Audience Of The Classical Hollywood Film example essay topic

Identifying Heroes: The Godfather and Pulp Fiction The form of Classical Hollywood films is, first and foremost, invisible. In a Classical Hollywood film, the narrative is foremost, and style serves the narrative. Camera angles, lighting and editing patterns such as the shot / reverse -shot pattern aim to give us the best possible perspective on the unfolding events (1). These events are arranged in a strongly causality-oriented linear narrative, with one event causing the next.

This narrative is arranged around a central, active protagonist, whose decisions and actions are the key to the pattern of cause and effect that drives the story (2). This pattern seems so logical, so natural, that the audience of the classical Hollywood film is supposed to feel that they are receiving the material without the mediating intervention of the filmmaker. The link between heroes and the spectator under this model is therefore one of relatively unproblematic identification. Even films that featured anti-social heroes, such as the thirties gangster genre, modified the pattern only through imposing the strongly moral, tragic sequence of rise and fall; the audience's identification remained firmly with the central protagonist (3). Such a situation, under these assumptions, puts the audience in an apparently perverse situation, and it is therefore hardly surprising that the infamous Hays code of the thirties moved to ensure that 'the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin (4). ' The assumption of audience identity with the hero was never unproblematic, and of course the classical Hollywood model of filmmaking partially outlined above never existed entirely without challenge.

Nevertheless, it is clear that up to the fifties the classical Hollywood model was relatively applicable and that challenges to it were largely ineffective. However, beyond the fifties, the model became increasingly irrelevant. The reasons for the downfall of the classical paradigm are complex, and related to economic changes within the industry (the forced dismantling of the vertically integrated studio system that placed production, distribution and exhibition roles under the one organisation) as well as wider cultural shifts that occurred during the sixties (the widespread social upheaval and increasing prominence of counter-cultural challenges to mainstream ideologies). Perhaps most crucial, however, was the growing media-literacy of the population, with television in most homes and (moving further forward in time) the appearance of a generation that had grown up with television. As old movies began to appear on television, the audience's familiarity with them increased, and, as Robert Ray notes (5), this causes audience recognition of the conventions' artificiality to increase. Recognition of genre forms was always something to be expected, and was seen by authors such as Thomas Schatz as the driving force behind generic evolution.

Yet what occurred in the sixties was profoundly different. Individual genres had reached the point of over-familiarity and died out before (as with screwball comedies), but in this case the rise of television meant the entire body of classical film was being exposed, and the classical Hollywood model itself was therefore vulnerable. The sudden awareness of the artifice that was Hollywood cinema meant that for at least some of the population the old models, if taken completely at face value, could only function as camp or nostalgia. Traditional genre narratives seemed hopelessly naive to an audience increasingly composed of the young, cinematically literate, and (to a lesser extent) politically radical. The search for a solution covered most of the sixties and seventies; it was the eighties before the rise of the blockbuster (5.5) once again gave Hollywood a consistently profitable model to work from. In the meantime, many different strategies were employed to try to deal with the problem.

Overtly youth-oriented films such as The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) that offered (at least superficially) a critique of mainstream society were one; sophisticated reworkings of existing genres through comedy, demythologization, , or overt nostalgia were another (6). These approaches, however, are notable for the lack of a challenge to classical Hollywood forms at a fundamental level. If the increasing media awareness of the population really did result in a desire for something other than traditional Hollywood forms in segments of the audience, then these yearnings had to be satisfied outside the Hollywood system with the more inscrutable examples of art-house cinema such as Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Blowup (1966), or El Topo (1971) (7). The Classical model was more stable than it might have appeared, and attempts to move away from it were likely to alienate most of the audience.

It was more rewarding to simply rework the traditional models and add a dissenting element for those who were eager to see the old norms reworked. The ideal variation on this approach, however, was the two-tiered system of address identified by both Noel Carrol and Robert Ray (8). Under this model, the audience is split into what Ray calls the 'naive' and 'ironic' audiences (9). Naive audiences are still satisfied by the old Hollywood forms if well told; the ironic, meanwhile, wants something more sophisticated. They both receive their wish through 'corrected' genre films (10), which combine traditional action, thrills and excitement with varying degrees of irony, self-reflexiveness, or modernist stylistic devices (11). Such an approach provides a commercially viable answer to the problem posed by increasing film literacy, so it is appropriate that one of Ray's key examples of the 'corrected' genre film was The Godfather (1972), which for a time was the most commercially successful film of all time.

Ray's analysis of The Godfather is also driven by the distinction between the 'Left Cycle' and 'Right Cycle' of films in the sixties (12). These two cycles represented one of the attempts at adjustment of the Classical form by Hollywood in this period. Both took the view that American mythology was under attack, and offered typically simplistic action-oriented responses to these problems. The Left Cycle followed outlaw heroes who would appeal to the emerging counter-culture (some of these heroes, as in Easy Rider, were members of this culture), and followed their adventurous conflict with traditional authority figures.

The Right Cycle took the inverse pattern, showing individual representatives of those authorities in conflict with anti-social forces (which, as in Dirty Harry (1971), were sometimes explicitly counter-cultural). Despite their superficial similarities, both these patterns were essentially similar in their reliance on a western mythos, and both therefore offered essentially the same approach to audience identification with the heroes as had been found in Classical films. The heroes of these films are sympathetic, their actions naturalis ed, their enemies demonized. For Ray, The Godfather and Taxi Driver (1976) represent a more sophisticated version of their respective Left Cycle and Right Cycle predecessors through their questioning (pitched at the 'ironic' audience) of their heroes' values (13). At the level of the naive audience this is not visible. The Godfather, like its left cycle (and gangster movie) predecessors, maintains sympathy with its small family of criminals, through framing and editing patterns that engage audience identification (the shift of identification from Vito to Michael is the chief complication with this pattern, and one that Ray is careful to note is established through traditional editing techniques).

The victims of the criminals are still shown as despicable, deserving of their fate, and the mob therefore become a force for good. The key conflict of the film is caused by the Corleone family's unwillingness to shift their operations into narcotics. Yet Ray argues that The Godfather is 'corrected' (at least partially) through an underlying ideological critique of the Corleone family's actions. For Ray the key sequence in establishing this critique is Michael Corleone's assassination of corrupt policeman McCluskey and rival gangster Solozzo. Taking the central thirteen shots of the sequence for analysis, Ray argues that most of the shots are structured according to a traditional shot / reverse -shot pattern, alternating shots from or nearly from Michael's point of view with simple reverse figures that are anchored back to Michael. For these shots it is Michael that the audience identifies with and we are therefore invited, according to Ray, to take the naive film goers response and thrill at the action presented.

However, Ray argues that two shots (eight and thirteen) provide a rupture from this continuity system to alienate the viewer (or, at least, the alert viewer) and provoke a critical response that encouraged us to reflect on our hero's actions. Ray argues these moments of estrangement are kept relatively short (compared, as he says, to the more pronounced ruptures used by Godard (14) ) in order to ensure that the film can retain the naive audience. This is perhaps not the most convincing example Ray could have cited, as the alienating function of these shots is arguable. The principle of inserting reestablishing shots to recreate a space that has been broken down by the shot / reverse -shot structure is hardly new (15).

Shot eight is so short that it hardly encourages any alienation: all it does is to quickly reestablish the spatial orientation of the protagonists. This is doubly true of the much longer shot thirteen, which shows the entire restaurant as Michael hurries out. In the preparations for the assassination the issue of intervention by passers-by was raised, and it seems merely logical at this point to insert a more prolonged shot to thoroughly reestablish the space and note that, as predicted, nobody in the restaurant will intervene (16). Ray would have found more convincing support for his argument by extending the analysis to the sequence's fifteenth shot, which lingers on the bloody table and does encourage audience reflection on the nature of Michael's crime. Within the thirteen shots Ray lists, however, Coppola seems simply to be following the classical model of continuity editing, and it therefore thrills the audience. Whatever critique of the actions occurs is created by the audience's retrospective reflection onthe scene (17).

However, it does seem clear that Coppola did intend to 'correct' his film. This is more clearly brought out in the final scenes, which definitely aim to alienate the viewer from the supposedly heroic protagonist and encourage reflection upon his moral depravity. This includes Michael's murder of his brother-in-law Carlo, in which our dislike for Carlo is undermined by Michael's duplicity in promising him forgiveness moments before his death. A better example of Ray's argument, however, is the famous sequence that shortly precedes this, in which the gunning down of Michael's enemies is intercut with scenes showing Michael standing as Godfather to Carlo Rizzi's son. The parallel editing here clearly functions on the two-tiered basis, generating excitement and suspense while simultaneously exposing, as Robert Koller (18) puts it, Michael's 'satanic cruelty. ' Both these sequences are suspenseful, but both also clearly strip away the notions of family loyalty that earlier in the film were used to justify the Corleones' actions.

It is a testament to the overwhelming power of Classical models of form that such a clear effort to alienate the viewer was only partially successful: it is hard, at the end of The Godfather, to shake the identification with Michael (This is a problem that became even more note able in the case of Ray's other key 'corrected' text, Taxi Driver, which inspired John Hinckley's attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (19) ). It is therefore hardly surprising that in The Godfather Part II (1974) Coppola went so much further in undermining his hero's status. Again parallel editing is used, this time contrasting Vito Corleone's early life with that of his son Michael (which moves toward the ultimate family betrayal, the murder of his brother Freddie) in order to more fully expose the corruption of Michael's life. Indeed, as John Hess argues (20), The Godfather Part II's motivation of Michael as a metaphor for America makes it an attack on the capitalist system, showing how business interests destroy or corrupt bourgeois ideals such as the family unit. Coppola's distancing devices were more successful as 'corrections' in this film, but ultimately harmed the film's box-office.

It is rare to find a filmmaker working within the Hollywood system willing to make such arguments. Yet more than twenty years after the Godfather films the desire to simultaneously satisfy both the general public and the intelligentsia has not disappeared. And while I alluded earlier to the rise of the blockbuster as Hollywood's solution to the problem of audiences' over-familiarity with Classical models, this problem has not disappeared completely either, since not all Hollywood films are blockbusters (it just seems that way sometimes). However, the media- (and cinema-) awareness of the audience is stronger still, with the patterns of allusion noted by Carrol now even more notable.

The Film school generation of the late sixties and seventies has been followed by another new wave of American semi-independent filmmakers who have grown up in the video-store and were raised on movies: hence Quentin Tarantino idolizes Brian De Palma in much the same way as De Palma had idolized Hitchcock (21). Yet the Classical model (with its emphasis on audience / hero identification) still persists, lurking in the background, and Tarantino, like Coppola, is still vulnerable to the old Hays code accusation of throwing sympathy 'to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. ' Tarantino deals with these issues in a very different manner to Coppola by mobilizing his allusions to thematic effect. This is not immediately apparent. Both of Tarantino's key films, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), are laden with so many references to other films (as well as songs, TV shows, brand names, and the like), both subtle and overt (22), that the most naive of naive audiences cannot help but be aware of them.

These references, along with the extended dialogues about the minutiae of everyday life (which themselves bear a strong resemblance to TV's Seinfeld) (23), are definitely intended as enjoyable. By this point, allusion is firmly established as a game with the audience that goes beyond mere homage or imitation: it is a pleasurable stylistic effect in itself. This has encouraged some to take the view that Tarantino offers nothing but surface gloss and non-stop allusion, creating (in Pulp Fiction) a film about nothing 'except for its own artificiality (24). ' Virtually empty of meaning, let alone a moral theme, Tarantino's films are therefore open to criticism for implicitly encouraging violence, and able to sustain little more than symptomatic readings (25).

Yet, as Peter and Will Brooker (26) argue, both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction bear out analyses that go beyond simple dismissal of their supposed postmodern vacuity. Carrol had suggested that allusion was the means by which films addressed the second level, ironic viewer (27), but with such allusions increasingly forming the outside, surface level of entertainment, more complex patterns are required to create the higher levels of meaning. Tarantino's ingenious answer is to mobilize these patterns of allusion in a critique of his heroes that at least attempts to 'correct' his plots. Evoking Ray's approach here is, of course, not unproblematic.

Tarantino's films are already distinguished from classical Hollywood narrative forms through their extensive utilization of modernist techniques (most notably his scrambled chronologies), whereas Ray was talking about films that still retained the linear plots of their generic inspirations. Yet, while the patterns of identification in Reservoir Dogs are only vague, Pulp Fiction sets up a strong identification with a single character, Vincent, if only by virtue of John Travolta's star status. Since Vince is an amoral hit man, there is some resemblance here to the audience's troubled relationship to Michael Corleone. In both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the central characters' impossible coolness is defined by their mastery of pop culture. In their extended discussions about music and film trivia, characters rarely fail to pick up on the references other characters are making; when offered a choice between 'Amos n' Andy' and 'Martin and Lewis's hakes, Vincent Vega knows instantly that this means a choice between chocolate and vanilla.

Such knowledge is cool because it is both complete and apparently effortless (Vince claims not to watch TV, but he knows what is on COPS). The characters' through immersion in pop culture is not gratuitous. Rather, it is critical, because it helps to show the extent to which the tough guy personae of the characters are acts, largely based on received movie versions of how criminals act (28). This is drawn out particularly explicitly in the long flashback sequence in Reservoir Dogs in which Mr Orange undertakes an on-screen rehearsal for the criminal role he plays in the rest of the film. It comes through, too, in Pulp Fiction's long sequence involving Vince and Jules preparing for a hit, in which they pause to 'get into character' and switch into their tough guy personae. Jules' intimidation of his victims, based on surface joviality alternated with sudden bouts of shouting and violence, seems straight from the De Niro handbook for psychopathic screen acting.

This does more than simply point out a feedback loop between screen reality and our reality, in which Tarantino shows his characters emulating previous movie characters, only to have them become the new benchmark for cinematic malice. For having established the pop-cultural suavity of his heroes, Tarantino delights in stripping it away and exposing these ultra-cool characters as imbeciles. In Reservoir Dogs, Lawrence Tierney's crime boss seems to have learnt both his manner and his approach to interior decoration from The Godfather, but he is far from the omniscient, invincible force Coppola's Mafia bosses represent. Family discipline (so crucial to the Corleones) is absent, with his son and best friend nearly destroying his office as they wrestle playfully; more crucially, he can't even organise his crimes properly, and hires a mixture of incompetents, psychopaths, and traitors. Steve Buscemi's Mr Pink argues that he is acting as a professional, but clearly nobody is. The pattern continues in Pulp Fiction.

Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, in the opening scene, are calmly assured about their ability to effectively stage a robbery: this is proven false in the final scenes. Uma Thurman's Mia seems the ultimate steely femme fatale, with her vixen's facade even throwing Vincent, yet she can't tell her drugs apart and overdoses. Vincent himself, however, is even more thoroughly degraded, as befits our hero: always in the bathroom at the wrong time, he is splattered in blood, embarrassed by the far cooler Winston Wolf, reduced to a nervous wreck by Mia's overdose, and ultimately shot dead after failing to follow Jules' example in retiring. The effect of these scenes is funny, and this is intended, but the humour is drawn from the fact that our ultra-cool characters are being shown as dopes.

The surprisingly moral subtext of Pulp Fiction is that the only solution is to avoid crime and escape, as Jules and Butch are smart enough to do: the splitting of the coffee shop scene around the body of the film isolates one couple at the exact moment they make the wrong choice. The cleverness of Tarantino's approach is in isolating the artificiality of his heroes' persona, and using that as an approach with which to undermine the audience's admiration of that hero. Just as Coppola's attempts to alienate the viewer from Michael Corleone were only partially successful, so Tarantino's approach is flawed: Tarantino was accused of glorifying his criminal heroes, and audiences do still see Vincent Vega as a modern day F onze, the embodiment of coolness. A subtext is still, after all, a subtext, and not everybody can be in the ironic audience. Perhaps, though, the real reason that both Coppola and Tarantino still have problems in avoiding the audience identification with their heroes is the astonishing persuasiveness of classical Hollywood forms. The learned patterns of classical Hollywood narratives and the associated identification with a strong central protagonist are likely to take over if given even the slightest chance.

This is the price Coppola and Tarantino must pay if they wish to harness this form of filmmaking for commercial advantage.