|
1930 |
The Blue Angel, is an early
dual-language production and the first of a series of films
directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich. |
|
Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dali's
surrealist L'Age d'or provokes riots in Paris. |
|
Chicago gangsters are a national fad;
Al Capone in real life and Edward G. Robinson in the film
Little Caesar. |
|
Gaspar bleached-color process is
announced. |
|
1930s |
Japan is the world's largest producer
of film entertainment and the only country in which Hollywood
films do not overshadow domestic product. Popular genres
include the historical drama, the contemporary-life film, and
melodramas. |
|
Gangster films and romantic comedies
become staples of American sound cinema. |
|
Double features are introduced to
counter Depression-era box-office slump, with "B" films shown
for the second half of double bills. |
|
Opens with the Depression and closes
with the beginning of WWII. Movies from this golden age of
Hollywood help people escape or understand the troubled world.
Child star Shirley Temple, Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire, and
Ginger Rogers are popular. |
|
|
Significant genre of movie musicals
contingent upon sound. |
|
1931 |
René Clair's early sound feature
Le million and À nous la liberté combine musical
comedy and politics. |
|
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff chill
millions in Dracula and Frankenstein. |
|
Also in History: The world's highest structure,
the Empire State Building opens. |
|
The Great Depression worsens -
breadlines are common. |
|
Harold Edgerton invents a repeatable
short-duration electronic flash, which captured stop-action
images that were beyond the perceptive capacity of the
eye. |
|
1932 |
George Eastman dies on March 14,
1932, in Rochester, New York. |
|
Walt Disney's cartoon short
Flowers and Trees is the first film made using new
three-strip, three-color Technicolor and is the first cartoon
to win an Academy Award. |
|
Johnny Weismuller plays Tarzan in
Tarzan the Ape Man. |
|
"Mostra Internazionale d'Arte
Cinematografica," the world's first film festival, is
inaugurated by Mussolini at the Lido in Venice. |
|
|
Technicolor, a three-color system, is
introduced. |
|
|
Ansel Adams founds Group f.64
dedicated to straight photography. Group f.64 photographers
use large cameras and small apertures to record nature's
light. |
|
|
First light meter with photoelectric
cell is introduced. |
|
|
Phil T. Farnesworth demonstrates
electronic television. |
|
|
8 mm Cine Camera and film are
introduced. |
|
Electron microscope is developed in
Germany. |
|
1933 |
In Queen Christina, Greta
Garbo places affairs of state over those of the heart. |
|
|
With the Nazis' rise to power, Dr.
Josef Goebells becomes Minister of Propaganda and gradually
nationalizes the film industry. More than 1,500 filmmakers
flee Germany. |
|
|
John Grierson, father of the British
documentary movement, heads up the General Post Office (GPO)
Film Unit. |
|
|
The British Film Institute is
established in London to "encourage the use and development of
the cinematograph as a means of entertainment and
instruction." |
|
Ernest B. Schoedsack's
King
Kong. |
|
Walt Disney's cartoon The Three
Little Pigs in three-color Technicolor |
|
|
Technology is developed to mix
separately recorded tracks for music, sound effects, and
dialogue at a dubbing stage. |
|
|
Also in History: Prohibition
ends. |
|
1934 |
It Happened One Night, is the
first of series of populist Frank Capra comedy-dramas. |
|
Leni Riefenstahl, using 30 cameras
and 120 assistants, films Triumph of the Will, a
powerful Nazi propaganda film. |
|
|
Joseph I. Breen, director of the
Production Code Administration, implements the Production Code
in response to pressure from the Catholic Legion of Decency.
It will remain in effect for more than thirty years. |
|
|
Bombay Talkies studio is formed in
India. |
|
Retina I introduced using standard
35mm case. |
|
1935 |
Rouben Mamoulian's Becky
Sharp, is the first three-strip Technicolor feature. |
|
|
"The March of Time," a monthly
documentary newsreel series is produced by Time
magazine. |
|
|
Foundation of the National Film
Library (later National Film Archive) in London, the Museum of
Modern Art Film Library in New York, and the Reichsfilmarchiv
in Berlin. |
|
|
Frank Lloyd's
Mutiny on the
Bounty |
|
Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome
film. |
|
1936 |
Charlie Chaplin speaks on film for
the first time in Modern Times. |
|
|
Pépé le Moko starring Jean
Gabin, is the fatalistic hero of French Poetic Realism. |
|
The Cinémathèque Française is founded
in Paris by Henri Langlois and Georges Franju. |
|
|
Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange |
|
American combat photographer, Robert
Capa captures on film the Spanish Civil War, notably
Death
of a Loyalist Soldier. |
|
Life magazine begins. |
|
American photographer Margaret
Bourke-White takes the cover photo for first issue Life
magazine. |
|
The Spanish Earth, directed by
Joris Ivens with commentary written and narrated by Ernest
Hemingway, is made as a response to the Spanish Civil
War. |
|
1937 |
Walt Disney produces Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated
cartoon. |
|
Saint Tukaram, is a hugely
popular Indian "devotional" film and winner at the Venice Film
Festival. |
|
Opening of Cinecittá, a modern
government-owned studio complex, is built on the outskirts of
Rome. |
|
Zeppelin Hindenburg is destroyed by fire. |
|
1938 |
Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei
Prokofiev collaborate on Alexander Nevsky. |
|
Leni Riefenstahl completes her
two-part Olympia, a film record of the 1936 Berlin
Olympics. |
|
Foundation of the International
Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). |
|
Chester Carlson invents
Xerography. |
|
Super Kodak Six 20-Autoexposure is
developed. |
|
1939 |
David O. Selznick's Gone With the
Wind and MGM's The Wizard of Oz, two enduring
Technicolor classics, debut. |
|
French films Le Jour se lève
and The Rules of the Game sum up the pessimism of a
nation on the verge of war and occupation. |
|
The National Film Board of Canada is
established under the directorship of British documentary
filmmaker John Grierson. |
|
Hitler invades Poland, unleashing
World War II. |
|
|
Television broadcast from New York
World Fair. |
