History 477

Devine

Spring 2013

Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, Chapter 11

1. How did the economic conditions of the Great Depression affect the kinds of movies Hollywood filmmakers produced?

2. How did the technical innovation of sound shape filmmaking and the content and settings of films?  What genres of film benefited most from the introduction of sound?

3. In what ways did filmmakers use sound – from simple “noise” to music – to attract audiences to their movies?

4. How did gangster films speak to broader concerns about social disorder and lawlessness?  Why do you think such films resonated with Depression Era audiences?

5. Why did the humor of Mae West and the Marx Brothers appeal to a society whose institutions and traditional culture were in crisis?

6. Why wasn’t Duck Soup one of the Marx Brothers’ bigger hits?  Why might audiences in 1933 not have been receptive to the film’s message?

7. What distinguished the first 1930s “golden age” of film from the second 1930s “golden age”?

8. What messages did the screwball comedies try to send to audiences?

9. How did the second generation of filmmakers differ from the first generation?  How did their experiences and their self-image affect their approach to their craft?