1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,030 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,340 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,340 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:28,870 DAVID THORBURN: The aesthetic of connection, this aesthetic 9 00:00:28,870 --> 00:00:32,800 of familiarity, this popular aesthetic operated 10 00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:35,490 in Hollywood movies. 11 00:00:35,490 --> 00:00:37,960 And I want to expand a bit on this idea 12 00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:40,430 by talking about more explicitly what 13 00:00:40,430 --> 00:00:43,130 might be called an anthropological view 14 00:00:43,130 --> 00:00:44,700 of this matter, what could be called 15 00:00:44,700 --> 00:00:47,030 the cultural work of movies. 16 00:00:47,030 --> 00:00:51,060 One way I can make you think about the larger and more 17 00:00:51,060 --> 00:00:53,680 significant implications of what the movies are, 18 00:00:53,680 --> 00:00:55,270 of how to think about the movies, 19 00:00:55,270 --> 00:00:58,830 is to ask you to think about the true implications 20 00:00:58,830 --> 00:01:01,430 of certain words that we just take for granted. 21 00:01:01,430 --> 00:01:03,260 For example, take the word entertainment 22 00:01:03,260 --> 00:01:06,560 or the verb entertain, to entertain. 23 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:08,150 We think of it as-- we think of it 24 00:01:08,150 --> 00:01:10,370 as a relatively straightforward term, as it is. 25 00:01:10,370 --> 00:01:13,910 And we think of entertainment as some form of diversion 26 00:01:13,910 --> 00:01:16,782 that takes us away from the serious things in life. 27 00:01:16,782 --> 00:01:18,990 But I want to suggest to you that if we look closely, 28 00:01:18,990 --> 00:01:20,960 even if we look at sort of the root of the word 29 00:01:20,960 --> 00:01:24,666 and the way the word is used, and the variations on the kinds 30 00:01:24,666 --> 00:01:26,540 of meanings that are associated with the word 31 00:01:26,540 --> 00:01:29,620 entertainment or the verb to entertain, 32 00:01:29,620 --> 00:01:32,100 we can see deeper implications. 33 00:01:32,100 --> 00:01:33,740 For one thing, for example, let's just 34 00:01:33,740 --> 00:01:36,340 take a standard dictionary definition. 35 00:01:36,340 --> 00:01:38,150 There are three different senses in which 36 00:01:38,150 --> 00:01:40,030 almost all dictionaries in English 37 00:01:40,030 --> 00:01:42,840 would iden-- would define the verb to entertain. 38 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:46,100 They would say, to hold the attention of someone 39 00:01:46,100 --> 00:01:47,660 is to entertain them. 40 00:01:47,660 --> 00:01:51,350 A second meaning would be to extend hospitality to someone. 41 00:01:51,350 --> 00:01:52,480 That makes sense, right? 42 00:01:52,480 --> 00:01:54,350 But think when you extend hospi-- 43 00:01:54,350 --> 00:01:58,020 you're engaged in a communal, in a hostly act, right? 44 00:01:58,020 --> 00:02:00,770 It's an act of generosity, an act of inclusion, right? 45 00:02:00,770 --> 00:02:03,220 So forms of entertainment are potentially 46 00:02:03,220 --> 00:02:06,930 community creating, gestures towards a community, acts 47 00:02:06,930 --> 00:02:09,009 of hosting, right? 48 00:02:09,009 --> 00:02:12,020 And they also, of course, are a bid for your attention. 49 00:02:12,020 --> 00:02:13,530 And then there's a third meaning, 50 00:02:13,530 --> 00:02:15,490 which is the most interesting. 51 00:02:15,490 --> 00:02:17,750 To entertain, almost all dictionaries 52 00:02:17,750 --> 00:02:22,050 will tell you also means, to hold in the mind. 53 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:24,290 I'm entertaining this idea. 54 00:02:24,290 --> 00:02:26,160 I'm entertaining this thought. 55 00:02:26,160 --> 00:02:28,460 I'm entertaining this possibility. 56 00:02:28,460 --> 00:02:31,800 In other words, the word enter-- the verb to entertain 57 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:35,460 means to meditate, to think, to speculate, to consider 58 00:02:35,460 --> 00:02:37,220 possibilities, right? 59 00:02:37,220 --> 00:02:38,980 And when you attend an entertainment 60 00:02:38,980 --> 00:02:41,370 in a certain sense, that's exactly what happens. 61 00:02:41,370 --> 00:02:44,610 Exactly because the space of entertainment 62 00:02:44,610 --> 00:02:48,170 is marked out by the society, by social convention, 63 00:02:48,170 --> 00:02:51,680 as a place of diversion, as a place of relaxation, 64 00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:55,510 as a place that is theoretically not a place of work. 65 00:02:55,510 --> 00:02:58,530 Certain things are licensed or permitted because of that, 66 00:02:58,530 --> 00:02:59,590 or encouraged. 67 00:02:59,590 --> 00:03:01,290 Because you know you're kicking back, 68 00:03:01,290 --> 00:03:04,340 it's not a serious place, what is likely to happen? 69 00:03:04,340 --> 00:03:06,650 You're allowed, or at least by implication, 70 00:03:06,650 --> 00:03:10,350 or permitted to entertainment possibilities that 71 00:03:10,350 --> 00:03:15,590 in actuality might be scary or disturbing or unacceptable. 72 00:03:15,590 --> 00:03:17,800 So that one of the ironies of entertainment 73 00:03:17,800 --> 00:03:21,120 is that it can become a space, especially public forms 74 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:23,720 of entertainment in cultures, like Shakespeare's 75 00:03:23,720 --> 00:03:28,130 public theater or likely public theater of the American movie 76 00:03:28,130 --> 00:03:31,270 system in the studio era, these public spaces 77 00:03:31,270 --> 00:03:33,350 can become spaces in which the body 78 00:03:33,350 --> 00:03:36,770 politic, the political and social community, 79 00:03:36,770 --> 00:03:39,800 entertains ideas about its own nature. 80 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:43,360 Entertains, considers, speculates, holds 81 00:03:43,360 --> 00:03:48,380 in its mind accounts of its origins, stories of its values, 82 00:03:48,380 --> 00:03:48,880 right? 83 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:52,080 And what we can say, then, is that the space of entertainment 84 00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:54,620 becomes from, in a certain angle, in virtually 85 00:03:54,620 --> 00:03:57,620 all societies, a space of discourse, 86 00:03:57,620 --> 00:04:01,320 a space in which exactly because it's a space recognized 87 00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:06,360 as not real, as make believe, is therefore licensed or allowed 88 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:10,370 to explore possibilities that might be too dangerous or too 89 00:04:10,370 --> 00:04:13,660 disturbing to explore in other ways. 90 00:04:13,660 --> 00:04:16,370 And we can see that certain features of the entertainment 91 00:04:16,370 --> 00:04:19,560 systems of most countries and of most societies, 92 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:21,760 and certainly the entertainment system we're 93 00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:25,260 calling the Hollywood studio movie, 94 00:04:25,260 --> 00:04:27,920 are systems in which other features 95 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:30,870 of the-- other features of the formats 96 00:04:30,870 --> 00:04:34,780 and organizational principles of the films 97 00:04:34,780 --> 00:04:37,440 reinforce this idea that you're escaping 98 00:04:37,440 --> 00:04:40,510 into a space that is also a space of exploration 99 00:04:40,510 --> 00:04:41,680 and discovery. 100 00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:45,150 That you're not escaping and running away exactly into forms 101 00:04:45,150 --> 00:04:48,530 of diversion and hiding from the world, but in fact, 102 00:04:48,530 --> 00:04:50,720 you're escaping into a space of freedom 103 00:04:50,720 --> 00:04:52,650 in which you can consider possibilities 104 00:04:52,650 --> 00:04:55,940 that might otherwise be too disturbing to think about. 105 00:04:55,940 --> 00:04:58,180 And one way you can see how the formats encourage 106 00:04:58,180 --> 00:05:00,000 that comes back to the argument I was 107 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,640 making about genres and stars. 108 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:05,170 Because think about, one of the most fundamental things 109 00:05:05,170 --> 00:05:08,000 about the conventions of genre are 110 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:10,870 that audiences understand not only 111 00:05:10,870 --> 00:05:12,370 sort of the costumes and the setting 112 00:05:12,370 --> 00:05:14,920 and so forth, but also usually understand 113 00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:20,130 the basic-- what do we call it-- the basic segments, a story 114 00:05:20,130 --> 00:05:23,742 force, the segmentation of the story, 115 00:05:23,742 --> 00:05:26,550 the stages through which the story is likely to go. 116 00:05:26,550 --> 00:05:28,200 And they're likely, in many cases, 117 00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:30,820 to have a pretty good idea about the nature of the ending 118 00:05:30,820 --> 00:05:32,790 of a particular genre form. 119 00:05:32,790 --> 00:05:35,550 They may not be absolutely certain about the details 120 00:05:35,550 --> 00:05:37,130 of how it will work out, but they 121 00:05:37,130 --> 00:05:39,700 have some pretty good ideas about-- for example, 122 00:05:39,700 --> 00:05:42,710 the notion is that various forms of comedy 123 00:05:42,710 --> 00:05:45,630 end on some sort of an affirming or a happy note, 124 00:05:45,630 --> 00:05:48,700 even if the difficulties that are dramatized 125 00:05:48,700 --> 00:05:52,430 in the text from the beginning are very serious and troubling, 126 00:05:52,430 --> 00:05:53,200 right? 127 00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:56,340 Not that every single comedy ends on a totally happy note, 128 00:05:56,340 --> 00:05:58,200 but that's the expectation you have 129 00:05:58,200 --> 00:05:59,610 when you come to see a comedy. 130 00:05:59,610 --> 00:06:02,660 You expect an adventure with many difficulties 131 00:06:02,660 --> 00:06:05,230 that are-- that will finally be resolved in some form. 132 00:06:05,230 --> 00:06:08,790 And in fact, traditionally, one of the most fundamental ways 133 00:06:08,790 --> 00:06:12,702 in which comic narratives and comic dramas are resolved 134 00:06:12,702 --> 00:06:13,785 is in the act of marriage. 135 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:19,230 Because of course, marriage is a kind of reconciliation 136 00:06:19,230 --> 00:06:20,530 of potential opposites. 137 00:06:20,530 --> 00:06:22,976 It is a space of celebration in which 138 00:06:22,976 --> 00:06:24,600 different families and different groups 139 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:28,190 and, in many forms of comedy, different social classes 140 00:06:28,190 --> 00:06:30,240 are brought together. 141 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:33,060 So that the marriage itself becomes a social space that 142 00:06:33,060 --> 00:06:37,300 replicates, if it's dramatized on stage or in the movie, 143 00:06:37,300 --> 00:06:39,780 it replicates in some sense the communal space 144 00:06:39,780 --> 00:06:42,290 of sharing that the audience is engaged in when 145 00:06:42,290 --> 00:06:44,160 it's watching the text, right? 146 00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:47,730 So you have expectations about the characters, 147 00:06:47,730 --> 00:06:51,070 about the plots, about the basic formats, 148 00:06:51,070 --> 00:06:54,220 and especially about the endings of genre forms. 149 00:06:54,220 --> 00:06:56,227 Now what follows from the fact that you 150 00:06:56,227 --> 00:06:58,590 know that genre forms usually end happily? 151 00:06:58,590 --> 00:07:01,900 And indeed, that most-- that most Hollywood movies, 152 00:07:01,900 --> 00:07:03,420 leave aside the question of comedy, 153 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:08,680 will end on a reassuring, or if not a happy, at least 154 00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:11,250 a reassuring or a positive note. 155 00:07:11,250 --> 00:07:12,540 You simply know that going in. 156 00:07:12,540 --> 00:07:15,030 Even though that rule is sometimes violated, 157 00:07:15,030 --> 00:07:16,700 it's not usually violated. 158 00:07:16,700 --> 00:07:18,440 And when it's violated, it's often 159 00:07:18,440 --> 00:07:21,040 violated in ways that are instructive and interesting. 160 00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:22,740 But you have that expectation. 161 00:07:22,740 --> 00:07:24,470 Well, the expectation that when you 162 00:07:24,470 --> 00:07:27,510 get into the story, the expectation 163 00:07:27,510 --> 00:07:29,874 you have as an audience member when you enter the story, 164 00:07:29,874 --> 00:07:32,290 knowing that you are going to come to a happy ending, what 165 00:07:32,290 --> 00:07:33,640 does that do? 166 00:07:33,640 --> 00:07:36,510 It's a form of reassurance before you start. 167 00:07:36,510 --> 00:07:39,260 There are theorists of folk tales and fairy tales 168 00:07:39,260 --> 00:07:42,590 who argue that that's one of the functions of fairy tales. 169 00:07:42,590 --> 00:07:44,290 That when a folktale or a fairytale 170 00:07:44,290 --> 00:07:48,010 begins, once upon a time, many, many years ago, 171 00:07:48,010 --> 00:07:51,280 in a land far away, and the story ends, and they all 172 00:07:51,280 --> 00:07:53,760 lived happily ever after, what are the-- those 173 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:56,900 are ritualized or conventional beginnings and endings. 174 00:07:56,900 --> 00:07:57,950 What do they contain? 175 00:07:57,950 --> 00:07:59,970 They may contain terror. 176 00:07:59,970 --> 00:08:01,870 They may contain Little Red Riding Hood being 177 00:08:01,870 --> 00:08:04,120 raped or eaten alive, right? 178 00:08:04,120 --> 00:08:06,670 But it's OK in a certain sense, because when 179 00:08:06,670 --> 00:08:09,410 you come to the ending, you know that you'll be reassured. 180 00:08:09,410 --> 00:08:12,820 So because you know that the ending will reassure you, 181 00:08:12,820 --> 00:08:14,790 it enables an exploration of stuff 182 00:08:14,790 --> 00:08:16,960 that would be scary and frightening. 183 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:18,770 There are child psychologists, for example, 184 00:08:18,770 --> 00:08:21,520 who say that one of the important aspects 185 00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:24,595 of storytelling to children is precisely this. 186 00:08:24,595 --> 00:08:27,800 That the ritualized reassurance of once upon a time and they 187 00:08:27,800 --> 00:08:32,179 all lived happily ever after are enabling conditions 188 00:08:32,179 --> 00:08:34,049 that permit the exploration, that 189 00:08:34,049 --> 00:08:36,276 permit the story to go into territories 190 00:08:36,276 --> 00:08:38,400 that would otherwise be frightening and terrifying. 191 00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:40,108 What I'm suggesting to you is that that's 192 00:08:40,108 --> 00:08:43,530 a way of understanding adult entertainment as well. 193 00:08:43,530 --> 00:08:45,930 And over and over again, the Hollywood film 194 00:08:45,930 --> 00:08:48,300 will prove this principle out. 195 00:08:48,300 --> 00:08:51,430 It will explore disturbing and frightening materials, 196 00:08:51,430 --> 00:08:56,000 but in ways that are some sense legitimated or permitted 197 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,320 by the very fact that it belongs in an entertainment space, 198 00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:02,680 by the very fact that it marks itself 199 00:09:02,680 --> 00:09:05,120 as something that is a diversion, 200 00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:06,630 a mere entertainment. 201 00:09:06,630 --> 00:09:08,620 But I'd like to eliminate the word mere 202 00:09:08,620 --> 00:09:13,520 because it's an inadequate and derogatory way of describing 203 00:09:13,520 --> 00:09:15,820 an experience that often can be among the most 204 00:09:15,820 --> 00:09:19,490 creative and valuable that people in a society can have, 205 00:09:19,490 --> 00:09:20,330 right? 206 00:09:20,330 --> 00:09:23,590 So one way then of crystallizing all of this 207 00:09:23,590 --> 00:09:27,180 is to say that the Hollywood film for me, 208 00:09:27,180 --> 00:09:29,630 in the studio era especially, represents 209 00:09:29,630 --> 00:09:34,460 a particular form of what I would call consensus narrative. 210 00:09:34,460 --> 00:09:38,310 What I mean by this term is something rather elaborate, 211 00:09:38,310 --> 00:09:40,050 but I think very helpful. 212 00:09:40,050 --> 00:09:43,630 What I mean by the term is this, that in most societies-- 213 00:09:43,630 --> 00:09:46,500 perhaps not in all, but in most societies-- 214 00:09:46,500 --> 00:09:48,330 all societies have many different sites 215 00:09:48,330 --> 00:09:50,470 of storytelling, right? 216 00:09:50,470 --> 00:09:51,940 People tell jokes to each other. 217 00:09:51,940 --> 00:09:53,160 We go to the opera. 218 00:09:53,160 --> 00:09:55,810 We watch-- we play video games that 219 00:09:55,810 --> 00:09:57,880 are deep forms of narrative today, right? 220 00:09:57,880 --> 00:10:00,680 So that's the coming-- probably the new form of narrative 221 00:10:00,680 --> 00:10:03,390 that's emerging in our society today, are video games. 222 00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:07,860 We hear stories in theaters. 223 00:10:07,860 --> 00:10:10,540 We can hear stories in popular songs. 224 00:10:10,540 --> 00:10:13,285 We read stories in novels, right? 225 00:10:13,285 --> 00:10:14,840 There are stories all over. 226 00:10:14,840 --> 00:10:17,200 And in fact, we get non-fictional stories out 227 00:10:17,200 --> 00:10:19,800 of our newspapers and from our politicians. 228 00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:22,350 These are usually even more outlandish, ridiculous, 229 00:10:22,350 --> 00:10:24,950 and false than the fictional stories that we're fed, 230 00:10:24,950 --> 00:10:28,320 although we often don't recognize that, right? 231 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:32,160 So we live in a sea, an ocean of narratives, right? 232 00:10:32,160 --> 00:10:34,320 All societies have many different sites of it. 233 00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:36,860 But in many societies, if not all, 234 00:10:36,860 --> 00:10:42,740 there usually is a single site that by general acceptance 235 00:10:42,740 --> 00:10:48,720 or consent is recognized as the space in which the stories that 236 00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:51,470 are being told are intended for everyone, right? 237 00:10:51,470 --> 00:10:54,035 The difference between what goes on in a wrestling match 238 00:10:54,035 --> 00:10:57,380 or in a baseball game, also forms of narrative in a way, 239 00:10:57,380 --> 00:11:02,130 or in an opera or in a theatrical piece and a movie 240 00:11:02,130 --> 00:11:05,440 of the Hollywood era, or a television program in the great 241 00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:10,400 era of television before, say, 2000 when new systems 242 00:11:10,400 --> 00:11:13,990 so atomized and divided the television system that it began 243 00:11:13,990 --> 00:11:17,520 to-- it began to imitate what happened to its ancestors, 244 00:11:17,520 --> 00:11:23,580 the films, a generation earlier, losing its hold on the majority 245 00:11:23,580 --> 00:11:27,050 of the population-- the idea is then that the idea 246 00:11:27,050 --> 00:11:29,400 of a consensus story is the story-- 247 00:11:29,400 --> 00:11:31,940 it's the story form or the story system 248 00:11:31,940 --> 00:11:34,640 that the culture recognizes as the one that reaches 249 00:11:34,640 --> 00:11:36,110 the largest number of people. 250 00:11:36,110 --> 00:11:38,090 And that by common agreement or consent-- 251 00:11:38,090 --> 00:11:41,080 not by law, but by something much richer and larger 252 00:11:41,080 --> 00:11:43,960 than that, by a kind of communal agreement, 253 00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:47,550 this space is recognized as the place in which the stories that 254 00:11:47,550 --> 00:11:51,100 are told are meant to appeal to the largest number of people, 255 00:11:51,100 --> 00:11:54,970 cutting across social class, cutting cross age and gender 256 00:11:54,970 --> 00:11:57,960 differences, cutting across ethnic differences. 257 00:11:57,960 --> 00:12:00,510 Virtually all societies have some space 258 00:12:00,510 --> 00:12:03,730 in which some story system of one kind or another 259 00:12:03,730 --> 00:12:06,710 that wants to appeal to virtually everyone exists. 260 00:12:06,710 --> 00:12:08,550 Now it's important to understand that I 261 00:12:08,550 --> 00:12:10,970 don't mean it's a real consensus, an authentic one. 262 00:12:10,970 --> 00:12:13,110 That is to say, I don't mean that the stories that 263 00:12:13,110 --> 00:12:16,630 are told there really embody the values universally of everyone 264 00:12:16,630 --> 00:12:17,360 in the society. 265 00:12:17,360 --> 00:12:18,490 Not at all. 266 00:12:18,490 --> 00:12:21,690 Because these societies are limited in certain ways. 267 00:12:21,690 --> 00:12:22,760 They have exclusions. 268 00:12:22,760 --> 00:12:25,290 They have caste structures, and so on. 269 00:12:25,290 --> 00:12:28,280 So the consensus narrative in 1920 270 00:12:28,280 --> 00:12:32,520 was a consensus narrative that sort of saw African Americans 271 00:12:32,520 --> 00:12:33,960 as second class citizens, right? 272 00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:35,376 There was a lot of prejudice then. 273 00:12:35,376 --> 00:12:37,910 Or it certainly was a patriarchal consensus, 274 00:12:37,910 --> 00:12:39,920 which assumed that women belonged in the home, 275 00:12:39,920 --> 00:12:40,500 and so forth. 276 00:12:40,500 --> 00:12:42,800 I don't mean that the consensus is universally 277 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:43,849 embraced by everyone. 278 00:12:43,849 --> 00:12:46,140 What I do mean, though, is that everyone in the society 279 00:12:46,140 --> 00:12:48,230 recognizes that this is the consensus. 280 00:12:48,230 --> 00:12:50,170 And even the people who descend from it 281 00:12:50,170 --> 00:12:53,710 recognize that this is the space in which the central values 282 00:12:53,710 --> 00:12:59,000 of the society are articulated, dramatized, and diffused. 283 00:12:59,000 --> 00:13:01,250 And what makes this space-- these spaces-- 284 00:13:01,250 --> 00:13:03,620 so that another example, I mentioned one earlier, 285 00:13:03,620 --> 00:13:06,740 in Shakespeare's day, the public theater of Shakespeare's time 286 00:13:06,740 --> 00:13:09,240 was the equivalent of what I'm saying Hollywood 287 00:13:09,240 --> 00:13:11,562 was in the studio era. 288 00:13:11,562 --> 00:13:14,410 In the Middle Ages, it would be the Bible, right? 289 00:13:14,410 --> 00:13:18,790 The central story promulgated through all-- virtually 290 00:13:18,790 --> 00:13:20,450 everyone in the society had-- not only 291 00:13:20,450 --> 00:13:22,690 had access to the Bible, when they went to church, 292 00:13:22,690 --> 00:13:28,110 they received further discussion and elaborate propaganda 293 00:13:28,110 --> 00:13:31,090 about how important and central the Bible was to their life. 294 00:13:31,090 --> 00:13:33,220 So the consensus narrative system 295 00:13:33,220 --> 00:13:35,807 was the one the church sustained in the Middle Ages, right? 296 00:13:35,807 --> 00:13:37,390 In fact, one of the interesting things 297 00:13:37,390 --> 00:13:40,690 is to watch in Western culture the way in which the consensus 298 00:13:40,690 --> 00:13:42,600 story becomes more and more secularized. 299 00:13:46,090 --> 00:13:47,740 And not only secularized, not only 300 00:13:47,740 --> 00:13:49,780 freed from religious dispensation, 301 00:13:49,780 --> 00:13:52,610 but also freed, in some sense, in many societies 302 00:13:52,610 --> 00:13:54,750 from government control. 303 00:13:54,750 --> 00:13:55,570 Right? 304 00:13:55,570 --> 00:13:57,580 So in some societies, there is no such freedom. 305 00:13:57,580 --> 00:14:00,900 So for example, the consensus narrative in the Soviet Union 306 00:14:00,900 --> 00:14:04,070 was the story that was approved by the government. 307 00:14:04,070 --> 00:14:07,270 It was-- and in fact, probably the majority of the population 308 00:14:07,270 --> 00:14:09,884 dissented from that consensus, right? 309 00:14:09,884 --> 00:14:11,300 So the consensus I'm talking about 310 00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:13,590 is always a constructed one, right? 311 00:14:13,590 --> 00:14:16,199 But that construction is still interesting. 312 00:14:16,199 --> 00:14:18,240 And this is one of the exam-- one of the reasons, 313 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:20,920 for example, that today people will still 314 00:14:20,920 --> 00:14:24,900 scream bloody murder if they see that on television, 315 00:14:24,900 --> 00:14:28,430 the representation of minorities or women is prejudicial. 316 00:14:28,430 --> 00:14:30,900 But you don't see anybody complaining about the fact 317 00:14:30,900 --> 00:14:34,140 that there are such representations in books 318 00:14:34,140 --> 00:14:35,660 or in theater any longer. 319 00:14:35,660 --> 00:14:38,450 And the reason for that is that it's the consensus 320 00:14:38,450 --> 00:14:40,230 system that matters to people. 321 00:14:40,230 --> 00:14:42,560 It's the consensus space in which 322 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:44,890 it is assumed the values of the society 323 00:14:44,890 --> 00:14:47,440 can be challenged or discussed, OK? 324 00:14:47,440 --> 00:14:50,580 So what I want to suggest, then, is 325 00:14:50,580 --> 00:14:53,410 we might think-- so we can think of the Hollywood film then, 326 00:14:53,410 --> 00:14:57,770 all Hollywood movies, as belonging-- as participating 327 00:14:57,770 --> 00:15:01,470 in the creation of what we can call the consensus story, 328 00:15:01,470 --> 00:15:05,130 the most widely shared story about American society. 329 00:15:05,130 --> 00:15:06,780 And it has many sides, right? 330 00:15:06,780 --> 00:15:09,770 Part of the story has to do with how you define masculinity, 331 00:15:09,770 --> 00:15:10,280 right? 332 00:15:10,280 --> 00:15:13,230 And some of that burden is carried in every film, 333 00:15:13,230 --> 00:15:15,990 but there are certain movies like war movies or Westerns 334 00:15:15,990 --> 00:15:19,590 in which masculinity, tough guy-ness is the main issue. 335 00:15:19,590 --> 00:15:21,440 And then there's some-- then we could say 336 00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:22,714 the norms about family life. 337 00:15:22,714 --> 00:15:23,630 Where do they come in? 338 00:15:23,630 --> 00:15:26,820 Well, more often in comedies and in melodramas 339 00:15:26,820 --> 00:15:28,300 that focus on families, right? 340 00:15:28,300 --> 00:15:30,870 In other words, different parts of the consensus 341 00:15:30,870 --> 00:15:33,160 are dramatized more fully in different genres. 342 00:15:33,160 --> 00:15:37,320 But all the films together can be said broadly 343 00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:41,610 to participate in a process whereby the central values 344 00:15:41,610 --> 00:15:44,770 and assumptions of the society are rehearsed and repeated 345 00:15:44,770 --> 00:15:46,160 and tested. 346 00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:48,180 The central fact about this process 347 00:15:48,180 --> 00:15:51,910 is that it's never finished, just like culture itself. 348 00:15:51,910 --> 00:15:54,720 Culture's never a fixed, finished thing. 349 00:15:54,720 --> 00:15:58,415 This is one of the deep insights of modern sociology 350 00:15:58,415 --> 00:16:00,100 and anthropology. 351 00:16:00,100 --> 00:16:02,750 I attribute it primarily-- specifically 352 00:16:02,750 --> 00:16:08,250 to the great English sociologist and historian Raymond Williams 353 00:16:08,250 --> 00:16:11,570 from whom I'm borrowing some of the ideas 354 00:16:11,570 --> 00:16:14,075 on-- although the word consensus narrative is mine, 355 00:16:14,075 --> 00:16:16,100 not his-- many of these ideas are 356 00:16:16,100 --> 00:16:19,161 drawn from Raymond Williams' account of culture. 357 00:16:19,161 --> 00:16:21,410 What he says is essentially that culture is constantly 358 00:16:21,410 --> 00:16:23,400 making and remaking itself. 359 00:16:23,400 --> 00:16:26,490 That every time you watch-- think about-- some of you 360 00:16:26,490 --> 00:16:28,580 can see this example more fully with television 361 00:16:28,580 --> 00:16:29,545 than with movies. 362 00:16:29,545 --> 00:16:31,045 Remember, the argument of the course 363 00:16:31,045 --> 00:16:33,540 is that at a certain point, sometime 364 00:16:33,540 --> 00:16:36,340 in the 1950s or early '60s, television 365 00:16:36,340 --> 00:16:39,850 supplanted the movies as the central form of narrative 366 00:16:39,850 --> 00:16:41,110 in the American society. 367 00:16:41,110 --> 00:16:45,640 Took over the job of being the consensus, the purveyor 368 00:16:45,640 --> 00:16:48,110 of the consensus, the purveyor of the culture's 369 00:16:48,110 --> 00:16:49,494 central values. 370 00:16:49,494 --> 00:16:51,410 And in many ways, that was a liberating moment 371 00:16:51,410 --> 00:16:52,540 for the movies. 372 00:16:52,540 --> 00:16:54,830 Our course dramatizes that. 373 00:16:54,830 --> 00:16:57,650 This week, we're looking at two screwball comedies 374 00:16:57,650 --> 00:16:59,470 from inside the studio era. 375 00:16:59,470 --> 00:17:02,680 Hereafter when we juxtapose two films, 376 00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:04,619 one will be from the studio era. 377 00:17:04,619 --> 00:17:08,220 One will be from the era after the movies no longer 378 00:17:08,220 --> 00:17:11,460 carry the consensus, the responsibility 379 00:17:11,460 --> 00:17:13,950 to be the consensus medium. 380 00:17:13,950 --> 00:17:15,609 That's been taken over by TV. 381 00:17:15,609 --> 00:17:17,790 And the differences are dramatic. 382 00:17:17,790 --> 00:17:20,329 The differences are stark and exciting. 383 00:17:20,329 --> 00:17:21,680 Both forms are interesting. 384 00:17:21,680 --> 00:17:24,450 The post-consensus forms have great claims on us 385 00:17:24,450 --> 00:17:26,589 because they're much freer. 386 00:17:26,589 --> 00:17:28,585 They're not limited or constrained 387 00:17:28,585 --> 00:17:32,510 by what we might call the central pieties of the culture. 388 00:17:32,510 --> 00:17:35,950 The most obvious way you could see this is in nudity, right? 389 00:17:35,950 --> 00:17:40,640 They can show-- attitudes-- and dirty language, right? 390 00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:44,090 Think about-- you can see the stupidity and the arbitrariness 391 00:17:44,090 --> 00:17:45,880 of these systems if you think about how 392 00:17:45,880 --> 00:17:46,990 television worked today. 393 00:17:46,990 --> 00:17:49,540 If you put on an American network show, 394 00:17:49,540 --> 00:17:53,220 even a late night show by 10:00, 11 o'clock, at 9:00 or 10:00 395 00:17:53,220 --> 00:17:56,412 a night, what you will get on those shows-- you might get 396 00:17:56,412 --> 00:17:58,620 things very different from what you would have gotten 397 00:17:58,620 --> 00:18:00,540 10 or 15 years ago, but you still 398 00:18:00,540 --> 00:18:01,930 won't get full frontal nudity. 399 00:18:01,930 --> 00:18:04,640 You won't get women taking off their clothes. 400 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:07,100 You won't see sexual activity. 401 00:18:07,100 --> 00:18:10,410 You won't see very much dirty language. 402 00:18:10,410 --> 00:18:12,840 You used to see none of it. 403 00:18:12,840 --> 00:18:16,190 But if you click the channel one over and you go to HBO, 404 00:18:16,190 --> 00:18:18,650 you could see the most disgraceful pornography 405 00:18:18,650 --> 00:18:20,140 that you can ever imagine, right? 406 00:18:20,140 --> 00:18:24,880 And you could hear people using the F word so often that it 407 00:18:24,880 --> 00:18:26,510 runs out of your ears, right? 408 00:18:26,510 --> 00:18:28,730 And they're right next to each other on the dial. 409 00:18:28,730 --> 00:18:30,540 What explains the difference? 410 00:18:30,540 --> 00:18:33,530 HBO doesn't belong to the consensus system. 411 00:18:33,530 --> 00:18:37,200 The networks are still a vestigial survival 412 00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:39,072 of the old consensus system. 413 00:18:39,072 --> 00:18:41,280 And if you think about the difference between network 414 00:18:41,280 --> 00:18:44,975 television, even today, and the movies or network television 415 00:18:44,975 --> 00:18:47,400 and what's on HBO or Showtime, you 416 00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:50,980 will see this distinction with great clarity, right? 417 00:18:50,980 --> 00:18:53,727 So one of the things that this means 418 00:18:53,727 --> 00:18:55,560 is that these systems of consensus narrative 419 00:18:55,560 --> 00:18:58,680 have a tremendous claim on our attention. 420 00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:00,360 They're more important, in some sense, 421 00:19:00,360 --> 00:19:03,630 in a sociological or anthropological sense 422 00:19:03,630 --> 00:19:07,140 than other forms that don't bear the burden of having 423 00:19:07,140 --> 00:19:10,260 to tell the story, the consensus story of the society. 424 00:19:10,260 --> 00:19:13,180 You remember I said culture's unfinished. 425 00:19:13,180 --> 00:19:14,740 So are these stories, right? 426 00:19:14,740 --> 00:19:17,130 The great thing about them is that they change, right? 427 00:19:17,130 --> 00:19:18,672 That over time, they'll alter. 428 00:19:18,672 --> 00:19:20,380 I'll come back to this question next time 429 00:19:20,380 --> 00:19:21,750 when we talk about the Western. 430 00:19:21,750 --> 00:19:24,090 We talk about how the Western alters 431 00:19:24,090 --> 00:19:26,330 over time in ways that are tremendously 432 00:19:26,330 --> 00:19:29,510 responsive to problems in the outer society. 433 00:19:29,510 --> 00:19:33,110 A very clear example of the way in which genre constraints 434 00:19:33,110 --> 00:19:36,750 can enable an exploration of serious subjects. 435 00:19:36,750 --> 00:19:39,490 So we'll return to that next time. 436 00:19:39,490 --> 00:19:43,600 For our purposes tonight, the primary point is this. 437 00:19:43,600 --> 00:19:45,780 What the advantage of these consensus-- 438 00:19:45,780 --> 00:19:48,720 one of the advantages of these consensus systems 439 00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:53,850 is that they can review a great deal to us about the societies 440 00:19:53,850 --> 00:19:55,580 they serve. 441 00:19:55,580 --> 00:19:58,210 We can say in a certain sense that the work or the job, 442 00:19:58,210 --> 00:20:01,820 the anthropological function of these consensus systems 443 00:20:01,820 --> 00:20:04,849 is to help the society figure out what it is. 444 00:20:04,849 --> 00:20:07,140 So that one of the things that happens in these stories 445 00:20:07,140 --> 00:20:09,070 is that-- and here I'm borrowing directly 446 00:20:09,070 --> 00:20:13,240 on Raymond Williams-- we can think of a consensus narrative 447 00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:17,160 as a discourse space, as a space for conversation, right? 448 00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:19,690 Thinking of also remembering that genre, 449 00:20:19,690 --> 00:20:21,730 in one way or another, could be thought 450 00:20:21,730 --> 00:20:27,050 to carry some sub-category or some sub-element of the larger 451 00:20:27,050 --> 00:20:27,720 consensus. 452 00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:31,730 So masculinity and warrior behavior, and certain forms 453 00:20:31,730 --> 00:20:33,810 of honor and courage are dramatized 454 00:20:33,810 --> 00:20:35,540 in war movies and Westerns. 455 00:20:35,540 --> 00:20:38,890 But certain aspects of family life 456 00:20:38,890 --> 00:20:40,670 and of the relation between siblings 457 00:20:40,670 --> 00:20:43,620 and of the relationship between parents and children 458 00:20:43,620 --> 00:20:47,730 are dramatized in forms of melodrama and comedy, right? 459 00:20:47,730 --> 00:20:53,120 And detective stories sometimes explore 460 00:20:53,120 --> 00:20:54,990 the social and political implications 461 00:20:54,990 --> 00:20:57,970 of particular societies more systematically and fully 462 00:20:57,970 --> 00:20:59,170 than other forms. 463 00:20:59,170 --> 00:21:00,480 But so take it all together. 464 00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:02,350 The different genre forms may be said 465 00:21:02,350 --> 00:21:05,290 to lay different emphases on the consensus, 466 00:21:05,290 --> 00:21:07,430 but they all contribute to the consensus. 467 00:21:07,430 --> 00:21:10,600 And one way they contribute is by constantly showing us 468 00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:12,365 fissures and disagreements. 469 00:21:12,365 --> 00:21:14,194 They don't all tell the same story. 470 00:21:14,194 --> 00:21:15,610 What they tend to-- and this helps 471 00:21:15,610 --> 00:21:19,810 to explain why movies are often either incoherent or partly 472 00:21:19,810 --> 00:21:22,160 contradictory, right? 473 00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,664 Movies are not simple, stable, unitary things at all. 474 00:21:25,664 --> 00:21:27,830 One reason is they're made by so many people, right? 475 00:21:27,830 --> 00:21:29,320 There's no single author. 476 00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:32,430 There's a director, a writer, actors. 477 00:21:32,430 --> 00:21:34,940 There's an army of subsidiary people who help. 478 00:21:34,940 --> 00:21:37,490 Films are profoundly collaborative form. 479 00:21:37,490 --> 00:21:41,000 And one of the effects of this is that in some forms, 480 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:42,880 the director's control may be imperfect, 481 00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:47,390 and the star may distort the film in some way, or take it-- 482 00:21:47,390 --> 00:21:50,350 or in some films, the writer may be so powerful and so 483 00:21:50,350 --> 00:21:52,570 imaginative, and the director's relatively 484 00:21:52,570 --> 00:21:55,630 weak that a different kind of movie emerges, right? 485 00:21:55,630 --> 00:21:57,130 So movies are different in that way. 486 00:21:57,130 --> 00:21:58,505 And then, of course, they're also 487 00:21:58,505 --> 00:22:02,140 different because they occur at different moments in time. 488 00:22:02,140 --> 00:22:03,654 And those moments-- when they occur 489 00:22:03,654 --> 00:22:05,070 in different moments in time, even 490 00:22:05,070 --> 00:22:06,870 if they belong to a particular genre, 491 00:22:06,870 --> 00:22:09,970 they may be responsive to later problems in the society 492 00:22:09,970 --> 00:22:12,630 from ones that differ from the problems that 493 00:22:12,630 --> 00:22:16,040 may have been the case 10 years earlier when the genre-- when 494 00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:18,330 a different version of the same genre story 495 00:22:18,330 --> 00:22:20,240 would handle the characters or the story 496 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:23,810 in a somewhat different way. 497 00:22:23,810 --> 00:22:25,530 So what we can say, among other things, 498 00:22:25,530 --> 00:22:28,290 is there's a tremendous value to the idea, 499 00:22:28,290 --> 00:22:31,400 to the recognition that not only is culture 500 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:32,870 always unfinished or always sort of 501 00:22:32,870 --> 00:22:35,820 struggling to figure out certain kinds of conflicts 502 00:22:35,820 --> 00:22:38,670 and difficulties, but that our consensus narrative 503 00:22:38,670 --> 00:22:40,980 systems are also a space that accommodates 504 00:22:40,980 --> 00:22:42,420 that kind of disagreement. 505 00:22:42,420 --> 00:22:43,890 And one way to conceptualize this 506 00:22:43,890 --> 00:22:46,080 is to see that in almost all films, 507 00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,140 and certainly the whole system, could 508 00:22:48,140 --> 00:22:51,790 be said to dramatize or give voice 509 00:22:51,790 --> 00:22:56,020 to three different strains or perspectives on society. 510 00:22:56,020 --> 00:22:59,140 One is what might be called a traditional voice. 511 00:22:59,140 --> 00:23:01,400 That is to say, these are old-fashioned ideas 512 00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:03,320 that are still powerful, but they really 513 00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:05,190 belong to an older era. 514 00:23:05,190 --> 00:23:06,680 The second kind of voice you hear 515 00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:08,388 is what we could call the dominant voice. 516 00:23:08,388 --> 00:23:10,492 That is to say, the central values 517 00:23:10,492 --> 00:23:12,950 that the majority of the people in the society now believe, 518 00:23:12,950 --> 00:23:13,449 right? 519 00:23:13,449 --> 00:23:15,410 A little different from traditional voices 520 00:23:15,410 --> 00:23:18,320 that are more old-fashioned that are becoming vestigial. 521 00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:21,930 And then on the other side, emergent voices, right? 522 00:23:21,930 --> 00:23:24,100 New ideas, new attitudes that are coming through. 523 00:23:24,100 --> 00:23:26,350 And you can feel this in every film. 524 00:23:26,350 --> 00:23:28,530 You can feel this in every television program. 525 00:23:28,530 --> 00:23:31,400 If you look at American television from the 1950s 526 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:35,270 to the 19-- say '90s-- let's say you've restricted yourself 527 00:23:35,270 --> 00:23:36,860 to situation comedy. 528 00:23:36,860 --> 00:23:38,240 What do you think you would see? 529 00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:41,660 You would see a drama in which the American family undergoes 530 00:23:41,660 --> 00:23:43,180 profound change. 531 00:23:43,180 --> 00:23:44,180 What happens? 532 00:23:44,180 --> 00:23:47,850 Women become more important, patriarchal values 533 00:23:47,850 --> 00:23:52,590 become less and less powerful, children become more respected, 534 00:23:52,590 --> 00:23:57,270 are treated less like appendages to the family. 535 00:23:57,270 --> 00:23:59,950 And by the '80s and '90s, sometimes the children 536 00:23:59,950 --> 00:24:01,840 have more dominant roles than the adults 537 00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:05,552 and are often even shown to be wiser than their parents. 538 00:24:05,552 --> 00:24:07,260 Something that would have been impossible 539 00:24:07,260 --> 00:24:10,150 in the early 1950s, a more patriarchal era, 540 00:24:10,150 --> 00:24:12,360 when the classic television program about families 541 00:24:12,360 --> 00:24:17,290 was called Father Knows Best, right? 542 00:24:17,290 --> 00:24:20,250 Whereas in later episodes, the father not only 543 00:24:20,250 --> 00:24:23,650 knows-- doesn't know best, he knows least. 544 00:24:23,650 --> 00:24:25,930 Or sometimes he's completely gone, 545 00:24:25,930 --> 00:24:28,160 and it's women who are raising the children, right? 546 00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,390 Well, what's going on in that process 547 00:24:30,390 --> 00:24:34,650 has to do with the way in which the feminist movement 548 00:24:34,650 --> 00:24:37,690 and a reconfiguration of our idea of gender, 549 00:24:37,690 --> 00:24:40,360 our ideas of gender and family-- what's happening 550 00:24:40,360 --> 00:24:44,540 is the situation comedy is the space in which those problems 551 00:24:44,540 --> 00:24:46,860 are being dramatized over time. 552 00:24:46,860 --> 00:24:50,150 And if you juxtapose a sitcom from the '50s and a sitcom 553 00:24:50,150 --> 00:24:53,470 from the '60s, and a sitcom from the '70s and one from the '80s, 554 00:24:53,470 --> 00:24:56,710 you can actually see that drama being enacted 555 00:24:56,710 --> 00:24:58,710 in tremendously powerful ways. 556 00:24:58,710 --> 00:25:00,110 I choose examples from television 557 00:25:00,110 --> 00:25:02,180 because I want to choose examples more of you 558 00:25:02,180 --> 00:25:04,690 are likely to have your own experience with. 559 00:25:04,690 --> 00:25:08,400 But I could offer such instances from the history of movies 560 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:09,010 as well. 561 00:25:09,010 --> 00:25:13,220 But almost none of you would have sufficient experience 562 00:25:13,220 --> 00:25:15,620 with the movies to understand the examples. 563 00:25:15,620 --> 00:25:17,750 So that's why I've chosen examples from television. 564 00:25:17,750 --> 00:25:20,000 I hope some of you at least-- well, I know many of you 565 00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,561 can't, because you didn't grow up on American television 566 00:25:22,561 --> 00:25:23,060 either. 567 00:25:23,060 --> 00:25:25,050 But some of you at least can get the idea 568 00:25:25,050 --> 00:25:26,750 that I'm talking about here. 569 00:25:26,750 --> 00:25:30,810 So the notion that-- so this is a way of explaining, 570 00:25:30,810 --> 00:25:33,520 for beyond what the intentions of any particular movie 571 00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,910 maker or producer would have, it's 572 00:25:36,910 --> 00:25:39,950 a way of explaining and clarifying 573 00:25:39,950 --> 00:25:43,400 the profound historical and anthropological importance 574 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,020 of the movies in American society. 575 00:25:46,020 --> 00:25:48,170 And by implication, in other societies 576 00:25:48,170 --> 00:25:51,040 as well because the argument applies in different ways 577 00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:52,780 to those societies as well. 578 00:25:52,780 --> 00:25:56,230 The notion is not that movies are unimportant today. 579 00:25:56,230 --> 00:26:00,160 But they occupy a different niche in our consciousness 580 00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,810 and in our daily lives than they did in the Hollywood era, 581 00:26:03,810 --> 00:26:06,340 in the era of the Hollywood studios. 582 00:26:06,340 --> 00:26:07,480 OK. 583 00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,180 Capra and Hawks can be said to be 584 00:26:10,180 --> 00:26:13,660 two characteristic instances, two characteristic examples 585 00:26:13,660 --> 00:26:19,290 of really journeyman directors from the studio era. 586 00:26:19,290 --> 00:26:22,800 I had intended-- let's put up the other-- I actually 587 00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:26,160 had intended and had planned to give you a much more 588 00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,480 elaborate, sort of brief biographical accounts 589 00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:29,490 of each director. 590 00:26:29,490 --> 00:26:31,130 But I don't have time to do that. 591 00:26:31,130 --> 00:26:33,340 And what I'm putting up instead here 592 00:26:33,340 --> 00:26:35,970 are just a list of some of their films. 593 00:26:35,970 --> 00:26:37,950 You can see what a journeyman Hawks was. 594 00:26:37,950 --> 00:26:40,580 He made very important screwball comedies. 595 00:26:40,580 --> 00:26:43,330 Probably the dominant figure in screwball comedy. 596 00:26:43,330 --> 00:26:44,890 Classic Westerns. 597 00:26:44,890 --> 00:26:47,110 I've listed some of them there. 598 00:26:47,110 --> 00:26:49,549 And he was also be a great director in other genres. 599 00:26:49,549 --> 00:26:51,590 He worked-- it was very interesting that he could 600 00:26:51,590 --> 00:26:53,420 work across genres in this way. 601 00:26:53,420 --> 00:26:59,310 He may be the most diverse of all the classic Hollywood 602 00:26:59,310 --> 00:27:01,090 journeyman professional directors 603 00:27:01,090 --> 00:27:04,060 because he worked so well across so many categories. 604 00:27:04,060 --> 00:27:07,395 There are recurring themes that show up across genre 605 00:27:07,395 --> 00:27:09,279 in Howard Hawks' work. 606 00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:11,320 And I'll mentioned some of them in a little while 607 00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:13,780 when I try to introduce His Girl Friday, 608 00:27:13,780 --> 00:27:19,200 one of his great screwball comedies. 609 00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,020 Capra operated in a slightly more-- 610 00:27:22,020 --> 00:27:24,110 a slightly narrower range. 611 00:27:24,110 --> 00:27:26,640 But like Hawks, he was an immensely successful, 612 00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,530 immensely popular director during an era 613 00:27:29,530 --> 00:27:32,000 when the studios were essentially 614 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,930 operating like gigantic factories in which the studio 615 00:27:34,930 --> 00:27:38,140 heads where the primary bosses, and in which each studio, 616 00:27:38,140 --> 00:27:41,270 especially the five major studios as well as many 617 00:27:41,270 --> 00:27:42,900 of the smaller ones, were essentially 618 00:27:42,900 --> 00:27:48,350 small cities, small factory cities for the manufacture 619 00:27:48,350 --> 00:27:50,000 of movies, right? 620 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:55,180 Not just that they employed dozens, if not hundreds 621 00:27:55,180 --> 00:27:57,200 of-- well, they employed hundreds, even 622 00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:58,840 thousands of workers of different-- 623 00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:00,930 but they employed dozens of writers and dozens 624 00:28:00,930 --> 00:28:05,210 of directors, and they had dozens of stars and actors 625 00:28:05,210 --> 00:28:08,600 on contract, and they owned great lots. 626 00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:11,550 And of course, they had an army of technicians, 627 00:28:11,550 --> 00:28:14,340 of grips and best boys and camera people, 628 00:28:14,340 --> 00:28:17,520 and post-production people and publicity people, 629 00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:21,500 and various other factotums who took care of people. 630 00:28:21,500 --> 00:28:28,360 And they probably had a more elaborate encyclopedia 631 00:28:28,360 --> 00:28:32,760 of gophers than any other industry in history. 632 00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,780 But the point is, in a sense that each studio was 633 00:28:35,780 --> 00:28:38,770 a kind of manufacturing hub, was like 634 00:28:38,770 --> 00:28:41,940 a great factory, the equivalent of General Motors or Chrysler. 635 00:28:41,940 --> 00:28:45,050 But instead of making automobiles or toasters, 636 00:28:45,050 --> 00:28:48,590 they were making these things that infiltrate our dreams. 637 00:28:48,590 --> 00:28:51,570 A product I think much more powerful, disturbing, 638 00:28:51,570 --> 00:28:54,425 and interesting, even than the most remarkable automobile 639 00:28:54,425 --> 00:28:54,925 or toaster. 640 00:28:57,750 --> 00:28:59,869 Two other things I should mention about both Capra 641 00:28:59,869 --> 00:29:01,660 and Hawks, because they share this quality, 642 00:29:01,660 --> 00:29:03,610 and they share it with Hitchcock as well. 643 00:29:03,610 --> 00:29:06,430 They began their careers in the silent era. 644 00:29:06,430 --> 00:29:09,670 They made a transition to the sound era. 645 00:29:09,670 --> 00:29:16,270 Capra was a more successful silent director than Hawks, 646 00:29:16,270 --> 00:29:18,850 but both had experience in the silent era. 647 00:29:18,850 --> 00:29:20,580 Unlike some directors, were able to make 648 00:29:20,580 --> 00:29:23,230 a very successful transition, along-- as Hitchcock 649 00:29:23,230 --> 00:29:27,030 also did, and became major directors in the sound era. 650 00:29:27,030 --> 00:29:29,890 The other significant thing to mention about both of them, 651 00:29:29,890 --> 00:29:32,490 they both spent time in the Army. 652 00:29:32,490 --> 00:29:33,490 They both kicked around. 653 00:29:33,490 --> 00:29:35,050 They were not sure they were-- it wasn't as 654 00:29:35,050 --> 00:29:36,100 if when they were born they said, 655 00:29:36,100 --> 00:29:37,224 I want to be a movie maker. 656 00:29:37,224 --> 00:29:41,380 They had all kinds of uncertainty in their lives. 657 00:29:41,380 --> 00:29:44,124 They almost fell into movie making. 658 00:29:44,124 --> 00:29:45,790 But there's one thing I think all of you 659 00:29:45,790 --> 00:29:46,706 will find interesting. 660 00:29:46,706 --> 00:29:49,160 And I love to mention this to my MIT students. 661 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:53,040 Both Capra and Howard Hawks studied engineering. 662 00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:55,170 And Capra, in fact, got an engineering degree 663 00:29:55,170 --> 00:29:57,460 from the University of Southern California. 664 00:29:57,460 --> 00:29:59,600 When he couldn't get work as a mechanical engineer, 665 00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:01,860 he began to cast around for other things, 666 00:30:01,860 --> 00:30:03,790 and he ended up in the movies. 667 00:30:03,790 --> 00:30:07,240 Howard Hawks didn't graduate, but he studied engineering 668 00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:08,304 at Cornell. 669 00:30:08,304 --> 00:30:09,970 I think he never graduated from Cornell. 670 00:30:09,970 --> 00:30:11,750 But he studied engineering seriously. 671 00:30:11,750 --> 00:30:14,100 And I don't think it's an accident that these directors 672 00:30:14,100 --> 00:30:16,632 had engineering experience. 673 00:30:16,632 --> 00:30:21,340 Because there's an organizational intelligence, 674 00:30:21,340 --> 00:30:25,110 a practical intelligence, even genius 675 00:30:25,110 --> 00:30:27,440 that every good director-- not to say great director 676 00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:31,847 needs-- that is very will served by an engineering education. 677 00:30:31,847 --> 00:30:34,180 So I encourage all of you, when you finish your degrees, 678 00:30:34,180 --> 00:30:38,160 to go to Hollywood and become directors. 679 00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,560 I won't say more about Capra and Hawks 680 00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:42,620 now except to say again that they represented 681 00:30:42,620 --> 00:30:46,160 a certain sense, the center of what a Hollywood director could 682 00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:55,640 represent in the era of the studios, in the era 683 00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,770 when the movies where the dominant form of entertainment 684 00:30:58,770 --> 00:31:00,116 in American society. 685 00:31:00,116 --> 00:31:02,490 I want to say a couple of things about each of the movies 686 00:31:02,490 --> 00:31:05,620 that you're seeing tonight, the two different screwball 687 00:31:05,620 --> 00:31:07,380 comedies. 688 00:31:07,380 --> 00:31:12,620 One by Hawks, one by Capra, each representing 689 00:31:12,620 --> 00:31:15,890 a characteristic tone of each director. 690 00:31:15,890 --> 00:31:18,780 As I said earlier, you can think of Capra as a slightly more-- 691 00:31:18,780 --> 00:31:22,730 as a somewhat more sentimental and optimistic director. 692 00:31:22,730 --> 00:31:24,880 If you want a quintessential-- a scene 693 00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:28,920 that sort of distills this sentimental populism-- 694 00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:32,260 a sentimental populism is a good way of describing much 695 00:31:32,260 --> 00:31:35,250 of Capra's work-- there's a scene 696 00:31:35,250 --> 00:31:38,430 in It Happened One Night that captures this quality in him. 697 00:31:38,430 --> 00:31:42,340 You can feel that-- you can feel its optimism and perhaps 698 00:31:42,340 --> 00:31:43,020 its fakery. 699 00:31:43,020 --> 00:31:45,002 But you want it to be true, even though you 700 00:31:45,002 --> 00:31:49,480 know he may be imagining a nicer humanity than actually exists. 701 00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:54,680 There's a scene on a bus in It Happened One Night. 702 00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,280 A good deal of the film or a good part of the film 703 00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:00,840 takes place as people are traveling. 704 00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:03,210 It's a road film, in a certain way. 705 00:32:03,210 --> 00:32:07,312 And there's a scene on a bus, a number of scenes on the bus. 706 00:32:07,312 --> 00:32:08,770 But there's one very powerful scene 707 00:32:08,770 --> 00:32:13,030 in which all of a sudden, after a certain dialogue occurs, 708 00:32:13,030 --> 00:32:14,690 the people on the bus sort of rise 709 00:32:14,690 --> 00:32:17,130 up and begin to sort of create a little musical number 710 00:32:17,130 --> 00:32:18,400 themselves. 711 00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:19,700 Watch how it happens. 712 00:32:19,700 --> 00:32:21,770 And it's almost as if these strangers suddenly 713 00:32:21,770 --> 00:32:24,250 become members of a musical troupe, 714 00:32:24,250 --> 00:32:26,540 and they begin to interact with each other. 715 00:32:26,540 --> 00:32:28,670 It's a fantasy of community that has 716 00:32:28,670 --> 00:32:32,630 all kinds of sentimental, affectionate assumptions in it 717 00:32:32,630 --> 00:32:34,900 that is no doubt an exaggeration, 718 00:32:34,900 --> 00:32:39,430 but it tells us something about the sentimental populism that's 719 00:32:39,430 --> 00:32:43,720 at the heart of Frank Capra's vision of life. 720 00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:48,460 Let me say quickly a couple of words about each film now. 721 00:32:48,460 --> 00:32:51,230 It Happened One Night is not the first screwball comedy, 722 00:32:51,230 --> 00:32:53,640 but is the film that established screwball comedy 723 00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:55,550 as a dominant genre. 724 00:32:55,550 --> 00:32:58,270 There are films going back probably to 1930, 725 00:32:58,270 --> 00:33:00,530 if not earlier, that could be identified 726 00:33:00,530 --> 00:33:01,840 as screwball comedies. 727 00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,500 And there are certainly films-- full screwball comedies 728 00:33:04,500 --> 00:33:06,440 that existed before It Happened One Night. 729 00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:10,570 But the success of It Happened One Night nailed the genre, 730 00:33:10,570 --> 00:33:12,600 made the genre a popular one. 731 00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:15,240 And I want to mention a couple of production notes 732 00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:16,700 that are kind of interesting. 733 00:33:16,700 --> 00:33:18,940 One of them is this. 734 00:33:18,940 --> 00:33:23,660 Both the stars in It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert 735 00:33:23,660 --> 00:33:29,770 and Clark Gable, had had significant careers before they 736 00:33:29,770 --> 00:33:32,000 came to make It Happened One Night. 737 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:34,270 Gable had been in movies for over a decade. 738 00:33:34,270 --> 00:33:36,210 He'd been in a whole number of films. 739 00:33:36,210 --> 00:33:38,530 But he was a second rate-- a secondary player. 740 00:33:38,530 --> 00:33:40,760 And he was a difficult man. 741 00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,270 He was resisting assignments that he was being-- 742 00:33:43,270 --> 00:33:46,310 he was under contract to the MGM Studio, 743 00:33:46,310 --> 00:33:49,940 which was the most elaborate and wealthy of all the studios. 744 00:33:49,940 --> 00:33:51,820 And the head of MGM, Samuel Goldwyn, 745 00:33:51,820 --> 00:33:56,605 was annoyed with Gable, because he was uncooperative. 746 00:33:56,605 --> 00:33:58,730 They were sending him scripts he didn't want to do, 747 00:33:58,730 --> 00:34:00,438 even though he was under contract to them 748 00:34:00,438 --> 00:34:02,530 and theoretically had to do what they told him. 749 00:34:02,530 --> 00:34:06,310 And because he annoyed Goldwyn, Goldwyn 750 00:34:06,310 --> 00:34:07,880 decided to discipline him. 751 00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,650 And the way he disciplined him is we said, all right. 752 00:34:10,650 --> 00:34:13,800 I'm assigning you to Frank Capra who works for Columbia Studios. 753 00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:15,909 You have to make a film that he's working on. 754 00:34:15,909 --> 00:34:16,723 You have no choice. 755 00:34:16,723 --> 00:34:17,889 You're under contract to me. 756 00:34:17,889 --> 00:34:20,480 Gable was incredibly angry about this. 757 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:23,370 One of the reasons is Colombia was not a major studio. 758 00:34:23,370 --> 00:34:25,130 It was a low-budget studio. 759 00:34:25,130 --> 00:34:28,709 Capra was not yet a widely known director, 760 00:34:28,709 --> 00:34:31,000 even though he had been directing since the silent era. 761 00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,590 Gable felt that he was being imposed upon. 762 00:34:33,590 --> 00:34:36,980 He was very reluctant and angry about the job. 763 00:34:36,980 --> 00:34:39,420 The star, the female star, Claudette Colbert, 764 00:34:39,420 --> 00:34:41,000 was also reluctant to take the job. 765 00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:42,745 She had been in-- she was a stage star, 766 00:34:42,745 --> 00:34:44,969 and she had been successful on Broadway. 767 00:34:44,969 --> 00:34:46,973 But she'd had a checkered career in the movies, 768 00:34:46,973 --> 00:34:48,139 some bad luck in the movies. 769 00:34:48,139 --> 00:34:49,650 She'd made a film that was panned. 770 00:34:49,650 --> 00:34:52,920 She was very reluctant to make any more movies. 771 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:54,770 And when she was asked, she resisted. 772 00:34:54,770 --> 00:34:57,090 And she finally agreed only when they doubled her fee. 773 00:34:57,090 --> 00:35:00,140 She normally would get $25,000 for a film. 774 00:35:00,140 --> 00:35:01,860 This time she got $50,000. 775 00:35:01,860 --> 00:35:04,600 But even when she accepted this, she still was reluctant. 776 00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:05,720 She said, OK. 777 00:35:05,720 --> 00:35:07,580 I will do this, but I have to be free to go 778 00:35:07,580 --> 00:35:10,110 to spend Christmas with my friends and family 779 00:35:10,110 --> 00:35:11,310 in Palm Beach. 780 00:35:11,310 --> 00:35:14,670 The shooting has to stop no-- I will not work 781 00:35:14,670 --> 00:35:18,220 late-- longer than December 23. 782 00:35:18,220 --> 00:35:22,240 And so they had four very intense weeks of shooting 783 00:35:22,240 --> 00:35:24,130 in which they-- in which they did their best 784 00:35:24,130 --> 00:35:25,360 to finish the film. 785 00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:28,090 And they didn't quite finish it. 786 00:35:28,090 --> 00:35:30,440 But Claudette walked off the set and said, I'm done. 787 00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,400 My contract-- I fulfilled my contract, and she left. 788 00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,450 Capra hadn't yet filmed the final scene of the film. 789 00:35:36,450 --> 00:35:39,800 When you watch the brilliant final scene of the film, which 790 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,940 Capra had to do without his stars 791 00:35:42,940 --> 00:35:45,010 because Colbert had walked off the set, 792 00:35:45,010 --> 00:35:46,810 you will see a magnificent example 793 00:35:46,810 --> 00:35:50,330 of what we might call necessity being the mother of invention. 794 00:35:50,330 --> 00:35:52,470 Because it's a brilliant, rich scene, 795 00:35:52,470 --> 00:35:55,036 but he had to do it because he didn't have his actress there 796 00:35:55,036 --> 00:35:56,160 in order to make the scene. 797 00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:58,760 So watch for it when you come to it. 798 00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:01,660 Another point about-- when Colbert left the film, 799 00:36:01,660 --> 00:36:03,160 she was said to say to friends, I've 800 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:04,618 just completed-- I've just finished 801 00:36:04,618 --> 00:36:06,310 the worst movie of my life. 802 00:36:06,310 --> 00:36:07,819 This is a horrible film. 803 00:36:07,819 --> 00:36:09,610 Gable was angry about the film, and thought 804 00:36:09,610 --> 00:36:11,610 it was a piece of garbage. 805 00:36:11,610 --> 00:36:14,720 In the advent, the film was the first film 806 00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:17,570 to win Academy Awards in every major category. 807 00:36:17,570 --> 00:36:19,030 It won for best film. 808 00:36:19,030 --> 00:36:22,770 It won for best actor, best actress, best director, best 809 00:36:22,770 --> 00:36:23,620 screenplay. 810 00:36:23,620 --> 00:36:27,090 It was the first film to notch all five victories, right? 811 00:36:27,090 --> 00:36:30,250 Like, it's better than a hat trick in hockey, right? 812 00:36:30,250 --> 00:36:32,810 Like a perfect game for a pitcher, right? 813 00:36:32,810 --> 00:36:36,320 The best-- very few films have ever done this. 814 00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:40,240 And it turned every one of the major participants in the film 815 00:36:40,240 --> 00:36:42,190 into major Hollywood players. 816 00:36:42,190 --> 00:36:46,380 After this film, Gable became what-- 817 00:36:46,380 --> 00:36:49,080 came to be known as the King of Hollywood. 818 00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:53,520 And for a decade and a half, he was the top-grossing actor 819 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:55,080 in Hollywood. 820 00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:57,870 And all of his great work follows after this film. 821 00:36:57,870 --> 00:37:00,370 He was in a series of classic Hollywood films 822 00:37:00,370 --> 00:37:02,550 to the very end of his life in his last film 823 00:37:02,550 --> 00:37:04,560 with Marilyn Monroe. 824 00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,070 Anyone know what it-- written by Arthur Miller? 825 00:37:07,070 --> 00:37:09,380 A film called The Misfits, his very last film. 826 00:37:09,380 --> 00:37:11,130 He was dying when he was making that film. 827 00:37:11,130 --> 00:37:12,459 It's very moving film. 828 00:37:12,459 --> 00:37:14,500 You can see that he's dying of cancer in the film 829 00:37:14,500 --> 00:37:16,410 if you look closely. 830 00:37:16,410 --> 00:37:17,960 But he had a magnificent career. 831 00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:19,570 He was one of the characteristic, 832 00:37:19,570 --> 00:37:23,510 central, iconic actors of the studio era. 833 00:37:23,510 --> 00:37:25,695 And this is the film that made him. 834 00:37:25,695 --> 00:37:27,070 There's a moment in the film when 835 00:37:27,070 --> 00:37:31,470 you see Gable and Colbert discussing-- 836 00:37:31,470 --> 00:37:33,320 they're forced to share a motel room, 837 00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,940 and this is very risque in the 1930s. 838 00:37:35,940 --> 00:37:38,720 Man and woman together, unmarried in the same room. 839 00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:40,940 And in fact, they have separate beds, 840 00:37:40,940 --> 00:37:42,360 but it's a very small room. 841 00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:43,500 And she's nervous about it. 842 00:37:43,500 --> 00:37:48,435 And one of the things he does is he 843 00:37:48,435 --> 00:37:51,020 puts up a line across the room of, like, a clothesline, 844 00:37:51,020 --> 00:37:53,100 throws a blanket over it, and he says, OK. 845 00:37:53,100 --> 00:37:56,040 We'll stay on either side of the wall of Jericho. 846 00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,200 And you'll see how the wall of Jericho 847 00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:01,380 works out in the final scene when it comes down. 848 00:38:01,380 --> 00:38:06,500 And there are moments where you could see the Colbert 849 00:38:06,500 --> 00:38:09,380 character very nervous about the fact that she's alone 850 00:38:09,380 --> 00:38:12,060 with a strange man in a motel room, and she's at his mercy, 851 00:38:12,060 --> 00:38:12,740 in some sense. 852 00:38:12,740 --> 00:38:15,010 And there is a kind of [INAUDIBLE] about this. 853 00:38:15,010 --> 00:38:17,680 And there's a moment where we see them getting ready for bed. 854 00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:20,760 Gable takes off his shirt, and he's not wearing an undershirt. 855 00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:22,520 He's only wearing an outer shirt. 856 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:24,760 And it is said-- it has been said so often 857 00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:26,440 I can't resist mentioning this to you, 858 00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:29,034 even though I can't confirm it absolutely. 859 00:38:29,034 --> 00:38:30,950 But it's mentioned so often in the scholarship 860 00:38:30,950 --> 00:38:33,060 that I want it to be true. 861 00:38:33,060 --> 00:38:36,090 It is said that the sales of undershirts in the United 862 00:38:36,090 --> 00:38:39,540 States plummeted after it was discovered 863 00:38:39,540 --> 00:38:42,342 that this actor wasn't wearing an undershirt. 864 00:38:42,342 --> 00:38:46,100 (GRUFF VOICE) Because that's what men do, OK? 865 00:38:46,100 --> 00:38:48,140 But there is a larger context for the film. 866 00:38:48,140 --> 00:38:50,440 The film takes place during the Depression. 867 00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,550 And even though it's a comic film about two apparently 868 00:38:53,550 --> 00:38:56,750 mismatched creatures who will come together in the end-- can 869 00:38:56,750 --> 00:39:00,180 you guess from the scene in Ball of Fire 870 00:39:00,180 --> 00:39:04,452 what's going to happen to Gary Cooper and that sexy woman 871 00:39:04,452 --> 00:39:05,410 by the end of the film? 872 00:39:05,410 --> 00:39:06,740 Of course you know, don't you? 873 00:39:06,740 --> 00:39:09,180 Why do you know it without ever having seen the film? 874 00:39:09,180 --> 00:39:11,240 Because that's what comedy does, right? 875 00:39:11,240 --> 00:39:13,250 The conventions of comedy do that. 876 00:39:13,250 --> 00:39:15,504 And part of the pleasure in watching that is to say, 877 00:39:15,504 --> 00:39:16,670 look how different they are. 878 00:39:16,670 --> 00:39:18,370 Look how frightened he is. 879 00:39:18,370 --> 00:39:19,626 Look how aggressive she is. 880 00:39:19,626 --> 00:39:21,000 How could they ever get together? 881 00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:22,600 But of course you know that they will. 882 00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:24,475 And part of the pleasure in watching the film 883 00:39:24,475 --> 00:39:26,396 is watching them get over those barriers. 884 00:39:26,396 --> 00:39:29,020 Well, the same thing happens, as you'll see, in tonight's film. 885 00:39:29,020 --> 00:39:31,930 But the gap between the Gable character and the Colbert 886 00:39:31,930 --> 00:39:34,470 character is not just gender male and female. 887 00:39:34,470 --> 00:39:36,040 It's also a class difference. 888 00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:37,807 She belongs to the upper classes. 889 00:39:37,807 --> 00:39:39,890 She has no experience with the outer world at all. 890 00:39:39,890 --> 00:39:42,720 She's lived an incredibly protected life. 891 00:39:42,720 --> 00:39:44,530 So that when she comes to terms with Gable, 892 00:39:44,530 --> 00:39:50,080 she's coming to terms not only with certain inherited 893 00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:51,660 forms of class prejudice. 894 00:39:51,660 --> 00:39:54,920 She's also overcoming a certain kind of innocence and naivete 895 00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:59,370 about her relationship to men, and her relationship maybe even 896 00:39:59,370 --> 00:40:00,920 to her own sexuality. 897 00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:03,100 So the film is a bildungsroman. 898 00:40:03,100 --> 00:40:04,680 You know that word? 899 00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:06,970 Novel about growing up? 900 00:40:06,970 --> 00:40:10,230 About this woman who lived a very-- lives a very 901 00:40:10,230 --> 00:40:10,870 sheltered life. 902 00:40:10,870 --> 00:40:12,600 She's a very spoiled rich girl. 903 00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:14,760 And the drama of the film is she becomes, 904 00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,700 in a certain sense, begins to discover her own real nature, 905 00:40:18,700 --> 00:40:21,070 begins to discover something about her own-- 906 00:40:21,070 --> 00:40:23,490 about her own character and about her own capacity 907 00:40:23,490 --> 00:40:24,830 to judge the outer world. 908 00:40:24,830 --> 00:40:28,770 She's very limited and foolish earlier. 909 00:40:28,770 --> 00:40:31,020 The context of the film, then, is a dramatization 910 00:40:31,020 --> 00:40:32,330 of this relationship. 911 00:40:32,330 --> 00:40:34,670 But the background of the film is the Depression. 912 00:40:34,670 --> 00:40:38,830 And as you'll see, this sexual and marital adventure, 913 00:40:38,830 --> 00:40:43,340 this comedy of marriage, or eventual marriage, 914 00:40:43,340 --> 00:40:46,960 takes place against a backdrop of suffering and unhappiness 915 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:48,100 and misery. 916 00:40:48,100 --> 00:40:52,440 And it imparts a resonance and an importance to the film 917 00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:53,850 that it wouldn't otherwise have. 918 00:40:53,850 --> 00:40:56,150 Because there are scenes in these trailer homes 919 00:40:56,150 --> 00:40:58,880 where the Colbert character, completely unused to having 920 00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:02,050 to live a life like that of ordinary people, 921 00:41:02,050 --> 00:41:04,735 is suddenly forced to confront what such lives are-- what 922 00:41:04,735 --> 00:41:09,400 such a life is like, and it's part of her education. 923 00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,090 So the context of the Depression is important. 924 00:41:12,090 --> 00:41:14,060 A second fundamental thing, as I've already 925 00:41:14,060 --> 00:41:16,330 implied by my anecdote about the undershirt, 926 00:41:16,330 --> 00:41:18,500 is that the Gable character came to stand 927 00:41:18,500 --> 00:41:21,360 for an ideal of American masculinity. 928 00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:25,114 In the scene where he is first introduced, he's half drunk. 929 00:41:25,114 --> 00:41:27,530 And it's important for you to understand the context here, 930 00:41:27,530 --> 00:41:30,140 because it's not exactly celebrating drunkenness. 931 00:41:30,140 --> 00:41:33,290 Although it partly is, I mean, he's a man's man, right? 932 00:41:33,290 --> 00:41:35,590 We see him get drunk and talk on the telephone 933 00:41:35,590 --> 00:41:38,340 to his editor boss, who fires him, right? 934 00:41:38,340 --> 00:41:40,352 And he staggers out of the phone booth, 935 00:41:40,352 --> 00:41:42,810 and he's talking to his friends, and he says, I'm the king. 936 00:41:42,810 --> 00:41:45,470 This is where the word-- where the term the King of Hollywood 937 00:41:45,470 --> 00:41:49,051 originates, in the lines that you see in the film. 938 00:41:49,051 --> 00:41:51,550 But it's important for you to understand that part of what's 939 00:41:51,550 --> 00:41:53,950 going on here-- it's 1934. 940 00:41:53,950 --> 00:41:56,819 Prohibition has just been lifted, right? 941 00:41:56,819 --> 00:41:59,110 And what's being dramatized there, it's illegal for him 942 00:41:59,110 --> 00:42:02,100 to drink for the first time in whatever it is, a decade. 943 00:42:02,100 --> 00:42:04,357 And the film is partly celebrating that, right? 944 00:42:04,357 --> 00:42:05,940 So you're not supposed to think of him 945 00:42:05,940 --> 00:42:08,362 as some ridiculous roustabout drunkard. 946 00:42:08,362 --> 00:42:10,320 You're supposed to recognize that what's partly 947 00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:14,110 being dramatized there is the new freedom that 948 00:42:14,110 --> 00:42:17,170 has emerged in American society now that Prohibition 949 00:42:17,170 --> 00:42:18,970 has been repealed. 950 00:42:18,970 --> 00:42:22,580 And in that scene you can see something-- 951 00:42:22,580 --> 00:42:27,582 because his half drunkenness, we do see some of his inhibitions. 952 00:42:27,582 --> 00:42:29,540 You can see something of his true nature there. 953 00:42:29,540 --> 00:42:31,392 And what you discover is-- and you 954 00:42:31,392 --> 00:42:33,850 can see this come out elsewhere in the film too-- something 955 00:42:33,850 --> 00:42:36,880 that the Colbert character at first can't recognize. 956 00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:38,740 That he has a heart of gold, that he's 957 00:42:38,740 --> 00:42:41,450 a decent, admirable person, that he would never 958 00:42:41,450 --> 00:42:42,610 treat anyone badly. 959 00:42:42,610 --> 00:42:44,690 But he's also very self-reliant, and no one 960 00:42:44,690 --> 00:42:46,020 can push them around. 961 00:42:46,020 --> 00:42:48,750 He's a particular kind of-- represents a particular kind 962 00:42:48,750 --> 00:42:50,550 of masculine ideal, right? 963 00:42:50,550 --> 00:42:53,780 He can't be intimidated, but he'll never mistreat someone. 964 00:42:53,780 --> 00:42:57,420 He has a kind of moral compass that guides his behavior, even 965 00:42:57,420 --> 00:42:59,520 though it's implicit, right? 966 00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,900 He's a bit vulgar. 967 00:43:01,900 --> 00:43:05,250 He's suspicious of wealth and pretension. 968 00:43:05,250 --> 00:43:06,900 The Gable character came to stand 969 00:43:06,900 --> 00:43:09,940 for a particular kind of American masculinity 970 00:43:09,940 --> 00:43:13,880 that was celebrated over and over again in American movies, 971 00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:16,392 a kind of-- a type of the American male. 972 00:43:16,392 --> 00:43:18,850 I've already said that one of the things the film does also 973 00:43:18,850 --> 00:43:21,937 is dramatize a romance across social class. 974 00:43:21,937 --> 00:43:24,020 And you might want to think about the way in which 975 00:43:24,020 --> 00:43:28,670 the-- in almost all comedy, and certainly comedies that 976 00:43:28,670 --> 00:43:31,090 involve-- comedies about marriage, 977 00:43:31,090 --> 00:43:36,010 comedies about men and women, almost all such comedies 978 00:43:36,010 --> 00:43:40,920 involve some notion of barriers of some sort that are placed 979 00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,980 in the way of the consummation in which the text wants to end, 980 00:43:44,980 --> 00:43:45,480 right? 981 00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:47,750 And those barriers can take many forms. 982 00:43:47,750 --> 00:43:50,460 But one of the most fundamental forms they take over and over 983 00:43:50,460 --> 00:43:52,700 again is the barrier of class. 984 00:43:52,700 --> 00:43:54,910 And one of the things that the Colbert character 985 00:43:54,910 --> 00:43:57,070 and the Gable character both have to do 986 00:43:57,070 --> 00:43:59,690 is get over their prejudices, get over 987 00:43:59,690 --> 00:44:02,960 their blind spots about the social classes they 988 00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:05,600 have less understanding of. 989 00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:08,420 One of the most moving and powerful aspects of the film, 990 00:44:08,420 --> 00:44:11,740 and I think you'll see this really powerfully, 991 00:44:11,740 --> 00:44:13,350 is the way in which the audience comes 992 00:44:13,350 --> 00:44:15,420 to have an understanding of the characters that 993 00:44:15,420 --> 00:44:17,346 exceeds that of the characters. 994 00:44:17,346 --> 00:44:18,720 And that there are many moments-- 995 00:44:18,720 --> 00:44:20,935 there are many moments in the film in which you 996 00:44:20,935 --> 00:44:22,960 will understand how the characters are 997 00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:26,290 feeling before they are able to acknowledge it themselves. 998 00:44:26,290 --> 00:44:28,280 You can see them falling in love, for example, 999 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,550 without them being able to admit it to themselves. 1000 00:44:31,550 --> 00:44:35,250 And it's immensely-- think of what an immensely subtle trick 1001 00:44:35,250 --> 00:44:39,330 that is, to put the viewer in possession of information 1002 00:44:39,330 --> 00:44:41,860 or knowledge that the characters themselves don't have, 1003 00:44:41,860 --> 00:44:44,000 and what a rich kind of knowledge 1004 00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:47,180 and ironic perspective-- a rich kind of irony 1005 00:44:47,180 --> 00:44:50,510 that generates for the viewing of the film. 1006 00:44:50,510 --> 00:44:53,590 "A marriage of true minds" is a famous sonnet by Shakespeare 1007 00:44:53,590 --> 00:44:56,550 that begins, "let me not to the marriage of true minds 1008 00:44:56,550 --> 00:44:59,010 admit impediments." 1009 00:44:59,010 --> 00:45:03,810 The impediments to the marriage of true minds in this film 1010 00:45:03,810 --> 00:45:10,490 have to do with the characters-- the Colbert character's naivete 1011 00:45:10,490 --> 00:45:13,860 with the prejudices and self-reliance of the Gable 1012 00:45:13,860 --> 00:45:18,160 character, with the social realities of the Depression. 1013 00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:21,920 And these barriers have to be overcome. 1014 00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:26,720 But "a marriage of true minds," what could the phrase mean? 1015 00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:28,700 A marriage of equals, a marriage of people 1016 00:45:28,700 --> 00:45:29,830 who are not different. 1017 00:45:29,830 --> 00:45:31,945 The deepest thing I love about this movie, 1018 00:45:31,945 --> 00:45:34,570 and the reason that I've come-- that I treasure this film, even 1019 00:45:34,570 --> 00:45:36,710 though there are many old-fashioned qualities in it 1020 00:45:36,710 --> 00:45:39,540 that make it feel old and distant, in some sense, 1021 00:45:39,540 --> 00:45:44,170 from contemporary society is its understanding of-- it's 1022 00:45:44,170 --> 00:45:47,340 the implicit, idealized understanding of marriage. 1023 00:45:47,340 --> 00:45:49,420 Because what the film really wants to suggest 1024 00:45:49,420 --> 00:45:52,140 is not that-- first of all, it suggests that these people are 1025 00:45:52,140 --> 00:45:53,776 drawn to each other sexually. 1026 00:45:53,776 --> 00:45:55,650 It's not embarrassed by the fact that they're 1027 00:45:55,650 --> 00:45:58,870 both physically beautiful people and that they feel attraction 1028 00:45:58,870 --> 00:46:00,700 for each other that they can't themselves 1029 00:46:00,700 --> 00:46:03,360 fully acknowledge or deal with. 1030 00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,490 But the second kind of attraction they have 1031 00:46:05,490 --> 00:46:06,880 is a mental attraction. 1032 00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:09,790 They realize that they're both deeply intelligent people, 1033 00:46:09,790 --> 00:46:12,930 that they're both people who are deeply verbal, that they 1034 00:46:12,930 --> 00:46:17,642 both have improvisatory powers, intellectual powers, that 1035 00:46:17,642 --> 00:46:19,100 distinguish them from other people. 1036 00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:21,330 That they're made for each other, essentially. 1037 00:46:21,330 --> 00:46:22,940 There's one scene that shows this. 1038 00:46:22,940 --> 00:46:24,830 Before they realize it, we realize it. 1039 00:46:24,830 --> 00:46:26,396 It's a wonderful scene. 1040 00:46:26,396 --> 00:46:27,645 They're hiding out in a motel. 1041 00:46:27,645 --> 00:46:30,800 And at a certain point, she's on the run. 1042 00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:32,540 Her rich father is searching for her. 1043 00:46:32,540 --> 00:46:34,336 And the Gable character's a reporter. 1044 00:46:34,336 --> 00:46:36,710 Says, I'll protect you and help you if you give me your-- 1045 00:46:36,710 --> 00:46:38,890 if you let me have an exclusive story, because she's 1046 00:46:38,890 --> 00:46:41,700 such a rich heiress that she's big news. 1047 00:46:41,700 --> 00:46:44,510 So she agrees, and he's escorting her north, 1048 00:46:44,510 --> 00:46:47,620 hiding from the people who are searching for her, right? 1049 00:46:47,620 --> 00:46:50,030 And at a certain point, they're in a motel. 1050 00:46:50,030 --> 00:46:53,200 Some private cops knock on the door of the hotel, 1051 00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:55,390 and they come in, and they're searching for her. 1052 00:46:55,390 --> 00:46:56,825 And watch what happens. 1053 00:46:56,825 --> 00:46:58,610 What Gable and the Colbert character 1054 00:46:58,610 --> 00:47:01,640 do is they immediate-- Gable says, follow my lead. 1055 00:47:01,640 --> 00:47:03,580 And then when they come in, they begin 1056 00:47:03,580 --> 00:47:06,320 to play husband and wife having a tremendous quarrel. 1057 00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,960 And you can watch-- you can see that they're improvising it. 1058 00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:10,870 And you can see they're enjoying it. 1059 00:47:10,870 --> 00:47:13,180 And you can see how well they play with each other. 1060 00:47:13,180 --> 00:47:15,054 So in other words, it's a moment in which you 1061 00:47:15,054 --> 00:47:17,090 can see that it is a marriage of true minds, 1062 00:47:17,090 --> 00:47:19,490 long before the characters themselves fully 1063 00:47:19,490 --> 00:47:21,874 recognize how they are meant for each other. 1064 00:47:21,874 --> 00:47:23,290 That's a wonderful moment in which 1065 00:47:23,290 --> 00:47:26,290 their intimacy and there appropriateness for each other 1066 00:47:26,290 --> 00:47:27,000 is dramatized. 1067 00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,330 It's not only a physical or a sexual thing. 1068 00:47:30,330 --> 00:47:33,670 It's also an intellectual and a moral and mental thing, 1069 00:47:33,670 --> 00:47:35,610 a psychological thing. 1070 00:47:35,610 --> 00:47:37,820 They are-- it will be a marriage of true minds 1071 00:47:37,820 --> 00:47:39,349 if they can come together. 1072 00:47:39,349 --> 00:47:41,140 I want to end-- just finally mention-- I've 1073 00:47:41,140 --> 00:47:42,430 mentioned the ending already. 1074 00:47:42,430 --> 00:47:45,830 And I'll just say one more time that, 1075 00:47:45,830 --> 00:47:47,340 watch how the ending works out. 1076 00:47:47,340 --> 00:47:49,660 And you'll see a magnificent example 1077 00:47:49,660 --> 00:47:53,800 of a director dealing with contingencies he could not 1078 00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:56,330 possibly have anticipated. 1079 00:47:56,330 --> 00:47:59,470 And it's a wonderful example of a kind of inventiveness. 1080 00:47:59,470 --> 00:48:02,610 Seems to me, the film ends as well as it could end. 1081 00:48:02,610 --> 00:48:05,120 And it's better that the actors aren't there. 1082 00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,000 But he certainly-- when this happened, 1083 00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:10,350 I'm sure that Capra thought it was the end of his film 1084 00:48:10,350 --> 00:48:11,850 and that he was-- didn't know what 1085 00:48:11,850 --> 00:48:13,308 he was going to do to try to finish 1086 00:48:13,308 --> 00:48:15,640 his film without his star actress. 1087 00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:17,677 I have to be even briefer about His Girl Friday, 1088 00:48:17,677 --> 00:48:19,510 but I think it's a more straightforward film 1089 00:48:19,510 --> 00:48:21,140 in some respects. 1090 00:48:21,140 --> 00:48:22,850 It's a much less sentimental film, 1091 00:48:22,850 --> 00:48:26,560 and I hope you'll recognize how deeply-- how much more deeply, 1092 00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:30,330 unsentimental, even cynical, or at least deeply tough minded 1093 00:48:30,330 --> 00:48:34,020 and suspicious, skeptical Howard Hawks is about all 1094 00:48:34,020 --> 00:48:35,430 of the operations of the world. 1095 00:48:35,430 --> 00:48:37,970 Not only about individual human motives, 1096 00:48:37,970 --> 00:48:39,910 but about all human institutions. 1097 00:48:39,910 --> 00:48:43,792 Virtually everyone in His Girl Friday 1098 00:48:43,792 --> 00:48:48,760 is a cynical, self-seeking creep. 1099 00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:51,440 Even the primary characters, the Ros Russell character 1100 00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,980 and the Cary Grant character have 1101 00:48:54,980 --> 00:48:57,990 intriguish, manipulative elements in their natures. 1102 00:48:57,990 --> 00:49:00,180 And you can see especially that the Cary Grant 1103 00:49:00,180 --> 00:49:04,490 character is, in some respects, a very nasty piece of work. 1104 00:49:04,490 --> 00:49:06,180 He does terrible, terrible things 1105 00:49:06,180 --> 00:49:09,220 to poor Ralph Bellamy, the man that Ros Russell is 1106 00:49:09,220 --> 00:49:12,010 supposed to marry, her fiance. 1107 00:49:12,010 --> 00:49:14,830 He plays a sort of straight, sweet, straightforward kind 1108 00:49:14,830 --> 00:49:17,490 of person, very much in love with his girlfriend, 1109 00:49:17,490 --> 00:49:19,840 but completely-- how can we put it? 1110 00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:21,340 But he's a dummy. 1111 00:49:21,340 --> 00:49:22,570 He's stupid. 1112 00:49:22,570 --> 00:49:25,550 And even though he's very nice, you don't really like him. 1113 00:49:25,550 --> 00:49:28,060 You think he's a jerk. 1114 00:49:28,060 --> 00:49:29,579 The film makes you mean or nasty, 1115 00:49:29,579 --> 00:49:31,120 in some sense, because it makes you-- 1116 00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:33,980 it makes you see things from the perspective of the Cary Grant 1117 00:49:33,980 --> 00:49:34,750 character. 1118 00:49:34,750 --> 00:49:38,272 It encourages you to be tough minded and skeptical. 1119 00:49:38,272 --> 00:49:40,480 And you do come away from the film thinking, oh, gee. 1120 00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:42,230 I've participated in the humiliation 1121 00:49:42,230 --> 00:49:43,570 of this poor, decent guy. 1122 00:49:43,570 --> 00:49:44,890 But anyway, he's deserved it. 1123 00:49:44,890 --> 00:49:47,290 He's such a stupid mark, right? 1124 00:49:47,290 --> 00:49:49,645 You can't-- you almost can't help that kind of reaction. 1125 00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:54,040 The film is based on what had been 1126 00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:56,980 a very successful play on Broadway, 1127 00:49:56,980 --> 00:49:59,150 some generation earlier. 1128 00:49:59,150 --> 00:50:02,260 And that play was made into a film in 1930 1129 00:50:02,260 --> 00:50:04,970 that was quite successful, directed by Lewis Milestone. 1130 00:50:04,970 --> 00:50:09,370 But the Hawks film is the classic version of it. 1131 00:50:09,370 --> 00:50:11,740 And Hawks does one thing that's very important, 1132 00:50:11,740 --> 00:50:14,020 that changes the original, changes 1133 00:50:14,020 --> 00:50:15,390 the play in a fundamental way. 1134 00:50:15,390 --> 00:50:17,160 In the original play, the character 1135 00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:20,170 played by the Rosalind Russell figure in the movie 1136 00:50:20,170 --> 00:50:21,770 is a male character. 1137 00:50:21,770 --> 00:50:26,090 And the great discovery or the great transformation 1138 00:50:26,090 --> 00:50:28,340 that was wrought in the film by Howard Hawks 1139 00:50:28,340 --> 00:50:31,750 was his decision to turn that character, 1140 00:50:31,750 --> 00:50:37,320 a guy named Johnson, from a male Johnson into Hildegard Johnson. 1141 00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:40,080 Hildy, Johnson, the character played by Rosalind Russell. 1142 00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:43,090 And as soon as he turned her into a woman, 1143 00:50:43,090 --> 00:50:45,200 he created his screwball comedy. 1144 00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:48,140 He created a wonderful kind of antagonist 1145 00:50:48,140 --> 00:50:49,355 for the Cary Grant character. 1146 00:50:53,340 --> 00:50:59,080 I've already indicated to you how many films 1147 00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,832 in different genres Hawks directed. 1148 00:51:01,832 --> 00:51:03,540 Remember that list I put up there was not 1149 00:51:03,540 --> 00:51:04,500 a complete list at all. 1150 00:51:04,500 --> 00:51:06,100 It was a selected list. 1151 00:51:06,100 --> 00:51:08,460 But it was some of the most important films 1152 00:51:08,460 --> 00:51:10,000 by each director. 1153 00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:13,680 And one of the things that's really interesting about Hawks 1154 00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:17,710 is that he directs Westerns and screwball comedies 1155 00:51:17,710 --> 00:51:21,420 and private eye films and war movies, 1156 00:51:21,420 --> 00:51:28,520 and a range of other lesser, sort of no-genre films as well. 1157 00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:31,190 And yet in all of them, there are certain throughlines. 1158 00:51:31,190 --> 00:51:33,820 You can recognize certain recurring themes 1159 00:51:33,820 --> 00:51:35,840 across these radically different films. 1160 00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:38,600 And one of the most fun-- and one of the way-- one 1161 00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:41,230 the most fundamental impulses in a Hawks 1162 00:51:41,230 --> 00:51:44,510 film, whether it's a Western or a war movie or a screwball 1163 00:51:44,510 --> 00:51:48,420 comedy, is an impulse to slow things-- well, 1164 00:51:48,420 --> 00:51:50,920 not to slow things down exactly, because his dialogue is 1165 00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:52,030 so rapid-fire. 1166 00:51:52,030 --> 00:51:56,320 But to sort of stop the plot, to interrupt the story 1167 00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:58,420 with a scene of argument. 1168 00:51:58,420 --> 00:52:00,140 He loves scenes of quarrel. 1169 00:52:00,140 --> 00:52:02,830 He loves scenes of discussion, of talk. 1170 00:52:02,830 --> 00:52:04,230 He loves talk. 1171 00:52:04,230 --> 00:52:06,170 And especially, he loves intelligent people 1172 00:52:06,170 --> 00:52:07,810 quarreling with each other. 1173 00:52:07,810 --> 00:52:10,360 And there's never been a director better 1174 00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:15,050 at eliciting from his actors quick, rapid-fire dialogue. 1175 00:52:15,050 --> 00:52:17,119 In fact, he developed a strategy for doing this. 1176 00:52:17,119 --> 00:52:18,785 He used to sit right next to the camera. 1177 00:52:18,785 --> 00:52:20,310 He didn't stand behind the camera. 1178 00:52:20,310 --> 00:52:21,280 He had a cameraman. 1179 00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:23,130 But he sat right next to the camera, 1180 00:52:23,130 --> 00:52:25,900 and he had his actors play to him, 1181 00:52:25,900 --> 00:52:29,110 only sometimes very close to him as they were acting. 1182 00:52:29,110 --> 00:52:31,470 And if you watch, especially some of the scenes 1183 00:52:31,470 --> 00:52:34,680 in this film, you will see what astonishingly 1184 00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:38,430 realistic performances he got from his actors 1185 00:52:38,430 --> 00:52:39,460 by this strategy. 1186 00:52:39,460 --> 00:52:42,320 He even encouraged certain forms of improvisation. 1187 00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:44,175 He would run through rehearsals first, 1188 00:52:44,175 --> 00:52:46,300 and then he would encourage, when he began to film, 1189 00:52:46,300 --> 00:52:49,940 scenes-- he would encourages his actors to improvise 1190 00:52:49,940 --> 00:52:51,670 and to improvise to his face. 1191 00:52:51,670 --> 00:52:55,240 And he creates a kind of electric authenticity 1192 00:52:55,240 --> 00:52:58,540 in his dialogue scenes that has a tremendous authority. 1193 00:52:58,540 --> 00:53:00,630 So the character plot I'm talking about 1194 00:53:00,630 --> 00:53:02,890 is this impulse to slow the plot down 1195 00:53:02,890 --> 00:53:06,472 or to stop the plot for scenes of argument and conversation. 1196 00:53:06,472 --> 00:53:08,180 And what constantly happens, whether he's 1197 00:53:08,180 --> 00:53:10,380 making a Western or a screwball comedy, 1198 00:53:10,380 --> 00:53:11,990 is his characters stop the action 1199 00:53:11,990 --> 00:53:14,590 and say, oh, what do you think is going to happen next? 1200 00:53:14,590 --> 00:53:16,270 If I do this, what will happen then? 1201 00:53:16,270 --> 00:53:18,000 As if the films begin to generate 1202 00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:21,810 a kind of meta-commentary about their own nature, right? 1203 00:53:21,810 --> 00:53:24,280 So they're incredibly talky films, 1204 00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:28,580 and the dialogue is fundamental to your-- the rapidity 1205 00:53:28,580 --> 00:53:31,920 of the dialogue is fundamental to your understanding 1206 00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,090 of the characters and to your understanding of the larger 1207 00:53:35,090 --> 00:53:35,960 film. 1208 00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:40,435 So his central scene then is a scene of quarreling intimacy. 1209 00:53:40,435 --> 00:53:41,810 You feel that they're quarreling, 1210 00:53:41,810 --> 00:53:44,080 but you also feel that no people could quarrel exactly 1211 00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:47,560 in this way if they weren't also intimate with each other. 1212 00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:49,315 And you'll see fully how it works out 1213 00:53:49,315 --> 00:53:51,280 when you see the film itself. 1214 00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:54,710 So finally, I want to say at least a word 1215 00:53:54,710 --> 00:53:56,860 to remind you how it actually-- although he's 1216 00:53:56,860 --> 00:53:59,980 tremendously entertaining line by line and scene by scene. 1217 00:53:59,980 --> 00:54:01,830 And never calls-- such a professional. 1218 00:54:01,830 --> 00:54:03,800 He never calls attention to his camera. 1219 00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,130 He's a very quiet filmmaker in that sense. 1220 00:54:07,130 --> 00:54:09,250 A real journeyman, a real professional. 1221 00:54:09,250 --> 00:54:11,532 He doesn't want you to think about him or his camera. 1222 00:54:11,532 --> 00:54:13,490 He wants you to think about what you're seeing. 1223 00:54:13,490 --> 00:54:15,637 There are limits to this strategy, 1224 00:54:15,637 --> 00:54:17,303 and we'll talk about what the limits are 1225 00:54:17,303 --> 00:54:19,094 when we look at certain other directors who 1226 00:54:19,094 --> 00:54:20,060 behave in other ways. 1227 00:54:20,060 --> 00:54:21,476 But there are also great strengths 1228 00:54:21,476 --> 00:54:23,870 to this, as you'll see when you watch tonight's film. 1229 00:54:23,870 --> 00:54:26,920 And something of his complexity is embedded here. 1230 00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:28,960 Because what you can find is he creates 1231 00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:33,270 scenes of immense comic energy, really generates real laughter. 1232 00:54:33,270 --> 00:54:34,730 But beneath the laughter, there's 1233 00:54:34,730 --> 00:54:38,720 a deep layer, a deep substrate of cynicism, 1234 00:54:38,720 --> 00:54:41,770 of skepticism, about human motives, 1235 00:54:41,770 --> 00:54:44,240 about the virtue of human institutions, 1236 00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:46,270 about the capacity of human institutions 1237 00:54:46,270 --> 00:54:50,380 and individual human beings for corruption and misdirection. 1238 00:54:50,380 --> 00:54:53,320 There's a kind of deep political and social cynicism 1239 00:54:53,320 --> 00:54:55,960 in the film that doubles the comedy 1240 00:54:55,960 --> 00:55:02,180 or complicates or deepens or roughens the comedy, 1241 00:55:02,180 --> 00:55:05,340 sours the comedy, in a way that makes 1242 00:55:05,340 --> 00:55:08,740 for a particular kind of complexity. 1243 00:55:08,740 --> 00:55:10,840 It's possible to argue, which some critics have, 1244 00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:15,620 that this film, more than any other that Hawks made, 1245 00:55:15,620 --> 00:55:20,230 combines laughter and cynicism in unique measures. 1246 00:55:20,230 --> 00:55:24,240 And I think together, these two films and these two directors 1247 00:55:24,240 --> 00:55:28,791 can mark at least a certain pole, certain poles 1248 00:55:28,791 --> 00:55:31,570 in the tradition of Hollywood filmmaking, 1249 00:55:31,570 --> 00:55:34,000 and especially in the tradition of screwball comedy. 1250 00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:38,680 You can feel the pull toward a kind of sentimental, affirming 1251 00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:45,320 impulse in Frank Capra, and the pull toward a kind 1252 00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:49,700 of cynical, distanced, complex, psychologically 1253 00:55:49,700 --> 00:55:52,860 deep, politically informed laughter, 1254 00:55:52,860 --> 00:55:55,360 even mockery in Howard Hawks. 1255 00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:59,150 And they represent two aspects, two elements, 1256 00:55:59,150 --> 00:56:04,350 almost poles within the larger story of the Hollywood studio 1257 00:56:04,350 --> 00:56:05,180 film. 1258 00:56:05,180 --> 00:56:07,140 Enjoy the films.