Friday, June 16, 2006

Chaplin to Lauper, Timeless Comedy

Introduction to Cinema Studies A: Hollywood & Art Cinema - Final word count: 2,924 of 3,000 limit


Q10. ‘Hollywood’ has produced a range of easily identifiable genres for sale of their product. Choose one genre – action film, martial arts film, teen film, romance, road movie, western, etc., - and discuss and compare the generic terms and range of any two screen products that fall within this category (film, TV series, computer game, etc). These products must have been produced in Hollywood, and you should identify their production company, and situate them within the ‘stable’ of their production. Issues to be discussed (but are not limited to) – leading actors, the style and ‘look’ of the product, and the technical limitations and breadth of the product, social, political, and cultural agendas. Include discussion of reviews and critical analysis.


‘Hollywood’ has a range of easily identifiable genres that have developed over time and that continue to develop. These genres have developed from a combination of the desires of the audience and the producers’ want of profit.

To the average audience member, the movies are a fantasy, and Hollywood movies and genres especially help us choose the kinds of dreams we wish to be lost in for a while. Of course, genre also helps the studios, for it gives them a creative place to start, along with narrative and style. Genre gives the filmmaker a basic blueprint from which to build. (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997; 52-53)

Basically, genres evolve – both industrially and socially. With merely minor differences, a genre ‘carbon-copies’ other films and stars to suit contemporary social demand. The blueprint for film genres stemmed from literature and the theatre and evolved to suit cinema (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997; 52-53). In the cinematograph industry, the popularity of one film, or a couple of films, is noted by other film producers, then the films are formally dissected into their essential component parts and reproduced as variants upon the originals. The popularity of each of the favourite genres waxes and wanes over time and so the industry also must change. Therefore, changes in genre are inextricably linked to changes within society.

In this essay I intend to discuss and compare two films that fall within the Hollywood genre of comedy. These two films are Sir Charles Chaplin’s classic 1925 release, The Gold Rush, and the 1988 critical and commercial flop, Vibes, starring Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum. Both films were produced in Hollywood. Both films’ male stars, Chaplin and Goldblum, were, to a greater or lesser degree, iconographic comic stars. Both films involved remote location shooting and grand-scale special effects. And both are comedies focusing upon found-love, wild adventure and the search for gold.

The cinema theorist, Noel Carroll, states that comedy is the ‘joy borne of marvellous transformations and physically impossible events,’ and both films succeed in creating such joy, for both films exploit ‘the magical properties of cinema, a comedy of metaphysical release that celebrates the possibility of substituting the laws of physics with the laws of imagination.’ (Horton 1991; 25) The Gold Rush does this through the magic of the Little Tramp character and the misadventurous situations he gets himself into, and Vibes does so through its accentuated metaphysical theme of psychic power.

The Gold Rush was produced by United Artists, at that time a major Hollywood studio which had been founded in 1919, mainly for distribution of their own work, by the U.S.A.’s four biggest box office drawcards: D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin. Each ‘united artist’ was thus ensured creative autonomy, as well as increased profits by dispensing with the producer/ employer situation each had previously worked under. By the time of the release of The Gold Rush in 1925, Griffith, Fairbanks and Pickford had each provided the company with successful films. This was simply by providing their audiences with what they knew those audiences wanted and expected, i.e. Griffith’s sentimental melodramas – such as Broken Blossoms (1919) and Orphans of the Storm (1922); Pickford’s America’s sweetheart character with the golden-curls – in such films as Pollyanna (1920) and Tess of the Storm Country (1922); Fairbanks’ adroit hero character – such as in His Majesty, The American (1919) and Robin Hood (1922). The company heads had grown annoyed and anxious that Chaplin had not contributed similarly as yet. This was because he still had a number of films to deliver to his previous employer, First National, plus was slow in the methodical production of his independent features and, perhaps most startlingly, had previously made, as his first film for United Artists, A Woman of Paris (1923), a straight drama in which he did not star (let alone as the familiar, beloved Little Tramp), and which did well critically but not commercially. (Bergen, 1986; 9-10, 12, 18) (Robinson, 2001; 264)

Vibes was produced 63 years later by Columbia Pictures. Chief Executive to the company in 1988 was David Putnam, who, during his short reign of just three years (1986 – 1989), was widely criticised for his failure to fully exploit the few hits that the studio did have in that time. (www.filmbug.com) Of the notable films produced by Columbia Pictures in the 1980s, most were comedies; and many of those that were not possess a supernatural, fantastic or exotic theme, as in, respectively, Christine (1983), Starman (1984) and The Last Emperor (1987). A few of Columbia’s comedies actually cut across different genre types, as in 1984’s Ghostbusters (supernatural comedy) and 1989’s Look Who's Talking (fantastical comedy). Vibes is a similar example, as I shall show.

Generally, The Gold Rush has remained critically admired from its first release in 1925. In a contemporary review of by an unnamed reviewer for The Times, it is observed that its opening day in London showed full sessions, with the popular critique being ‘uproarious laughter’. The reviewer expounds upon the film as ‘an excellent example of the “Chaplin method,” which is still in a class by itself.’ In 1942, James Agee reviewed the film for its re-release. The original ending had been truncated slightly and the title cards were gone, and in their place were Chaplin’s own narration and musical score. Agee expresses admiration for the film, referring to the re-release as ‘a sight for sore eyes’ and states in relation to both versions of Chaplin’s film that ‘[w]hat matters are the delicious beads of humour strung on the thread of his unique personality.’

The critics pretty much universally damned Vibes. It seems that the major problem that reviewers had with the film was in the height of their expectations, being that it was a major pop star’s big-screen début. Such is evident in Roger Ebert's review for the Chicago Sun Times, where he suggests that he was expecting a comic film that’s narrative dealt mainly with supernatural gifts and the fallible human ego. Ebert seems to have played out the entire film in his mind before seeing it but, as most adults know, an imagined event rarely lives up to the actual event – at least, in the way imagined. Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, seems to have held similar expectations and opines that the comic potential of a love story involving two psychics is never satisfactorily realised. Reviewers seem to have either misperceived Lauper’s performance and accused her of just acting herself (as in Ebert’s review), or felt let down because she was not her normal, zany self (as in Maslin’s review).

A key difference between the two films lies in the space of time between which they were made. Naturally, significant technical, social and political changes were to develop in the 63-year expanse between the two films.

The technical advances evident in Vibes are, of course, diagetic sound and colour, which serve to give the filmmaker greater technical and creative choice. The invention of the synchronized soundtrack suddenly provided audiences with diagetic sound, and the invention of colour film stock meant that all films could now be shot in colour, where previously if a film was in colour it meant the laborious task of hand- colourising every frame. This can also be seen as a limitation in the sense that now audiences demand that both of these advancements be present in every film. However, as Bela Balazs argues, the unspoken word can be just as powerful a medium as the spoken and in some cases even preferred by the audience. Balazs observes that the ‘unnatural’ spoken soliloquy has been replaced in film by the silent soliloquy ‘in which faces can speak with the subtlest shades of meaning.’ He asserts that because film can be manipulated, such as through the use of close-ups, an actor can fully and poetically express emotions silently that on the stage are only able to be effectively expressed through the spoken word of the soliloquy. (Balazs, Bela. 1980; 293) And in specific relation to silent comedy, Noel Carroll argues in Notes on the Sight Gag that sight gags have been around as long as comedy has been performed and are now even used in films that are not comic. (Horton, 1991; 26)

All the special effects used in The Gold Rush were done in-camera using double exposure techniques (Vance, 2003; 136-137), developed early in film history and demonstrated to the extreme by Buster Keaton in his film The Playhouse, where he portrays several characters on-screen at the same time. Of course, as in many Hollywood productions both then and now, The Gold Rush also employs models and studio sets to help create its illusions; and the scene where the Tramp peers through the dancehall window on New Year’s morning is worthy of Citizen Kane in the technical achievement of its ‘depth of focus’ cinematography.

The special effects in Vibes are basic filmic illusions for which the techniques, although changed, have been around since the silent era. Now they are done during the cutting and editing process. Also, the film’s credits state that the special effects were done on 65mm film, even though, given convention, the film proper was most likely to have been shot on 35mm film.

In the silent era filmmakers often worked without conventional scripts, working out scenarios and gags as they went along, with the director shouting out direction while the camera was being cranked. This was how Chaplin worked. However, in creating his epic of the Klondike, he ‘seems to have had a much clearer sense of the eventual story line.’ (Robinson, 1992; 335)

The Gold Rush was made before the template for ‘classical Hollywood cinema’ narrative form had been forged and, as such, does not strictly conform to that narrative form but instead is more of a uniquely ‘Chaplinesque’ narrative style, given the autonomy of this genuine auteur. Being that it is still narrative, his film is still produced in a way that leads the viewer to construct a story. He departs from it only briefly at the end, to jibe the sentimentality of conventional Hollywood endings (he and Georgia’s passionate kiss ‘ruining’ the picture). The Chaplin narrative style is different from the classical Hollywood style in that his manipulation of causality weaves a few seemingly unrelated story lines into the diegesis. These don’t necessarily come together at the end, for they are able to terminate at any point in the tale, such as in the Black Larson storyline ending about a third of the way through the film, yet in a completely satisfying way (i.e. his just demise at the hand of Fate).

A salient technique of Chaplin’s is to place the camera in the best long-shot position for the viewer to take in a whole scene, stage-like, yet avoiding actual staginess by then cutting to close-ups for important moments of action, rarely using keyhole shots as was common in silent films. Also, linearity is salient to the Chaplin style – a prescient exception is any purposeful digression for comic purpose and/or to illustrate the Tramp’s irrelevant actions, both of which are of great significance to the exploration and illumination of the soul of the Tramp character.

The Gold Rush was made during Hollywood’s ‘golden silent film period’, which had begun with the influx of European films into the U.S.A., especially German expressionist works such as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (original release 1919; U.S. release 1921) and ended with the introduction of sound films to the industry in 1928 with The Lights of New York, the first completely sound film (The Jazz Singer, a year earlier, was essentially a silent film containing two sound sequences). Artistic vision, sophistication and style blossomed in films of this period. ‘Stars who had been happy to entertain their fans with perhaps four or five medium-length films a year now became impresarios in full charge of their own productions, determined to stagger audiences with only two (and soon, just one) productions annually, blockbusters of outsize proportions and length.’ (Everson, 1978; 4)

Vibes, directed by Ken Kwapis, does indeed follow the classical Hollywood narrative. While primarily a comedy, the film is a hybrid of successful Hollywood genres grafted together as part of an industry movement of the time to try to entice people back to the cinema. Vibes is a screwball, an adventure and a romantic comedy rolled into one. In screwball style, the characters are all a bit eccentric, as is suggested by the title, Vibes, because the whole film is set around the supernatural which of itself could be seen as a somewhat eccentric theme. It also runs in the vein of classical romantic comedy in that the stars nurture a love-hate relationship requiring an ongoing and amusing bickering between the two characters.

It is interesting to note that during the classical Hollywood period the male character was usually the initiating pursuer, while the female character was usually raised up on a pedestal above him somehow, yet in Vibes the rôles are reversed, with the woman initiating pursuit and the man held up as the subject of her adoring gaze. This is probably due to changes in the view of the rôles that women play in society; even though the opening line of Molly Haskell’s study, From Reverence to Rape, still rings true: ‘The big lie perpetrated upon Western society is the idea of women’s inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behaviour that merely to recognize it is to risk unravelling the entire fabric of civilization.’ (Haskell, 1974; 1)

Edgar Morin states that ‘the stars rightly determine the very existence and economy of the movies.’ (Morin 1960; 5) This is especially true when the stars themselves are iconographic. Chaplin’s Tramp character was so effective an icon that a new word entered the English vocabulary – Chaplinesque. In the 1980’s, critics like Roger Ebert recognised Jeff Goldblum as a considerably iconographic ‘screwball actor … capable of doing or saying almost anything.’ Before Madonna became a pop star and helped define female sexuality of the 1980’s and 1990’s, Cyndi Lauper was letting us all know that ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, thus promoting a whole generation’s ideal of feminine freedom.

Gerald Mast observes that ‘[t]he great silent comedies revolved about the body and the personality of its owner; the great sound comedies revolve about structure and style.’ (Mast, 1973; 27) Indeed, the balletic quality of Chaplin’s pantomime contributed to making his performances so wonderful. Another contributory is, as Kenneth Lynn states, ‘Chaplin’s portrayals of basic human insecurities [, which] have always been an integral part of his half-realistic, half-absurd poetry.’ (Lynn, 1989; 10)

Both Vibes and The Gold Rush make use of the classic sight gag of physically juxtaposing two people in a relationship. Noel Carroll observes that the classic comic duos are often visually opposites such as pairing a tall, thin male with short, fat one or a tall male with a short female. (Horton, 1991; 26-27) In The Gold Rush, the Tramp is a small, scruffy figure of a man, lost in the Alaskan wilderness, while Georgia is a world-wise, vampish, glamorous woman. By contrast, Lauper’s character in Vibes is a small, ditsy woman and Goldblum’s, a very tall, gangly intellectual.

‘The personality of the female star is almost entirely a function of an erotic archetype; the personality of the male star is much more closely related to qualities that are actually heroic’; so states Edgar Morin in The Stars. (1960; 109)

Up until the late 1990’s, virtually all Hollywood films shared the same main social agenda – that of reinforcing hetero-monogamous relationships between beautiful people. In Hollywood cinema, comedies seem to be the only real sanctuary from the idea that only beautiful heterosexuals deserve love; in both Vibes and The Gold Rush the comic characters are allowed to be a little grotesque. The odd little man gets the girl in The Gold Rush, and in Vibes the tall, skinny, bookish fellow unexpectedly finds love in the eccentric, trashy-looking woman.

By the Roaring Twenties, the division between wealthy and poor was spread across a broader parameter than ever before in the United States’ history, and the booming stock market seemed to illuminate a tantalising opportunity for the unwealthy to realise the Great American Dream. There was a ‘gold rush’-like fever inspired by the seeming health of the stock market, which may indeed have inspired the fancifully happy ending of The Gold Rush.

The political force of the U.S.A. in the 1980’s was the Reagan administration, which plunged the country into a conservative political environment. Vibes is a part of the backlash culture of this era because of its supernatural themes and that its character types are treated as normal people rather than pariahs, as is usually the case from a conservative point of view. Like Madonna, Lauper was bucking against the political norm of the ’80s with her open sexuality and challenging of sexual stereotypes (with her hit single ‘She Bop’, she was the first female star to sing about female masturbation).

Chaplin’s main social and political agenda in the making of his film was ultimately to unite humanity in laughter and tears. This attitude was representative of his communal feelings, which were to later see him barred from the U.S.A. during the McCarthy era for being supposedly sympathetic to the communist cause.

Ultimately, however, the political agendas of either film were of apparently lesser priority than the other agendas previously discussed.


Bibliography
• Agee, James, 1963, Agee On Film, Peter Owen Limited, London.
• Balazs, Bela. Theory of the Film From - ed. Mast, Gerald and Cohen, Marshall, 1974, Film Theory and Criticism, second edition, 1980, Oxford University Press, New York.
• Bergen, Ronald, 1986, The United Artists Story, Octopus Books, London.
• Everson, William K., 1978, American Silent Film, Oxford University Press, New York.
• Haskell, Molly, 1974, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York; 1975, New English Library, London.
• Horton, Andrew, ed, 1991, Comedy/ Cinema/ Theory, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
• Lynn, Kenneth S., 1998, Charlie Chaplin and his Times, Aurum Press Ltd, London.
• Mast, Gerald, 1973, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis and New York.
• Morin, Edgar, 1960, The Stars, English translation by Richard Howard, Grove Press, New York.
• Robinson, David, 1985, 1992, Chaplin: His Life and Art, second revised edition, 2001, Penguin Books, London.
• Vance, Jeffrey, 2003, Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema, Harry N. Abrams, New York.
• http://www.filmbug.com/dictionary/studios/columbia-pictures.php, sighted 22nd July, 2005.



Filmography
Broken Blossoms, D. W. Griffith, 1919.
The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, Robert Weine, 1919.
Christine, John Carpenter, 1983.
Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, 1941.
Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman, 1984.
The Gold Rush, Charles Chaplin, 1925.
His Majesty, The American, John Emerson, 1919.
The Jazz Singer, Alan Crosland, 1927.
The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987.
The Lights of New York, Bryan Foy, 1928.
Look Who’s Talking, Chris Columbus, 1989.
Orphans Of The Storm, D. W. Griffith, 1922.
The Playhouse, Buster Keaton, 1923.
Pollyanna, Jacques Tourneur, 1920.
Robin Hood, Alan Dwan, 1922.
Starman, John Carpenter, 1984.
Tess Of the Storm Country, Jacques Tourneur, 1922.
Vibes, Ken Kwapis, 1988.
A Woman of Paris, Charles Chaplin, 1923.

1 Comments:

Blogger Assignment Nerd said...

University: University of Melbourne
Subject: Introduction to Cinema Studies A: Hollywood & Art Cinema
Semester: 1, 2005
Mark: a distinction I think my lecturer said
Comments: I never received this essay back so I;m not sure of the mark. Someone had stolen it from the collection file.

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