Lea Jacobs

Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942

The Wages of Sin

Seeking to characterise the radical shifts in taste that changed American life in the Jazz Age, Jacob documents the fims and film genres that were considered old-fashioned, as well as those considered more innovative, and looks closely at the work of Erich von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Monta Bell, and others.

American Film in the 1920s

The Decline of Sentiment

The Decline of Sentiment seeks to characterize the radical shifts in taste that transformed American film in the jazz age. Based upon extensive reading of trade papers and the popular press of the day, Lea Jacobs documents the films and film genres that were considered old-fashioned, as well as those dubbed innovative and up-to-date, and looks closely at the works of filmmakers such as Erich von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, and Monta Bell, among many others. Her analysis—focusing on the influence of literary naturalism on the cinema, the emergence of sophisticated comedy, and the progressive alteration of the male adventure story and the seduction plot—is a comprehensive account of the modernization of classical Hollywood film style and narrative form.

Examines how film censors and producers treated the "fallen woman" or "sex picture" subject.

Ben Brewster

Assistant Director Center for Film and Theater Research Ben Brewster

Benjamin Robert Brewster

Associate Professor Department of Communication Arts Lea Jacobs

This study of the origins of film looks at the relations between early cinema and 19th century theatre, examining how film-makers in Europe and America assimilated and adapted 19th century theatrical and acting styles.

Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film

Theatre to Cinema

The seemingly effortless integration of sound, movement, and editing in films of the late 1930s stands in vivid contrast to the awkwardness of the first talkies. Film Rhythm after Sound analyzes this evolution via close examination of important prototypes of early sound filmmaking, as well as contemporary discussions of rhythm, tempo, and pacing. Jacobs looks at the rhythmic dimensions of performance and sound in a diverse set of case studies: the Eisenstein-Prokofiev collaboration Ivan the Terrible, Disney’s Silly Symphonies and early Mickey Mouse cartoons, musicals by Lubitsch and Mamoulian, and the impeccably timed dialogue in Hawks’s films. Jacobs argues that the new range of sound technologies made possible a much tighter synchronization of music, speech, and movement than had been the norm with the live accompaniment of silent films. Filmmakers in the early years of the transition to sound experimented with different technical means of achieving synchronization and employed a variety of formal strategies for creating rhythmically unified scenes and sequences. Music often served as a blueprint for rhythm and pacing, as was the case in mickey mousing, the close integration of music and movement in animation. However, by the mid-1930s, filmmakers had also gained enough control over dialogue recording and editing to utilize dialogue to pace scenes independently of the music track. Jacobs’s highly original study of early sound-film practices provides significant new contributions to the fields of film music and sound studies.

Technology, Music, and Performance

Film Rhythm After Sound

J. B. Bullen

Professor of English J B Bullen

Pre-Raphaelitism was the first avant-garde movement in Britain, and it shocked society. This study traces the source of that shock to the representation of the human body, the sexualization of the female body, and lurid interest in the 'fallen woman'.

Lea Jacobs

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