The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Dir: Raoul Walsh
Starring: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane
Country: USA
B&W

Under the studio system in Hollywood pretty much all films fitted into a genre. Some of the best known are: horror, western, musical, screwball comedy, melodrama and of course the gangster film.

In any business, when a product is successful, more are made to capitalise on the success of the first product. The film business (as is still sadly the case) is no exception to this.

The downside is that over time the quality that was inherent in the first product, will eventually diminish. The upside is, that for a moment, before an idea is rinsed out, the product will be unparalleled. Consequently, when studios got good at making a certain kind of film (and we must remember that stars were contracted to exclusive deals with one studio), they became known for it; it was their specialty.

• MGM became know for musicals because it did glamour and gloss so well.
• Universal were unrivaled in horror movie production in the 1930's. 
• Everybody made westerns.
• And Warner Brother made gangster pictures.

Before The Godfather; before Goodfellas; before Carlito's Way and before Scarface there was Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces and The Roaring Twenties. Scarface itself is a remake of a 1932 film.

The Warner Brothers cycle of gangster movies from the 1930's, probably more than any other moment in cinema history, came to define a key moment in American history.

The Volstead Act (1919-1933) prohibited the sale of alcohol across the US, however the demand for alcohol did not miraculously disappear. Into the void stepped a motley crew of mostly Irish, Jewish and Italian gangs intent on getting rich. Initially they imported booze illegally; running it over the border from Canada (it is from this period we get the term "bootlegger") and selling it in speak easies. But eventually they began distilling their own variations on alcoholic drinks, which maximized profits but did put the health of the punters at risk.

As the gangs grew in wealth and power they began to engage in turf wars with each other as they all vied for control of the liquor trade. By the time prohibition was repealed, the criminal make-up of America had been transformed. 

John Gotti, head of the Gambino family and the last
Capo di tutti capi to be acknowledged by all five families which
comprise the American mafia. The five families link directly 
back to the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra.

The Italians emerged the ultimate victors and it is from this time that the Mafia, as we now know it, really begins to take shape as an organised criminal network with an infrastructure of families with soldiers, captains, under-bosses, bosses and at the very top, the boss of bosses, or Capo di tutti capi, as it is in Italian.

However, since much of this activity took place in New York, and the Irish were the first immigrants to really make their mark there, in the early days of prohibition a lot of the gangs were Irish. They emerged from the street gangs that formed in New York in the 19th century (See Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York) and would go on to be so influential in the police force and politics - JFK's father Joe Kennedy, was known to have been a bootlegger.

But perhaps just as importantly Warner Brothers had James Cagney under contract, and he was never going to play an Italian.

The 1930s belong to Jimmy Cagney. One of the greatest screen actors of all time, he managed to combine a sometimes quite theatrical exuberance, with a street sensibility that made him mesmerizing to watch. You literally did not know what Cagney would do next.

Cagney as Tom Powers at the climax of Public Enemy

His Tom Powers, in The Public Enemy(1931) helped create the archetype of the screen gangster (and was unquestionably Irish in origin), in the first wave of films from the early thirties. The other key films of this time are Little Caesar(1931) with Edward G. Robinson and Scarface(1932) with Paul Muni.

By 1939 Cagney was already a huge star and Warner Brothers had gotten the gangster picture down to a fine art, though in doing so they had become somewhat stale. However, were the lead characters in gangster films prior to this had frequently been thinly veiled references to real gangsters, The Roaring Twenties was based on a story by Mark Hellinnger, who had been a crime reporter in New York during this momentous, tumultuous time.

Edward G. Robinson as Rico in Little Caesar

His story of an ex-soldier, turned bootlegger, turned crime boss, offered a plausible rags to riches story for the modern era. The evolution of Jimmy Cagney's everyman car mechanic, Eddie Bartlett to a powerful gangster both shocked and thrilled; its ripped-straight-from-the-headlines ring of truth, gave the audience a three dimensional protagonist, which had not quite been achieved in Little Caesar or Scarface - both based on Al Capone.

Alongside Cagney starred Humphrey Bogart, still yet to make the grade as a leading man and confined mostly to "bad man" roles, at which he was nonetheless very effective. Bogart's real break wouldn't come for another year, when in a rather short-sighted move, George Raft turned down the role of Sam Spade in John Huston's adaptation of Dashiel Hammet's The Maltese Falcon (1941). The film made Bogart and Raft's career sadly went into perpetual decline.

Al Capone, the original Scarface

The gangster genre is unique to American cinema. The British have attempted it but, with a few rare exceptions, the results tend to be weak at best.

The American gangster in many ways reflects the dark underbelly of the American Dream. The fact that the majority of gangsters rise from immigrant communities, who have gone to America to pursue the dream, is no accident. Whether Irish, Italian or Jewish, the immigrants quickly realised that they were second class citizens in America, especially those that chose to remain in the cities and not break out for the wide open spaces of the frontier.

"He used to be a big shot". Eddie Bartlett's death draws an explicit
link between the gangster's downfall and the sacrifice of Christ

The America gangster relentlessly pursues the American Dream but strictly on his own terms, and with all the ruthlessness of a bank repossessing a house. He is in many ways the ultimate free market capitalist, and when the market continued to demand booze after it had been banned, the gangster entered the void. The rest is history.

The Roaring Twenties, like many gangster films, is a "rise and fall" story. What distinguishes it from the others, for me, is Cagney's portrayal Eddie Bartlett, as a reluctant hoodlum, constrained by circumstance. His inevitable downfall therefore feels less a comeuppance, and more a tragedy - emphasised by the final pieta on the steps of the cathedral, a clear religious metaphor, linking Bartlett's demise to ideas of suffering and sacrifice. This was a new grace note for the gangster film, something earlier attempted in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938).

Previously they purported to be staunchly moralistic stories; cautionary tales about the dangers of greed and violence. But the vicarious thrills offered by gangster movies were hugely appealing to the public. Like the cowboy heroes of westerns, here was a man who lived by his own rules, didn't take orders from anyone and followed his own (albeit rather loose) moral code. The films themselves thrilled 30's audiences who, still reeling from the depression, identified with the an anti-hero who robbed from big business and gave the public what they wanted; illegal liquor.

From left to right: Errol Flynn, tough guy director Raoul Walsh and Cagney

A mood of reckless abandon had pervaded America in the 1920's and the gangster film captured it perfectly.    But perhaps The Roaring Twenties was the first film to really attempt to examine what was still very recent history and offer some kind of commentary on the period.

Eddie Bartlett is ultimately seduced by the bright lights and glamour of the world that is foisted upon him, before falling victim to the Wall Street Crash and becoming one of millions ruined by the financial collapse that followed. It is in the film's attempt to honestly appraise the impact of this tumultuous decade on ordinary people, that I think  enables The Roaring Twenties to transcend the confines of its genre, and allows it to still feel vital and enthralling to this day; one of the first truly modern films.

Nosferatu: A symphony of Horror (1922)

Director: F.W. Murnau
Country of origin: Germany
Language: Silent
B&W

Ok, admittedly, this might feel like being thrown in at the deep end but bear with me, for this film is a wonder to behold.

The first (and arguably still the best) screen incarnation of Dracula, is Max Schreck's terrifying portrayal of the blood-sucking, sexual predator Count Orlok. But what he lacks in looks he makes up for in style, wit and panache. No, not really, he's just such a horrific creation, he will set your bowels to churning and skin to crawling.

Nosferatu is important for several reasons.

Classic low angle shot

It is a major early work by F.W. Murnau, a former theater director, who along with the Russian director, Sergei Eisenstein, American D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, would really create the blueprint for what we now speak of as film language.

While Griffith was a pioneer of epic staging; Einstein more or less invented editing and Chaplin became a master of the set piece to rival them all; Murnau brought the theater concept of mise-en-scene to the party. I'm not saying he invented it, but few were doing it as well as him, as early as him.

All those low angle shots giving an impression of power, or high angles that make characters look vulnerable; Murnau was at it in 1922.

Mise-en-scene: The Count, framed by the window's criss-crossed sashes, appears as if imprisoned behind bars. His own awareness of his predicament is reflected in the anxiety on his face. As with all great versions of the story, as much as we are repelled by the Count, we also pity him his plight.

Every shot is highly composed; the attention to detail supreme. Every aspect is chosen to create maximum effect. From the placement of a prop, to an actor's precisely blocked movement; Murnau was an obsessive perfectionist, sometimes driving his collaborators close to insanity, if the stories are to be believed.



This "faction" is captured wonderfully in the curious, and apparently little seen film, Shadow of the Vampire (2000). A fictionalised account of the making of Nosferatu, it suggests that the venerated German stage actor Max Schreck, who plays the Count, was in fact a real vampire, whom crazed Murnau tempts to play the role with the promise that he will get to feast on the blood of his co-stars. John Malkovich is perfectly cast as Murnau, and Willem Dafoe delivers a predicably batty turn as the immortal Schreck. An interesting counterpoint to his other wonderful turn as an immortal: Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Nosferatu is a key work of German Expressionism, an art movement whose cinematic offshoot was visually defined by jagged angles and geometrically absurd, wildly unrealistic sets (see also: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). The result was a nightmarish visual landscape which reflected both the metal turmoil of the characters and the psychologically disturbing  themes being explored.

Jagged, angular shadows

Nosferatu, however was shot on location, a bold move in those days given the lighting limitations imposed by the very basic, hand-cranked cameras of early cinema. Nonetheless it is full of looming, sharp shadows, inside which lurk our deepest fears. It epitomises  expressionist film, creating the template for the modern horror film.

These frenzied tales of madness could be interpreted as attempting to confront the dread that festered in the aftermath of WWI. The impact on the European psyche of the cataclysmic devastation of that war cannot be over-estimated.

A very real fear was emerging that this rapidly changing and modernizing world, where death could be delivered to men by the tens of thousand, may be spiraling out of control. The new world was viewed ambiguously at best, for it seemed to hold within itself the seeds of its own destruction, on a mass scale. Nosferatu reeks with the madness of this death dealing.

Artists like Murnau would, notice early the changes occurring in Germany as the Nazis began to emerge in the 1920s; they would eventually brand his kind of cinema too intellectual. But Murnau escaped early, avoiding the oppression to come, like many German artists (not necessarily all Jewish, artists by their nature have tended to be liberals) to the welcoming arms of Hollywood where he would make the magnificent Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927).

He died in a car accident in 1931.

Links:

To watch Nosferatu CLICK HERE

To watch a trailer for Werner Herzog's chilling remake: Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) CLICK HERE

A (film) Education - Part 3: The List

Here's how it will work. As with imdb.com (a most wonderful research resource for you) I will give a basic listing of the film in question. This will include:

• title
• director
• year of release
• country of origin
• language
• colour/B&W

Some of this will be self-evident: if the country of origin is Germany, the film is likely to be in German, except when it isn't (this will soon make sense).

If the film is made before 1939, it will be made in black and white (B&W).

I'll then write a little bit about the film. This will be partly be synopsis, partly some of my observations and reflections on the film and what I think about it and why.

Where possible, I'll include reference pictures, posters, trailers and links to other relevant material.

The list will be in chronological order, starting with the oldest film first. I am not sure yet how long it will be - 10? 20? 30? Who knows - but I will try to keep it manageable. And even if you only manage to watch five of them, rest assured that your knowledge will have multiplied tenfold in comparison to the impact of the mind-rotting multiplex fonder that passes for cinema these days.

Get it? Good.

On with the show...

A (film) Education - Part 2: It's all a matter of taste

Or is it? Well it is and it isn't.

Now, I'm not talking in riddles here just to bamboozle you. Taste is intangible. What one person likes, another person might despise. It's true of most art forms: painting, music, cinema, theater.

What we personally like, is dependent on a myriad of different factors that relate to us personally: age, gender, sexuality, race, religion. (Exactly the same factors that marketing people base their research on; this is no accident.) And any number of personal factors of taste, that are unique to us as individuals.

However, what you must now begin to understand and accept is that in all art forms there is a recognised canon of what is considered to be of worth. That is to say, it's inherent properties give it an intrinsic value, in and of itself. (Of course we must acknowledge that films are a business, but at their best they can achieve the level of art.)

Undoubtedly, there will be many films regarded as classics, which you will not care for. The same can be said for me. This is absolutely fine, you are entitled to your opinion, but that is not the point. That it is all a question of taste, is almost irrelevant when it comes to the appreciation of something. If that were the case we would accept the stance of millions of students who cannot stand Shakespeare. But they are wrong. Shakespeare is a genius and they may just be reluctant learners. This is just a fact of life. What must be acknowledged is that there is an accepted criteria for what constitutes good or better in everything. Film, is no different. If you don't get it, it is your job as a student to try to do so, even if it is a struggle. Nothing in life worth having comes easy, knowledge and understanding as much as anything.



Another aside:

I continue to struggle with the work of Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni.

His modernist masterpieces leave me cold. This, as the man might say, is the whole point of these films. They are cold, clinical exercises in formalism; stylistic experiments where the locations are as much "characters" as the people.

-But, I repeat, they leave me cold. I wish to care about the people in these stories.

-Well, look elsewhere for your succour then, the aesthete admonishes.



BUT, and this is a big but. As students of media, you have a duty to at least try to understand why some dodgy looking old 1940's film. with a lot of stagey acting and wobbly sets, may be considered a classic by generation after generation of audiences, filmmakers and critics. This is just common sense.

Bogart in Casablanca

Why is Humphrey Bogart revered as one of the greatest screen actors to have ever lived by everybody from Quentin Tarantino to George Clooney? When to you, he just looks like somebody's slightly rough uncle, who likes a drop too much of the hard stuff.



How did a bald, rotund, (apparent) buffoon from Ealing - who caricatured himself in his own TV show - come to be regarded by many, as perhaps the greatest filmmaker of all time? This was Alfred Hitchcock.



Hitchcock is a point in case. His 1958, tale of sexual obsession, Vertigo, created a template for many similarly themed psycho-sexual thrillers. It is not a only regarded as Hitch's greatest, but regularly makes the top 3 in top ten lists of the greatest films of all time. But personally, I'm not  big fan. I reckon it's about 20 minutes too long, and the effects have dated really quite badly.



I prefer Rear Window, which as anybody will tell you, is gimmicky, stagey and more than a little bit daft. But it does have Grace Kelly, not Kim Novack as Hitchcock's standard issue icey blonde. I am a big enough man to admit that this may have not a little to do with my fondness for it.

The key thing is, I understand why everyone thinks, Vertigo,  is so brilliant, it just doesn't really do it for me.

Ironically neither of these films will feature on my list, though another Hitchcock will.

Whilst the main purpose of the list I am going to compile is to educate you about what constitutes a great film, it would be remiss of me were I to cram it full of the sort of masterpieces that you would never in a million years want to watch. That would be self-defeating.

Ideally you should LOVE these films.

But while, you may not love all of them, I am hoping that my selections will be intriguing enough for you to give them the time to try to understand why they are held in such high esteem.

A (film) Education - Part 1: Why Now?

This is something I've been meaning to do for a while now.

Since the summer looms on the horizon, you will have time on your hands, and what better to do with time on your hands than watch a bunch of films.

But what to watch? Hhhmmm????

Fear not, I've decided to create a list of classics - old and new - that it would be in your interest to see.

The slight problem with A level Media Studies as a subject is that the actual study of film is very limited - that's why there is A level Film Studies.

However, in order to be truly effective and enlightened producers of media, and to feed into your other units of study - to be able to talk intelligently about, amongst other things: genre, narrative theories, film language, pot-modernism at A2 etc., you need to develop a greater appreciation of cinema. This can only be done  by gaining some background knowledge about film and cinema history.

Currently (and don't take this the wrong way but...) what you all don't know about films could just about be crammed into the Olympic Stadium.

Fortunately for you the reverse could be said about me. Furthermore, the arrogance on my part that allows me to make such a claim, extends to a desire to share this knowledge with you.

Here's how it will work:

I will create a list (which will be by no means exhaustive) of films which I think you should see. They will be grouped roughly under two labels - CLASSICS (from the Dawn of Cinema to the 1960's) and MODERN CLASSICS (1970's to the present).

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963)

This is my own categorization, based on the fact that the Hollywood studio system had largely collapsed by the 1960's, due to an over-reliance on what critics regarded as bloated epics like Cleopatra and Doctor Zhivago (both of which I love ironically, but there's no accounting for taste - more on that subject later).

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

The days of out and out genre pictures and the star system was essentially at an end, or at least undergoing a period of radical change and adaptation.




With the 1970's, the era of contemporary American filmmakers (often referred to as the Movie Brats, or in academic film books as the
"New Hollywood") like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola had arrived. These directors were as much inspired by European and Japanese cinema as by classic Hollywood, and that - if only for a brief, beautiful moment - transformed the possibilities of what an "American" film might constitute.

From left to right: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola

Sadly the whole moment had largely blown out by 1980 in a  snowstorm of cocaine and the rampaging egos that excessive use of that drug seems to spawn in creative, yet incredibly insecure people. They had it all and they blew it. Go figure.


If you want to know the full story behind that era then seek out Peter Biskind's fabulously entertaining and somewhat depressing book Easy Rider's, Raging Bulls.

An aside:

My own love and appreciation of cinema does not simply revolve around American films. However, I do understand that there is often a resistance in young people to engage with foreign films, consequently I have framed the idea of "classics" to essentially revolve around the American milieu. This does not mean foreign films will not make the list, merely that they will be more limited than if I were compiling the list for a more open-minded audience. Sorry if you feel like that sells you short, but I am basing it on the understanding I have gleaned thus far of the level of your appreciation of film.

Now back to business.

Shifty case study

From the Media Education website that you are signed up to.

http://media.edusites.co.uk/article/shifty-case-study-2009/

Vivian's Group Feedback 29/04/12

Planning and Research

Mid Level 2  10 marks

Planning and research evidence may be partially incomplete;

There is basic research into similar products however no reference made to the potential target audience (nor to the Ring movies which are an obvious inspiration); M2

There is basic organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props; choices not always clearly accounted for, though a very detailed costume analysis increases this mark L3

There is no evidence of work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding; L1

There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning; some posts cover too much information and would be better broken down into smaller posts. Blog is difficult to navigate with some posts having more that one post and no archive visible to indicate how many posts and when they were made. M2

Time management is basic. M2

Construction (Production currently incomplete)

Low Level 3 – 36 marks

There is evidence of proficiency in the creative use of many of the following technical skills:

Producing material appropriate for the target audience and task;

Proficiency in producing material appropriate to task, though no apparent acknowledgement of target audience. The opening scene, shot with a fish-eye lens to create an extreme looking POV perspective, works very effectively to create the unsettling dream imagery. M3

using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions;

Use of titles appropriately - minimal. There should be no end credits as the “film” is not technically over. M1

using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set;

No sound available. Unmarked.

shooting material appropriate to the task set;, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene;

An excellent use of the camera for the first scene; the nature of employing a fish-eye lens determines that certain framings and shot distances will be altered/distorted. Eg. The shot of the feet. The students have used this to their advantage, creating a quite disturbing sequence, which, though having obvious antecedents, is nonetheless still effectively rendered. Limited shot types in the following scene limits the mark though. It might’ve been more appropriate to come out of the dream sequence on to a close up of the main character, simply so we get a clearer look at him, Overall the mise-en-scene, in terms of framing and composition, to include and exclude appropriate elements do however show a reasonable level of proficiency. Opening establishing shot feels somewhat out of place, since we do not cut immediately to action inside the school, but more precisely, inside a character’s head. M3

using editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects.

Proficient use of editing creates clear meaning for the audience. Proficient use of transitions - white-out transition from dream to reality works well. Very cold, muted colour grade on dream sequence clearly establishes that audience is seeing something out of the ordinary helping to establish the unsettling, horror movie feel from the outset.

However, since the clip is currently unfinished the overall meaning isn’t entirely apparent. M3 (finish it effectively and it will be higher).