John C. Tibbetts

Ken Russell's The Debussy film (1965)

First telecast on 18 May 1965 as part of the BBC’s Monitor series, The Debussy Film was Ken Russell’s first fully-realized composer biopic—‘one of Russell’s major contributions to the art of film biography’, according to biographer Joseph Gomez. Although it must be reckoned as one of Russell’s most significant and influential films, it has long been unseen and is currently unavailable, accounting for its neglect in recent scholarship. For reasons not entirely clear, no copies are in distribution, and none are available for screening at the British Film Institute. This is particularly regrettable, inasmuch as it represents several important breakthroughs in Russell’s oeuvre. It was his first feature-length television biopic—more a film than an arts program (Russell has said that all of his biopics ‘were really feature films masquerading under the banner of TV documentaries’). It was the first time that he used actors speaking lines in their impersonations of real-life people. It was the first time he indulged in a highly personalized experiment in meta-cinema. And, no less significantly, it was the first time he worked with co-scenarist Melvyn Bragg, inaugurating a personal and professional association that continues to this day. Throughout his long career filmmaker Ken Russell’s antic imagination, canny exploitation of music, dazzling showmanship and controversial pose have marked his insistently idiosyncratic interpretations of the lives and music of Serge Prokofiev (1891–1953), Edward Elgar (1857–1934), Bela Bartok (1881–1945), Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Frederick Delius (1862–1934), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Peter Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), Franz Liszt (1811–1886), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), Arnold Bax (1883–1953), Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) and Bohuslav Martinu (1890–1959). To be sure, they are not the only films from Russell’s oeuvre to benefit from his lifelong passion for classical music. Even his nominally non-musical projects for television and film, such as the biopic about the sculptor Henri Gaudier (Savage Messiah, 1972), the literary biopics of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Wordsworths (Clouds of Glory, 1978), and the science

Epilogue: Past is Prologue

When this book began, Hollywood was “in a hurry to grow up.” Now as we venture further into the new century, it seems that Classical Hollywood is retreating into its own past. More an artifact than a living presence, it’s on display in memorabilia auctions and in museums, congratulating itself in endless awards ceremonies, nostalgia channels and celebrity cruises. It streams across cable and internet, incestuously feeding on itself, recycling its own past in endless generic reboots, retreads, and sequels, its big-screen glory reduced in size to hand-held mobile devices. At the helm is the new “Auteur,” the Fan Editor, who co-opts the work of others on laptop computers.

Late Twentieth Century Cultural Inclusion

The years spanning the 1980s to the new century saw a continuing cultural and ethnic inclusiveness in Hollywood, as work by filmmakers such as the Italian master Bernardo Bertolucci, Hong Kong-born and American educated, Wayne Wang, Indian director Mira Nair, and Australian George Miller was absorbed into Hollywood studio-released theatrical films. “Cross-over” composer Philip Glass brought h is brand of classical music into Hollywood features and documentaries. Newly emerging art houses and independent cinemas provided venues for the work of independent filmmakers. And critic Roger Ebert, like his contemporaries Pauline Kael, Stanley Kauffman, John Simon, and others, became a public figure in his own right, who connected his readers and television viewers with the work of both independent and establishment cinema.

Introduction: Interviews and Conversations

The cover photo of this book depicts Steven Spielberg conferring with Whoopi Goldberg on the set of the director’s landmark classic, The Color Purple (1985). The film would not only have a profound impact on the career trajectories of both director and actor, but would mark a significant moment in the history of Classical Hollywood—from the 1920s to the waning years of the last century—as will be seen in this and many other interviews and conversations about films and filmmaking in this book.

Innovations in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood Cinematography, Sound Technology, and Feature-Length Animation

The American film industry was in a hurry to grow up, from the early ‘teens to the 1930s. The ragtag nickelodeon days transformed into Classical Hollywood’s studio structures and star system. East and West Coast became configured as, respectively, the business and the production ends of the studios. The vertical integration of the studios had begun, insuring that the film product would be produced, distributed, and exhibited under one banner. Cinematographer Glen MacWilliams, sound technician Bernard B. Brown, and Disney animator Ollie Johnston were the children of this era. In their respective fields, they were eyewitnesses to the development of sophisticated camera techniques, talking-picture technology, and the maturation of the animated feature film. For a useful overview of the early days of the emerging studio system, see Janet Staiger, Ed. The Studio System (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, NJ, 1995).

“New Hollywood” Filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s

Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s has acquired many labels, including “New Hollywood” and “Hollywood Renaissance.” There is dispute over how these labels differ, but, in general, we can agree that films from this period were in large part responses to post-Vietnam social upheavals, youthful alienation, shifting concepts of authorship, and technological change. This was the era of Director-As-Auteur, witness the directors featured here—Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Moore. Spielberg and cinematographer Allen Daviau infused issues of race into the blockbuster format; Altman and Gilliam brought a morally ambiguous, fiercely revisionist vision that undermined narrative coherence and conventional genre formulas; and Michael Moore introduced his own special brand of “ambush,” agit-prop documentary agendas. Meanwhile, Muppet-Master Jim Henson, special effects wizard Richard Edlund, and editor Neal Travis confronted changes both social and technological in their work. Despite this scramble of change and revision, Classical Hollywood assimilates it all. The big studios never relinquish their power; rather, they distribute under their banners the work of independent production entities. See Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

Cold War Film and Television in the 1950s

Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s refracted American life through the lens of the Cold War. Ideologies became visible.1 Political and nuclear anxieties surfaced in a spate of “Red Menace” dramas, films noir, and science fiction “invasion” films, of which Ray Bradbury’s It Came from Outer Space in 1953 was a prime example. Meanwhile, television as a commercial medium emerged in the immediate post-war years, and “live” broadcast transmissions, as early as 1947, like the phenomenally popular children’s program, The Howdy Doody Show, brought reassuring “family values” into American living rooms. For an older demographic, action pictures on the nation’s drive-in movie screens got bigger, faster, and more dangerous, as far as stunt men like Richard Farnsworth were concerned … For a standard text on Hollywood in the 1950s, see Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).

Hollywood at Home and at War in the 1940s

As the 1930s gave way to the 1940s, Hollywood was luring stage talent like director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman to the movies to make Citizen Kane (1940). At the same time, it was enlisting all the studios in the war effort, resulting in a flood of patriotic propaganda fervor, from home front dramas, comedies, and cartoons to combat documentaries in the theaters of war on land, sea, and in the sky. William Wyler’s classic The Memphis Belle (1944) was perhaps the most distinguished of them; and participants in that film came together with filmmakers of the remake (1990) to examine fact, myth, and memory. For a standard treatment of the Second World War film, see Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)

In Search of Peter Weir

Abstract As part of the preparation for a book on Australian director Peter Weir, the author visited Weirs home in Sydney for interviews about his life, career, and work.

XXI IAMHIST Congress, Cincinnati, OHIO, July 22–23, 2005: Projections of Race and Ethnicity

The 21st Congress of the International Association for Media and History was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, the first time IAMHIST had ever visited Ohio, and only the third time IAMHIST convened in the United States. IAMHIST has a tradition for being timely in its concerns, but did Cincinnati notice? Suppose the most controversial film of the past year was shown there, the one that got director Theo Van Gogh murdered in Amsterdam? Was Cincinnati given notice? Should the proceedings have been promoted locally? At the end of the day, IAMHIST probably did not leave too big an imprint on the city at large or perhaps even on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, though the group was certainly well treated there. Certainly IAMHIST conferees cared about the assassination of the controversial filmmaker in Amsterdam, generally considered the most tolerant city in the world, and a city that has hosted IAMHIST in the past and will, perhaps, again in the future. Karsten Fledelius of the University of Copenhagen addressed the issue of ‘Islamism and Blasphemy’ in Holland, for example, and Gerda Jansen Hendriks of Nederlands National Public Television showed recent footage from the series ‘Primetime Live’ concerning the assimilation of the Moslem ‘other.’ According to Peter Lev, the redoubtable Karsten Fledelius was more a presenter than a speaker at this year’s conference. In discussing ‘Islamism and Blasphemy,’ Karsten presented a video copy of the short film Submission, about, as Lev notes,