Today in class we had a research day and it is finally Friday (haha). I continued looking into my second topic which was the culture of the movies in the 30’s. I just added onto my notes from yesterday.I found a site to look into further later but it did say that most movies of this time where in black and white although they did start to move into the so called “Talkies”, which were movies that talked, and some color films. The genres were expanding rapidly to now include gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, historical biopics, social-realism films, comedies, westerns and horror.Biopics are basically movies that portray the lives of actual people whose actions are known. They are different from “based on a true story” films in that they comprehensively tell the person’s life story. However they still tended to dramatize events or make them happen in a shorter time period to fit the time of the movie.http://www.filmsite.org/30sintro.htmlI also found a good site that focused more on the way people were going to movies. They went to movies to sort of escape from the Great Depression for a while. People were fascinated by the way movies gave a glimpse into high society life which was so far from all of the life they were currently living. "My Man Godfrey" was a film in this time that told the story of a man that lost all of his money in the stock market crash and gained it back working as a butcher for a wealthy family.In some small towns people decided to draw more people to the movies by offering free movies on Thursday nights. They would go downtown where the movie was projected onto a wall and people would gather to see all of their friends and watch a movie.When sound came into movies it wasn’t that reliable to start. Sometimes it wouldn’t go along with the movie at all and it would bring a comical note to the movie that wasn’t intended at all.During this time Hollywood entered its so called Golden Age. People came to movies to see many of the big stars at the time like Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, little Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Walt Disney’s Snow White became the first full length animated film in 1937. Two years later Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta.http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/life_16.htmlthere is a good picture of a theater on thereI found another source today that talked more about the Golden Age of Hollywood. Sound had come into play and dialogue was a lot more important. Music and Dance were incorporated into these movies and new technology made the pictures better and with better editing it was more realistic.The Academy Awards were created during this time and stars would rise to the top and stay there for years. Each movie studio had their own big stars and they made some of the most memorable movies of the time. Some actors couldn’t make the switch to sound but those that did were great.The Wizard of Oz was also made in 1939 along with a few others that it describes in this source.http://www.epinions.com/content_3383402628 (the space is an underscore)
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