Hollywood Film History
The evolution of love in Hollywood Cinema; the love affair and its portrayal
The romance genre of Hollywood films has evolved throughout the decades to match the societal norms in which they were created. American society’s ideologies of romance and love the time in which seen through the film’s narrative structure, plot, the protagonists, and costumes. All of which are enhanced, in some way, by the setting of the scene and film technologies used to tell the narrative. A contrast can be seen in the way romance, love and sexual relations are depicted in films during the time of the Production Code, and those made after its elimination. “By the 1920s almost ever Hollywood film contained a romantic plot or subplot” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.309). This continues to be true in today’s cinema. …show more content…
There are many romance films to date that involve the notion of true love, and use the love affair sequence to tell the story.
Made in the late 1950s An Affair to Remember by director Leo McCarey tells the love affair of Nickie Ferrante, a suave gold digger, and Terry McKay an entertainment singer. The two fall in love on a cruise ship even though they are engaged to other people back home. Dear John a modern love film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, directed by Lasse Hallström, is about John Tyree, a soldier, who meets a conservative Savannah Curtis while he is home during leave. The two fall in love in just only two weeks but are separated by war, and Savannah finds someone else to be
with.
A vital part of any romance film is the first kiss. After visiting Nickie’s grandmother Janou the two reminisce about how nice their visit was offshore. At this point, Nickie attemps to make a move at kissing Terry. She delicately pulls away and says, “let’s walk”. The camera cuts to a side angle and shows Nickie and Terry walking along the top deck, and then they begin to descend a staircase that leads to the deck below. The camera cuts and now we see their feet as they walk further down the staircase. Terry stops halfway down the staircase, while Nickie walks down a few more steps and we can see him full bodied in the bottom right of the screen. Terry still holding on to his hand leads him back up the stairs towards her. Next we see Cary Grant’s weight has shifted and we can see that he is leaning into her, indicated by his left foot reaching out to balance him. The couple obviously shares a kiss while the viewer gazes at their feet for a few long seconds. We can see Terry’s hand move from her side up and up to embrace Nickie’s head to deepen their kiss. We don’t actually see where her hand goes as the couple is beheaded by the frame.
As we continue to watch their feet as they are kissing we ask ourselves; is the camera ever going to move upwards so we can see them kiss? Was it a good kiss? Are they still kissing now? WHY CAN’T WE SEE THEM? What is the point of making a film about a love affair when there is no on camera kissing being shared with the audience? To a modern movie viewer this seems outrageous and is unnerving.
The fact that the spectator could miss the first kiss is something important to note. The subtleness of the narrative and what the film reveals through the camera works against showcasing the love that has kindled between Terry and Nickie.
What is off screen can be just as important as what is on it. “If mis-en-scene, editing, and camera movement are all matters of decision-making, of selection, then it stands to reason that the information a director leaves out of the image is worth considering as well” (Sidkov, 2012, p. 30). After the two finally descend the staircase, they move off to the side and with palm open on his, she tells him, “we are heading into a rough sea Nickie”. He replies, “I know, we changed our course today”.
“Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sexual relations between men and women were considered a delicate and frequently unspoken-of subject” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.311). Relations between man and woman, however, became a staple subject of film and has proven dramatic and interesting to the mass audience of cinema.
The Production code “serving as a means of self-censorship, it offered the film industry a set of rigid guidelines that ere incorporated unto a system and enforced by the Production Code Administration beginning in 1934” (Hart, 2006, p.35).
“’Application II- Sex’ of the Code stated that ‘scenes of passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element’” (Hart, 2006, p.35).
“The years 1931 and 1932 had seen the release by all major studios of cycle of what the Hays Office dubbed ‘sex films’: Back Street, Possessed, and Blonde Venus, among others” (Couvares, 1996, p. 188).
“As a theme, adultery forges connections between the fictional and real world by dealing with conflicts between desire and duty; the ideal and reality” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.120). Its transgressive status has become more diluted and ambiguous, yet punishment is still part of the adultery equation.
“the audience is shown in some detail what is attractive about the character set up as the object of desire” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.125).
In the love affair narrative formula “emotional keys help create drama, suspense, and engagement with the main character/s and have a bearing on the transgressive coding of adulterous sex in the film” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.126).
“a great deal of care [is] taken to keep the scenes visually ‘tasteful’, which works to preserve the ‘romance’ as ideal” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.126).
The affair concept typically involves the pleasure and reality principles are in conflict. When reality gets the upper hand the mask of disapproval slips, and a key change in the relationship occurs. The affair once established is heightened by the drama of the choice or the crisis (Krzywinska, 2006, p.128).
“Representations of adultery under the Production Code were subject to the rule of metaphysical retribution” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.120). Perhaps this is why in An Affair to remember the kissing appears off camera. The viewer knows that Nickie and Terry are obviously kissing, but the director may have chosen to leave the action out of view so that the film could get a seal of approval. This seems strange, since by 1959 there were numerous films showing kissing, lovemaking and sexual scenes. Is the lack of on camera kissing then due to the fact that An Affair to Remember was intended to be a remake of Love Affair? This could be, but is only one possibility.
The “Hollywood narrative form and the invisible style remain similar to what they were during the classical years” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.43). Except in modern romance films, the kissing, the foreplay, and sometimes, actual sex is shown on screen. If the sex isn’t directly shown, it’s indefinitely hinted at, or everything before and up to the actual meeting of members is shown. “The Hays Code kept sex off the screen, (but not out of our dirty –minded little hearts) for more than three decades” (Brandie, 2010).
In the first scene of Dear John both protagonists are already shown half naked; Tatum with no shirt, Siegfried with only a bikini with a see-through cover up on top.
22 minutes into the film, the modern couple exchanges their first kiss. Tatum and Siegfried in a close-up shot share a passionate make out session involving hand embraces and body touching. They move into one another, embrace, and further intensify their intimacy by holding one another’s head while doing so. Tatum even picks Siegfried up in one fluid movement and lowers both of their bodies to the floorboards of the half-built house. With Amanda sitting on top of him they continue to kiss while the rain pours around them. The rain and the secluded setting causes the kiss to be even more intimate and sexual and the viewer becomes encapsulated within the scene.
“These lenses make possible the inclusion of vir tually the entire frame of reference of which the photogra pher is aware when he shoots. They allow the photographer to relate himself to his subject matter as a participator rather than a mere spectator, thus conveying an illusion of intimacy of relationship not possible with any other lens” (Simmons, 1959, p.90).
In the scene following immediately after, the couple is entwined hand-in-hand walking merrily through town. One wonders did they have sex following their steamy rain kissing scene? Well if not then, we certainly are shown an intimate seen just two minutes later when the couple once again shares a full kiss and then moves onto Tatum’s single bed and then fool around in his bedroom closet. Again, the camera never reveals their actual love making, if it occurred.
“Two weeks is all it took. Two Weeks to fall in love with you.” Yet, while away overseas on duty, she decides to be with someone else, and is already engaged when she writes to him. This again shows that the scenes of cheating are left out of the narrative, and left of screen because they are bad, at least for the two films being discussed.
In order to receive self-fulfillment from watching a romance film, one must give in to the emotions, and interact with the characters and the film. After all isn’t the purpose of film making to engage the viewer through mind, experience, and emotion? “More often than not, intimacy is addressed as a quality of engagement between viewer and character” (Peacock, 2012, p.5). A bond is established between viewer and protagonist and the success of the protagonist attaining love is bound to the viewer’s fulfillment of the movie experience. The spectator’s delight in seeing the lovers become reunited is also based on the creativity of love (Laine, 2011, p. 141). The viewer has become emotionally attached and has sacrificed too much of his/ her time for the romance to fail.
The contemporary movie rating system in American changed the way sexual content could be produced. “The original rating categories announced by Valenti were; G- general audiences, all ages permitted; R-restricted, under seventeen requires accompanying adult; and X- no one under seventeen admitted” (Atkins, 1975, p.77). Although the ages and rules have changed slightly, for example a PG rating now exists for pre-teens, cinema today is still bound be these guidelines.
“Under the old censorship system, when a film failed to meet the standards of the Code, it was denied a Production Code seal; today, when a film is rated X that same seal is withheld” (Atkins, 1975, p.80). When a movie is considered to contain X rated scenes, it becomes pornography and is not shown at regular movie theatres. Thus, there is a line drawn between sex in the cinema, and pornography. All the actions between a couple can be shown on camera, except the actual sexual organs. One doesn’t need to see the actual sex happening in order to let their mind wander and formulate the connections that will presumably happen off camera. Romance films today, especially those based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels, are often referred to as girl porn. The romantic love story and the lead up to the climax of the sexual encounter are enough to woo the hearts, the minds, spark the pheromones for most women.
An Affair to Remember, the protagonists appear reserved, sophisticated, and well mannered. In contrast, Dear John starring the chiseled Channing Tatum and the big eyed, big-breasted Amanda Siegfried depicts an unattainable modern love of the 21st century America. The characters are much more revealing, assertive, and share almost all with the audience. Though many narratives from old Hollywood are used in today’s romance films, what is shown on screen is the difference.
Conclusion
Perfection versus realism is always a dominant theme in romance film. We get this sense that true love always exists. And that once we find true loves, everything is beautiful, the world shines, and everything is right in the world. The relationship between lovers depicted in Hollywood cinema gives a false impression of real life romances. The mass audience, typically women, look beyond this fact and continue to watch romance films over and over again because it gives them pleasure to watch the actors fall in love and fell connected to them.
Bibliography
Turner, Adrian (1986). Hollywood 1950s. London, England: Multimedia Publications (UK) Ltd.
Couvares, Francis (1996). Movie Censorship and American Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hart, Kylo-Patrick (2006). Film and Sexual Politics. Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Press.
Peacock, Steven (2012). Hollywood and Intimacy: style, moments and magnificence. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan.
Laine, Tarja (2011). Feeling Cinema: emotional dynamics in film studies. New York: Continuum.
Krzywinska, Tanya (2006). Sex and the Cinema. London ; New York : Wallflower.
Everson, William (1979). Love in the Film: screen romance from the silent days to the present. Secaucus, N.J. : Citadel Press
Grindon, Leger (2011). The Hollywood Romantic Comedy: conventions, history, controversies. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell.
Benshoff, Harry et al (2009). America on film : representing race, class, gender, and sexuality at the movies. Malden, MA, USA : Wiley-Blackwell.
Atkins, Thomas (1975). Sexuality in the Movies. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press.
Galician, Mary-Lou (2004). Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media: analysis and criticism of unrealistic portrayals and their influence. Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sidkov, Ed (2012). Film Studies: an introduction. New York : Columbia University Press.
Brandie (March 26, 2010). Hays Code/ The Art of Filmaking. True Classics. Retrieved on November 16, 2012 from http://trueclassics.net/2010/03/26/the-hays-code/
Simmons, Robert (1959). Telephoto and Wide-angle Photography. Modern Camera Guide series. Volume 43. Retrieved on Nov 24, 2012 from
The romance genre of Hollywood films has evolved throughout the decades to match the societal norms in which they were created. American society’s ideologies of romance and love the time in which seen through the film’s narrative structure, plot, the protagonists, and costumes. All of which are enhanced, in some way, by the setting of the scene and film technologies used to tell the narrative. A contrast can be seen in the way romance, love and sexual relations are depicted in films during the time of the Production Code, and those made after its elimination. “By the 1920s almost ever Hollywood film contained a romantic plot or subplot” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.309). This continues to be true in today’s cinema. …show more content…
There are many romance films to date that involve the notion of true love, and use the love affair sequence to tell the story.
Made in the late 1950s An Affair to Remember by director Leo McCarey tells the love affair of Nickie Ferrante, a suave gold digger, and Terry McKay an entertainment singer. The two fall in love on a cruise ship even though they are engaged to other people back home. Dear John a modern love film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, directed by Lasse Hallström, is about John Tyree, a soldier, who meets a conservative Savannah Curtis while he is home during leave. The two fall in love in just only two weeks but are separated by war, and Savannah finds someone else to be
with.
A vital part of any romance film is the first kiss. After visiting Nickie’s grandmother Janou the two reminisce about how nice their visit was offshore. At this point, Nickie attemps to make a move at kissing Terry. She delicately pulls away and says, “let’s walk”. The camera cuts to a side angle and shows Nickie and Terry walking along the top deck, and then they begin to descend a staircase that leads to the deck below. The camera cuts and now we see their feet as they walk further down the staircase. Terry stops halfway down the staircase, while Nickie walks down a few more steps and we can see him full bodied in the bottom right of the screen. Terry still holding on to his hand leads him back up the stairs towards her. Next we see Cary Grant’s weight has shifted and we can see that he is leaning into her, indicated by his left foot reaching out to balance him. The couple obviously shares a kiss while the viewer gazes at their feet for a few long seconds. We can see Terry’s hand move from her side up and up to embrace Nickie’s head to deepen their kiss. We don’t actually see where her hand goes as the couple is beheaded by the frame.
As we continue to watch their feet as they are kissing we ask ourselves; is the camera ever going to move upwards so we can see them kiss? Was it a good kiss? Are they still kissing now? WHY CAN’T WE SEE THEM? What is the point of making a film about a love affair when there is no on camera kissing being shared with the audience? To a modern movie viewer this seems outrageous and is unnerving.
The fact that the spectator could miss the first kiss is something important to note. The subtleness of the narrative and what the film reveals through the camera works against showcasing the love that has kindled between Terry and Nickie.
What is off screen can be just as important as what is on it. “If mis-en-scene, editing, and camera movement are all matters of decision-making, of selection, then it stands to reason that the information a director leaves out of the image is worth considering as well” (Sidkov, 2012, p. 30). After the two finally descend the staircase, they move off to the side and with palm open on his, she tells him, “we are heading into a rough sea Nickie”. He replies, “I know, we changed our course today”.
“Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sexual relations between men and women were considered a delicate and frequently unspoken-of subject” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.311). Relations between man and woman, however, became a staple subject of film and has proven dramatic and interesting to the mass audience of cinema.
The Production code “serving as a means of self-censorship, it offered the film industry a set of rigid guidelines that ere incorporated unto a system and enforced by the Production Code Administration beginning in 1934” (Hart, 2006, p.35).
“’Application II- Sex’ of the Code stated that ‘scenes of passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element’” (Hart, 2006, p.35).
“The years 1931 and 1932 had seen the release by all major studios of cycle of what the Hays Office dubbed ‘sex films’: Back Street, Possessed, and Blonde Venus, among others” (Couvares, 1996, p. 188).
“As a theme, adultery forges connections between the fictional and real world by dealing with conflicts between desire and duty; the ideal and reality” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.120). Its transgressive status has become more diluted and ambiguous, yet punishment is still part of the adultery equation.
“the audience is shown in some detail what is attractive about the character set up as the object of desire” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.125).
In the love affair narrative formula “emotional keys help create drama, suspense, and engagement with the main character/s and have a bearing on the transgressive coding of adulterous sex in the film” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.126).
“a great deal of care [is] taken to keep the scenes visually ‘tasteful’, which works to preserve the ‘romance’ as ideal” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.126).
The affair concept typically involves the pleasure and reality principles are in conflict. When reality gets the upper hand the mask of disapproval slips, and a key change in the relationship occurs. The affair once established is heightened by the drama of the choice or the crisis (Krzywinska, 2006, p.128).
“Representations of adultery under the Production Code were subject to the rule of metaphysical retribution” (Krzywinska, 2006, p.120). Perhaps this is why in An Affair to remember the kissing appears off camera. The viewer knows that Nickie and Terry are obviously kissing, but the director may have chosen to leave the action out of view so that the film could get a seal of approval. This seems strange, since by 1959 there were numerous films showing kissing, lovemaking and sexual scenes. Is the lack of on camera kissing then due to the fact that An Affair to Remember was intended to be a remake of Love Affair? This could be, but is only one possibility.
The “Hollywood narrative form and the invisible style remain similar to what they were during the classical years” (Benshoff et at, 2009, p.43). Except in modern romance films, the kissing, the foreplay, and sometimes, actual sex is shown on screen. If the sex isn’t directly shown, it’s indefinitely hinted at, or everything before and up to the actual meeting of members is shown. “The Hays Code kept sex off the screen, (but not out of our dirty –minded little hearts) for more than three decades” (Brandie, 2010).
In the first scene of Dear John both protagonists are already shown half naked; Tatum with no shirt, Siegfried with only a bikini with a see-through cover up on top.
22 minutes into the film, the modern couple exchanges their first kiss. Tatum and Siegfried in a close-up shot share a passionate make out session involving hand embraces and body touching. They move into one another, embrace, and further intensify their intimacy by holding one another’s head while doing so. Tatum even picks Siegfried up in one fluid movement and lowers both of their bodies to the floorboards of the half-built house. With Amanda sitting on top of him they continue to kiss while the rain pours around them. The rain and the secluded setting causes the kiss to be even more intimate and sexual and the viewer becomes encapsulated within the scene.
“These lenses make possible the inclusion of vir tually the entire frame of reference of which the photogra pher is aware when he shoots. They allow the photographer to relate himself to his subject matter as a participator rather than a mere spectator, thus conveying an illusion of intimacy of relationship not possible with any other lens” (Simmons, 1959, p.90).
In the scene following immediately after, the couple is entwined hand-in-hand walking merrily through town. One wonders did they have sex following their steamy rain kissing scene? Well if not then, we certainly are shown an intimate seen just two minutes later when the couple once again shares a full kiss and then moves onto Tatum’s single bed and then fool around in his bedroom closet. Again, the camera never reveals their actual love making, if it occurred.
“Two weeks is all it took. Two Weeks to fall in love with you.” Yet, while away overseas on duty, she decides to be with someone else, and is already engaged when she writes to him. This again shows that the scenes of cheating are left out of the narrative, and left of screen because they are bad, at least for the two films being discussed.
In order to receive self-fulfillment from watching a romance film, one must give in to the emotions, and interact with the characters and the film. After all isn’t the purpose of film making to engage the viewer through mind, experience, and emotion? “More often than not, intimacy is addressed as a quality of engagement between viewer and character” (Peacock, 2012, p.5). A bond is established between viewer and protagonist and the success of the protagonist attaining love is bound to the viewer’s fulfillment of the movie experience. The spectator’s delight in seeing the lovers become reunited is also based on the creativity of love (Laine, 2011, p. 141). The viewer has become emotionally attached and has sacrificed too much of his/ her time for the romance to fail.
The contemporary movie rating system in American changed the way sexual content could be produced. “The original rating categories announced by Valenti were; G- general audiences, all ages permitted; R-restricted, under seventeen requires accompanying adult; and X- no one under seventeen admitted” (Atkins, 1975, p.77). Although the ages and rules have changed slightly, for example a PG rating now exists for pre-teens, cinema today is still bound be these guidelines.
“Under the old censorship system, when a film failed to meet the standards of the Code, it was denied a Production Code seal; today, when a film is rated X that same seal is withheld” (Atkins, 1975, p.80). When a movie is considered to contain X rated scenes, it becomes pornography and is not shown at regular movie theatres. Thus, there is a line drawn between sex in the cinema, and pornography. All the actions between a couple can be shown on camera, except the actual sexual organs. One doesn’t need to see the actual sex happening in order to let their mind wander and formulate the connections that will presumably happen off camera. Romance films today, especially those based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels, are often referred to as girl porn. The romantic love story and the lead up to the climax of the sexual encounter are enough to woo the hearts, the minds, spark the pheromones for most women.
An Affair to Remember, the protagonists appear reserved, sophisticated, and well mannered. In contrast, Dear John starring the chiseled Channing Tatum and the big eyed, big-breasted Amanda Siegfried depicts an unattainable modern love of the 21st century America. The characters are much more revealing, assertive, and share almost all with the audience. Though many narratives from old Hollywood are used in today’s romance films, what is shown on screen is the difference.
Conclusion
Perfection versus realism is always a dominant theme in romance film. We get this sense that true love always exists. And that once we find true loves, everything is beautiful, the world shines, and everything is right in the world. The relationship between lovers depicted in Hollywood cinema gives a false impression of real life romances. The mass audience, typically women, look beyond this fact and continue to watch romance films over and over again because it gives them pleasure to watch the actors fall in love and fell connected to them.
Bibliography
Turner, Adrian (1986). Hollywood 1950s. London, England: Multimedia Publications (UK) Ltd.
Couvares, Francis (1996). Movie Censorship and American Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hart, Kylo-Patrick (2006). Film and Sexual Politics. Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Press.
Peacock, Steven (2012). Hollywood and Intimacy: style, moments and magnificence. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan.
Laine, Tarja (2011). Feeling Cinema: emotional dynamics in film studies. New York: Continuum.
Krzywinska, Tanya (2006). Sex and the Cinema. London ; New York : Wallflower.
Everson, William (1979). Love in the Film: screen romance from the silent days to the present. Secaucus, N.J. : Citadel Press
Grindon, Leger (2011). The Hollywood Romantic Comedy: conventions, history, controversies. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell.
Benshoff, Harry et al (2009). America on film : representing race, class, gender, and sexuality at the movies. Malden, MA, USA : Wiley-Blackwell.
Atkins, Thomas (1975). Sexuality in the Movies. Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press.
Galician, Mary-Lou (2004). Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media: analysis and criticism of unrealistic portrayals and their influence. Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sidkov, Ed (2012). Film Studies: an introduction. New York : Columbia University Press.
Brandie (March 26, 2010). Hays Code/ The Art of Filmaking. True Classics. Retrieved on November 16, 2012 from http://trueclassics.net/2010/03/26/the-hays-code/
Simmons, Robert (1959). Telephoto and Wide-angle Photography. Modern Camera Guide series. Volume 43. Retrieved on Nov 24, 2012 from