Griffith and American Films

Movies are key cultural artefacts that offer a window into American cultural and social history. A mixture of art, business and popular entertainment, movies provide a host of insights into Americans’ shifting ideas, fantasies and preoccupations.

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A Many films of the early silent era dealt with gender relations. Before 1905, as Kathy Peiss has argued, movie screens were filled with salacious sexual imagery and risque humor, drawn from burlesque halls and vaudeville theaters.

Early films offered many glimpses of women disrobing or of passionate kisses. As the movies’ female audience grew, sexual titillation and voyeurism persisted. But an ever-increasing number of films dealt with the changing work and sexual roles of women in a more sophisticated manner.

While D.W. Griffith’s films presented an idealized picture of the frail Victorian child-woman and showed an almost obsessive preoccupation with female honor and chastity, other silent movies presented quite different images of femininity. These ranged from the exotic, sexually aggressive vamp to the athletic, energetic "serial queen"; the street-smart urban working girl, who repels the sexual advances of her lascivious boss; and cigarette-smoking, alcohol-drinking chorus girls or burlesque queens.

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B In early 1910, director D.W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore and others.

While there, the company decided to explore new territories, travelling several miles north to Hollywood, a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. By focusing the camera on particular actors and actresses, Griffith inadvertently encouraged the development of the star system.

As early as 1910, newspapers were deluged with requests for actors’ names. But most studios refused to divulge their identities, fearing the salary demands of popular performers. As one industry observer put it, "In the ‘star’ your producer gets not only a ‘production’ value, but a ‘trademark’ value and an ‘insurance’ value which are very potent in guaranteeing the sale of this product."

As the star system emerged, salaries soared. In the course of just two years, the salary of actress Mary Pickford rose from less than $400 a week in 1914 to $10,000 a week in 1916. This action made Griffith believe in the great potential of the movie industry.

Thus, many competitors copied the same system Griffith used because of the considerable profits. Additionally, they studied the theories and methods Griffith suggested.

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C From the moment America entered the war, Hollywood feared that the industry would be subject to heavy-handed government censorship. But the government itself wanted no repeat of World War I, when the Committee on Public Information had whipped up anti-German hysteria and oversold the war as "a Crusade not merely to re-win the tomb of Christ, but to bring back to earth the rule of right, the peace, goodwill to men and gentleness he taught."

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D The formation of the movie trust ushered in a period of rationalization within the film industry. Camera and projecting equipment were standardized; film rental fees were fixed; and theaters were upgraded, which improved the quality of movies by removing damaged prints from circulation.

This was also a period of intense artistic and technical innovation, as pioneering directors like David Wark Griffith and others created a new language of film and revolutionized screen narrative.

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E With just six months of film experience, Griffith, a former stage actor, was hired as a director by the Biograph Company and promised $50 a week and one-twentieth of a cent for every foot of film sold to a rental exchange. Each week, Griffith turned out two or three one-reelers.

While earlier directors had used such cinematic devices as close-ups, slow motion, fade-ins and fade-outs, lighting effects and editing, Griffith’s great contribution to the movie industry was to show how these techniques could be used to create a wholly new style of storytelling, distinct from the theater.

Griffith’s approach to movie storytelling has been aptly called "photographic realism". This is not to say that he merely wished to record a story accurately; rather, he sought to convey the illusion of realism.

He demanded that his performers act less and behave in a more lifelike manner, avoiding the broad, exaggerated gestures and pantomiming of emotions that characterized the nineteenth-century stage. He wanted his performers to take on a role rather than directly address the camera.

Above all, he used close-ups, lighting, editing and other cinematic techniques to convey suspense and other emotions and to focus the audience’s attention on individual performers.

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F During the 1920s and 1930s, a small group of film companies consolidated their control. Known as the "Big Five" -- Paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO, 20th Century-Fox and Lowe’s (MGM) -- and the "Little Three" -- Universal, Columbia and United Artists -- they formed fully integrated companies.

The old film companies’ opposition was shocked by the new tycoons. The confusion of tongues in foreign versions of American films deepened when American directors themselves embarked on shooting the new versions. They did not usually speak Spanish or the given target language, and at that time there were only a few translators at the studios’ disposal.

For this reason, it was more common to contract Spanish directors, actors and screenwriters to produce American films in Spanish for Latin American audiences and the public in the Iberian Peninsula.

Hollywood had depended on overseas markets for as much as 40 per cent of its revenue. But in an effort to nurture their own film industries and prevent an excessive outflow of dollars, Britain, France and Italy imposed stiff import tariffs and restrictive quotas on imported American movies.

G A basic problem facing today’s Hollywood is the rapidly rising cost of making and marketing a movie: an average of $40 million today. The immense cost of producing movies has led the studios to seek guaranteed hits: blockbusters loaded with high-tech special effects, sequels, and remakes of earlier movies, foreign films and even old TV shows.

Hollywood has also sought to cope with rising costs by focusing ever more intently on its core audiences. Since the mid-1980s, the movie-going audience has continued to decrease in size. Ticket sales fell from 1.2 billion in 1983 to 950 million in 1992, with the biggest drop occurring among adults.

Since over half of Hollywood’s profits are earned overseas, the target market has had to change because of the increasing costs and salaries involved in making a film. The industry has concentrated much of its energy on crude action films that are easily understood by an international audience, featuring stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Environmentally-Friendly Vehicles

A In the early 1990s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the government of California’s "clean air agency", began a push for more fuel-efficient, lower-emissions vehicles, with the ultimate goal being a move to zero-emissions vehicles such as electric vehicles.

In response, automakers developed electric models, including the Chrysler TEVan, Ford Ranger EV pickup truck, GM EV1 and S10 EV pickup, Honda EV Plus hatchback, Nissan lithium-battery Altra EV miniwagon and Toyota RAV4 EV.

Ford Fusion is manufactured at Ford’s Hermosillo Stamping & Assembly plant, located in Sonora, Mexico. I thought going green was supposed to provide the U.S. with more jobs.

B The automakers were accused of pandering to the wishes of CARB in order to continue to be allowed to sell cars in the lucrative Californian market, while failing to adequately promote their electric vehicles in order to create the impression that consumers were not interested in the cars, all the while joining oil-industry lobbyists in vigorously protesting CARB’s mandate.

GM’s programme came under particular scrutiny. In an unusual move, consumers were not allowed to purchase EV1s, but were instead asked to sign closed-end leases, meaning that the cars had to be returned to GM at the end of the lease period, with no option to purchase, despite considerable interest in continuing to own the cars.

Chrysler, Toyota and a group of GM dealers sued CARB in Federal court, leading to the eventual neutering of CARB’s ZEV Mandate.

C After public protests by EV drivers’ groups upset by the repossession of their cars, Toyota offered the last 328 RAV4-EVs for sale to the general public for six months, until November 22, 2002.

Almost all other production electric cars were withdrawn from the market and were in some cases seen to have been destroyed by their manufacturers. Toyota continues to support the several hundred Toyota RAV4-EVs in the hands of the general public and in fleet usage.

GM famously deactivated the few EV1s that were donated to engineering schools and museums.

D Throughout the 1990s, the appeal of fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly cars declined among Americans, who instead favoured sport utility vehicles. These were affordable to operate despite their poor fuel efficiency because of lower gasoline prices.

American automakers chose to focus their product lines around truck-based vehicles, which enjoyed larger profit margins than the smaller cars preferred in places such as Europe or Japan.

In 1999, the Honda Insight hybrid car became the first hybrid to be sold in North America since the little-known Woods hybrid of 1917.

E In 1995, Toyota debuted a hybrid concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show, with testing following a year later. The first Prius, model NHW10, went on sale on December 10, 1997.

It was available only in Japan, though it was imported privately to at least the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The first-generation Prius, at its launch, became the world’s first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car.

The NHW10 Prius styling originated from California designers, who were selected over competing designs from other Toyota design studios.

F In the United States, the NHW11 was the first Prius to be sold. The Prius was marketed between the smaller Corolla and the larger Camry. The published retail price of the car was US$19,995.

The NHW11 Prius became more powerful partly to satisfy the higher speeds and longer distances that Americans drive. Air conditioning and electric power steering were standard equipment.

The vehicle was the second mass-produced hybrid on the American market, after the two-seat Honda Insight. While the larger Prius could seat five, its battery pack restricted cargo space.

G Hybrids, which featured a combined gasoline and electric powertrain, were seen as a balance, offering an environmentally friendly image and improved fuel economy without being hindered by the low range of electric vehicles, although at an increased price over comparable gasoline cars.

Sales were poor, with the lack of interest attributed to the car’s small size and the lack of necessity for a fuel-efficient car at the time. The 2000s energy crisis brought renewed interest in hybrid and electric cars.

In America, sales of the Toyota Prius jumped, and a variety of automakers followed suit, releasing hybrid models of their own. Several began to produce new electric-car prototypes, as consumers called for cars that would free them from fluctuations in oil prices.

H In 2000, Hybrid Technologies, later renamed Li-ion Motors, started manufacturing electric cars in Mooresville, North Carolina. There has been increasing controversy concerning Li-ion Motors because of ongoing "lemon" issues regarding its products and its attempts to cover them up.

California electric-car maker Tesla Motors began development in 2004 on the Tesla Roadster, which was first delivered to customers in 2008. The Roadster remained the only highway-capable electric vehicle in serial production and available for sale until 2010.

Senior leaders at several large automakers, including Nissan and General Motors, stated that the Roadster was a catalyst which demonstrated that there was pent-up consumer demand for more efficient vehicles.

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said in 2007 that the Tesla Roadster inspired him to push GM to develop the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid sedan prototype intended to reverse years of dwindling market share and massive financial losses for America’s largest automaker.

In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Lutz was quoted as saying, "All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us -- and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, ‘How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam."