American Cinema (Кино и театры Америки)

Minicap Educational Establishment

Secondary School N0 1 with

Thorough Learning of Foreign Languages

Central District, Chelyabinsk

Report

''American Cinema''

Made by Bragina Kate

Class 10-4

Foreign Language Department

2001-2002

The contents

Introduction. 2

American Cinema 3

The earliest history of film. 4

The earliest movie theatres. 4

The growth of the film industry. 5

Popcorn 7

The Oscar. 7

Hollywood. 7

Beverly Hills. 9

The major film genres. 9

Film Companies 10

Film Directors and Producers 10

Films. 12

Actors and Actresses. 12

Marilyn Monroe. 16

Walt Disney 18

Titanic. 19

Literature. 20

Vocabularly. 21

Introduction.

I’m a cinema goer. And also I like watching films on TV or video.

But I think, that watching a good film is the best relaxation. It is

thought-provoking and entertaining. Now a growing number of people prefer

watching films on TV to attending cinemas. There are wonderful comedies,

love stories, science fiction, horror films, detective stories, and

historical films on. There’s a variety of films available today. It is

difficult to live without cinema. One fact is clear for everyone: cinema

makes our life better. Cinema helps us to forget different problems. When

people watch films, they have a rest. Some films take people into another

world. I think it is a pure world, where usual problems do not even exist.

Cinema is a great power, it helps us to understand our complex well. Cinema

can leave nobody indifferent. It is so powerful that it provokes complex

feelings. We meet a lot of people. Everyone has his own opinion about

something and like most of us I have my own opinion too, for example, about

cinema. Cinema is a necessary and important part of my life. It is my

essence, my mode of life and my happiness. Cinema helps me to cope with

difficulties and with incorrigible problems. So that’s why I have chosen

the topic ‘Cinema’.

American Cinema

The world of American cinema is so far-reaching a topic that it

deserves, and often receives, volumes of its own. Hollywood (in Los

Angeles, California), of course, immediately comes to mind, as do the many

great directors, actors and actresses it continues to attract and produce.

But then, one also thinks of the many independent studios throughout the

country, the educational and documentary series and films, the socially-

relevant tradition in cinema, and the film departments of universities,

such as the University of Southern California (USC), the University of

California at Los Angeles (UCLA) or New York University.

For over 50 years, American films have continued to grow in popularity

throughout the world. Television has only increased this popularity.

The great blockbusters of film entertainment that stretch from "Gone

with the Wind" to "Star Wars" receive the most attention. A look at the

prizes awarded at the leading international film festivals will also

demonstrate that as an art form, the American film continues to enjoy-

considerable prestige. Even when the theme is serious or, as they say,

"meaningful", American films remain "popular". In the past decade, films

which treated the danger of nuclear power and weapons, alcoholism, divorce,

inner-city blight, .the effects of slavery, the plight of Native Americans,

poverty and immigration have all received awards and international

recognition. And, at the same time, they have done well at the box-office.

Movies (films), including those on video-cassettes, remain the most

popular art form in the USA. A book with 20,000 readers is considered to be

a best-seller. A hit play may be seen by a few thousand theatergoers. By

contrast, about a billion movie tickets are sold at movie houses across the

USA every year.

There are three main varieties of movie theaters in the USA: 1) the

"first-run" movie houses, which show new films; 2) "art theaters", which

specialize in showing foreign films and revivals; 3) "neighborhood

theaters", which run films — sometimes two at a time — after the "first-

run" houses.

New York is a movie theater capital of the country. Many of the city's

famous large movie theaters, once giving Times Square so much of its

glitter, have been torn down or converted (in some cases into smaller

theaters), and a new generation of modem theaters has appeared to the north

and east of the area. Most of them offer continuous performances from

around noon till midnight. Less crowded and less expensive are the so-

called "neighborhood theaters", which show films several weeks or months

after the "first-run" theaters. There are several theaters that specialize

in revivals of famous old films and others that show only modernist, avant-

garde films. Still others, especially those along 42nd Street, between the

Avenue of Americas and Eighth Avenue, run movies about sex and violence.

Foreign films, especially those of British, French, Italian and Swedish

origin, are often seen in New York, and several movie theaters specialize

in the showing of foreign-language films for the various ethnic groups in

the city.

The earliest history of film.

The illusion of movement was first noted in the early 19th century. In

1824 the English physician Peter Mark Roget published an article ‘the

persistence of vision with regard to moving objects’. Many inventors put

his theory to the test with pictures posted on coins that were flipped by

the thumb, and with rotating disks of drawings. A particular favorite was

the zoetrope, slotted revolving drum through which could be seen clowns and

animals that seemed to leap. They were hand drawn on strips of paper fitted

inside the drum. Other similar devices were the hemitrope, the phasmatrope,

the phenakistoscope, and the praxinoscope. It is not possible to give any

one person credit for having invented the motion picture. In the 1880s the

Frenchman Etienne Jules Marey developed the rotating shutter with a slot to

admit light, and George Eastman, of New York, developed flexible film. In

1888 Thomas Edison, of New Jersey, his phonograph for recording and playing

sound on wax cylinders. He tried to combine sound with motion pictures.

Edison’s assistant, William Dickson, worked on the idea, and in 1889, he

both appeared and spoke in a film. Edison did not turn his attention to the

projected motion picture at first. The results were still not good enough,

and Edison did not think that films would not have large appeal. Instead he

produced and patented the kinetoscope, which ran a continuous loop of film

about 15 meters (50 feet) long. Only one person could view it at a time. By

1894, hand-cranked kinetoscope appeared all over the United States and

Europe. Edison demonstrated a projecting kinetoscope. The cinematograph

based on Edison’s kinetoscope was invented by two Frenchmen, Louis and

Auguste Lumiere. This machine consisted of a portable camera and a

projector. In December 1895, The Lumiere brothers organized a program of

short motion pictures at a Parisian cafe.

The earliest movie theatres.

Films were first thought of as experiment or toys. They were shown in

scientific laboratories and in the drawing rooms of private home. When

their commercial potential was realized they began to be screened in public

to a paying audience. The first films to be shown publicly were short,

filmed news items and travelogues. These were screened alongside live

variety acts form theatre shows, called vaudeville in United States. Within

a few years fairground tents that slowed nothing but programs of films were

common sights. In United States stores were converted onto movie theatre,

which were known as ‘storefront theatre’. People would pay a nickel to see

about an hour’s worth of film, so the theatre came to be known as

‘nickelodeons’. Early film audiences needed patience. There were many

technical problems. Projectors were likely to breath down and every

projectionist kept slides to reassure the audience: ‘The performance will

resume shortly.’ Many projectors caused flickering on the screen, earning

films the nickname of ‘the flicks’.

The growth of the film industry.

From the start the film industry was eager to make and show films that

people would want to see. The most popular films were those that told

stories- narrative fiction films. Film making began to realize that by

using different camera angels, locations, lighting and special effects,

film could tell a story in the way that live theatre couldn’t.

The great Train Robbery, made in 1903 by Edwin S. Porter, was the first

American narrative fiction film. It included the basic ingredients of the

Western: a hold-up, a chase, and a gunfight. It used a great variety of

shots by showing the action at different distances from the camera- long

shots of action in the distance, but also medium shots of the actors shown

full-length, and chase-ups of the face and shoulders of a gunman shooting

directly at the audience.

Before World War I American film industry had logged behind the film

industries of Europe particularly those of France and Italy. But during the

war, film making almost stopped in Europe, partly because a chemical used

in celluloid was needed for making gunpowder. The American film industry

thrived during the war because there was money for making films; and also

because of popular the genius of D. W. Griffith. In 1915 Griffith made The

Birth Of Nation, a film about the American Civil War and in 1916 he made

Intolerance. These three hour’s films were American’s answer to the

spectacular Italian films such as Quo Vadis that had earlier astonished the

world. For Intolerance Griffith had built a set of an ancient Babylonian

city, which was over a mile long, and he photograph it from a balloon.

Griffith was a genius, not just because he could show huge and thrilling

scenes on the screen, but because he was aware of the artistic

possibilities of film.

The actors in the old-sealers had mostly been unknown and their

performances very poor. Because the films were silent, actors made up for

lack of speech by frantic and unnatural gestures and movements. A new and

better style of acting was adopted by a young American actress called Marry

Pickford who showed that a simple natural style was more effective on the

screen than dramatic arm-waving and chest-thumping. Her fame spread across

the Atlantic. In 1918, she signed a contract for more than a million

dollars. The stars system was born.

About the same time, some of the slapstick comedians developed unique

comedy styles, and also became world-famous stars. Charlie Chaplin, the

little man with the derby hat, cane, and boggy pants, became the most

famous (he, too, sealed a million-dollar contract). But others such as

Buster Heaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon were also widely acclaimed.

They were great artists whose work is still popular today. By 1920 the

cinema had became the most popular form of leisure activity outside the

home.

Film studios such as Metro-Goldwin Meyer, Paramount, Warner’s, 20th

Century Fox, and United Artists developed a system for producing films on

the same principle that Henry Ford used for his cars- the assembly like

Hollywood, on the west coast of the United States, became the center of the

film industry. Its climate, light and physical surroundings were suited to

the film industry, which shot much material out of doors. Film making

thrived. In succeeding years, many great films were made in Hollywood,

beginning with the silent films, followed, in the mid-twenties, by the

first sound pictures.

The first animated cartoon drawn in the United States especially for

film was done in 1906 by J. Stuart Blackton. The first full-length animated

feature film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made in 1937.

The stars of the films being produced in Hollywood became known

throughout the world. Among them were famous Cagney, Clark Gable, Marlene

Dietrich, who had first appeared in films in Germany, the Swedish Greta

Garbo and the young Shirley Temple. Some of the most famous stars were

Mickey Mouse and characters from Walt Disney’s cartoon. Leading film makers

included John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and George Cukor.

During World War II some of the best Americans directors in the US

were recruited by the War Department, because films were needed to help

raise the morale of servicemen. Among the best films of this war period

were Frank Capra’s ''Why We Fight'' series (1942-45). Walt Disney’s

animated films; and documentaries about important battlers directed by

Garson Kanin, John Huston, Billy Wilder. Orson Welles’s masterpiece

''Citizen Kane'' (1940) was the story of a newspaper tycoon. After the war

high-quality films continued to pour out of the United States. They

included Charlie Chaplin’s ''Limelight'' (1952), the fine Western Shane

(1956), a drama of the New York docks called On The Waterfront (1954) and

many high-spirited musicals of which An American In Paris (1951) was

outstanding. Alfred Hitchcock made his best films during this period.

''Psycho'' with its famous murder-in-the-shower scene was probably the most

successful. Despite these successes the great studios began to get into

financial difficulties because of declining audiences.

However, the late 1960s saw a turning point in the American film

industry with the release of a number of films appealing to the youth

market, which drew enormous audiences. The most famous of these were Arthur

Penn’s ''Bonnie and Clyde'' (1967) and Dennis Hopper’s ''Easy Rider''

(1969). Realising that they could no longer rely on their traditional

family audiences, film makers increasingly concentrated on films for the so-

called ‘teenage market’, science fiction and fantasy ‘blockbusters’ with

computer enhanced special effects Dolby sound such as George Lucas’s ''Star

Wars'' (1977) and Steven Spielberg’s ''Raiders Of The Lost Ark'' (1981)

became very popular.

Popcorn

Today Americans still continue the custom of eating popcorn at the

movies. Americans use 500,000 pounds of popcorn every year. All corn does

not pop. A seed or kernel of corn must have 14 percent water in it to pop.

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