Our professor in Cinema101 let us watch American Cinema, a
series exploring film history and American culture
in films through the years. The second episode of the series was all about The
Stars during the early years of Hollywood films and as discussed in the
documentary, Hollywood
cosidered that the talents of the stars could save film production from its
financial problems. Critics, film scholars, and studio publicists see stars as
marketing tools, cultural icons, and products of the industry.
The Star episode talked about the life
of the movie stars on and off the camera, how they controlled cinema for a while,
and how did it all change over the decades. The documentary featured a lot of famous
faces including Jack Lemmon, Julia Roberts, John Waters, Douglas Fairbanks,
Jr., Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Arthur Wilde, Jane Russell and Joan
Crawford.
Fans of Hollywood and its history might
not learn anything they haven't heard before but this is still a very
entertaining piece. You would learn a lot about the life of the stars then even
the star system as they call it. The Star system was a method of creating,
promoting and exploiting movie stars in Classical Hollywood Cinema. These stars
weren’t expected to be the best in acting, singing or dancing. They mainly
focused on the image of the stars, how they act out, dress, behave in public.
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