Speaker 1: The problem with movies in generals that everybody sort of
Speaker 1: has low expectations of them. You know, what do you
Speaker 1: want to do? I don't know nothing. I want to
Speaker 1: go to a movie. I mean, so that's sort of
Speaker 1: that's where we are right and we don't even plan
Speaker 1: to go to and we just go. Something will be
Speaker 1: playing their sixteen screens. We have to find something. The
Speaker 1: Science of Happiness, appreciating modern painting, dilemmas of modern medicine,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln and the civil The artistic genius of Michel Angeli.
Speaker 1: When intuition changed American mystory, Psychology of Religion. One Day University.
Speaker 1: The most acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're
Speaker 1: best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn.
Speaker 1: And so this is sort of the climate today. This
Speaker 1: is the digital age right where we just seem to
Speaker 1: have so many choices. My name is Mark LaPadula. I
Speaker 1: teach at Yale University in the Film and Media Studies program.
Speaker 1: Today is films that changed America. There was something about
Speaker 1: the films of yesteryear that I think it's really worth
Speaker 1: and I tell my students to go back and re
Speaker 1: examine them. What is our relationship with with movies? How
Speaker 1: has that changed over years? You know, movies do tend
Speaker 1: to reflect the time in which they're made, and the
Speaker 1: best movies actually become mirrors of the world and help
Speaker 1: us to better see the world we're sort of embroiled in.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we don't see as clearly as we'd like to.
Speaker 1: A movie can somehow, you know, open up a window
Speaker 1: and it gives you a view and you then can
Speaker 1: sort of better assess, you know, sort of what's going on.
Speaker 1: Are there like abrupt or dramatic changes that have taken
Speaker 1: place to the way we look at movies. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: very much at how a lot of people consume movies,
Speaker 1: not in movie theaters anymore, but on smaller screens and
Speaker 1: sometimes very small screens. There's sort of been a diminishment
Speaker 1: ever since the movie palaces started to close down. In
Speaker 1: those days, you know, you wanted to get out of
Speaker 1: your cold water flat in Brooklyn, you know, might have
Speaker 1: been the Great Depression. In the nineteen thirties, about ninety
Speaker 1: million tickets per week on average were sold. People just
Speaker 1: wanted to escape. They wanted to go to a place
Speaker 1: where there were comfortable seats to watch the movie, and
Speaker 1: with the velvet draperies that would part and the curtains
Speaker 1: that would open, they would just have an experience that
Speaker 1: was it was a special event. They got dressed up
Speaker 1: to go there. We don't really do that today at all. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you do see people in the movie theater,
Speaker 1: if you even are in the movie theater, we kind
Speaker 1: of look like we just rolled out of that. We're
Speaker 1: still in at some sort of form of our pajamas.
Speaker 1: So let's go back in time and talk about the
Speaker 1: first film on your list, which is The Jazz Singer,
Speaker 1: and that movie was the first talkie, right, Well, wasn't
Speaker 1: really the first talkie. What is surprising to people when
Speaker 1: they actually see The Jazz Singer. It's one of those
Speaker 1: movies that you feel you know enough about I need
Speaker 1: to see it. I know all about it. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a silent film except that in six scenes it has
Speaker 1: the miracle sound. Six scenes, not many. It is credited
Speaker 1: with being the first feature length film to have sound,
Speaker 1: but it's not the first full fledged talkie. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were shorts that were made that we're talkinges even
Speaker 1: before The Jazz Singer. This was the first feature film. Now,
Speaker 1: what was it that prevented sound from coming into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: The technology was difficult to get right. The synchronization amplification
Speaker 1: issues were enormous. It took like two decades of wanting
Speaker 1: these characters to be able to speak and be heard
Speaker 1: until they could actually sink it properly. You're gonna see
Speaker 1: in this scene from the long shot, Jolson's lips are
Speaker 1: not matching the song, but once they go inside they do.
Speaker 1: But what made The Jazz Singer so important is that, Yes,
Speaker 1: it was Warner Brothers attempt to really bet the ranch
Speaker 1: on this new technology, and if it had failed, that
Speaker 1: studio would have gone under. But because it succeeded, it
Speaker 1: didn't succeed, you know, in a blockbuster way. It was
Speaker 1: a success, but it actually then it was like a
Speaker 1: revolution in the way cinema would now, you know, strive
Speaker 1: towards sing sound. So The Jazz Singer was an incredible
Speaker 1: gamble and also a technological breakthrough. And it starred Al Jolson,
Speaker 1: who was an extraordinary star. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about his impact. Al Joelson was somebody who actually was
Speaker 1: a hero to Black America. He was a champion of
Speaker 1: civil rights, whereas normally the orchestra was down in the pit,
Speaker 1: and he had an all black orchestra because he's singing
Speaker 1: jazz numbers. He wanted them on stage with him as equals.
Speaker 1: He didn't want them in the pit. He actually spawned
Speaker 1: certain the first play a drama ever written by an
Speaker 1: African American that went to Broadway. It got there because
Speaker 1: of Joelston and it was called Appearances. Interesting title. Joelson
Speaker 1: was somebody who, with that voice being as great as
Speaker 1: it was, stars in a movie that actually invents the
Speaker 1: genre of the musical. I mean, obviously couldn't have musicals
Speaker 1: up until this point. But because of this performance, you're thinking,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, a new genre, not just a star
Speaker 1: is born, a new genre is born. This was something
Speaker 1: that was actually, I mean, this was a revolution this
Speaker 1: film on so many levels. There's gonna have to be
Speaker 1: a whole new way that people act now in movies.
Speaker 1: So Al Jolson introduced jazz too many people. Oh absolutely
Speaker 1: that you would have to say that. Now, this film
Speaker 1: was not a sound movie in every venue that it
Speaker 1: played in. It was only in the major metropolis is
Speaker 1: that could actually afford the vitaphone technology. So it actually
Speaker 1: was a silent movie for most. Most Americans probably did
Speaker 1: see it in a silent form, except those that en
Speaker 1: mass sawt in the major metropolis is But I mean
Speaker 1: it caused the transition. As a result of this, now
Speaker 1: stars now had to be able to deliver lines, and
Speaker 1: this was something that actually cut short many careers. There
Speaker 1: was also a strong Jewish theme in this film, was
Speaker 1: that in any way controversial or considered avant garde or
Speaker 1: outside the mainstream. We'll see looking back you think, wow.
Speaker 1: You know, here's a movie about a young man who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be a canter, wants to hang out
Speaker 1: in the clubs, sing jazz in black face, and audiences
Speaker 1: embraced it. I mean mainstream audiences. People who had no
Speaker 1: ties to the Jewish religion, had no familiarity even with
Speaker 1: Jewish individuals, they actually identified with this this story because
Speaker 1: America is all about right, coming from an old tradition,
Speaker 1: coming to a new land, trying to find your own voice,
Speaker 1: trying to find your own way. And it's going to necessary,
Speaker 1: not necessarily be that you can do what you or
Speaker 1: for the most part, rejecting over in Europe that brought
Speaker 1: you here in the first place. You have to find
Speaker 1: a new path, and so a new path like this
Speaker 1: someone that like stood his ground and really said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to devote everything to what I love. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: follow my dream, the American dream. That was something that
Speaker 1: audiences absolutely found easy to embrace. Let's move on to
Speaker 1: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which came
Speaker 1: out just five years later Warner Brothers, same studio, and
Speaker 1: technologically it's completely like a different generation. You look at
Speaker 1: it and go wow. They certainly figured out ways of
Speaker 1: telling stories and sinking sound with the visual in a
Speaker 1: way that they hadn't before. We'll see that's so important.
Speaker 1: The silent era was obviously story driven. When it became
Speaker 1: a sound film, suddenly the movies became very a static
Speaker 1: They didn't have that beautiful narrative thrust that the silent
Speaker 1: films were well, that was what they were known for.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is by y two, what Changang
Speaker 1: does so well is that it marries sound to the
Speaker 1: tradition of actually telling a full fledged narrative with a
Speaker 1: lot of scenes, with a lot of action, with a
Speaker 1: lot of things going on. And I would really say
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties where they kind of nailed it, and it's
Speaker 1: it's shocking that they were able to just within three years.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, go from we're not making
Speaker 1: any movies with sink sound, suddenly most movies are now
Speaker 1: in singing sound. It's it looks like modern cinema. So
Speaker 1: this movie is about a World War One veteran, who,
Speaker 1: like so many war events from overseas wars then and
Speaker 1: up to the present day, has a really difficult time
Speaker 1: adjusting to civilian life. Right. What's sad is that this
Speaker 1: scene is one that played out so powerfully in ninety two,
Speaker 1: and it's it's been something that audiences can relate to
Speaker 1: it since, whether it's the Korean War veteran, the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War veteran, the Persian Gulf War veteran, those veterans back
Speaker 1: from Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, our combat veterans, they become
Speaker 1: this lost generation. Once upon a time, these guys are
Speaker 1: really valuable when there was a war to fight, but
Speaker 1: now that the war is over, they're forgotten. Did this
Speaker 1: movie lead to any political change or any social proach?
Speaker 1: It did. Actually, people were so upset that a veteran
Speaker 1: who was a decorated war veteran was so mistreated because
Speaker 1: remember he's an innocent guy. Because the guy puts a
Speaker 1: gun on and says empty the cash register, he becomes
Speaker 1: an accomplice and as a result, during this hold up
Speaker 1: that he had nothing to do with, he sentenced to
Speaker 1: ten years of hard labor in the chain Gang. This
Speaker 1: is a movie that caused such outrage when they saw
Speaker 1: how these convicts were beaten, how they were abused. They
Speaker 1: actually wrote in those days their congress men in the
Speaker 1: thirties and they demand a change. Well, there was a
Speaker 1: conference of writers in the night teen fifties and at
Speaker 1: the podium was the German playwright Bertold Brett and a
Speaker 1: hand went up after he gave his talk, and the
Speaker 1: hand belonged to the Swiss dramatist Frederick dern Matt. He said,
Speaker 1: Mr Brett, is it still possible to dramatize the modern world?
Speaker 1: And Brett just looked out and he said, yes, but
Speaker 1: only if the dramatist attempts to change it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is what has happened to so many of us
Speaker 1: in the films that we hold the most dear. That
Speaker 1: is the promise, you see, that is the greatest possible
Speaker 1: promise of the cinema, and so there were laws that
Speaker 1: went on the books as a results of this film
Speaker 1: that was about real life. You know, art can reflect
Speaker 1: real life, right, but then real life can now take
Speaker 1: that reflection and do something that is actually beneficial to
Speaker 1: the society large. Let's fast forward more than thirty years. Um,
Speaker 1: I am a fugitive on a chain gang and talk
Speaker 1: about a very different movie, The Graduate. I guess what's
Speaker 1: really important about this film is that young people in
Speaker 1: the sixties really wanted to have movies that would speak
Speaker 1: to their generation, and there were very few being made
Speaker 1: at this time. And here comes this young guy, Benjamin Braddock,
Speaker 1: fresh out of college. He's not really sure what he
Speaker 1: wants to do with his life. When he's asked at
Speaker 1: his graduating party, what are you gonna do now, he says,
Speaker 1: I think I'm just gonna go upstairs for a moment.
Speaker 1: They go no, but with your life, your future, He goes, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of hard to deterver it at this time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's such a big that's a big question.
Speaker 1: But um, they had the opportunity to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to sort of develop my own values. I
Speaker 1: want to be someone who pursues my own dream again
Speaker 1: goes back to the jazz singer um because all these
Speaker 1: themes just constantly repeat themselves. They always just resurface. You
Speaker 1: say in in the One Day University Lecturer, the graduate
Speaker 1: changed America. Wow, there are movies that actually change movies.
Speaker 1: So every one of these movies change movies. But it
Speaker 1: also actually changed the society. This film is really single
Speaker 1: handedly responsible for launching the sexual revolution in nine sixties.
Speaker 1: It actually really stoked the flames of that young population.
Speaker 1: And remember in nineteen over half this country was under
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. Over half the population of this
Speaker 1: country under eighteen. This is really where the Hollywood studio system,
Speaker 1: it was fragmenting all over the place, didn't make it
Speaker 1: through the sixties. I mean, it really broke apart because
Speaker 1: television was siphoning off so much revenue. But also they
Speaker 1: were making movies that people really didn't want to see.
Speaker 1: I mean they were still making movies in the mid
Speaker 1: sixties where you know, Henry Fonda and I don't know,
Speaker 1: like Doris Day and they got twelve kids. They go
Speaker 1: to the Cape cod for the summer and no, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be fun, and like two people saw it right,
Speaker 1: because these kids were not looking for that kind of movie.
Speaker 1: And what made it also important was nobody had ever
Speaker 1: taken the music like rock and roll or pop music
Speaker 1: like Simon and Garfunkel and actually hired them to do
Speaker 1: the soundtrack. Mrs Robinson was written expressly for the film.
Speaker 1: I remember being in the movie theater when this was
Speaker 1: released and being stunned by the music. The music was
Speaker 1: the biggest thing for me because Simon and Garfunkel were,
Speaker 1: yes they were, they were making number one hits, but
Speaker 1: they were on the singer songwriter, folky end of popular music.
Speaker 1: And there it was as a soundtrack that never happened before, right,
Speaker 1: and that actually paved the way for Easy Rider, which
Speaker 1: is going to be like a rock concert. Before we
Speaker 1: leave The Graduate. It was a film about the generation gap.
Speaker 1: Other films too that preceded it were about the generation gap.
Speaker 1: Ro Without a Cause is about the generation gap, because again,
Speaker 1: what is the big fear, James Dean, what is the
Speaker 1: big fear in The Graduate is that if I'm not careful,
Speaker 1: I'm going to become my dad. I'll become my mom
Speaker 1: and to that generation, kill me. Now, if that's gonna
Speaker 1: be my future kill me now, I don't want to
Speaker 1: live because oh my god. Whereas if you actually see
Speaker 1: that might be. What is so different about the movies
Speaker 1: today is kids today for the most part. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying they aren't rebellious at times. Of course they are.
Speaker 1: They you know, everybody's rebellious that it, but they're not
Speaker 1: rebellious in the way that that generation was. I mean,
Speaker 1: they just wanted to reject everything from this fashion, the values,
Speaker 1: the music, you know, everything the politics they were because
Speaker 1: I remember the Beatles made it. They were in their
Speaker 1: teens when they were coming up, and they were making
Speaker 1: major contributions to music in their early twenties and their
Speaker 1: best work even after they broke up. They broke up,
Speaker 1: they were still in their late twenties most of them.
Speaker 1: Everything that the Beatles did, their contributions were that was
Speaker 1: like under the age of thirty. That was an amazing
Speaker 1: generation when you think of what what they what they
Speaker 1: did in such a short period of time. The next movie,
Speaker 1: the final movie, Jaws, directed by the great Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1: There's an extraordinary musical build up where just before the
Speaker 1: first person is attacked by the shark. It really is
Speaker 1: one of the most memorable moments in film. Well, you'll
Speaker 1: say there are certain films where like in Psycho, Bernard
Speaker 1: Herman's score all Strings steals the show, obviously John Williams
Speaker 1: score and Jaws steals the show. Uh, people didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to the beach. They were terrified to put
Speaker 1: a tone in the water. And so when you think
Speaker 1: about movies that affect behavior in a mass way, that
Speaker 1: is pretty phenomenal. What makes him different Spielberg is that
Speaker 1: he was the first generation of university trained filmmakers. He
Speaker 1: people like Scorsese, later, Spike Lee, George Lucas, they're going
Speaker 1: to have this kind of love of the cinema where
Speaker 1: they actually know what has come before them, they've studied it.
Speaker 1: You say in your one day university lecture that this
Speaker 1: movie with with its happy ending, changed film Jaws is
Speaker 1: very significant. I mean Steven Spielberg, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: major talent. He has more talent in his little finger
Speaker 1: the most filmmakers would ever have in their whole body
Speaker 1: on a good day, on their best day. There's something
Speaker 1: about how this guy knows how to tell a story
Speaker 1: and then make it to his advantage. The shark malfunction
Speaker 1: throughout the shoot. Then instead of like pulling his hair
Speaker 1: out or letting it look fake, he actually said, well,
Speaker 1: we'll hide the shark. And that hiding of the shark
Speaker 1: was the master stroke because it build up even greater
Speaker 1: suspense for when you finally do see it. No film
Speaker 1: prior to in the history of cinema had ever grossed
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars at the box office, but Godfather, Wow,
Speaker 1: it came close. Guess what this movie not only crossed
Speaker 1: the hundred million dollar threshold, it will make in its
Speaker 1: initial run domestically over two hundred and twenty million dollars. Wow,
Speaker 1: is right. So it was so huge that they said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have got to figure out number one. We've got
Speaker 1: to start endowing all these m f A programs, because
Speaker 1: if this is what's coming out of these these colleges,
Speaker 1: we gotta get the next Spielberg. We gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: nurture the next generation of Spielberg's. And of course there
Speaker 1: was Lucas too. Lucas made just as much money with
Speaker 1: Star Wars and that franchise as Spielberg has made with
Speaker 1: all of his franchises. So you create a franchise and
Speaker 1: see That's what this was the birth of because you know,
Speaker 1: Star Wars is a franchise, Jaws became a franchise. But
Speaker 1: I will say this, all of those movies right happy endings,
Speaker 1: they make a ton of money, not just for their
Speaker 1: initial commercial release, but with all the ancillary products that
Speaker 1: they actually generate, the towels, the lunch boxes, the video games,
Speaker 1: the action figures, and so there's so much money to
Speaker 1: be made. And what what happened with Spielberg and Lucas
Speaker 1: Their success actually put the brakes on what was America's
Speaker 1: true golden age of cinema. Let me ask you about
Speaker 1: your one day university lecturers, what are some of the
Speaker 1: or giving an example of a great question you've had
Speaker 1: from the audience. Wow, the most profound question is why
Speaker 1: aren't there movies today that actually changed American the way
Speaker 1: these Obviously, you know you made a pretty good case
Speaker 1: in the the thirties, We went to the sixties, went
Speaker 1: into the seventies, and you know you could go into
Speaker 1: the eighties. But where are they today? How do you
Speaker 1: answer that question? The way you answer it is that
Speaker 1: cinema used to have heft, It used to have prestige.
Speaker 1: You used to be an event that you went to
Speaker 1: and it was exciting to go to this darkened room
Speaker 1: in this big theater and this huge screen lights up.
Speaker 1: It can change the way I look at things. It
Speaker 1: can change the way I feel about myself. We wanted
Speaker 1: to be transformative. We wanted to be something that makes
Speaker 1: us a different person, a better person. You walk out
Speaker 1: of that, you walk out of that movie just energized.
Speaker 1: But see today, I'm not really sure if that is
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. Because we are seeing them on our
Speaker 1: cell phones. We are watching them at home kind of
Speaker 1: while we're doing the laundry, while we're ironing, while we're cooking.
Speaker 1: We're not really paying attention. We're kind of hearing it,
Speaker 1: sort of seeing it. Movies require us to really focus
Speaker 1: because these directors that are really careful, they're putting stuff
Speaker 1: all over this canvas, and we have to pay attention.
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign up on our
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