CHAPTER 6 – AMERICAN CINEMA IN THE 1930s
Multiple Choice
1. What quality of speech most characterized how actors spoke in early “talkies”?
a. poetic
b. colloquial
c. proper
d. accented
2. The gangster movie cycle began with which film?
a. Scarface
b. Underworld
c. Little Cesar
d. Public Enemy
3. Who first administered the censorious Production Code?
a. Joseph I. Breen
b. Will Hays
c. neither a nor b
d. both a and b
4. Which of the following is true of the gangster in gangster movies?
a. He is poorly educated.
b. He is incapable of love.
c. He is a man of the city.
d. He is incapable of humor.
5. All of these movies featured guns, cars, and sex except:
a. Wild Boys of the Road
b. Public Enemy
c. Scarface
d. Little Caesar
6. Who was “a musical Eisenstein”?
a. Howard Hawks
b. Ernst Lubitsch
c. Fred Astaire
d. Busby Berkeley
7. What replaced the sight gag in comedies when sound was introduced?
a. wisecrack
b. fast talk
c. double entendre
d. non sequitir
8. _____ were “the legitimate descendents of the American iconoclastic tradition.”
a. The Gold Diggers
b. Mae West and Cary Grant
c. The Marx Brothers
d. none of the above
9. All of the following are typical examples of a Frank Capra movie except
a. It Happened One Night
b. Red River
c. Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington
d. The Strong Man
10. Greta Garbo laughed for the first time on film in which movie?
a. The Little Foxes
b. It’s a Wonderful Life
c. Front Page
d. Ninotchka
11. What did Mae West possess that made her a “startling apparition”?
a. beauty
b. bravery
c. great voice
d. political savvy
12. What characterizes the film style of William Wyler?
a. lengthy takes
b. deep-focus photography
c. few close-ups
d. all of the above
13. Which of the following is true of an Ernst Lubitsch comedy?
a. it is very realistic
b. it makes secondary characters the butt of jokes
c. it is never cold nor brittle
d. it stays true to traditional comic technique
14. Who worked as a successful independently produced director?
a. Howard Hawks
b. George Cukor
c. Sam Wood
d. Mervyn LeRoy
15. John Ford’s movies are characterized by which of the following?
a. visual economy
b. independent women
c. loosely structured plots
d. none of the above
16. The actor that worked successfully in westerns with both Howard Hawks and John Ford was
a. Humphrey Bogart
b. James Cagney
c. Clark Gable
d. John Wayne
17. All of the following qualities are true of George Cukor’s outstanding, Garbo-starring film
except: a. luxurious mise en scène
b. underplayed acting
c. careless writing
d. great performance
True/False
(Place a T or an F in the line following the sentence.)
1. Ernst Lubitsch was the screen’s resident master of the grotesque through the early 1930s.
2. Ben Hecht’s writing was embodied in a dynamic, no-sense style which helped define 30s
comedy and drama.
3. In a Busby Berkeley movie the star was really the editor, not the actor and not the camera.
4. Fred Astaire used dance as a metaphor for character, courtship, love, and, yes, sex.
5. The Marx Brothers were more dependent on their writers than quieter, more behavioral comics
like Laurel and Hardy.
6. Frank Capra’s movies are morality plays of loss followed by reclamation as can be seen in It’s
a Wonderful Life.
7. Musical underscoring is what made bad movies “bad” and, as well, often distracted from the
emotion a key moment in a movie.
8. Bette Davis made her mark as a shy, retiring woman who would surrender her will to stronger
characters, especially men.
9. Howard Hawks’s films are characterized by a concise sense of plot, verbal economy, visual
economy, and, at their end, triumphant characters.
10. John Ford’s films are full of compositions which are painterly, in-depth, and in deep focus,
but whose narrative is often rambling.
Matching
1) Angels with Dirty Faces ___
2) Swing Time ___
3) Scarface ___
4) The Informer ___
5) The Little Foxes ___
6) Duck Soup ___
7) The Gold Diggers of 1935 ___
8) Camille ___
9) It’s a Wonderful Life ___
10) She Done Him Wrong ___
a. Busby Berkeley’s musical in which pianos move
b. Mae West puts Cary Grant in his place
c. William Wyler films starring Bette Davis
d. Marx Bothers’ surrealistic assault on order and reason
e. starred James Cagney, bruised, without illusions…
f. George Cukor film starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor
g. Frank Capra film starring James Stewart
h. director John Ford’s first critical hit
i. gangster film written by Ben Hecht, directed by Howard Hawks
j. starred Fred Astaire, the musical’s inventor Short Answer
ANS:
Short Answer
1. What things did the Production Code prohibit in movies?
2. What was it that Fred Astaire managed to achieve through his dance musicals in the 30s?
3. What was impossible for director Frank Capra in movies? What was his core message?
4. With what character type was John Ford preoccupied in his movies?
Essay Questions
1. What did gangster movies generally have in common with the optimistic orientation of most
American movies (that is, until the typical gangster movie reached its bloody conclusion)?
2. What was the appeal of the American musical, both in technique and story, to American
audiences?
3. What would be the delights and problems with director William Wyler’s excessive attention to
detail in making his movies?
4. In American movies, which is the more powerful thematic impulse: idealism or pragmatism?