Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Analytical Table of Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Case Studies
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Problems of Definition and the Discourse of American Independent Cinema
- Part I American Independent Cinema in the Studio Years (mid-1920s–late 1940s)
- 1 Independent Filmmaking in the Studio Era: Tendencies within the Studio System
- 2 Independent Filmmaking in the Studio Era: The Poverty Row Studios (1930–50s)
- Part II The Transitional Years (late 1940s–late 1960s)
- Part III Contemporary American Independent Cinema (late 1960s–present)
- Epilogue: From Independent to ‘Specialty’ Cinema
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Independent Filmmaking in the Studio Era: The Poverty Row Studios (1930–50s)
from Part I - American Independent Cinema in the Studio Years (mid-1920s–late 1940s)
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Analytical Table of Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Case Studies
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction: Problems of Definition and the Discourse of American Independent Cinema
- Part I American Independent Cinema in the Studio Years (mid-1920s–late 1940s)
- 1 Independent Filmmaking in the Studio Era: Tendencies within the Studio System
- 2 Independent Filmmaking in the Studio Era: The Poverty Row Studios (1930–50s)
- Part II The Transitional Years (late 1940s–late 1960s)
- Part III Contemporary American Independent Cinema (late 1960s–present)
- Epilogue: From Independent to ‘Specialty’ Cinema
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Not everybody likes to eat cake. Some people like bread, and even a certain number of people like stale bread than fresh bread.
Steven Broidy, chairman of Monogram PicturesINTRODUCTION
The above statement by the once president and chief executive officer of Poverty Row outfit Monogram Pictures represents an appropriate introduction to a different form of independent filmmaking during the studio years: low-end independent production, which, in Broidy's analogy, is represented by the phrase ‘stale bread’. The analogy seems apt. If one accepts that the films of top-rank independent producers and the studio prestige productions represent American cinema's ‘cake’, and the standard studio film production corresponds to its ‘bread’, then films from studios like Monogram, Republic, Grand National, PRC and a large number of other smaller companies certainly represent American cinema's ‘stale bread’. In other words, they represent film production of a particularly low quality and cheap look that could never be confused with the top-rank product examined in the previous chapter. For instance, according to film historian Wheeler Dixon, the key features of Monogram films were ‘shoddy sets, dim lighting restricted mostly to simple key spots, non existent camerawork and extremely poor sound recording’, elements far removed from prestige-level independent production or studio filmmaking. Even the most successful financially and ‘artistically’ Poverty Row studio in the 1930s and 1940s, Republic Pictures, was widely known by industry practitioners as ‘Repulsive Pictures’.
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- Information
- American Independent CinemaAn Introduction, pp. 63 - 98Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2006