The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film

• Publisher:   Praeger
• Number Of Pages:   240
• Publication Date:   2008-10-30
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0313356920
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780313356926

Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate Hollywood's classic movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself through the grace and beauty of its form. This beauty, when seen, challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. The Hidden Art of Hollywood draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film.

While the greatness of the classic Hollywood film is, for many of us, settled business, there are also a great number who have difficulty understanding why these films - which can often seem dated and unrealistic compared to modern fare - are taken as seriously as they are. Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong and often didactic messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate classic American movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself not through ideas or social relevance, but through the grace and beauty of its form.

The beauty of the Hollywood film challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. In his effort to answer the many questions that classic American cinema suggests, author John Fawell considers previous criticism of Hollywood, but also draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film. The films of certain great auteurs, including Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, and Orson Welles, receive particular attention here, but this book is organized by ideas rather than films or artists, and it draws from a wide array of Hollywood films, both successes and failures, to make its points.

As a video store manager and classic movie lover, few things are more distressing than hearing about or seeing people dismiss old Hollywood movies, whether they simply dismiss them for being in black-and-white, or for being "unrealistic." So, in theory, I welcomed the book "The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film" by John Fawell (an associate professor at Boston University) as a way to counter some of those claims. Unfortunately, the book ends up not as illustrating the virtues of classic Hollywood films but as a pedantic rant against anything else. Fawell's book does have its good points. His chapter on character actors is a delightful illustration of one of the great pleasures for classic movie lovers, that of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of character actors who either propped up various movies, or became part of the stock company of such directors as Capra, Ford, and Sturges, all of whom knew how to use said actors to their best advantage (though he does err by misidentifying Charles Lane, one of Capra's favorites, as "Charles Lang"). Fawell also avoids the trap of those who prefer classic movies because they represent "simpler times," and he's able to distinguish between, say, the honest sentiment of movies by Capra and Ford (because of the harsh backdrops their sentiment is set against) and the saccharine nature of the Andy Hardy films. Too often, however, Fawell makes the same mistake he accuses "realistic" films of making - he preaches rather than illustrates. Certainly, I would agree such seemingly "light" films as TROUBLE IN PARADISE, NOTHING SACRED, STAGE DOOR, THE LADY EVE, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, to name but a few, can stand up proudly with the likes of more serious-minded films. But Fawell forgets during the 1930's, there were also attempts at more serious-minded films, and while some were indeed self-serious bores (A FAREWELL TO ARMS - one of the few films he actually does cover, biopics such as THE GREAT ZIEGFELD), they could also be very well made (I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, BLACK LEGION). Also, in talking about the Production Code, while Fawell discusses the way Hollywood directors and writers were forced to be creative in depicting sex and violence, he completely ignores the uglier aspects of the Code (the enforced racism, for starters, he completely ignores). What bothered me most about the book, however, was Fawell's tirade against method acting, and his auteurist rants. For the former, it's one thing to point out the acting of such stars of the time is better they get credit for today (he brings up the oft-cited example of Gary Cooper, who seemed to be doing nothing until you actually saw him on film), and I certainly have no argument against that. But to say actors who tried to change from role to role are inferior to the star acting of the time is patently unfair, and ignores how the stars we like were good when they were allowed to perform variations on their persona, not playing it straight (in other words, Humphrey Bogart is better served in THE MALTESE FALCON and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT than in third-rate knock-offs like DEAD RECKONING). As for the latter, Fawell acts as if the director is the main one to be credited for the success of a film, yet he contradicts himself by pointing out the collaborations necessary to make those classic films great. And while he's right in pointing out the vitality of the slang-heavy, cynical dialogue, his anti-intellectual rants about the uselessness of "big ideas" in films becomes tiresome (particularly when he forgets much of the dialogue he likes comes from the pens of writers who worked for The New Yorker, one of the greatest collections of intellectual writers ever). People who try to praise older Hollywood films usually tend to either do it at the expense of today's films as a way of longing for a "simpler time," or they tend to treat classic films the same way high school English teachers often treat Shakespeare - it tastes bad, but it's good for you. Fawell attempts to avoid both of these routes, but ends up being as preachy and off-putting as the more "realistic" films he slams.

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