Hollywood Frame by Frame

Here at Lance's Werthwhile Movies Blog I not only like to talk about classic movies- but I also like to talk about books about classic movies. 

I just recently finished up Karina Longworth's Hollywood Frame by Frame. Have you ever wondered about the history of still promotional photography of Hollywood movies? Longworth has. Her theory is that as movies and the studio system (as well as photography technology) changed so too did the way that studio photographers shot specific film productions for publicity. As cultural views of stars and the movies evolved, the ways studios promoted those stars and movies evolved. Staged pictures shot in portrait studios gave way to more relaxed candid shots of stars as well as shots of actual filming. Makes sense. Unfortunately the contact sheets that Longworth shows aren't great examples of her point. 

The uncharacteristically relaxed and smiling candid shots of James Dean from the set of Giant (1956) are similar to the candid shots of a pre-superstardom Madonna smiling and laughing having a drink at Danceteria during the filming of Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). The portraits of Audrey Hepburn and Cat for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) are as glamorously staged  as the portraits of Faye Dunaway's fashion shots for The Thomas Crown Affair- a year after the American verite movement was born.

The frame-by-frame shots of Sissy Spacek having blood dumped on her in Carrie (1976) hold the same stop-motion fascination as the shots of Robert De Niro getting punched in Raging Bull (1980). What's missing is a sense of the dramatic change that Longworth discusses within the pictures themselves. But perhaps this illustrates a point that Longworth doesn't explicitly make- While film styles and stars change- how we connect with them does not. Talented photographers of very different eras were able to grasp what made a star or a movie exciting and were able to capture it on film- whether it was staged or candid, on 35mm or a Polaroid. With the digital film revolution, it sounds like the contact sheet is dead. But I'd be willing to bet that the promotional pictures stored on hard drives and memory sticks of today's photographers are probably very similar to the shots depicted in Hollywood Frame by Frame.