Cinematic Flashes , livre ebook

CINEMATIC
Flashes
CINEPHILIA AND CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD
CINEMATIC
Flashes
RASHNA WADIA RICHARDS
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2013 by Rashna Wadia Richards
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Richards, Rashna Wadia, [date]
Cinematic flashes : cinephilia and classical Hollywood / Rashna Wadia Richards.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00688-2 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00692-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00700-1 (e-book) 1. Motion pictures - United States - History - 20th century. 2. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) - History - 20th century. I. Title.
PN 1993.5. U 6 R 495 2012
791.430973 - dc23
2012026048
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
FOR JASON
Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION : Inventing Cinephiliac Historiography
1
SONIC BOOMS : 1929 and the Sensational Transition to Sound
2
SHOW STOPPERS : 1937 and the Chance Encounter with Chiffons
3
SIGNATURE CRIMES : 1946 and the Strange Case of the Lost Scene (as Well as the Stranger Case of the Missing Auteur)
4
APOCALYPTIC ANTENNAE : 1954 and the End of Storytelling

CONCLUSION : The Cinephiliac Return

Notes

Bibliography

Index
Acknowledgments
This book was conceived in Robert B. Ray s seminar on experimental film criticism at the University of Florida in the fall of 2001. Robert introduced me to the concept of cinephilia and guided critically my many inchoate ideas. This book would not exist without his support and wise counsel, and I am truly grateful for his enduring influence on my work and my life. I also benefited immensely from the guidance and encouragement offered by Nora Alter, Susan Hegeman, and Greg Ulmer. They challenged me to think historically and helped refine my arguments considerably. In the English department at UF, I was thrilled to find a stimulating and demanding intellectual environment where I could hone my ideas and prepare for life as a teacher-scholar.
After graduate school, many mentors and friends have helped this project along. Among those who offered helpful feedback at conferences, responded to email inquiries, read my work, and provided encouragement at just the right moments, I want to thank especially Chris Holmlund, David T. Johnson, Christian Keathley, Christopher D. Morris, James Naremore, and Drake Stutesman. I am profoundly indebted to the two anonymous reviewers who read my manuscript for Indiana University Press. Their insightful comments and thoughtful suggestions have made this book much stronger, and I am extremely grateful to them.
Having encouraging colleagues and amazing students has made the process of revising and completing this book much easier. Members of the English department at Rhodes College have been terrific mentors and wonderful friends. I am lucky to work every day with Mark Behr, Gordon Bigelow, Marshall Boswell, Jenny Brady, Lori Garner, Judy Haas, Mike Leslie, Scott Newstok, Leslie Petty, Seth Rudy, Brian Shaffer - and especially, Rebecca Finlayson. Outside my department, I am thrilled to have Jeanne Lopiparo, Laura Loth, and Evie Perry as my buddies. My students (too many to name) at Rhodes College and SUNY Brockport deserve special thanks for their passionate and thoughtful engagement with the movies. I am indebted especially to students in my seminars on film noir and fifties American cinema at Rhodes, where we tested the viability of cinephiliac historiography as a research method with tremendous success.
I am grateful to Jane Behnken and Raina Nadine Polivka, my editors at Indiana University Press, for their confidence in this project. I also thank June Silay, my project manager, and Candace McNulty, my copy-editor, who helped bring this book to life. I really value the institutional support I have received for research and travel over the years. In particular, thanks go to the University of Florida for awarding me the Alumni Fellowship from 2001 to 2005 and to Rhodes College for giving me a Faculty Development Endowment grant in 2009. My research has been greatly aided by the knowledgeable staff at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California. Portions of this project were presented at conferences organized by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Literature/Film Association, and I am thankful for the intellectual stimulation offered by those forums. I am also grateful to Kristi McKim for inviting me to present my work at Hendrix College; that enormously invigorating research trip was exactly what I needed while completing this book. An earlier version of chapter 2 was published in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media (48.2; 2007), and I thank Wayne State University Press for use of that material.
Finally, I would like to recognize my friends and family for their countless kindnesses. Sangreal and Eric Smith have offered their lifelong friendship, and I am fortunate to have them as my closest allies. My parents, Aban and Yazdi Wadia, nurtured my love for the movies, especially old Hollywood movies, and I am forever and deeply grateful that they encouraged me to follow my passion, even when it led me so far away from them. My parents-in-law, Patti and Mike Richards, have been generous and encouraging; they have regaled me with stories of the studio era (Joseph Breen happens to be my great-grandfather-in-law), and I really appreciate being able to make their home my home base in Southern California. Eustis Richards s gentle canine sensibilities have brought me immense joy. Writing at my desk day after day would be far more tedious without his occasional nudging, yawning (yes, he yawns when he s excited!), and general goofy antics. Ultimately, I am most grateful to my husband, Jason Richards, who has watched every movie and read every word in this project multiple times. I dedicate this book to him; without his love and partnership, this long, strange trip would not have been imaginable or worthwhile. I am really glad I asked him in to watch Chaplin s Modern Times all those years ago.
CINEMATIC
Flashes
The things that have gone out of fashion have become inexhaustible containers of memories.
WALTER BENJAMIN , Arcades Project , J [Baudelaire]
Is there a theory that can make use of the concept of contingency?
NIKLAS LUHMANN , Observations on Modernity
Introduction
Inventing Cinephiliac Historiography
IN A MOMENT
Her Hollywood debut is a fleeting farewell. Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) is to wave a melancholy goodbye from a mock-up train window. On set various technicians prepare for the shot by gearing up the artificial lights, wind, snow, and steam. After Esther is quickly wrapped into a burly fur coat, the camera begins to roll. Then, there is a glitch. What is meant to be a memorable shot of a handkerchief trembling in the wind as the train leaves the station reveals a face. During the shoot, Judy Garland s bewildered visage inadvertently peeks through the window, a disruption that cannot be afforded at this point in the narrative. The moment is cut; the shot will have to be redone.
During a second take, we see what is necessary to keep the plot rolling: just a solitary hand, waving adieu. Made at a time when the studio system had already begun its slow but ceaseless crumble, it is understandable why George Cukor s A Star Is Born (1954) struggles with goodbye. Fortuitously, the next shot is better choreographed, so it carries the narrative along. But there is something about this other goodbye that always overwhelms me. Whereas the first take is clearly designed to be memorable, the second take has a startling irresistibility. In comparison to the former s poetic exterior shot of a frozen train window, enhanced by a glimpse of the troubled star s sorrowful face ( Figure 0.1 ), this frame is highly cluttered and yet almost mundane ( Figure 0.2 ). Next to the unglamorous inner workings of the studio system that take up more than half the frame, I am always struck by Judy Garland s discombobulated body, estranged from her own hand waving goodbye by the frame of the mock-up train. I can never quite explain its emotional potency, but I am always startled by the unexpected pleasure of this excessive moment.

0.1. A Star Is Born (dir. George Cukor, 1954).
Looking back on classical Hollywood today, what can we say about such momentary audiovisual pleasures? Are these moments merely dazzling disruptions, to be dismissed as interesting but insignificant? Can we do more than collect them, catalog them, and cherish their entrancing interruptions? The Impressionists called such ineffable moments photog nie , reveling in the camera s ability to render mundane objects or gestures suddenly enigmatic. Jean Epstein likened photog nie to a spark that appears in fits and starts, noticed in fleeting flashes, like Sessue Hayakawa