“Hollywood Cinema” the Book by Richard Maltby Essay (Critical Writing)

The aspect of traditional Hollywood entertainment is presented in the beginning of the sequence. People are dancing, laughing, and drinking, a familiar environment depicted in so many films. There is a sense of Utopianism in the way the party is shown – it has more energy and more abundance in character if compared to the day-to-day reality¹. In the scene, the camera follows Gilda, who dances with a stranger, and when Johnny alerted her that the “husband was showing,” flirts with the stranger, gives him her phone number, and leaves swiftly. The camera leads her and Johnny to the table, where Ballin Mundson waited for his wife. In the scene where the three of them are sitting behind the table, the camera shifts its gaze to focus on different participants of the conversation. According to Maltby, the shifting gaze allows viewers “not only to explore the space but also understand its meanings through identifications of and with characters”². This cinematic method is beneficial for letting viewers into the space of the characters and participate in the action that they are experiencing.

In the scene where Gilda is lying on her bed, and her husband Ballin comes in and sits next to her, there is a distinct focus of the camera on the woman’s emotions. As Gilda lays her head on her husband’s lap, the frame is fixed on her face and expressions that she makes. In the nonchalant banter, her face is relaxed, eyes looking down. The “good-bad” girl is exposed in this short sequence. When she realizes that her husband knows about her knowing Johnny before, her facial expression changes, eyes wide open, glancing in different directions. When she gets up, Gilda looks straight into Ballin’s eyes but proceeds to lie. Her character has distinct features of the method used in American cinema to use the goodness and the badness in women to make them more appealing³. Playing on her vulnerability, Gilda then falls face down on her plush pillows. As her husband proceeds talking, the camera focuses on Gilda who is riddled by her own feelings

In the casino scene, the movements of the camera translate the erratic behavior and the confusion Gilda experienced. She leaves the casino table after a snarky remark made by a man, and goes on to have a smoke. At the same time, viewers see a short man with a moustache entering, also with a worried expression on his face. Both Gilda and the man are worried and lost in the chaos of the casino, which provokes sympathy among viewers. This aligns with the appeal of Hollywood movies, that along with aesthetic unity and the diversity of characters make audiences live through different emotions⁴. The sense of confusion follows Gilda and the man. While he is refused from making low bets at the table, she encounters a cleaner who sees her distressed expression and makes and calls her lonely and frustrated. The sequence then shows an angry conversation between Ballin and the man with the moustache. They argue about business, and the sequence uses the space method again, changing shots from Ballin’s face and his opponent’s. Notably, Ballin is much taller than the man, and when the camera shows his face, his glance is directed down, showing superiority. When the man’s face is shown, he is almost cropped from the camera shot, which underlines his vulnerable position.

Bibliography

Maltby, Richard. Hollywood Cinema. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.

Footnotes

1. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 37.
2. Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 344.
3. Ibid., 64.
4. Ibid., 11.