Overview

At a time when the Hollywood studios are stronger than they have ever been during the eighty-year history, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art.The book lays to rest the persistent myth that studio executives and producers stifle artistic talent, and reveals instead the genius of a system of collaboration and conflict. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers and the making, and unmaking, of movies, from Frankenstein to Casablanca to Hitchcock's Notorious - and how it all collapsed in the face of television.The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundation of the New.

Full Product Details

9780571195961

Table of Contents

Reviews

Schatz (Hollywood Genres, 1981) limits this study of the Hollywood factory system to four giants: Universal Pictures, MGM, Warner Brothers, and David O. Selznick International Pictures. Having vastly researched these four through industry documents, interoffice memos, corporate correspondence, budgets, schedules, story-conference notes, daily production reports, censorship files, etc., he locates the genius he seeks without overloading his study with encyclopedic comprehensiveness. Schatz has a fine time presenting the house styles of these companies and their trade-offs between economics and aesthetics, but the book is very much a study of economics, not a pile of juicy stories or rich show of ideas about talent and genius, and many eager readers will fade under the flow of production figures and analyses. Those who stick will find Schatz's producers getting the lion's share of attention, especially Irving Thalberg ( the man who first learned to calculate the whole equation of pictures, who understood the delicate balance of art and commerce in moviemaking ) and Selznick, with Alfred Hitchcock as the director who gets the most space. Many truly obscure Films (e.g., A Letter of Introduction, 1938), part of a new treasure trove now being shown on TNT's late-night cable, get as much attention as famous hits or such studio staples as the Andy Hardy series, the Gene Kelly and Busby Berkley musicals, Bette Davis programmers, or Universal's low-budget horror and Deanna Durbin flicks. In the end, Schatz does prove his point - that talent confronting the factory system actually produced the genius later killed by TV, diversification, and conglomeration. An original theme that should raise hackles. (Kirkus Reviews)

A controversial examination of Hollywood's studio system, exploring the contradictions of an industrial process that is also an art. Thomas Schatz argues that the traditional perception of studio suppression of artistic talent over the pursuit of profit is a myth. It is the system of production itself, constructed by the executives and producers, which created the genius of Hollywood rather than the individual auteur. A debateable thesis certainly, but an extremely well-constructed one framed by an impressive research of industry documents. It provides a fascinating account of the rise, golden age and final fall to television of the studio. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available