Week 1: Film History
How does the reception of the film adaptation Ben-Hur (MGM 1925) comment on cinema production in its time period?
In the early 1920s, due to the successes of Kew and Erlanger’s play adaptation of Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur, there was a huge public demand for a film following the first adaptation in 1907 directed by Sidney Olcott and Frank Oakes Rose. After negotiating the rights for $500,000, the struggling studio company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took on the challenge, taking production to Italy and Germany. Although there were troubles with artistic disagreements with producer June Matthis, with new creative direction from Fred Niblo the film subsequently went on to be the most expensive silent film, costing $4-$6 million but earning in box office a grand total of $10.7 million.
The Chariot Race in the film is recognised as a colossal effort in production and connectedly in the film’s success, with use of forty-two cameras capturing tens of thousands of feet of footage, with a full reconstruction of Circus Maximus and some 2000 extras to fill the audience. When discussing the narrative of the film with reference to the cinematic expectations of the time and historical implications, Jon Soloman states that in illustrating such a historical epic “the film medium does not easily lend itself to portraying vagueness”, which many critics believed Niblo defied with his grandeur and scale of this particular scene. Critics such as Kevin Brownlow applauded Niblo for “realising the potential of the cinema”, and seizing the opportunity to fulfil it. However, it did receive criticism of its historical authenticity within the narrative, with the behaviour of Messala during the race described as “unthinkable” within the Roman context. I’m not sure how much one can agree that this particular criticism should be pinned against the 1925 production and not to the novel itself, but perhaps it was a dislike towards Bushman’s performance as Messala.
The casting of Roman Novarro as the protagonist encouraged the existence of the Hollywood star-system during the 1920s, “associating [Novarro] with values of history, tradition and respectability” This would have been a contributing factor to the film’s success, encouraging audiences to purchase tickets for the actor if nothing else.
Although Henry Wallace, the son of the Ben-Hur author, believed that the capabilities of cinematic production at the time wouldn’t be able to capture the full scale of Ben-Hur both narratively and cinematically, over 70 years later Ben-Hur went on to preserved in the US National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”, showing that not only did it succeed in its inconceivable production and box office success but has made an impact in cinematic history.
Week 2: Comic Strips and Superheroes
Week 3: Serial Narratives
How does the use of serial narratives on television compare to cinema?
As John Ellis argues, the point of the serial narratives on everyday television is not necessarily the resolution of the narrative, therefore bringing it to a close, but “the ‘dilemma’ which may be re-opened week after week” Television serials attract large numbers of audiences nationally and internationally, as the development of television has entered the 21st century. Audiences enjoy the intimacy and immediacy of having access to their favourite television programmes, so much so that ‘long drawn continuities’ such as Coronation Street exceed the number of viewers of live action events, for example the marriage of characters’ Ken Barlow and Deirdre Langton in 2005 had thirteen million viewers; the following day, the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles had just nine million.
According to Raymond Williams’ findings of television conventions in 1974, he anticipates that drama in modern television has become an integral part to everyday life. From his writing, it is clear John Caughie finds Williams’ findings interesting and of importance, however he suggests that in the development of television it has the “possibility for distraction” as a new domestic technology, supported by Christine Geraghty’s point referencing the familiarity of each programme’s title sequence, which could indicate a lack of constant intrigue. These potentially suggest the possibility (or also, in a domestic setting, the ease) of diversion from a programme on television; different from the cinematic conventions of viewing a film in a projection theatre. That being said, Geraghty also speaks of the “sense of future” in a continuous serial, which could quite easily be evident in cinematic productions. She speaks of “unchronicled growth” when a serial does come to an end, suggesting that a programme could end on an opportunity of, for example, a new job proposal or a pregnancy. This idea of continued life after the end of production is a valid convention in films from a variety of genres, including Hollywood classics such as Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942) where the future of the relationship between Charlotte and Jerry is left unclear and open-ended.
Despite the increasing popularity of television seriality in the 20th century, it was clear that the social stigma around television given by those of “cultural elite” were still present, some intellectuals even would have referred to television as “the sewer of national and global culture” . That being said, with the cultivation of viewers and producers together building diegetic story worlds to become consumed by on a regular basis, combined with the technological development of television production, television is vastly becoming a competitor to cinematic productions by gathering audiences through serial narratives of week-by-week programmes.