How did old Hollywood disintegrate?

Hollywood can be divided into two periods: the old and the new. Old Hollywood (also known as classic Hollywood) began with the Great Depression in 1930 and ended at the beginning of the Cold War in 1960, spanning several important historical periods of World War II and postwar. Economically, old Hollywood went through the process of system establishment from MPPC to big studios, and artistically, it established various film models until the new Hollywood stage, which is still a factor that cannot be ignored. The new Hollywood stage refers to the film period from the 1960s to the present. At this stage, the high-cost "blockbuster" strategy has changed the expression of genre films, and the social significance has also moved towards diversification. The new Hollywood is the extension and development of the old Hollywood, and it is the result of changes in the internal film art and social and cultural environment. In essence, Hollywood's "dream" function has not changed.

From old Hollywood to new Hollywood is a slow and gradual process. In order to facilitate comparison, the aesthetic characteristics of old Hollywood movies are summarized as follows:

(A) the aesthetic characteristics of old Hollywood dramas and films

The creation of old Hollywood films follows an aesthetic principle of drama films, and its basic characteristics are embodied in three aspects:

That is, dramatic story structure, typed characters and natural and smooth continuous editing.

1. Classic Hollywood movies are obviously based on drama in story structure and plot development: the story is full of dramatic conflicts, the story structure is complete and closed, and the story develops step by step until the final climax, which is always inseparable from the happy ending. Such as Casablanca and Broken Bridge.

2. After the plot structure model of drama stories is established, the characters in Hollywood classic narratives naturally tend to be typed. According to the conflict principle of drama, the characters are set as pros and cons, pros and cons. For example, in western movies, there are always police chiefs and greedy and savage Indians who represent justice and law, while in gangster movies, there is a confrontation between justice and crime. Of course, in the classic Hollywood narrative, under the premise of following the genre principle, the characters have endless choices and changes, but the dramatic conflict between the positive characters and the negative characters is the eternal magic weapon of Hollywood.

3. The core of Hollywood classic narrative system is the above-mentioned continuous editing, which represents the characteristics of Hollywood classic narrative. It is not only the development of drama stories and typed characters, but also the basic premise for Hollywood to create dreams and laughter, because natural and smooth continuous editing provides a simple, convenient and real screen world for the audience. Because the editing of the classic narrative system aims to meet the requirements of realism, the sequence of scene separation has a special meaning: first, the organic lens shows the overall environment and characters, then the intermediate lens explains the actions and counter-actions of characters, then cut into the close-up lens (including close-up) to directly present the importance of facial expressions of characters to the audience, and finally return to the panoramic lens to end the paragraph narrative or rebuild a new time-space relationship.

4. As an important part of the classic Hollywood narrative system, the happy ending of Hollywood plays an important role in many mainstream Hollywood movies. Simply put, it has two meanings: one is a round or closed story structure; The second is to achieve a successful and perfect happy ending. For example, at the beginning of orson welles's immortal masterpiece Citizen Kane, the camera slowly moves in from the gate of the newspaper tycoon's extremely luxurious "Paradise Manor" and the warning sign of "No Entry" on the gate, and finally pulls out the gate of the manor with a reverse lens to end the whole film, completing a closed cycle in the narrative structure and lens language of the film.

(b) genre films about old Hollywood

The 1930s and 1940s were the heyday of Hollywood in the United States. During this period, genre films dominated Hollywood film creation. Genre movies are created according to the rules of different genres (or styles). In essence, it is a standard of art product standardization. The essence of this standard film is to use all the film expression schemes that can capture the audience's vision and psychology. It often reflects the audience's interest and moral standards better than those movies that consciously pursue the art of personal conception. Genre film is the product of Hollywood production system, which makes movies from the perspective of business and box office, and establishes and perfects a set of film creation methods in a lot of artistic practice.

The main features of genre films are as follows:

1. The formulation of scenario 2. Characterization III. The standardization of screen narration (genre films mostly adopt a single linear structure, take the time-space transformation as the order, take the event development as the clue, use less flashbacks and cross montages, and pay attention to telling the story of one-way development) 4. Graphic visual image (such as a castle or tower symbolizing danger, a dark forest hiding disaster, a gurgling test tube in an evil laboratory, etc.). )

The development of classic Hollywood genre films has experienced formation, maturity and decline. Its revival period appeared in the new Hollywood era. Classic Hollywood genre films include westerns, gangster films, musical films, horror films and so on.

From 1950s to 1960s, due to the development of TV industry and other social reasons such as politics and economy, the classic Hollywood genre films declined.

(3) New Hollywood movies

(1) Hollywood Movement

The New Hollywood Movement rose in the 1960s, which was an eventful time for American society. The black people's civil rights struggle for equality and freedom is surging, and the protracted Vietnam War is a rising anti-war sentiment in China, and irrational anti-mainstream culture prevails. Although the American economy recovered after World War II, American movies in the 1960s also suffered an unprecedented severe winter. Large studios have closed down or changed their production. Some studios have given up using well-known directors and actors because of financial difficulties, but boldly used new people. Others make films independently or jointly run film companies with less money, and make films according to their own wishes. These filmmakers have more creative freedom and less traditional constraints, which makes Hollywood movies start to look brand-new. The New Hollywood Movement, which arose in 1960s, contributed a large number of outstanding directors to American film industry, including Casaster, Payne Penguin, Coppola, Daniel Hope, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Spielberg and so on. They made positive contributions to the glory of Hollywood films after the 1970s.

(2) Aesthetic features of new Hollywood films (compared with old Hollywood)

1。 Theme and theme of movies: Old Hollywood movies were influenced by the studio system and politics (at that time, there was Hayes code in the United States, which prohibited filming films that were in contact with society), so the theme and theme were mostly entertainment content that was far away from reality and politics, reflecting the creative values of the middle class, moderation and conservatism, and realistic films accounted for very little in this period. However, the new Hollywood movies show rebellion against the old Hollywood movies, and their sharp exposure, criticism and protest against social problems, as well as the breadth and intensity of facing real life are deeply shocking. For example, the iconic film Bonnie and Clay, which was shot by Arthur Pepa King 1967 and called the birth of New Hollywood, took place in the American countryside in the 1930s. It is a "gangster film" in a sense, but it embodies the theme of contemporary youth resistance: directly resisting social injustice and the violent legitimacy of imprisoning personality. Influenced by the Vietnam War, New Hollywood made many excellent films reflecting the Vietnam War. These films questioned the true nature of human nature through the life and death of the war, and exposed the physical and mental trauma brought to the American people by the Vietnam War. These films are called "Vietnam War Movies". Such as deer hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Pai (1987). In 1970s, influenced by political scandals such as Watergate, political films appeared in Hollywood. These films exposed the darkness of the judicial system and the trial system, accused the government of corruption and reflected social injustice. More films are aimed at young people, showing their emptiness of mind, loss of value and complete rebellion against tradition in a highly developed material life.

2. From the aspect of film expression, Hollywood new films have borrowed a lot from the creative experience of European art films in art, and the film creators have absorbed its reasonable components while jumping out of the classic Hollywood drama film mode, highlighting the image function of the film in expression form. Compared with the old Hollywood, the new Hollywood movies can be viewed from the following aspects in terms of aesthetic characteristics:

① In the plot structure, Hollywood new films have broken the one-way narrative mode of pursuing drama, and the time-space transformation is more flexible, instead of pursuing the integrity of the story, they seek an open ending.

② Characters are no longer stereotyped, but show their natural nature according to their own development. Good and evil is no longer a clear-cut standard to distinguish between good and bad characters. In addition, in the relationship between the characters and the plot, the new Hollywood movies make the characters no longer subordinate to the plot but highlight the characters from the plot. For example, in Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the development of the plot is actually the process in which the protagonist goes crazy step by step. The shock of the film lies not in the suspense of the plot, but in the alienation and alienation of people in the cruel war environment: the lieutenant who was ordered to kill a war madman became another madman after experiencing various events.

③ Hollywood new films pay more attention to the development of film skills including lens language. Hollywood new films do not pursue the reality on the screen, but use various film techniques to produce a certain distance effect. Therefore, in the new Hollywood movies, there are many shots with different angles and speeds, such as freezing and jumping. The new image language strengthens the visual impact and makes the picture more artistic, while the use of metaphor and symbolism adds philosophical connotation to the film on the other hand, thus making the film more characteristic of the director's personal style. For example, Coppola's The Godfather actually magnifies a rather traditional "family story" in an American movie into a family myth, and the individual hero in the traditional robber movie melts into an omnipresent family force, which becomes the epitome of contemporary America and even the whole capitalism.

It is worth mentioning that after the development of New Hollywood in the 1980s, commercial films aiming at film visual effects began to appear, represented by Lucas' Star Wars series and Spielberg's Jurassic series. These films make full use of the high-tech achievements of films, and trick photography and digital production have almost become the magic weapon to replace the plot. The unprecedented visual wonders brought by these films have gone far beyond people's visual experience and even dreams, thus bringing great sensory stimulation and shock to the audience.

(3) The revival of Hollywood genre films.

After the mid-1970s, represented by Jaws by Spielberg and Star Wars by Lucas, a number of movies with thrilling, scary and sci-fi colors attracted the audience back to the cinema. The popularity of these movies made Hollywood people realize the great commercial value of genre films again. Therefore, all kinds of movies are favored again in Hollywood. In the original mode, Renaissance genre films have three characteristics: First, they pay attention to catering to young people's appreciation psychology. Most films depict the psychological characteristics of young people, absorb modernist ideas, and create avant-garde screen images and fashionable content. Second, a large number of modern scientific and technological elements have been added. Trick photography and digital technology make the screen more visual. Third, develop new genre films on the basis of the original genre films, such as ethics films and disaster films.

In short, the success of Hollywood's new movies, both technically and artistically, once again shows the strong vitality of American movies, and Hollywood, which is intertwined with tradition and modernity, is still an invincible "movie kingdom".