#howard hawk

[infernothechaosgod]

Btw we know howard hawk would be a villian in oswalds show not only because of the way his expressions are drawn or because he's the mayor(?) Of the place but also

Oswalds other villian was planned to be a fox/wolf

Howard was a hawk...both of these animalf love to chomp on rabbits

[craigfernandez]

[elizabethanism]

“So, you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?”

German movie poster for Howard Hawk’s The Big Sleep (1946).

[infernothechaosgod]

Cancelled oswald show rewrite

Recently I posted my art of rewritten fanny from that ver so i thought id write a little something furthering my thoughts and ideas about it, not just her but the story and other characters aswell

First of all THE NEW CHARACTERS

As we can see there were 7 new characters planned to appear in the series, we don't know much about the elephant man or the cop dogs but we do know alot about Cliff and gloria!

"Gloria The diva" was suppoust to be a fameous actress and is visibly inspired by flapper culture or some parts of it at least, in my rewrite I imagine her to become friends with fanny! Oswald most likely meet her by ruining something on her set and id imagine fanny pulling up to try and fix it then meeting gloria, shes one of few people fanny accualy got to properly meet in the city and seeing a new young clearly lost girl around she decided to try and lean in a hand for her, little did she know how much that friendship will bring her 👀

"Cliff the cabby" was meant to be friends with oswald, as the original creators said their dynamic was inspired by tortoise and the hare, Cliff was meant to have a very low self image opposite to oswald who even in that ver appeared very hyper and confident (maybe oblivious tbh) In my rewrite Cliff is still friends with oswald but their dynamic is a little different, oswald doesn't "unlock his inner confidence" but rather makes him gain a new perspective at things, he's always lived in the city overwhelmed by it, but then suddenly someone from complete outside appeared and opened his eyes to things he learned to ignore, it makes him rethink everything and while yes he does kinda copy oswald in trying to appear more confident, it's not as much as oswald unlocking that in him but more so the time he spend with him that did that- if it makes any sense

Truth be told I don't have that much of an idea for the elephant man

But I think the police dogs could be antagonists to oswald, trying to catch him as he brings in mayhem everywhere and bend in the rules a bit if it means he'll be more likely to be caught, they might appear goofy all around at first but do become more of a problem the further we go

Speaking of antagonists!

Howard hawk! As described by Matt danner was a visionary behind the city of coneyopolis and while that parts not confirmed i belive he could also be the mayor by that logic? Anyway I belive him to be the big bad of the show, a corrupt guy in charge trying to benefit himself with lies and empty promises, prehaps he wants to use oswald for some of his plans make him an "example" but for what hmmm? 🤨 Im sure it's nothing he has to worry about no no no-

Sneek the cheat and his boss are a pretty basic ball for me tbh, sneek is a con artist trying to rip people off and steal a thing there and there meanwhile his boss as small as he is is the one in charge telling him what to do, not really evil geniuses but after oswald crosses their path a few times too many they try to pounce him every now and then

I mainly have ideas for Fanny & gloria and Oswald & Cliff but thats pretty explainatory why as there the two closest characters to the main cast and yes both oswald AND FANNY are the main cast they have sm more potential that way istg TOT

They both arrived to the city at the same time from an old small village they just call "the burrow" Oswald is very excited to arrive there, ready to meet all kinds of people and of course become a great hit! How doesn't really matter, he's very confident- a little too confident you could say, he's not used to losing in any way, people back home spoiled him a bit so now he just really doesn't know what concequence of action or accountability means, every trouble he's caused back home could easily be fixed or he'd just brush it off, every person yelling at him to get off their lawn could easily turn around and pet him on the head next time he'd see them, however the city will not work this way and even if he doesnt realize it going in he sure as hell will know what concequences and maturity means on his way out, the city will kindly feed his hunter for adventure as well as give him a rude awakening to how he can't just run around like a child and not expect anything to happen

Fanny on the other hand- oh don't get me started! She's very scared and shy, one might think she doesn't want to be there at all, she spends most of her time at their hotel room/apartment, trying to act like she did back home, you know uh...cleaning the dishes, cleaning the place, trying to cook, washing their stuff, taking care of the paperwork, very very "home" orientated, don't let that fool you like it has fooled her however, Fanny adores the city and it's culture, she's so allured to the dance floors and the music and the people it's almost suffocating to keep herself away from them!...but alas, their home town wasn't as kind to fanny as it was to him, even away she's trying to be "modest" "un-corrupt" never show as much as inch of her legs arms or god forbig torso! She's not used to having any form of autonomy so now that it's just infront of her and she still has her villages "values" grilled into her- yeah it's alot for her, the city will not change her as much as it will let her be herself for the first time in her life

[alls-well-with-the-world]

Celebrated Cary Grant’s birthday today by watching Bringing Up Baby. Amazing that Howard Hawks, Grant and Hepburn were able to propel a film that has such a madcap plot. Definitely can see how it made the Sight and Sound top 250 list. Speaking of, that makes 50 films I’ve seen on it.

[silverscreenevenings]

AFI’s Top 100 - #88: Bringing Up Baby (1938), or THE BABY IS A BIG CAT I DID NOT EXPECT THAT

Yes, you might say, “But there is a leopard right in the cover image!” and to that I reply, I am no observant. Never have been, never will be. You duped me, Director Howard Hawks! Got me real good.

Handsome goober paleontologist David Huxley (Carey Grant) is rather stressed lately. Namely, by nabbing the last bone to his prized Brontosaurus skeleton, his next day marriage to the puss-faced Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker), and efforts to secure a cool $1 million (my expert calculations on inflation tell me that in the present day, that would be a lot) for his museum from a wealthy prospective donor, Elizabeth Random (May Robson). Proto-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Susan Vance, a motor-mouthed eccentric who is actually the niece of the donor, wrangles him to look at her new Brazilian pet leopard, Baby (Nissa the Leopard), and decides to try and entrap him in her (misguided) wiles to win his affections. The ensuing harebrained shenanigans that Susan leads the respectively clumsy duo into pit them in an enjoyable battle-of-the-sexes-turned-romance that screwball comedy dreams are made of.

Fun fact: leopards are native only to Africa and Asia, not South America. It’s details like this that don’t really matter when you get into the thick of the film, however. In truth, it’s best to leave all prior contexts at the coat check, otherwise it becomes a game of clichés. There’s a dog who buries a valuable object; zany! Confusion of identity (even leopard identity); crazy! There’s an Irish drunk who drinks; wahoo! The list goes on. But rather than deriding Bringing Up Baby for its reliance on age old tropes, I’ll give it a pass for taking time-tested comedy aspects and making them entertaining in their own right. Where I may raise my eyebrow at some of the dopey mischief, it never made me outright groan.

The prolific classic maker Howard Hawks (Scarface (1932), His Girl Friday (1940), The Big Sleep (1946), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) for instance) was not entirely well honored by his contemporaries – in fact, Baby was reviewed very poorly despite screening well with audiences – but I think he gets it. The late 30s Depression-era filmography was kind to light comedies of this sort. Audiences needed a boost of genuine and simplistic humor to uplift their states of mind. Baby is cheery and never complex. While the tomfoolery flits here and there, one barely needs to follow the plot (what plot there is) to take pleasure in the exploits of the perplexing Susan and mild-mannered David.

The couple, Hepburn and Grant, star in their second feature together of four, followed by Holiday (1938) and the pinnacle Hepburn film, The Philadelphia Story (1940). Despite repairing the two as romantic leads - in all of which they have excellent chemistry - this is Katherine Hepburn’s first and only screwball comedy. Reportedly, early in the shoot she was so exaggerated and frankly unfunny that Hawks brought in Vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett to tutor her. Catlett was later hired as Baby’s bumbling Sheriff Slocum at the behest of Hepburn. Hepburn is lovely in the film, attractive and madcap, but there is still an air of trying very hard. A for effort, though. I prefer it to actor’s who phone it in. Carey Grant is gifted with more experience in comedy as well as a significantly less annoying character (how does one make a part that’s description is “annoying” endearing after all? Hepburn did quite well in that light). He is flustered and compliant to the whims of Susan in due turn and admirably plays the easy foil to her loony lady.

Bringing Up Baby and its ilk are effectively the 20th century answer to Shakespearean comedy. Sparring couples, witty dialogue, mischievious capers. Screwball rom-coms lift the spirit of Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well That Ends Well straight off the pages and smack onto the screen. That’s what silly comedy is good for: to help alleviate present sorrows with a brief respite of uncomplicated absurdity and a happy ending. And with a film as jocular as Baby, it doesn’t have to be innovative. Just amusing.

Bringing Up Baby gets 70 animal actors, despite only having two in the cast (the other is a pup named Skippy!). A good time to be had by all, I can nearly guarantee it.

[inqym]

Here is another essay that I wrote, pretty much just used it as an opportunity to talk about one of my favourite movies and two of my favourite actors. Still trying to figure out how to write without sounding like a mess of other people's opinions.

Classical Cinema refers to an era bound between 1915 and 1960 that was identifiable through procedural elements relating to the construction of plot. These elements include a double causal structure, the emphasis of a deadline, a Hollywood star line-up and a happy ending. How is Howard Hawks 1946 film, The Big Sleep, a supreme embodiment of these technical conventions of classical Hollywood cinema and the progeny of the tense conventions of its time?

Classicism in any medium is traditionally characterised by obedience to a set of extrinsic norms. Classical Hollywood Cinema’s commitment to an unambiguous presentation of the classic narrative is indeed reason enough to label it as such. Unfortunately, it is in this transparency that the misgivings of present generations lies. Classical Hollywood has been underestimated because people think it obvious in the sense of being simplistic as opposed to it’s obviousness actually being the very source of the cinema’s meaning and structure. This essay tackles Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946) as a supreme embodiment of the technical conventions of classical Hollywood cinema and the progeny of the tense conventions of its time. Classical cinema refers to an era bound between 1915 and 1960 that was identifiable through procedural elements relating to the construction of plot. These elements, which will be discussed below, include the embodiment of a double causal structure, the emphasis of a deadline, the casting of Hollywood stars and, foremost, a happy ending.

“Cinema is a question of things that seem obvious and indeed are obvious, but that obviousness is rich and charged with difficulty.” (Bellour, R. 2000) The classical style’s transparency is a cog in a very seamless and economical piece of machinery. “Everything from shot duration to character motivation can be placed within a detailed paradigmatic structure that nonetheless functions both to ensure the clarity of narrative meaning and to install a regime of naturalness about the system.” (Galt, R. 2008). It is in the obvious that Howard Hawke’s genius lies, his manipulation of key classical elements in The Big Sleep reign supreme as an example of the styles competence and in it’s subsequent audience satisfaction.

Hollywood has long insisted on an unyielding screenplay formula and Hawke’s The Big Sleep respects this. As monolithic a novelist construct it seems, it is a format that has been conditioned throughout history and inherited by humanity as it sustains the balance of the spectator. The pace is nevertheless relentless; a set of affairs are quickly established, they are then just as quickly violated and must then be set right. No problem, problem, struggle, and the elimination of problem is the characteristic back-and-forth-tango of the classical narrative.

The Big Sleep’s plot is odd in its confusing nature; its disorientation is a feature that the classical style characteristically makes a point of shunning. The rapid-rhythm of the film is astute in that it makes certain that the audiences ‘time to reflect’ is kept to a bare minimum and that their ‘intrigue’ is carried over to the subsequent sequence rather than lost in the tangles of the plot. We should not underestimate the role of rapid-rhythm as a means of distraction. It stops the audience getting bored and encourages rushed forward thinking hypotheses.  It needs to be said that true audience satisfaction in this film relies on the relationship between Detective Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall). Film critic Roger Ebert makes a great summation toying with this avowal– “The Big Sleep is a lust story with a plot about a lot of other things.”

Without ado, The Big Sleep opens on the door of General Sternwood’s home. The wealthy general has called on private eye Philip Marlowe in the hope that the reputable man will succeed in, ever so prudently, putting an end to the blackmail he has been the victim of over gambling debts his daughter, Carmen, owes to bookseller Arthur Gywnn Geiger. What begins as a benchmark case and another day down the straight and narrow for Marlowe rapidly begins to unravel upon his discovery of a man lying dead on the floor and a half-naked and fully-drugged Carmen giggling beside him. Things grow murkier when the elder Sternwood daughter, Vivian Rutledge, also comes forward as a victim of blackmail. A compromising picture of Carmen has come to her through the mail from the night of the murder, hand-in-hand with the threat that if a certain sum of money fails to be supplied soon, the photo will be released to the press and authorities. From here, to save the Sternwood family reputation and, first and foremost, his own skin, the audience joins Detective Marlowe as he is pushed to wade waist-deep through a seedy jungle of murderers, blackmailers, pornographers and gamblers who have all appended themselves to the old general and his two randy daughters. 

The inclusion of the naughty photo of Carmen paves the way for a device highly characteristic of classical narration – the deadline. “The device of the deadline asks the viewer to construct forward-aiming, all-or-nothing causal hypotheses: either the protagonist will achieve the goal in time or s/he will not.” (Bordwell, D. 1986) The debasing photograph sets parameters for the dramatic duration of The Big Sleep; it is fatalistic in its symbology of an end or of some sort of “limit” that the story’s world has set for its action. It also gives motivation to the action; it encourages those previously mentioned forward-thinking hypotheses rather than reflection, which is a lucky thing for The Big Sleep considering its incredibly confusing plot. In Lauren Bacall’s autobiography ‘Lauren Bacall, By Myself’ she recalls "One day Bogie came on the set and said to Howard, 'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' Everything stopped." As A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax write in "Bogart," "Hawks sent Chandler a telegram asking whether the Sternwood's chauffeur, Owen Taylor, was murdered or a suicide. 'Damn it, I didn't know either,' " Chandler recalled.

A double causal structure like that present in The Big Sleep is paradigmatic of the classical plot. The audience typically plays witness to two plot lines: one focusing on a heterosexual relationship, whether it blossoming or long-lived, and the other on another sphere, a second intimate relationship, work, politics, war, adventure etc. In The Big Sleep, the hero Phillip Marlowe must work through the bog of crime and blackmail that has affixed itself to the Sternwood Family and preserve the reputation of the General and his daughters. All the meanwhile, and much more stimulating, is the secondary sphere of romantic action, Marlowe’s witty and flirty back and forth with the eldest daughter Vivian Rutledge. This romantic sphere possesses a stability and direction to it that The Big Sleep’s primary dramatic sphere lacks. Yet where the spectator begins to lose footing in the midst of bullets, car crashes and punches, they find it again in the titillating banter and locked gazes of the two leads. An example of such entrancing titillation is in one of the most ostentatious and daring examples of double entendre ever seen or heard in any movie leading up to that time. Marlowe and Vivian sit across from each other in a fancy nightclub, sharing a scotch and insinuating around their interest in the other when they begin ostensibly talking about horse racing.

Bacall: "...speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first. See if they're front-runners or come from behind... find out what their whole card is, what makes them run. I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the back stretch, and then come home free...."

Marlowe: "You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go."

Bacall: "A lot depends on who's in the saddle."

“In most cases, the romance sphere and the other sphere of action are distinct but interdependent. The plot may close off one line before the other, but often the two lines coincide at the climax: resolving one triggers the resolution of the other.” (Bordwell, D. 1986) The end of The Big Sleep is very motivated and fitting of this generic code. Marlowe has just killed one of Eddie Mars’ head honchos and escaped a tangle, with thanks due to Vivian. They drive to the house where the drama all began, Marlowe and Vivian all the meanwhile considering their dire state of affairs and matter-of-factly proclaiming their love for one another. They rush into the house where cunning Marlowe puts into play a tense hoodwink to lure Mars to the house and, in a bid to shield blame from the Sternwood family, frame him for the murder of Shaun Regan. What is fascinating about these last few sequences of the film is the way in which our protagonists evade ever actually solving the crime by ceaselessly discussing the solved crime. An example of this is throughout Marlowe and Vivian’s car ride. Marlowe spends the greater part of the conversation theorising in relation to the case, from here the script deflects any further probing by Marlowe citing to Vivian to “stop asking questions” because he is tired and his ribs ache, conveniently, just as she begins to explain her part in the scheme of things. Again, when Marlowe confronts Eddie Mars, and the case proceeds to again rapidly unravel, each point that Marlowe, full of bravado, brings to light is quickly followed by yet another while Mars fumbles weakly at gunpoint. At the peak of the interrogation, when Marlowe spouts his core query, things promptly come to a climax; Marlowe’s temper peaks and he begins shooting until his plan has run its course, Mars lies dead and the audience none the wiser but ever so perpetually pleased.

This is not an immediately conspicuous discursive tactic as, to avoid stagnancy, the romance sphere remains open as an avenue of escape for the conversation. As mentioned, this secondary sphere protects the genre’s internally consistent system of cause and effect by slighting any potential moment for audience reflection – a smart part of the codified arsenal that is classical cinema.

In The Big Sleep, the death of Eddie Mars paves the way for Marlowe and Vivian to pursue their romance but it is also the condition of it; had such a resolution not been obtained, neither could have their relationship. The conclusion of The Big Sleep is baffling and sense plainly plays second fiddle for the sake of the romance sphere yet, frankly, the spectator does not care. Not only has the protagonist been rewarded for his worthy work but so have the desires of the spectator through the restoration of a secure and pleasing final situation. Classical Hollywood cinema has thoughtfully mastered the ploy of  “pseudo-closure” (Neupert, R. 1995) as a means of satisfying the spectator at the most puerile of levels.

“In the classical film the resolution of the narrative and positioning of discourses and spectator is re-marked by a very overt, often schematic plot resolution in which the restoration of an equilibrium is signalled on many codic levels (thus producing that effect of harmony – almost in a musical sense - so characteristic of the classical text.” (MacCabe, C. 1985) The “happy ending” has become a cliché of the Classical Hollywood cinema. The classical denouement is purely formal, constructed through a logical system of cause and effect to reward and psychologically seduce the viewer. Bordwell writes, “Within the terms of Hollywood’s own discourse, whether the happy ending succeeds depends on whether it is adequately motivated. The classical Hollywood cinema demands a narrative unity derived from cause and effect… The happy ending, then, is defensible if it conforms to canons of construction.” In other words, should a films plot kowtow to logic, and take logical steps in it’s construction, it ought therefore to be ‘defensible’ to the audience as a perfectly reasonable outcome and not the result of any capricious conventions. The finale of The Big Sleep supports this avowal.

“A classical film strives to make the obligatory reunion of the couple feel so correctly motivated – seeming to be the only logical ending – that the fact that the audience was already aware of the ending, or range of plausible endings, before entering the theatre may be forgotten or repressed.” (Neupert, R. 1995) The Big Sleep’s conclusion is one of poetic justice and the courtship process itself constitutes as a structuring element of the narrative. The film closes on a vague summation from Marlowe and Vivian to bring to a close the two spheres of dramatic action: Marlowe:            “I don’t know what I’m going to tell them but it’s going to be pretty close to the truth. You’ll have to send Carmen away, from a lot of things. They have places for that, maybe they can cure her, its been done before. We’ll have to tell your father about Regan, I think he can take it.”

Vivian:            “You’ve forgotten one thing… me. Marlowe:             “What’s wrong with you?” Vivian:             “Nothing you can’t fix.”

As established previously, the priority of the romantic sphere and a happy ending commits this classical narrative to unambiguous presentation. Vivian’s sister’s impending commitment to an institution, her father’s subsequent heartbreak and the death of several men along the way reigns inconsequential in contrast to the conclusion-worthy union of the two leads. Frequently, the resolution of the two primary causal lines subsequently leaves the fate of secondary characters unsettled, for example, the fate of the Sternwood’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor. Taylor’s body is fished out of the Pacific Ocean in the first half of the film and that is that; the spectator, and Taylor’s character, is never offered anything more beyond the suspicious circumstances of his death. “Our forgetting is promoted by the device of closing the film with an epilogue, a brief celebration of the stable state achieved by the main characters.” (Bordwell, D. 2010) This state of stability in The Big Sleep being the acknowledgement that Marlowe and Vivian’s love will reign supreme despite all else. This treatment of heterosexual romance as paramount often links Hollywood classicism to dominant conceptions of sexual relations in this day and age.

In Mary Beth Haralovich study of women’s roles in Warner films of the 1930’s and 40’s, she discusses that narrative closure is always dependent on the resolution of enigmas centring on a heterosexual courtship: “If a woman is in a non-normative role in economic control and production, she will cede that control to a man by the end of the film.” Vivian Rutelage is the character incarnate of a woman in an ‘non-normative’ role in society but, come the concluding scenes of The Big Sleep, although out of her depth, she remains stubborn to her choices and true to her character. Typically, the standard ‘Femme Fatale’ of classical Hollywood was captivating, liberated and ultimately worthy of destruction. The dark ladies of film noir were symptomatic of the phallocentric perspective of the time, coded for visual pleasure, spectacle and prey to the conditioning of the archetypal male viewer. The character of Vivian Rutelage is no average 1940’s American representation of woman. She defies the patriarchal conviction of the ‘Eternal Feminine’, a reference to some sort of “biological essence” that woman are believed to embody. An essence that “attributes qualities such as inferiority, gentleness and emotionality to woman and assumes them to be innate and fixed.” (Chaudhuri 2006, pg16) Although still a ‘prize’ of Marlowe’s tough work, she seems liberated, tough, capable of making her own decisions and able to accept the responsibility of their outcomes with or without Marlowe’s two-cents – she cedes control to Marlowe eventually but on her own terms. This is a very refreshing portrayal of a 1940’s female character from Hawks although it is still only ever explored in relation to, and in the company of, the male protagonist, Marlowe.

Knowledge throughout The Big Sleep (1946) is restricted to the character of Phillip Marlowe. All dramatic action hinges on the character’s presence and it is he who is the most advantageous point of perception throughout the picture. The camera, if it is considered a “cognitive schema”, as Bordwell calls it, is then the perfect, invisible observer to the action, thus creating the perception of the spectator being omnipresent throughout the narrative. Adding to this perception of omnipresence is the way in which the character of Marlowe seems to have pre-existed his narrational representation in The Big Sleep; it is as though he has lived beyond the dramatic parameters of the film. Such a sentiment is the consequence, and exploitation, of the flourishing “star system” of Hollywood, a system at its height at the time of the film. Sure, the character of Marlowe is introduced in typical behaviour yet it is the real life star status of Humphrey Bogart that reaffirms any first impressions that the audience may have had of Marlowe.

Bogart brought the dawn on detectives in film noir; it was his role in The Maltese Falcon (1941) that paved the way for the archetypal hard-boiled detective and branded him it’s title-holder in the world of classical cinema. With each and every new character that Bogart became tied to, he brought with him a history. A history of crimes solved, criminals caught, lovers lost, scotch consumed and, above all else, justice. The same can be said for his wife, Lauren Bacall and their on-screen courtship within The Big Sleep. Bacall and Bogart stand as one of Hollywood’s most enduring love stories. On the set of Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not, (1942) Bogart, then married to mercurial actress Mayo Methot, fell madly in love with the beautiful 19-year-old Bacall. Despite a tempestuous start, what followed was a legendary Hollywood romance that came to a head during the filming of The Big Sleep when Bogart officially left his wife to be with her. “That's the undercurrent. It may not have been fun to live through, but it creates a kind of joyous, desperate tension on the screen. And since the whole idea of film noir was to live through unspeakable experiences and keep your cool, this was the right screenplay for this time in his life.” (Ebert, R. 1997) 

To conclude, classical Hollywood cinema, and its celebrity culture, embodied contemporaneous society of its time, defined the dreams of a mass culture and of what it was to be American. Despite this, the notion of this time in film history as a ‘primitive’ period has been hard to shake. Its embodiment of the obvious, as well as the technical elements discussed above, has regrettably been shirked as an elementary and even childish mastery of the cinematic form. “These connotations see one of the earliest periods of cinema as a period of lack in relation to later evolution. This lack has most often been specified as a relative absence of editing, a nearly monolithic concept of the shot unsubordinated to any editing schema. Even those who maintain the uniqueness and value of early film within a non-linear view of film history have a hard time avoiding a description of early cinema as a sort of degree zero in the evolution of montage.” (Gunning, T. 1989) 

Such an outlook is lamentable and, frankly, naïve as it is these previously discussed conventions of the classical movie that have shaped commercial cinema and are the  archetypal structure for enticing and then satisfying the audience over and over again. Classical cinema “like an individual’s own mechanisms of perception, works to reward the spontaneous desires to go to the cinema: One goes to the cinema because one wishes to and because one hopes the cinema will be perpetually pleasing.” (Neupert, R. 1995) Classical cinema guarantees it’s own continued existence as an apparatus of satisfied desire through the elements of a double causal structure, deadline, Hollywood star line-up and happy ending. Howard Hawks, The Big Sleep (1946), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is a supreme embodiment of these archetypal technical conventions and identifiable, relating to the construction of plot, through these elements. It is legendary films, like this one, that have earned the era of Classical Hollywood Cinema the title of the ‘Golden Age of Film’ and for good reason.

Bordwell, D. (1986), Classical Hollywood Cinema—a formalist assessment of narrative norms. Available at: <http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/teaching/coursenotes/Texts/classHollcin.Bordwell.html> [Accessed 14 September 2012]

Kuhn, A. (1994), Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. Available at: < http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Women_s_Pictures.html?id=8BU6d7vmLs0C&redir_esc=y > [Accessed 08 September 2012]

Bordwell, D. (1985), The Classical Hollywood Cinema, e-book. Avaiable at: <http://books.google.com.au/books?id=AkUOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=the+end+of+classical+hollywood+cinema&source=bl&ots=g60q66Iv_8&sig=00K4yMOEBHOA9Thd77rKrvZls5c&hl=en#v=onepage&q=the%20end%20of%20classical%20hollywood%20cinema&f=false> [Accessed 05 September 2012]

Bordwell, D. (2010), The Classical Hollywood Cinema Twenty-Five Years Along. Available at: <http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/classical.php> [Accessed 05 September 2012]

Goldberg, M. Classical Hollywood Cinema. Available at: <http://faculty.washington.edu/mlg/courses/definitions/classicalHollywoodcinema.html> [Accessed 05 September 2012]

Galt, R. (2008) The Obviousness of Cinema. Available at: <http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_2/Galt.html> [Accessed 05 September 2012]

Ebert, R. (1997) The Big Sleep (1946). Available at: <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970622/REVIEWS08/401010360/1023> [Accessed 05 September 2012]

Neupert, R. (1995) The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. E-book. Available at: <http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DVRMfbJNJ0MC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=classical+hollywood+happy+ending&source=bl&ots=l0zDk15npn&sig=H4k38SG8YWBk7L7mi9m7w1kUmPc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=l2iCUMCjKoeQiQealYHABw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=classical%20hollywood%20happy%20ending&f=false> [Accessed 09 October 2012]

Bellour, R., The Analysis of Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 69-76.

MacCabe, C (1985) Theoretical Essays: Film, Linguistics, Literature. E-book. Available at: <http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Theoretical_essays.html?id=MPjnAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y> [Accessed 09 October 2012]

Chaudhuri, S (2006), ‘Feminist Film Theorists’, Routledge Publications, Oxon.

Gunning. T (1989),“Primitive” Cinema - A Frame Up? Or the Trick’s on us? Available at:< https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/courses/1/2012-5-HDFTV001-23941/content/_3081744_1/Gunning%2C%20Tom.pdf > [Accessed 03 September 2012]