"The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era", Thomas Schatz
Thomas
Schatz is the director of undergraduate courses in the radio, TV and film University
of Texas (Austin) and author of Hollywood genres. A member of the American Film
Institute, he is also a regular contributor to the of American TV PBS and
specialized magazines like Wide Angle, Cineaste and Premiere.
The
Genius of the System
depicts the greatness of Classic Hollywood era, not through the talent of its
directors (Hitchcock, Hawks, or Lang), but of the commercial vision and
executive talent of the producers of the great studios (Selznick, Zanuck,
Mayer, the Warner brothers and Irving Thalberg). By interweaving the histories
of Warner Bros., MGM, Universal and Selznick International Pictures, by telling
the production stories of such classics as Greed, Frankenstein, Rebecca
or Grand Hotel, by looking at the cinema through a business perspective,
Schatz diminishes the romanticism of directorial authorship created by critics
and historians in the 60s and 70s, studying the direct interferences that
producers made in all stages of film production. The producer is no longer seen
as just “the evil” that doesn’t allow the director work without constraints, he’s
the one who makes the studio a strong base of operations with a robust set
of resources and a talented staff, creating a synergic environment that could
give the great masters of cinema the best conditions to work. Business and art
make together a fruitful relationship of collaboration and conflict. And that’s perhaps
what best characterized the glory of the Hollywood system.
Excerpts:
“Auteurism
itself would not be worth bothering with if it hadn’t been so influential,
effectively stalling film history and criticism in a prolonged stage of
adolescent romanticism. But the closer we look at Hollywood’s relations of
power and hierarchy of authority during the studio era, at its division of
labor and assembly-line production process, the less senses it makes to assess
filmmaking or film style in terms of the individual director – or any
individual, for that matter. The key issues here are style and authority –
creative expression and creative control – and there were indeed a number of
Hollywood directors who had a unusual degree of authority and a certain style.
John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock are good examples,
but it’s worth noting that their privileged status – particularly their control
over script development, casting, and editing – was more a function of their
role as producers than as directors. Such authority came only with commercial
success and was won by filmmakers who approved not just that they had talent
byt that they could work profitably within the system.”
“(…) the
Selznick-Hitchcock and Zanuck-Ford unions were very much like difficul
marriages, sustained by mutual dependence and a shared commitment to their offspring
– only was motion pictures, not the kids, that kept them together.”
“Selznick
reminded Hitchcock that he had already adapted ‘many classics successfully and faithfully,’
and he had learned that in doing a successful (i.e., popular) play or novel, the
adaptation itself ‘will succeed in the same manner as the original succeeded if
only the same elements are captured and if only as much as possible is retained
of the original.' (…) Selznick insisted that these characters be returned to
their original conception, and that the story itself be brought in line with Du
Maurier’s. He told Hitchcock that he wanted Rebecca to ‘seem to be a
exact photograph of the book’ – much as he believed Gone with the Wind
was being done”.
Link to the complete book in PDF:
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