CHAPTER 3 – AMERICAN CINEMA IN THE 1920s
Multiple Choice
1. To many ordinary Americans, what seemed true about those larger-than-life silent movies
coming out of early Hollywood?
a. They were impossibly glamorous.
b. They were a little dangerous.
c. They were scandalous.
d. all of the above
2. Many comedians in early Hollywood movies came from
a. vaudeville.
b. Broadway.
c. Burlesque.
d. little theatre.
3. Each of the following is a thematic aspect of Charlie Chaplin’s best work except
a. conveying the pain of being human.
b. portraying the joy of being rich and powerful.
c. showing what it is to love more than to be loved.
d. dramatizing being ignored when one does not deserve to be ignored
4. Chaplin’s comic work probably owes its great appeal to the fact that it has a great sense of
a. the physical.
b. the political.
c. the psychological.
d. the philosophical.
5. Buster Keaton’s characters exhibited all of the following traits except
a. industriousness.
b. earnestness.
c. an inability to assimilate the reality around him.
d. cowardice.
6. Harold Lloyd’s films like Safety Last were on “the myth of the Good American,” and in such
films, viewers find
a. Home.
b. Hearth.
c. One True Love.
d. all the above
7. Which of the following films is not one of Douglas Fairbanks’ swashbuckling spectaculars?
a. The Mask of Zorro
b. The Private Life of Don Juan
c. The Iron Mask
d. The Thief of Bagdad
8. The female actor whose own career paralleled the development of movies themselves was
a. Mary Pickford.
b. Mabel Normand.
c. Greta Garbo.
d. Lilian Gish.
9. Rex Ingram’s film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, with Rudolph Valentino, is
characterized by
a. visual beauty.
b. intense dislike of close-ups.
c. both a and b.
d. neither a nor b.
10. The qualities which prohibit Erich Von Stroheim from being the Marquis de Sade of cinema
are a. precision and clarity.
b. sex and doomed love.
c. fascinating and likeability.
d. humor and humanity.
11. Who of the following is considered a carefree flapper?
a. Clara Bow
b. Greta Garbo
c. Lillian Gish
d. Mary Pickford
12. The female director whose work was so admired that Universal built a studio for her that was
hers alone was
a. Lois Weber
b. Alice Guy-Blache
c. Francis Marion
d. Mrs. Wallace Reid
13. What woman, at age 24, wrote a script for D. W. Griffith and later worked on the subtitles for
his Intolerance?
a. June Mathis
b. Anita Loos
c. Francis Marion
d. Dorothy Azner
14. Silent films blended several arts except for
a. photography.
b. music.
c. acting.
d. special effects.
15. The film that opened Hollywood to sound in movies is
a. The Blue Angel.
b. Tabu.
c. The Jazz Singer.
d. Wings.
16. Adding a microphone to a set to record the actors talking did which of the following to
acting?
a. Stopped the actors dead in their tracks
b. Made them say their words very, very precisely
c. Made the loud camera relocate to a sound-proof booth
d. all the above
17. King Vidor’s first talkie, Halleluja, employed which one of the following now-common
recording techniques?
a. voice-over
b. dubbing
c. sound montage
d. none of the above
True/False
(Place a T or an F in the line following the sentence.)
1. Most female film directors flourished when the “talkie” era began.
2. Charlie Chaplin was always famous, even before getting into movies, for his “Little Tramp”
character.
3. Chaplin was more than a comedian and The Gold Rush is more than a comedy.
4. Buster Keaton’s analytically abstract humor is more in tune with modern sensibilities than
Chaplin’s open vulnerability.
5. Unlike Chaplin, Harold Lloyd was a creature of the movies almost from the beginning and so
required a long apprenticeship to learn how to make people laugh.
6. Tom Mix and Clara Bow best personified the early Hollywood era, its ascent from primitivism
into aesthetic accomplishment.
7. Erich von Stroheim, who increased the latitude for serious filmmakers, was responsible for
shifting power from the creative to the business end of filmmaking.
8. Studios like Universal hired “prestige” directors to please the critics and justify the wealth and
influence standard Hollywood fodder generated.
9. Says Alexander Walker, “The silent stars were less mythic figures, but not quite human
because they didn’t speak yet, giving emotions human shape.”
10. The Jazz Singer was spectacular success from its first performance, thereafter prompting
theaters to begin wiring for sound at considerable expense.
Matching
1) Warner Brothers
2) von Sternberg
3) Mary Pickford
4) King Vidor
5) F. W. Murnau
6) Alice Guy-Blache
7) Ed Lubitsch
8) Harry Langdon
9) Buster Keaton
10) Charley Chaplin
a. first European woman director
b. satirized sex, fidelity, and bad faith in intimate relations
c. a star who also teamed with Fairbanks and Chaplin to form United Artists
d. The Navigator
e. stellar career basically ended as a film comedian after two years
f. City Lights
g. Underworld and The Last Command two of his best works
h. made The Last Laugh, stylized miseen scene helped to wean audiences from rural romances
i. made The Crowd which deals with something approaching real life
j. produced The Jazz Singer which included sound
ANS:
Short Answer
1. How did Charles Chaplin create pathos (sympathy for another) in his comedies like City Lights
or The Gold Rush? Illustrate.
2. What were some of the filmmaking techniques or qualities that made Buster Keaton’s early
film comedies the antithesis of Max Sennett’s comedies?
3. What were some of the ways that Mary Pickford’s film career paralleled Hollywood’s
evolution as the filmmaking capital of the world?
4. What was Hollywood’s resistance at all levels — studio owners, directors, actors, etc. — to
introducing sound to the movie experience?
Essay Questions
1. In a Charlie Chaplin comedy, which element is dominant: slapstick comedy or the
psychological study of character?
2. Why was vaudeville an excellent training ground for acting in movies?
3. What was the typical tone of the movies that women directors made in the silent era?
4. To what extent and in what way(s) did the introduction of sound turn films into “talkies”
(sound dependent) rather than movies (image/picture dependent)?