FILM STUDIES

Frank Capra considered an auteur

Frank Capra considered an auteur

Introduction

Perhaps the most significant challenge to the studio system was the rise of the producer-director. In contrast to the considerable authority of the pre-Hollywood era film directors like D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince, most of the directors at the major studios in the 1920s and 1930s were reduced to hired-hands. The studio system by its very nature had compartmentalized and restricted the role of the director, and concentrated the creative power in the hands of the film executives who oversaw production from script to editing.

Q. Through an examination of It Happened One Night (1934), explore whether Frank Capra should be considered an auteur. Your essay should incorporate an explanation of authorship theory and in-depth analysis of the film.

It Happened One Night directed by Frank Capra was made and released in 1934 by Columbia Pictures as a small budget film that was not expected to do well at the box office. Yet, after its release the film gained many accolades and won the Academy Award for best picture in 1934. Due to the original small nature of the film, the leading man role was surprisingly filled by Clark Gable who was on loan from another studio. He stared opposite of Claudette Colbert. Capra's film was a combination of many ideals, emotions and social perceptions of the American society of the thirties but it was also a combination of many new and innovative filming techniques and sound advancements. The film unfolds the story in such a attention-grabbing and remarkable way that most of today's cinema use his style and ideals when producing and creating films. Capra used the idea of a moving camera, one that was not fixed upon a box, but on a moveable crane instead. This produced more sweeping shots, more angles for filming and fewer distance shots. It allowed for more movement of the actors as well as a more realistic and real life feeling to the movie. The film also incorporates back projection of images.

As the studio system itself was strained by the economic chaos of the early 1930s, some directors demanded, and received, greater creative freedom at the studios. Directors who had a strong artistic vision, but who also were commercially reliable, worked their way out of mere contract-director status, to head their own semi-autonomous units at the major studios—Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Gregory La Cava, Ernst Lubitsch, Leo McCarey, Mervyn Le Roy, Tay Garnett, William Wellman, and Cecil B. DeMille. As producer-directors, their work seemed to show a continuity of style, and allowed their films to transcend the studio assembly-line.

Bisaquino, Sicily, 18 May 1897; immigrated with family to Los Angeles, 1903. Education: Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles; studied chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, graduated 1918. Family: Married 1) Helen Howell, 1924 (divorced 1938); 2) Lucille Reyburn, 1932, two sons, one daughter, Ballistics teacher, U.S. Army, 1918-19. Career: Lab assistant for Walter Bell, 1922-23; prop man, editor for Bob Eddy, writer ...