The US cinema industry (2005)

Résumé du document

When I try to imagine a typical American family, the first image which comes to mind is that of a perfect family with beautiful (their teeth have to shine) and rich parents and beautiful and healthy children, who live happily in a small house somewhere in the countryside in a small village. A kind of Coca Cola or Hollywood chewing gum family, a part of the American dream. The studied films: Citizen Kane of O. Wells All about Eve of J. Mankiewicks,Hitchcock's Rear Window and Claughton's The Night of the Hunter show a completely different image of the American family and they criticize some American values. In these films couples are unmarried, divorced, children are often seen as a burden instead of a source of joy, men are macho, women naïve and submitted, there is almost any happy end. They reveal undoubtly a more contrasted and probably real image of the United States.

Extraits

[...] Charles Kane behaves with Susan as a creator with his beast. Susan has not the right to contradict Kane, in Xanadu she is like an animal locked up in a gold cage. That is also one reason of the madness of Kane when Susan leaves him: he does not understand how his creation can escape from him. Claughton shows quite the same relationships between the preacher and Willa in the night of the hunter. Willa is completely under the domination of her husband. [...]

[...] This is more particularly the case in Citizen Kane. The parents of Charles get rid of him because they feel that they will be unable to educate him. The father is apparently sometime violent and the mother does not want to take the responsibility of educating alone the boy. Charles is obliged to leave the family home and we know all the consequences that will lead to. The second interesting example is the one of children in the Night of the hunter. [...]

[...] She is too smooth, all that she does is well-thought-out and he does not need that. He needs action. During all the film Lisa will try to demonstrate to him that she can also be a woman of action, but she will finally show that she really is not used to that and will overturn almost everything. At the end, the camera makes a last turn around, as at the beginning. The last image shows Jeff again in plaster but this time both legs and Lisa beside him reading a magazine about fashion. [...]

[...] These two motivations concern several couples in these films. There is firstly Charles Kane and Emily Norton: obviously Carter says that this marriage is at least at the beginning a love marriage but how do we believe that when we know the will of Kane to develop his empire and that Emily is the daughter of the senator, the best proof of that is probably the shortness of their marriage: more or less fifteen years in life which are shown in two minutes on screen. [...]

[...] The concept of marriage is also questioned in these films. Marriage rarely brings happiness to couples. We can also quote here almost all movies, but I think that the case of All about Eve is the most interesting one. Margo and Bill play a very modern and liberated couple. They firstly do not want to marry, but the arrival of Eve will oblige them to do so. Mankiewicks completely reverses here the aim of marriage: it is used not as proof of love but the only mean to rescue it. [...]