The Oxford History of World Cinema (20 page)

THE PRODUCTION SYSTEM

During the late 1910s and early 1920s, the successful companies, led by Adolph Zukor's

Famous Players-Lasky corporation, developed a system by which to manufacture popular

films on a large scale. This system was much admired abroad, and film industries the

world over sent their representatives over to Hollywood to study and, if possible, copy it.

As well as visitors from France, Germany, and Britain, Hollywood was to play host in the

1930s to Luigi Freddi, head of the Italian Fascist film industry, and to Boris Shumyatsky,

Stalin's henchman in charge of the industry in the Soviet Union.

The centrepiece of the product offered by the Hollywood companies was the feature film,

generally about ninety minutes long. Ten-minute newsreels or animated subjects might

provide a complement, but it was the feature that sold the show. The feature film had to

be a story of unusual interest, produced at a cost of about $100,000, sometimes up to

$500,000. Ironically, inspiration for this had come from Europe. Through the 1910s

foreign features repeatedly demonstrated that longer films could draw sizeable audiences.

The then independents imported epics from European film-makers who did not care to

book through the Trust. The success of prestigious Italian productions such as Dante's

Inferno ( 1911) not only proved there existed a market for longer fare, but helped to give

the new medium much-needed respectability in the eyes of the traditional middle class.

In 1911 Dante's Inferno enjoyed successful extended engagements in New York and

Boston. Where the average two-reel Trust film may have played two days, Dante's Inferno

was held over for two weeks. Where the average Trust film was shown in a 200-seat

'odeon' for 10 cents, Dante's Inferno was presented in 1,000-seat rented legitimate theatres

for $1. Indeed, the most influential of early feature films, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a

Nation ( 1915), opened a few years later in a noted New York City legitimate theatre and

ran for a year at an unheard of admission price of $2. In less than two decades the

industry had moved from selling movies as a novelty to developing a finely-honed

publicity machine to promote an entire system and its nationally advertised products.

Hollywood centred its promotional efforts on the star system. Publicists had to acquire the

art of manipulating the new techniques of mass advertising and mass communication to

create something special in the minds of the growing middle-class public. Stars provided

an effective means of differentiating feature films, making each individual title an

unmissable attraction. In 1909, for example, Carl Laemmle lured Florence Lawrence from

Biograph, and named her his 'IMP Girl' -- the letters representing his Independent Motion

Picture Company (later Universal). Laemmle then sent his star on tour and planted story

after story in the newspapers, including one falsely reporting her death.

Others plucked their stars from the legitimate stage. Adolph Zukor's pioneering company

Famous Players (later Paramount), whose slogan was 'Famous Players in Famous Plays',

achieved early successes with The Count of Monte Cristo ( 1912) starring James O'Neill,

The Prisoner of Zenda ( 1913) starring James Hackett, Queen Elizabeth ( 1912) starring

Sarah Bernhardt, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles starring Minnie Maddern Fiske.

Zukor soon saw the need to develop his own stars, not simply buy up already established

names. Mary Pickford saw her salary increase from $100 a week in 1909 to $10,000 per

week in 1917 as Zukor made her the biggest star of her day. Zukor's rivals developed their

own 'Little Marys', and 'inked' them to exclusive, long-run contracts. The Hollywood

companies then fashioned elaborately prepared scenarios as centrepieces for their stars.

But the stars were quick to realize that, if they were so important to the studios, they had

bargaining power of their own. Although many remained tied to exploitative contracts,

some of the most successful broke loose from the system. On 15 January 1919, major

luminaries Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford joined with director

D. W. Griffith to create United Artists, and issued a declaration of independence from

their former studio bosses. United Artists announced it would distribute starproduced

features so their makers could extract the riches their star power had generated.

United Artists achieved great success with, for example: The Mark of Zorro ( 1920,

Fairbanks), Robin Hood ( 1923, Fairbanks), Little Lord Fauntleroy ( 1921, Pickford), and

The Gold Rush ( 1925, Chaplin). Unfortunately, however, the studio did not regularly

release enough star-laden films, Theatre owners called for three Chaplin, Fairbanks, and

Pickford films per year, but the company was able to deliver only one every twenty-four

months. Theatre owners could not afford to go dark to wait for biennial inspirations, and

turned back to the majors. Thus, in the long run, United Artists simply became a haven for

independent producers (some good, some bad) fleeing from the strict confines of the

major Hollywood studios.

United Artists was an anomaly. The standard Hollywood system of feature film-making

sought to guarantee the shipment of attractive films to theatres on a weekly basis, and the

studios developed efficient and cost-effective production methods to produce films that

filled theatres. This factory system would prove the best method by which to provide a

regular supply of films.

In the days before the feature film, there had been two standard methods of production.

For 'reality' subjects, a camera operator would journey to the subject, record the action,

and then edit it together. For films inspired by vaudeville acts or taken from literary

sources, movie companies employed a director to stage 'scenes' and a camera operator to

record them. Gradually during the 1910s, as the demand for narrative films increased,

specialists were trained to assist the director to make movies faster. Writers thought up

story lines, scenic artists painted backgrounds, and designers fashioned appropriate

costumes.

Soon film-makers realized that it was less expensive to shoot the story out of order, rather

than chronologically record it as it might be staged in a theatre. Once all planned scenes

were filmed, an editor could reassemble them, following the dictates of the script. All this

required a carefully thought out, prearranged plan to calculate the minimum cost in

advance. Such a plan became known as the shooting script.

The Hollywood studio had to fashion shooting scripts which would turn out to be popular

at the box-office. Gradually, as feature films became longer, stories became more

complicated, requiring more complex shooting scripts. Paying careful attention to script

preparation meant faster and cheaper feature film-making. One could make a careful

estimate of the necessary footage for each scene, and film-makers developed techniques

to minimize the need for retakes.

William Cameron Menzies's sets for
The Thief of Bagdad
seen from the air in 1924.

The typical script immediately proclaimed its genre (comedy or drama, for example),

listed the cast of characters, and sketched a synopsis of the story, and only then went on to

a scene-by-scene scenario. From this plan, the head of the film company could decide

whether he wanted to make the movie. The producer could, once the project was

approved by the studio boss, redo the shooting script to fashion the actual order of

production.

The Hollywood production system was not invented, but evolved in response to a number

of felt imperatives, of which the most important was the need for regular and consistent

profit. A pioneering role, however, can be ascribed to producer Thomas Ince, working at

Mutual in 1913. The standard studio working procedure, as devised by Ince, involved a

studio boss, the film's director, and a continuity script. Once Ince as head producer had

approved a project, he assigned available buildings for filming, and commissioned writers

and production artists to create the necessary script, sets, and costumes. Back-up systems,

such as an internal police force to keep out crowds, or fire-fighters to assist when wooden

sets burned, meant that by the early 1920s studio lots, covering many acres, operated as

veritable subcities within the urban environs of Los Angeles.

Studio bosses planned a programme of films a year in advance. Sets were efficiently used

over and over again, and adapted for different stories. Art directors designed and

constructed sets; casting directors found the talent; make-up artists perfected the

glamorous movie look; and cinematographers were picked to shoot scripts as written.

Time was of the essence, so actors were shuttled from film to film. Often multiple

cameras were used for complicated shots (for example, a battlefield sequence) to avoid

having to stage them twice. And always present was the continuity clerk, who checked

that, when shooting was completed, the film could be easily reassembled.

DISTRIBUTION AND CONTROL OF THE MARKET

If Ince⊥ pioneered this Hollywood studio 'factory' production system, it was Adolph

Zukor who taught Hollywood how fully and properly to exploit it. By 1921 Zukor had

fashioned the largest film company in the world -- his Famous Players. Five years earlier

he had merged twelve producers and the distributor, Paramount, to form the Famous

Players-Lasky Corporation. By 1917 his new company included stars such as Mary

Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Pauline Frederick, and Blanche Sweet.

Two years later, about the time Pickford and Fairbanks left to form United Artists, a

quarter of the cinemas in the USA were regularly presenting Famous Players films.

Famous Players began to block book its yearly output of 50 to 100 feature films, which

meant that the theatre owner who sought to show the films of Mary Pickford had also to

take pictures featuring less well-known Famous Players stars. In turn, Famous Players

used these guaranteed bookings to test and develop new stars, and to try new story genres.

When major theatre owners began to baulk at the risks involved, Zukor stepped in,

acquired theatres, and set up his own theatre chain.

Such a large real estate venture needed more investment than could be financed with the

cash on hand. Zukor therefore turned to the Wall Street investment banking firm of Kuhn

Loeb for the necessary $10 million. At that time Kuhn Loeb was an outsider on Wall

Street, a small Jewish-run business in a world of WASP-dominated institutions. In time,

however, the company would grow into a financial giant, partly on the basis of deals with

expanding film companies from the west coast like Famous Players. Hollywood may have

been over 2,000 miles from New York City, but to gain crucial financing not available

from conservative west coast bankers, Zukor showed the industry that eastern money was

there to be tapped.

During the 1920s Famous Players became a high-flyer on the New York Stock Exchange.

Others soon followed. Marcus Loew put together Metro-Goldwyn-Maker. William Fox

expanded his film company as did Carl Laemmle with his Universal Studios. Even

stalwart independents United Artists built a theatre chain. Thus a handful of major,

vertically integrated companies came to dominate and define Hollywood.

It was not enough however, that this small handful of companies controlled all the movie

stars and theatres. They sought to expand their markets beyond the US border, to establish

distribution all over the world. The First World War offered a crucial opening. While other

national cinemas were constrained, the leading Hollywood companies moved to make the

world their marketplace. Although the average cost for Hollywood features of the day

rarely ranged beyond $500,000, expanding distribution across the globe meant revenues

regularly topped $1,000,000. Adolph Zukor, ever aggressive, led the way with a series of

spectacular foreign deals, and was able during the years prior to the coming of sound to

effect a stranglehold on the world-wide market-place.

To maintain conditions for maximizing profits abroad, the major Hollywood companies

formed an association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of