A Film-by-Film History of American Cinema, Paul Monaco presents a study of the narrative feature film from the 1920s to the present to Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema.
The book concentrates on 170 of Hollywood’s most prestigious and well-known feature films, including every Best Picture Oscar winner as well as those deemed the best by members of the American Film Institute.
Monaco gives a fundamental history of one of the contemporary world’s most complicated and successful cultural institutions: Hollywood, by focusing on a limited set of films that reflect the apex of these relationships. “Classic Hollywood, 1927-1948,” “Hollywood In Transition, 1949-1974,” and “The New Hollywood, 1975 To The Present” are the three sections of the book.
The General, Wings, Bringing Up Baby, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, On the Waterfront, The Searchers, Psycho, West Side Story, The Godfather, Cabaret, Raging Bull, Rain Man, Toy Story, and Saving Private Ryan are among the films Monaco explores.
This is the only book that examines Hollywood—and the most significant films it has produced—as an art, a craft, and a business all at the same time. This method gives you a unique perspective on one of the most accomplished and successful creative forms in human history: the Hollywood feature film.
What is the Art Film?
An art film (also known as an art-house film) is usually an independent film intended towards a specialized audience rather than a broad audience.
It is intended to be a serious, creative production, typically experimental and not geared for broad appeal, with unorthodox or highly symbolic content, developed largely for aesthetic motives rather than economic profit.
Film festivals and special theaters (repertory cinemas or, in the United States, art-house cinemas) are common venues for art film creators. In comparison to mainland Europe, where the phrases’ auteur films and national cinema (e.g. German national cinema) are used instead, the term art film is considerably more often used in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Art films seldom receive the financial backing that enormous production expenditures associated with widely distributed blockbuster films do, since they are intended at tiny, specialist audiences.
African American-focused films
Like the community that inspires them, African American-focused films and black filmmakers are not a monolith. The story of a black screenwriter is deep, strong, and artistic.
They span the whole history of cinema—narrative films, documentaries, dramas, comedies, musicals, biopics, and everything in between—and they seek creative and financial goals with equal zeal.
For as long as there have been American movies, their work has both broadened and criticized American cinema. Even so, few filmmakers in that vast library can surpass Shelton Jackson Lee—a.k.a. Spike—in terms of quantity and influence.
Lee’s work will be included in the Academy Museum’s and the art of technique primary exhibition, Stories of Cinema, as part of a suite of galleries spotlighting artists and films that have changed our understanding of the craft of filmmaking.
His films are entitled with constant elements of art, and the strong influence of American filmmaking is present. His Films are about various chapter topics, student films, experimental films, and so on.
Deviations from mainstream film norms
In a 1979 paper titled “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,” film historian David Bordwell developed the academic term of “art film,” and “recurring themes,” which compares such films with mainstream films of conventional Hollywood cinema.
A clear narrative structure is used in mainstream Hollywood-style films to organize the picture into a sequence of “causally connected events taking place in space and time,” with each scene leading to a goal.
The storyline of popular movies is led by a well-defined protagonist, who is fleshed out with distinct characters and bolstered by “question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, [and] deadline plot structures.”
Fast tempo, a melodic soundtrack to trigger the proper viewer emotions, and precise artistic work, visual style, flawless editing bind the picture together. Mainstream films also deal with moral challenges and identity crises, although these concerns are generally handled by the film’s conclusion.
The difficulties are examined and investigated in a thoughtful manner in film features, but there is largely no obvious conclusion or the answer at the end of the film.
New narrative techniques in the modern world
What is the best way to convey a story? Is the story best told in mainstream blockbuster films, or is it told in mainstream Hollywood films?
To answer this question, we must first examine art film directors. It’s not about how to write a tale or how to build and plot one. What is the best way to convey a story?
When you think of storytelling at its most basic level, we see our forefathers gathering around a campfire, exchanging stories about their life, the adventures they’ve gone on, and their people’s history.
Narrative devices are how you tell the tale, and if you’re a writer, you should think about your storytelling approach and viewpoint. If you want to avoid film critics’ reviews and to gain artistic achievements, the key is to focus on new narrative techniques.
The following list features some of the most influential film directors:
Number 1: Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is a film and television director, producer, screenwriter, and cinema historian from the United States, who also acts on occasion. He is widely recognized as one of the best and most important filmmakers in film history, and he is one of the primary players of the New Hollywood era. He took inspiration from films such as Birth of a Nation or A city of Sadness.
Number 2: Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol was an influential player in the visual art style known as pop art. He was an American artist, film director, and producer. His films influenced mostly young people. With his great film editing and motivations of characters, he was very respected in the circles of film societies.
Number 3: Ingmar Bergman
Swedish film director, screenwriter, producer, and playwright Ernst Ingmar Bergman Bergman’s films include The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, and Fanny and Alexander, and he is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant and important filmmakers of all time.
The comprehensive book he wrote on the film genre showed the greatest influence on the new film that Americans tend to produce brilliantly.
Number 4: Hans Richter
Hans Richter was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, filmmaker, and producer from Germany. He was born into a well-to-do family in Berlin and died in Minusio, Switzerland, near Locarno. He took inspiration from the French playwright and from Soviet Armenia.
Number 5: Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (November 30, 1943) is a film director, screenwriter, and producer from the United States. Before a long sabbatical, Malick began his career as part of the New Hollywood film-making movement with the films Badlands (1973), about a homicidal couple on the run in the 1950s American Midwest, and Days of Heaven (1978), about a love triangle between two laborers and a wealthy farmer during WWI.
After The Thin Red Line (1998), for which he was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay and received the Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival for such themes, he returned to directing after a twenty-year hiatus with The New World (2005) and The Tree of Life (2011). He worked closely with Miramax films for a couple of years.
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