history. According to his analysis, Raphealson and Lubitsch both aspired to create things more than comedies, which involves more wisdom and morality. Thanks to this, and the fact Lubitsch freed him from playwright’s obligation ‘something to say’, he had the chance to not be afraid of the rules and just write down the scenes came up in his mind. This way, he could be somehow irresponsible, and like the author mentioned, trust his impulse and instincts. However, when back to theater, he had to hold it down. Anyway, writing for Lubitsch is totally different experience for him in his career, and through it, his words, his dialogues were polished and became more poetic and romantic.

The reading of this week written by Noel King basically explains the concept of ‘New Hollywood’, and introduces the history of its development and changes.

The author firstly tried to make it clear that although the descriptions on ‘New Hollywood’ are critical and different, but all these arguments agree that it is a specific period of Hollywood film history from 1960s onwards. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, due to the innovations of the European art cinema, the Hollywood also started to consider the direction it should take. Few expansive films were made, but the most were out of touch. Then the real and significant changes happened in the early 1970s, when new generation directors started to show their understandings on film criticism and art by making unti-heroes, commercial American films. They started to make experiments, to explore the new style and trey to mix the traditional classical Hollywood film genre with the new elements.

After those experiments in early 1970s and the emergence of ‘movie brats’, the next key move is the release of Steven Spielberg’s thriller Jaws in 1975. It is usually marked as the arrival of the New Hollywood, which redefined the commercial films as a cultural phenomenon. This successful, profitable mode has profound influences on the post-1975 Hollywood commercial films and film studies. More and more successful and influential films like Star Wars (1977), The lion King (1994) emerged and enriched the New Hollywood.

This article written by Andrew Sarris basically focuses on the American period of Ernst Lubitsch. It starts with some general comments on his good manners, and then briefly mentions the Lubitsch’s short German Period. He argues, as an American director, Lubitsch had few remarkable films which are however neglected, like The Merry Widow and To Be or Not to Be. The Critics said a lot about the miscast actor, but not mentioned the stylistic features of those films.

Then it turns to analyze the representative and featured films during his career, and also introduce the history, especially his ‘golden age’ in the 30s, and the 40s, which things were quite different. The author explains the effects of censorship after 1934 on his films. He raises The Smiling Lieutenant as an example of Lubitsch’s outstanding sensitivity as a director, poor sensitivity as a producer. It also mentions the Angel, which is considered as his best but most anachronistically civilized film.

In the 40s, it was clear that his film was increasingly reflective and sombre, which made people start to thinks he is out of his ‘touch’ with the tastes if time. He tried to regain the success in the past, but anyway, it seems he did not made it at the end.