American Cinema (Кино и театры Америки)
Minicap Educational Establishment
Secondary School N0 1 with
Thorough Learning of Foreign Languages
Central District, Chelyabinsk
Report
''American Cinema''
Made by Bragina Kate
Class 10-4
Foreign Language Department
2001-2002
The contents
Introduction. 2
American Cinema 3
The earliest history of film. 4
The earliest movie theatres. 4
The growth of the film industry. 5
Popcorn 7
The Oscar. 7
Hollywood. 7
Beverly Hills. 9
The major film genres. 9
Film Companies 10
Film Directors and Producers 10
Films. 12
Actors and Actresses. 12
Marilyn Monroe. 16
Walt Disney 18
Titanic. 19
Literature. 20
Vocabularly. 21
Introduction.
I’m a cinema goer. And also I like watching films on TV or video.
But I think, that watching a good film is the best relaxation. It is
thought-provoking and entertaining. Now a growing number of people prefer
watching films on TV to attending cinemas. There are wonderful comedies,
love stories, science fiction, horror films, detective stories, and
historical films on. There’s a variety of films available today. It is
difficult to live without cinema. One fact is clear for everyone: cinema
makes our life better. Cinema helps us to forget different problems. When
people watch films, they have a rest. Some films take people into another
world. I think it is a pure world, where usual problems do not even exist.
Cinema is a great power, it helps us to understand our complex well. Cinema
can leave nobody indifferent. It is so powerful that it provokes complex
feelings. We meet a lot of people. Everyone has his own opinion about
something and like most of us I have my own opinion too, for example, about
cinema. Cinema is a necessary and important part of my life. It is my
essence, my mode of life and my happiness. Cinema helps me to cope with
difficulties and with incorrigible problems. So that’s why I have chosen
the topic ‘Cinema’.
American Cinema
The world of American cinema is so far-reaching a topic that it
deserves, and often receives, volumes of its own. Hollywood (in Los
Angeles, California), of course, immediately comes to mind, as do the many
great directors, actors and actresses it continues to attract and produce.
But then, one also thinks of the many independent studios throughout the
country, the educational and documentary series and films, the socially-
relevant tradition in cinema, and the film departments of universities,
such as the University of Southern California (USC), the University of
California at Los Angeles (UCLA) or New York University.
For over 50 years, American films have continued to grow in popularity
throughout the world. Television has only increased this popularity.
The great blockbusters of film entertainment that stretch from "Gone
with the Wind" to "Star Wars" receive the most attention. A look at the
prizes awarded at the leading international film festivals will also
demonstrate that as an art form, the American film continues to enjoy-
considerable prestige. Even when the theme is serious or, as they say,
"meaningful", American films remain "popular". In the past decade, films
which treated the danger of nuclear power and weapons, alcoholism, divorce,
inner-city blight, .the effects of slavery, the plight of Native Americans,
poverty and immigration have all received awards and international
recognition. And, at the same time, they have done well at the box-office.
Movies (films), including those on video-cassettes, remain the most
popular art form in the USA. A book with 20,000 readers is considered to be
a best-seller. A hit play may be seen by a few thousand theatergoers. By
contrast, about a billion movie tickets are sold at movie houses across the
USA every year.
There are three main varieties of movie theaters in the USA: 1) the
"first-run" movie houses, which show new films; 2) "art theaters", which
specialize in showing foreign films and revivals; 3) "neighborhood
theaters", which run films — sometimes two at a time — after the "first-
run" houses.
New York is a movie theater capital of the country. Many of the city's
famous large movie theaters, once giving Times Square so much of its
glitter, have been torn down or converted (in some cases into smaller
theaters), and a new generation of modem theaters has appeared to the north
and east of the area. Most of them offer continuous performances from
around noon till midnight. Less crowded and less expensive are the so-
called "neighborhood theaters", which show films several weeks or months
after the "first-run" theaters. There are several theaters that specialize
in revivals of famous old films and others that show only modernist, avant-
garde films. Still others, especially those along 42nd Street, between the
Avenue of Americas and Eighth Avenue, run movies about sex and violence.
Foreign films, especially those of British, French, Italian and Swedish
origin, are often seen in New York, and several movie theaters specialize
in the showing of foreign-language films for the various ethnic groups in
the city.
The earliest history of film.
The illusion of movement was first noted in the early 19th century. In
1824 the English physician Peter Mark Roget published an article ‘the
persistence of vision with regard to moving objects’. Many inventors put
his theory to the test with pictures posted on coins that were flipped by
the thumb, and with rotating disks of drawings. A particular favorite was
the zoetrope, slotted revolving drum through which could be seen clowns and
animals that seemed to leap. They were hand drawn on strips of paper fitted
inside the drum. Other similar devices were the hemitrope, the phasmatrope,
the phenakistoscope, and the praxinoscope. It is not possible to give any
one person credit for having invented the motion picture. In the 1880s the
Frenchman Etienne Jules Marey developed the rotating shutter with a slot to
admit light, and George Eastman, of New York, developed flexible film. In
1888 Thomas Edison, of New Jersey, his phonograph for recording and playing
sound on wax cylinders. He tried to combine sound with motion pictures.
Edison’s assistant, William Dickson, worked on the idea, and in 1889, he
both appeared and spoke in a film. Edison did not turn his attention to the
projected motion picture at first. The results were still not good enough,
and Edison did not think that films would not have large appeal. Instead he
produced and patented the kinetoscope, which ran a continuous loop of film
about 15 meters (50 feet) long. Only one person could view it at a time. By
1894, hand-cranked kinetoscope appeared all over the United States and
Europe. Edison demonstrated a projecting kinetoscope. The cinematograph
based on Edison’s kinetoscope was invented by two Frenchmen, Louis and
Auguste Lumiere. This machine consisted of a portable camera and a
projector. In December 1895, The Lumiere brothers organized a program of
short motion pictures at a Parisian cafe.
The earliest movie theatres.
Films were first thought of as experiment or toys. They were shown in
scientific laboratories and in the drawing rooms of private home. When
their commercial potential was realized they began to be screened in public
to a paying audience. The first films to be shown publicly were short,
filmed news items and travelogues. These were screened alongside live
variety acts form theatre shows, called vaudeville in United States. Within
a few years fairground tents that slowed nothing but programs of films were
common sights. In United States stores were converted onto movie theatre,
which were known as ‘storefront theatre’. People would pay a nickel to see
about an hour’s worth of film, so the theatre came to be known as
‘nickelodeons’. Early film audiences needed patience. There were many
technical problems. Projectors were likely to breath down and every
projectionist kept slides to reassure the audience: ‘The performance will
resume shortly.’ Many projectors caused flickering on the screen, earning
films the nickname of ‘the flicks’.
The growth of the film industry.
From the start the film industry was eager to make and show films that
people would want to see. The most popular films were those that told
stories- narrative fiction films. Film making began to realize that by
using different camera angels, locations, lighting and special effects,
film could tell a story in the way that live theatre couldn’t.
The great Train Robbery, made in 1903 by Edwin S. Porter, was the first
American narrative fiction film. It included the basic ingredients of the
Western: a hold-up, a chase, and a gunfight. It used a great variety of
shots by showing the action at different distances from the camera- long
shots of action in the distance, but also medium shots of the actors shown
full-length, and chase-ups of the face and shoulders of a gunman shooting
directly at the audience.
Before World War I American film industry had logged behind the film
industries of Europe particularly those of France and Italy. But during the
