Richard Maltby—The Cinema of Disintegration

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

CHAPTER 10

MERE ANARCHY: THE CINEMA OF DISINTEGRATION

[315]

...

PACKAGING CONCEPTS

The fragmentation of production coincided with the merger of the major distribution companies with larger corprate groupings. The period from 1966, when Gulf and Western took over Paramount, to 1969, when Kinney National Services merged with Warner-Seven Arts, saw an upheaval in company ownership more substantial even that that of the early 1930s. The majors diversified, predominantly into other media, or were absorbed into conglomerates attracted by their undervalued stock, their film libraries and their real estate. However, the reorganization of the industry that followed diversification was a less fundamental change than that provoked by the Paramount decrees. By and large, it extended the effects of divorcement. The merger with other media concerns, particularly the record industry, was in a sense only an extrapolation of the majors' post-

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Paramount commitment to a power-base in distribution rather than production, and the growth of independent production completed a process begun in the early 1950s.

Hollywood's acquisition by conglomerates has, to a degree, merely been the swapping of one set of distant masters for another. The new landlords of the Dream Factory, like their predecessors, have pursued the primary motivation of profit; on occasion obtained by slum clearance projects like Kirk Kerkorian's sale of M. G. M. assets to build a Las Vegas hotel, or the urban renewal program of Century City on the back lot of the Fox studios. But if Hollywood has shrunk physically under corporate ownership, with its volume of production declining from 196 features in 1969 to 106 in 1978, its business remains much the same, and in one respect only have the new patterns of ownership made a significant difference to the way it conducts that business. The role of the mogul has been abolished: Hollywood's recent studio executives are men under different influences from those of Warner or Cohn. They share a trait common among corporate management, of frequent mobility of employment. Where Mayer ruled M. G. M. from 1924 to 1951, the studio saw six different studio heads in the years between 1968 and 1979. Only Warner Brothers and Universal had the same management team throughout the decade, while career structures like that of David Picker are increasingly the norm. Picker became President of United Artists in 1969, left to go into independent production in 1973, became head of production at Paramount in 1975, and returned to independent production for Lorimar in 1977. This pattern of short tenure in senior management helped to remove the last vestiges of any identifiable studio styles. By the mid-1970s the post-Paramount attitude of regarding each production as a one-off event had reached a point where none of the majors any longer possessed a recognizable identity either in its personnel or its product.

The corporate acquisitions and the economic crises of the late 1960s occasioned the removal of the old guard. Box-office failures combined with the spectacles of the counter-culture (Haight-Ashbury, Chicago, Woodstock) to offer further evidence that Hollywood's liberal consensus was no longer adequate to the demands of a more youthful and volatile audience. The accepted explanation was that the industry had lost contact with its audience because there were too many old men with too much control over production to encourage the right material. In response,

[317]

Hollywood engaged in an unparalleled wave of parricide. Its most conspicuous victims were the last surviving moguls. Jack Warner sold his interest in the studio in 1967 to embark on a notably unsuccessful career in independent production. Darryl Zanuck lost the last in a series of proxy fights at Fox, and retired in 1971. Between 1966 and 1973 all the majors acquired new, much younger production heads, drawn as often as not from outside the immediate confines of Hollywood. The more public search for the kid genius director concealed a more enduring palace revolution giving power to a younger generation of executives whose previous careers were most likely to have been in television, talent agencies or "creative management."* If the personnel changed, the professional ethos remained the same. Heads of production continued to insist on their ability to gauge an unstable public taste, and to argue that the nature of the industry militated against predictable profit margins.

Richard Maltby—Rhetoric Without a Cause

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

[242]

...

REASONABLE BELIEFS

The mechanisms of displacement, by which liberalism avoided debating itself by always accepting the terms of others, were a reflection of the implicit concession it made to technological improvement. Liberals' commitment to material progress necessitated that technological advance be regarded as, in itself, a social goal . The tension in the liberal perspective was that the mechanics of technology were ideologically required to work for the betterment of man in society, and yet the imperatives of professional expertise and "pure research" insisted that they remain free from social control --for the simple reason that the machine was progressing at an ever-increasing rate towards a goal that could only be presumed, not guaranteed. It was comforting in 1950 to read Asimov's three laws of Robotics, but there was other, more tangible evidence of the dangers of technological progress. Atomic weaponry questioned the benign potential of technology, but, perversely, required the ever more fervent assertion of that article of faith. The danger was again displaced: it lay not in the technology of nuclear destruction itself, but in man's capacity to employ it. Fear

[243]

was diverted from the fact of the Bomb, which, of course, no rational man would ever use, to the possibility of that crazy finger on the button. The existence of such totalitarian weaponry gave credence to the need for eternal vigilance, and the need to compromise liberal idealism with the realism that accepted totalitarian forms of debate. Locked into their technological ideology, liberals located the threat as coming not from the Bomb, but from the fact that someone, specifically the Russians, might use it. The ascending helix of complex technological development was based on the assumption, which did not permit of questioning, that the machine was good for man. The problem, as seen by the liberal technocrat, was whether man was good enough to control the machine.

Interesting (and answerable at all) only on the individual rather than the collective level, no?

Richard Maltby—Coherence, Benevolence, Significance

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

[192]

"WHAT IS REAL?" ... PART ONE: COHERENCE

"Can I tell you a story, Rick?"
"Has it got a wow finish?"
"I don't know the finish."
Bergman and Bogart in
Casablanca

The dual sense of "perfect reproduction" describes both the intent and the effect of the industry's operation of technology. The strictures of the Production Code, the obligations imposed by the duty to entertain, and the idealist nature of Hollywood's adopted ideology meant that it represented the world not as it was, but as it should be. To describe an aesthetic so committed to illusion, artifice, and idealism as "realist" seems a perversity sanctioned only by tradition. To call The Wizard of Oz a "realist" film seems bizarre. The aesthetic strategy employed by the cinema of the consensus was not concerned with the philosophical or perceptual presumptions behind its imitation of life, only with the technical expedients necessary to sustain its illusion. In its presentation of perspective, for example, it was opportunist and inconsistent. Set design in the 1930s assumed

That the Long Shots would be taken with a 40mm lens. For closer shots a 50mm lens was ... the usual choice, and of course for Close-Ups something like 75mm.

The quite visible variation in apparent object relationships between the foreground and background of shots taken with lenses of such different focal length fell within the tolerance levels of a loosely-defined normative perspective, but hardly suggested that Hollywood cameramen recognized realism as a perceptual system governing their work.

However awkward a term it may be, however, realism cannot be altogether discarded. Perfect reproduction engineered a style which concealed its mediation of the narrative it presented. However conventional and codified it may have been, it offered itself as natural because it assumed, as part of the cinematic contract, a fixed relationship between film and audience, and did not seek to question that relationship. If a text and its consumers share the assumption

[193]

that a fixed and mutually known set of conventions represent external reality, and neither seeks to challenge the efficacy of those conventions of representation, then we may describe the text as "realist," regardless of what perceptual systems it operates. The conventions of representation that Hollywood's consensual cinema employed provided its audiences with the means by which they could treat what they saw as if it were real, and order their emotional responses accordingly. Hollywood's realism operated at two levels. Perfect reproduction effaced the techniques by which it produced a seamless flow, and concentrated the audience's attention on the contents of that flow, the narrative. The spatial construction of narrative placed the spectator in the film, while the ordering of events attached the spectator emotionally to its characters as benevolent sources of meaning and significance. Despite the opportunism of its techniques, the cinema of the consensus was committed absolutely to the maintenance of continuity as the primary ingredient of its realism. As a result it was firmly attached to the articulation of a coherent narrative structure.

The narrative of Casablanca (1943, Warner Bros.; dir. Michael Curtiz)--which may indisputably be regarded as "classic Hollywood text" of the consensus--is constructed to support and clarify the story of the film, aiming at a coherence in the revelation of the plot in order to concentrate attention on the story as it is revealed. The audience is attached to the film by the process of the revealing of the story , not by the facts of the story's revelations . One example among many is the introduction of Ingrid Bergman, and the establishment of her previous relationship with Bogart. Up to this point the film has concentrated on establishing its locale, Bogart's cynical isolationism ("I stick my neck out for nobody"), and the apparent major plot device of the theft of the letters of transit and the arrival of Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Henreid and Bergman first appear entering Rick's Cafe in a long medium tracking shot, which takes them past Sam (Dooley Wilson) at the piano. Wilson and Bergman seem to recognize each other, and Wilson looks worried and shakes his head. A signal to the audience's attention has been provided, but it is not immediately pursued. Henreid and Bergman are joined first by Berger (John Qualen), a member of the Resistance, and then by Captain Renault (Claude Rains), in conversations about Henreid's situation. Bergman asks Rains about Wilson--"'somewhere I've seen him"--a remark whose significance is signaled by its delivery in extreme close-up. Rains

[194]

supplies an enigmatic description of Bogart, and its impact on Bergman is again shown in close-up when the group is joined by Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt). However, the subject is not pursued and conversation returns to Henreid's politics and future. But the disruptive influence of Bogart's presence is registered by the repetition of close shots of Bergman, detaching her from the men's conversation. When Rains and Veidt return to their table, a female guitarist begins a song, during which Bergman and Wilson exchange looks of recognition, and Wilson repeats his concerned expression. Once more, the cue is left hanging while Henreid joins Qualen at the bar. Bergman calls Wilson over to her table. Wilson tries to convince her Bogart has another girl, but she tells him "you used to be a much better liar, Sam." He replies, "Leave him alone, Miss Ilsa, you're bad luck to him." In its ordering, her next line encapsulates in microcosm the mechanism of the narrative:

Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake ... play it,
Sam, play, "As Time Goes By."

Richard Maltby—The Cinema of the Consensus

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

[182]

CHAPTER 7

UNITED WE STAND:
THE CINEMA OF THE CONSENSUS

The social condition and the institutions of democracy impart, moreover, certain peculiar tendencies to all the imitative arts, which is easy to point out. They frequently withdraw them from the delineation of the soul, to fix them exclusively on that of the body; and they substitute the representation of motion and sensation for that of sentiment and thought: in a word they put the Real in place of the Ideal."--Alexis de Tocqueville

Tain't what you do, it's the
    way that cha do it,
'Tain't what you do, it's the
    way that cha do it,
'Tain't what you do, it's the
    way that cha do it,
That's what get results.
  Sy Oliver and James
      'Trummy' Young

THE INVISIBLE POLITICS OF STYLE

An ideology which refuses to distinguish between the good of the individual and that of society discovers democratic compromise not in the resolution of conflict between opposing interest groups, but in the achievement of a con-

[183]

sensus among the body of enlightened individuals.   Populist ideology inclines towards status concerns against interest politics as consensus transcends compromise. While the progression to a consensus over issues through compromise is a common democratic activity, once again the individualist orientation of a populist democratic sentiment

!!

Richard Maltby—Sense and Sensorship

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

PART 2

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

...

---

CHAPTER 4

SENSE AND SENSORSHIP

CHIEF INVESTIGATOR STRIPLING: Mr Menjou,
if a picture is produced, as for example Mission
to Moscow, which gives a false portrayal or which
has propaganda in it, who do you hold responsible
in your own mind as a veteran actor in the motion-
picture industry?

MR. MENJOU: Well, I believe that the manufac-
turer of any product is responsible in the end for
the quality of his product.

MR. STRIPLING: In other words, the producers
should be held responsible?

MR. MENJOU: They should be.

House Committee on Un-American Activities,
October 1947.

The producers, the studio executives, never attempted to deny their public responsibility for the quality of their product, nor for its content. Their films, of necessity, existed in the public domain, and were therefore subject to the critical comment not only of their audiences, but also of the socially opinionated. As a pervasive mass entertainment, the cinema was exposed to a more intense examination of its social implications than either more conventional non-durable consumer goods or forms of expression generally seen to operate independently of commercial pressures and the responsibilities of the mass audience. The unique position of the film industry made it vulnerable to a particular kind of public threat. ...

[95]

...

In dealing with those who took an undue interest in their merchandise, the producers invariably placed a premium on their own financial interests. The crucial threat to the majors' interests came from the raising of the anti-trust issue; compared to the maintenance of their economic hegemony, questions of the political or artistic freedom of the screen dwindled into insignificance. The only threats industry leaders took note of were financial ones. Nothing else could persuade them to act in concert, and nothing would make them acquiesce so fast as a threatened boycott. Equally, they saw no purpose in challenging a status quo which worked to their financial advantage. ... since both the most severe restriction of the cinema's freedom of expression and the greatest opportunity to expand that freedom took place at times of financial crisis in the industry, the majors' preference for their short-term economic interest was never revealed so clearly.

Richard Maltby—The Dream Factory

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

PART 3

"I'D RATHER HAVE MANDRAKE FALLS"

...

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[146]

CHAPTER 6

THE AMERICAN WAY:
THE EVOLUTION OF A POPULIST ARCHETYPE

"It is not the easy way, but the
American Way, and it was Lin-
coln's way."

Herbert Hoover, radio broad-
cast, February 1931.

"Hip Hooray, The American
Way"--lyrics of "That's Enter-
tainment"

THE DREAM FACTORY

The industry leaders, and in particular the first- and second-generation studio heads, accepted the limitations imposed on their product by the Production Code in large part because they could accommodate these limitations within their own vision of the commodity they dealt in. That vision was the product of three factors which conveniently knitted together and reinforced each other: their attitude towards their audience; their conception of their own role as mediators between that audience and the filmmakers who worked for them; and the set of social and political assumptions which they, as a group, had in common.

The "movie moguls"--the small group of men who brought "Hollywood" into being and dominated the studio system from the 1920s to the beginnings of its decline--shared a narrow perspective on the expectations of their audience. The commercial nature of their product dictated that they seek to appeal to the widest possible spectrum, and in attempting to do so they assumed that there existed a broad consensus of taste little affected by regional or class varia-

[147]

tion. Part of their marketing conservatism was the result of their low estimation of their audience's flexibility. Commercial experience, however, confirmed the validity of this assumption. Although Sticks might occasionally Nix Hick Pix, box-office failures and successes did not, in the main, vary greatly from region to region, while the available surveys indicated that movies attracted all socioeconomic groups. The economic need to appeal to the undifferentiated mass audience was reinforced by the profitable success of that appeal and, once established as a credo, it became almost impossible to challenge. The studios conducted little research into the composition of their audience because there seemed no need for it.

Richard Maltby—in order to create a political cinema, you have to create a non-political cinema

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

CHAPTER 5

DOUBLE MEANINGS

...

[129] The definition of "controversial" grew broader as blacklisting procedures became more institutionalized.* The appearance of one's name in a list published by the Legion's Firing Line, Counterattack, the publications of AWARE, Inc., or any of the even more obscure Red-baiter groups was all that was needed. Figures without studio protection who had past "controversial" allegiances found it increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, to obtain work. The studios were careful to avoid providing grounds for any possible charges of conspiracy, so that there was never an industry-wide "blacklist" as such. There were almost certainly minor variations in policy between studios, with less pressure on independent producers. These inconsistencies as well as the lack of written evidence on the subject, the general pattern of declining employment in the industry, and the reluctance of any but the victims to discuss the issue, make it almost impossible to determine accurately how many people were affected by blacklisting, or the resulting impact on film production.

The studios' adoption of blacklisting practices can, however, be explained, and largely in non-political terms. The economic crisis provoked by falling audiences and the

__________
*By 1952 the "controversial" category covered not only the 324 names cited by cooperative witnesses at the H.U.A.C. "mass hearings, " but also brief membership of the 194 organizations deemed "subversive" by Counterattack, or a listing in the notorious Appendix IX of the 1945 H.U.A.C. report, which even the Committee had ordered destroyed on the grounds of its inaccuracy.

[130]

Paramount decrees left the majors anxious to avoid any further criticism that might have repercussions on their financial position. They conceded to the anti-Communist lobby for the same reasons that they had conceded to the Legion of Decency in 1934, and if the influence of the anti-Communists was disproportionate to their numerical strength, the financial crisis facing the industry was more severe. Moreover, the increase in relative authority that the crisis had given distribution executives in New York encouraged the timid solution. After 1947 the position of the studio production heads was seriously and permanently weakened. Louis B. Mayer was forced out of M. G. M., Darryl Zanuck was pressured into resigning from Twentieth Century-Fox, and two of the Warner Brothers sold their interest in the company. Hughes' sale of R. K. O. to a branch of the General Tire and Rubber Co. in 1955 may have predated by ten years the submergence of other film companies in disparate conglomerates, but it did indicate in dramatic terms that the era of the all-powerful production head was over, and that the dominant voice in studio policy would from now on belong to those in charge of distribution and finance.

Richard Maltby—Mixed Economies

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment: Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

CHAPTER 3

MIXED ECONOMIES

...

[65]

TELEVISION AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD THEATRES

It is not possible to attribute the subsequent developments in the American film industry wholly to the effects of the Paramount decrees, but their influence was of greater consequence in the restructuring of the industry in the post-war period than any other single factor. By comparison, the impact of television on the studios has been exaggerated . Undoubtedly, the main reason for the decline in audience attendance over the period from 1947 to 1962 was the availability of television as an alternative form of entertainment. But during those fifteen years the methods of American production underwent a major reorganization which was only in part the consequence of falling attendance. It is more accurate to suggest that the effects of the Paramount decrees were exacerbated and accelerated by the immediate financial pressures imposed on the studios by audience defections.

[66]

The initial decline in audience attendance in the immediate post-war period had little to do with television. After the peak attendance year of 1946, a fall to pre-war levels was perhaps to be expected, independent of other influences. That natural fall in audience numbers was aggravated by the post-war restructuring of the national economy, as wartime production resources were diverted into the manufacture of consumer goods. Returning servicemen married, started families, and acquired consumer durables, which both reduced the amount of money available for leisure-time spending and tied families to their homes. When box-office receipts began to decline in the 1947 season, there were fewer television sets in America than there were cinemas. Television, indeed, was one of the major beneficiaries of this redirection of the economy into the production of consumer goods, as the movies suffered from its concomitant concentration of financial resources on the nuclear unit, the suburban family home. The growth of television sales, television's enormous penetration of the American market in the ten years after 1948, and the nature of its content intensified the already existent tendency of the family audience to find its entertainment at home rather than going out to the movies to find it. That this tendency was, however, independent of television itself can be seen in the rise of book sales and the growth of the magazine industry in the immediate post- war period.

Richard Maltby—The Seat of Harry Cohn's Pants

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

CHAPTER 2

THE BUSINESS OF FANTASY

THE CONDITION OF CRISIS

...

[51]

THE SEAT OF HARRY COHN'S PANTS

The industry as a whole needed the stability of predictable box-office earnings to guarantee the production and advertising pattern of large-scale short-term investment. This was a division of interests which corresponded to the requirements for novelty and predictability of the films themselves. Movie economics resembled those of the fashion industry in their dependence on stable consumption of a product which was constantly being modified, and in their ambiguously determining and dependent relationship with audience "taste." Many of Hollywood's moguls had worked in clothing trades early in their careers and may have acquired the particular skills which entrepreneurial success in both industries required: in particular, "the ability to suspend one's own tastes and calculate the desires of others."

The promotion of fashion as a mechanism for the superficial alteration of a fundamentally consistent product was as important to the workings of the film industry as it was to the garment business, because it attached unnatural limits to the durability of the product in question. Films, like clothes, went out of fashion before they were worn out. This imposed an attitude towards the product on the part of the producers that influenced their manner of distribution. The felt need to be fashionable reinforced the notion of the product having a short commercial life, and being worthless after expiry. Fashion had to be latched on to quickly; producers, like dress designers, had to stay one step ahead of public taste, anticipating it by at least a year in order to have product ready for the market.

The studio heads' claim to control over production was in part based on the assertion that they had unique intuitive abilities to gauge and predict audience reaction to the individual films their companies produced. In their interventions over story development, characterization, casting or costume design, all the moguls insisted on their mediating role as arbiters of the Common Taste, though few were as terse in expressing their peculiar gift for judgment as Harry Cohn:

When I'm alone in the projection room, I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If

[52]

my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good. It's as simple as that.

Richard Maltby—Story as the Cheapest Form of Novelty

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

[26]

THE CANNING BUSINESS

"After all, pictures are shipped
out in cans. We're in the can-
ning business."
Sammy Glick

... "There is ever present the obligation to entertain those who pay the price for what they believe will be entertainment." [Joseph] Breen's job was to ensure that Hollywood produced "entertainment which tends to improve the race, or at least to recreate and rebuild human beings exhausted with the realities of life."

As well as this prescription, the movies were also expected to contain a number of known or anticipated ingredients, which can be characterized in several ways. In fulfilling its "obligation to entertain" the Hollywood movie had, like any other non-durable consumer product, to meet certain standards of quality. Predictable quality was indicated by the same criteria as might be employed by a manufacturer of canned food: the reputation of the producing company's brand name (MGM, Warner Brothers), and the quality of the product's ingredients (starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, [etc.]...) Commercially, film, like canned food, required that its customers could anticipate enjoying it by contemplating the mixture of known and reliable ingredients.

On the other hand, while one can's contents should taste exactly like another's, a film needed to present at least the illusion of being distinct from every other film. Even the most formularized B-film entailed a separate act of production and had to supply its spectator/consumers with an element of novelty to keep them engaged in its consumption, as well as the predictable ingredients which would initially lure them to the cinema. Advertising slogans often sought to make this joint appeal. ...

[27]

... Campaigns mounted around a star... offered the audience a novel experience from a familiar, reliable source, an idea perhaps most concisely expressed in the advertisements for Ninotchka, which simply announced, "Garbo laughs."

Richard Maltby—The Cinematic Contract

Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)

---

PART 1

THE CRAP-GAME

---

CHAPTER 1

TAKING HOLLYWOOD FOR GRANTED

...

[10]

...

"MOVIES ARE YOUR BEST ENTERTAINMENT"

(Industry promotional slogan of early 1950, hastily with-
drawn when it was pointed out that its initials spelt
M. A. Y. B. E.)

What do you go for, go see a
show for?"--lyrics to Dames

entertainment is a type of
performance produced for pro-
fit, performed before a gener-
alised audience (the "public"),
by a trained, paid group who
do nothing else but produce
performances which have the
sole (conscious) aim of pro-
viding pleasure.

Richard Dyer

The American cinema was a commercial institution, and its films were commercial products. Any assessment of those products must acknowledge this economic fact of

[11]

life, and not merely because Hollywood took an industrial attitude to its own activities. Film, by its very nature, proposes a symbiotic relationship between the commercial and the aesthetic . It exists simultaneously in two states. Materially, it is a roll of celluloid, wound onto a metal spool and stored in a tin can. In use, it is a progressive series of "moving pictures, " evanescent shadow images projected onto a blank white screen. Unlike books or paintings, film undergoes a material transformation when it is viewed or experienced. This transformation is engineered by a combination of mechanical and optical processes needing complex projection equipment as well as a large space across which the magnified image is thrown. The economics of these material prerequisites forcibly encourage film to project itself before as large an audience as possible. The evolution of viewing apparatus, from the Kinetoscope and peepshow to the nickelodeon, picture palace and Cinerama, traces a history and an economic logic of larger pictures projected in front of larger audiences. The institution of the cinema is first of all a physical institution of the buildings in which it takes place.