Crime In The Movies Final
Homogenization
-harder to distinguish between films/directors -PG and PG13 movies are twice as likely to earn 60 mill and twice as likely to earn 100 mill than were R rated movies (larger demographic)
Richard Schickle sums up the 1980s
-"A handful of great movies. two handfuls of interesting movies, and a lot of stuff it's impossible to remember of care about" -new standard for film; middle of the road appeals to masses
Experimental period of courtroom dramas
-1940s -Film Noirs -depicted legal strugles and wanted to be both persuasive and entertaining
Period of depletion of courtroom dramas
-1970s-present -films had to adapt to the new landscape and reconceptualize justice and injustice -cinematically more films became more reliant on violence and action
1990's the new Golden Age
-1993- American Motion Picture industry took in over 5 bill -US produces 10% of the worlds films and 65% of the global box office receipts
Studio ownership today
-Almost all companies owned domestically and nternationally -Sony (Japan)--Columbia -Matsushita (Japan)--Universal MCA - Murdoch (Australia)--Fox -Disney is the only free standing entity
Return to Studio System?
-Disney, Paramount, and Orion start signing big names to long term contracts -studios start slowly buying back theaters -return to escapist fluff and comedies
Top Stars of the 1980's (men)
-Harrison Ford -Dan Aykroyd -Eddie Murphy -Bill Murray -Tom Cruise -Sylvester Stallone -Jack Nicholson -John Candy -Steve Guttenberg -Danny Devito
Top Stars of the 1980's (women)
-Kim Basinger -Sigourney Weaver -Meryl Streep
Bonnie and Clyde
-Known best for "valley of death" final scene -Used a "squib" to replicate gunshot wounds -Led to the demise of Hayes Corp
Fall of X rating
-Porn industry began using "XXX"
Pivotal films of the 1960-70s
-The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -All questioned social institutions and snti-establishment
1968-1974
-The new cinema -Film attendance on the rise -Almost all films revisionist in theme
Tech and the Marketplace
-advent of the VCR -"Art Houses" started to disappear -widescreen processes declined severely -1987 video rentals surpassed ticket sales as the industry's leading source of revenue
Why do we enjoy identifying with movie criminals?
-back and forth between criminal and good citizen -identify with hero until end when the hero is taken out by a good citizen
Importance of Star Wars
-breaks box office record $216 mill in US and Canada -Lucas and Spielberg dominate 80s -outsold The Godfather -return to the traditional form and values of the 40s and 50s "Diminished Expectations" "packaging" trend -Star Was is like a western
What changed the definition of law films?
-changes in taste -changes in attitude towards law -changes in understandings of the nature of law itself
Trouble on the Horizon?
-fiber optics and HDTV -satellite technology -big and small movies -foreign ownership of studios
Taxi Driver themes
-loneliness in crowds -glorification of violence -pre-determined vs. self-directed fate
Packaging
-making movies like an item or commodity to be sold, corporations only want to make money -Studios realized that marketing the films was as important as producing it -Foreign returns and video sales dominate -DW Griffith's ideal of films as "universal language" came true artistically and economically
Heroic period of courtroom dramas
-mid 1950s-60s -series of films showing that justice can be achieved through the courts
How do movies turn criminals into heroes?
-persona of the actor and his/her ability to simultaneously project two contradictory messages -script writers ability to camouflage flaws and create other characters who make criminal seem worthy -camera angles, setting, color, music
Shawshank themes/symbols
-the power of hope -Rita Hayworth (other females) poster -importance of rocks -education
Aspects of alternative or critical tradition movies
-turn away from promoting heroes and consoling resolution -flawed casts of characters with no heroes
New developments in prison films:
1. Alternative-tradition prison films 2. New prison documentaries 3. Self-reflexive prison films
Why do we watch prison films?
1. Identify with a perfect man 2. Participate in perfect friendship 3. Fantasize about sex and rebellion 4. Acquire insider info about apparent realities of prison life/claims to authenticity
Moral ambiguity in 3 film classics
1. Rashomon 2. Breathless 3. The Conversation
2 trends of alternative-tradition films
1. decentering of criminality 2. movement toward genre dissolution
Central concern of traditional prison films
1. oppression 2. transgression 3. restoration of a natural order in justice
3 themes of prison/execution films
1. rebellion against injustice 2. control 3. gap between appearance and reality
Criminal Law Films address 3 issues:
1. tension between goals of crime control and due process 2. special problems of defendants with mental retardation 3. vigilantism
"Step on it Velma!"
Bonnie and Clyde
"Valley of Death scene"
Bonnie and Clyde
"We rob banks."
Bonnie and Clyde
"You know what you done there? You told my story, you told my whole story right there, right there. One time, I told you I was gonna make you somebody. That's what you done for me. You made me somebody they're gonna remember."
Bonnie and Clyde
"the truck drivers come in to eat greasy burgers and they kid you and you kid them back, but they're stupid and dumb, boys with big tattoos all over 'em, and you don't like it... And they ask you for dates and sometimes you go... but you mostly don't, and all they ever try is to get into your pants whether you want to or not... and you go home and sit in your room and think, when and how will I ever get away from this?... And now you know."
Bonnie and Clyde
"No man can eat fifty eggs"
Cool Hand Luke
"One in the box, one in the bush."
Cool Hand Luke
"Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."
Cool Hand Luke
"What we've got here is failure to communicate."
Cool Hand Luke
"You haven't got it in you, Pop. I've got it in me, all right. *You* put it there."
Desperate Hours
Law films used to be defined as:
Dramas featuring a heroic white male lawyer who solved the mystery and settled other dilemmas in the course of the trial
"Some men are broken by the laws that they break, unable to resist the forces that are pulling them down. Other men live by the rules that society sets down. You're not one of them."
Muder in the first
Current Ratings System
G, GP (later PG), PG-13, R, X, NC-17
Original Ratings System
G, M, R, X
Distinguished Westerns
Heroric outsider reluctantly consents to clean up some equivalent to dodge. Outside heroes fight for the sake of the group.
"I steal."
I am a fugitive of a chain gang
"There are no musts in my life. I'm free, white and twenty-one."
I am a fugitive of a chain gang
"What would I say to a hamburger? Boy. I'd take Mr. Hamburger by the hand and say, "Pal, I haven't seen you for a long, long time."
I am a fugitive of a chain gang
Movie that led to creation of PG-13
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
"How do you think the Yankees will do against the Redskins this year? [Character]: The Yankees are a baseball team. The Redskins are a football team. Personally, I think the Redskins would kick the shit out of them."
Murder in the First
"Action - I won. Reaction - you can't ever take that away from me."
Murder in the first
In Coutroom Dramas there are two figures
Justice- support/obtain the ideal outcome Injustice- responsible for keeping the gap between natural and civil law
"I was the weapon, but I ain't no killer."
Murder in the first
"ln life for every action there is a definite and distinct reaction. Action"
Murder in the first
Tentpole pictures
Make or break movies that hold up the whole "tent". If the movie fails, that is very detrimental for the company
The Godfather symbol
Oranges in almost every scene that there is a killing
Cool Hand Luke symbols
Religious references
"He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say...I liked Andy from the start."
Shawshank Redemption
"I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me."
Shawshank Redemption
"I find I'm so excited that I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."
Shawshank Redemption
"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying."
Shawshank Redemption
"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."
Shawshank Redemption
"Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
Shawshank Redemption
Blaxploitation films
Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song, Shaft, Superfly, The Mack
"They're young! They're in Love! And they kill people!"
Tagline from Bonnie and Clyde movie poster
"All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person like other people."
Taxi Driver
"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."
Taxi Driver
"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Well, who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the F***do you think you're talkin' to?"
Taxi Driver
'He's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction.'"
Taxi Driver
. . . you do a thing and that's what you are . . . Get drunk, you know, do anything. 'Cause you got no choice anyway."
Taxi Driver
"Good. Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."
The Godfather
"In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns."
The Godfather
"What's the matter with you? Is this what you've become, a Hollywood finocchio who cries like a woman? "Oh, what do I do? What do I do?" What is that nonsense? Ridiculous!"
The Godfather
"YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!"
The Godfather
"Suppose you talk us all outa this and the kid really did knife his father?"
Twelve Angry Men
"This better be fast. I got tickets to a ball game tonight."
Twelve Angry Men
"This gentleman has been standing alone against us. He doesn't say the boy is not guilty. He just isn't sure. Well, it's not easy to stand alone against the ridicule of others. He gambled for support and I gave it to him. I respect his motives. The boy on trial is probably guilty. But I want to hear more."
Twelve Angry Men
"This is not why we are here, to fight. We have a responsibility. This, I have always thought, is a remarkable thing about democracy. That we are, uh, what is the word? Notified."
Twelve Angry Men
"Wait a minute! What are you trying to give us here? The phrase was, "I'm going to kill you," and the kid screamed it out at the top of his lungs. Don't tell me he didn't mean it. Anybody says a thing like that the way he did it, they mean it."
Twelve Angry Men
Movies after midterm
Twelve Angry Men, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, The Desperate Hours, Bonnie and CLyde, Cool Hand Luke, I am a Fugitive of a Chain Gang, Murder in the First, The Shawshank Redemption
About half of prison films ____
assert that they are "based on a true story" or are "fictionalized accounts of an actual event"
What was the 1/3 of the revenue of movies in the 1990s?
blockbusters
Characteristics of traditional prison genre
certain stock characters, plots, and themes turn up over and over again
Stock characters of traditional prison films
convict buddies, a paternalistic warden, cruel assistant warden or guard, a craven snitch, and an absolutely innocent man or a man convicted of a petty crime
Chronicles of criminal careers
criminal heroes
Moral ambiguity films
differ from regular crime films because: -we may not know who the criminal is -morality is relative -may not know if the bad guy should be punished -victims may be partially responsible -crimes committed by ordinary people -no clear heroes, villains, victims -truth depends on point of view
Main theme of courtroom films
difficulty of achieving justice, justice is elusive
Courtroom dramas main theme
distinguish tension between natural law vs. civil law
What kind of films were dominant in the Vietnam - Watergate era?
downbeat themes
Tale of revenge/vigilantism
heroes are slow to anger but pursue bad guys for personal reasons
Mystery or Detective
heroes: clever, persistent, imaginative, adept The audience and the investigator will discover clues in small portions so the development of the investigation will be parallel between the character and the viewer
Thriller
heroes: ordinary people The central character is chased or pursued by a figure who is horrifying
Tale of justice violated/ justice restored
heroes: patience, superhuman endurance Main character has been falsely accused or is being unjustly punished Main character is finally set free through a plot device that could be a jailbreak or a sudden revelation of the true villian
Caper or Heist
heroes: those who plan the heist, assemble the team, etc These films usually follow a character or group of characters as the plan to perform a heist that will have them set for life. Planning --> Execution
Natural Law vs Civil Law
natural often tries to achieve the ideal outcome and the film will usually introduce a man made law that will prevent that situation from occurring
What are Art Houses?
small independent film places that went away in the 80s
Action
superheroes
Plots of traditional prison films
usually a riot or escape